The Antidote (24 page)

‘Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky':
Stephen Mitchell, Ed.,
Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn
(New York: Grove, 1994), 51-2.

In 1996, a twenty-eight-year-old from Indiana:
My account of Christopher Kayes's travels, his account of the 1996 Everest disaster, and his interpretation of the 1963 Everest study, along with quotes from Ed Viesturs, James Lester, Beck Weathers and others are drawn from an interview with Kayes and from his fascinating book
Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mount Everest Disaster
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

a largely forgotten psychology study:
My primary source is Christopher Kayes,
Destructive Goal Pursuit,
but the study in question is detailed in James Lester, ‘Wrestling with the Self on Mount Everest',
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
23 (1983): 31-41.

a journalist from the technology magazine
Fast Company: Lawrence Tabak,
‘If Your Goal Is Success, Don't Consult These Gurus',
Fast Company,
18 December 2007.

‘Consider any individual at any period of his life':
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America,
Vol. 2, Trans. George Lawrence (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 369.

The psychologist Dorothy Rowe argues:
In Tim Lott, ‘Why Uncertainty is Good for You',
The Sunday Times,
24 May 2009.

Here are the words of one blogger:
See David Cain, ‘How To Get Comfortable Not Knowing', at
www.raptitude.com/2009/06/how-to-get-comfortable-not-knowing

the economist Colin Camerer and three of his colleagues:
Colin Camerer et al., ‘Labor Supply of New York City Cabdrivers: One Day at a Time',
Quarterly Journal of Economics
112 (1997): 407-41.

a 2009 paper with a heavy-handed pun for its title:
Lisa Ordóñez et al., ‘Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side-effects of Overprescribing Goal-setting',
Academy of Management Perspectives
23 (2009): 6-16.

One illuminating example of the problem:
My account of GM's ‘twenty-nine' campaign is drawn from Sean Cole, ‘It's Not Always Good To Create Goals', from the website of the American Public Media radio show Marketplace, accessible at
www.marketplace.org/topics/life/its-not-always-good-create-goals
, and Drake Bennett, ‘Ready, Aim … Fail',
Boston Globe,
15 March 2009.

Gary Latham and Edwin Locke's response:
Gary Latham and Edwin Locke, ‘Has Goal-setting Gone Wild, or Have Its Attackers Abandoned Good Scholarship?',
Academy of Management Perspectives
23 (2009): 17-23.

‘When we try to pick out any thing by itself':
John Muir,
My First Summer in the Sierra
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 211.

‘The continued existence of complex interactive systems':
Gregory Bateson,
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 124.

‘I'm not sure if my goals drove me':
Steve Shapiro,
Goal-free Living
(Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2006), xii.

In survey research he commissioned:
Steve Shapiro,
Goal-free Living,
v.

A few years ago, the researcher Saras Sarasvathy:
Information and quotations about effectuation come primarily from Leigh Buchanan, ‘How Great Entrepreneurs Think',
Inc. Magazine,
February 2011; and the website
www.effectuation.org
.

‘The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning':
Erich Fromm,
Man for Himself (New
York: Macmillan, 1947), 45.

‘To be a good human':
In Bill Moyers,
A World of Ideas
(New York: Doubleday, 1989), 448.

‘a slow movement at first':
All quotations from Eckhart Tolle are drawn either from my meeting with him, or from his books
The Power of Now
and
A New Earth.
See Oliver Burkeman, ‘The Bedsit Epiphany', The
Guardian,
11 April 2009; Eckhart Tolle,
The Power of Now
(Novato, California: New World Library, 1999) and
A New Earth
(New York: Dutton, 2005).

‘supremely powerful and cunning':
This and following quotes are from René Descartes,
Meditations on First Philosophy,
Trans. Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 16.

‘A viewer of
The Matrix': Christopher Grau, Ed.,
Philosophers Explore the Matrix
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 13.

‘For my part, when I enter most intimately':
David Hume,
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Selections from a Treatise of Human Nature,
Ed. Thom Chittom (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004), 200.

no ‘centre in the brain':
Quoted in Jullian Baggini, ‘The Blurred Reality of Humanity',
Independent,
21 March 2011.

As the psychologist Michael Gazzaniga has demonstrated:
See Michael Gazzaniga,
The Ethical Brain
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006): 149.

claims Paul Hauck:
Paul Hauck,
Overcoming the Rating Game: Beyond Selflove, Beyond Self-esteem
(Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 46.

adapted here from the work of … Alan Watts:
All quotations from Alan Watts,
The Wisdom of Insecurity.

‘a pretty effective spear':
All quotations from Bruce Schneier come from my interview with him and from his essay ‘The Psychology of Security'. See Oliver Burkeman, ‘Heads in the Clouds',
Guardian,
1 December 2007; and Bruce Schneier, ‘The Psychology of Security', accessible at
www.schneier.com/essay-155.html

the 2020 Project … published a report:
See
www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2020_s4.html

‘the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity':
Alan Watts,
The Wisdom of Insecurity,
14.

‘As a matter of fact':
Ibid., 15.

‘To be vulnerable … is to be without defensive armour':
Quoted in Susan Schwartz Senstad, ‘The Wisdom of Vulnerability'; available at
voicedialogue. org/articles-b/Wisdom_Of_Vulnerability.pdf

‘You can't selectively numb emotion':
From a talk at the TED conference by Brené Brown, viewable online at
www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

‘To love at all is to be vulnerable':
Quoted in Vincent Genovesi,
In Pursuit of Love: Catholic Morality and Human Sexuality
(Collegeville, Minneapolis: Liturgical Press, 1996), 28.

‘The truth that many people never understand':
Thomas Merton,
The Seven Storey Mountain
(New York: Harcourt, 1948), 91.

‘Becoming a Buddhist':
Quoted in Helen Tworkov, ‘No Right, No Wrong: An Interview with Pema Chödrön',
Tricycle,
Fall 1993.

‘Things are not permanent':
Ibid.

‘It's clear that poverty has crippled Kibera':
From Jean-Pierre Larroque, ‘Of Crime and Camels', blog post at
mediaforsocialchange.org/blog/of-crime-and-camels
22 July 2001

‘I find it so inspiring when you see people':
See ‘Colleen “Inspired” by Poor People', unbylined article at
www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/22368-coleen-inspired-by-poor-people

International surveys of happiness:
All World Values Survey data is accessible at
www.worldvaluessurvey.org
. Also see, for example, ‘Nigeria Tops Happiness Survey', unbylined BBC News article, 2 October 2003, at news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3157570.stm

Survey data from the Afrobarometer project:
A good overview of this research is Carol Graham and Matthew Hoover, ‘Poverty and Optimism in Africa: Adaptation or Survival?', prepared for the Gallup Positive Psychology Summit, October 2006, accessible at
brookings.edu/views/papers/graham/20061005ppt.pdf

According to mental health researchers:
The study is by the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey Consortium, entitled ‘Prevalence, Severity, and Unmet Need for Treatment of Mental Disorders in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys', and was reported in ‘Global Study Finds Mental Illness Widespread', unbylined Associated Press report, 7 July 2004.

‘It is simply self-evident':
Alan Watts,
The Wisdom of Insecurity,
16.

As the journalist Neil Steinberg has noted:
Neil Steinberg,
Complete and Utter Failure
(New York: Doubleday, 1994), 31.

‘top 50 per cent of safe drivers':
Ola Svenson, ‘Are We All Less Risky and More

Skillful Than Our Fellow Drivers?',
Acta Psychologica
47 (1981): 143-8.

A fascinating series of studies of working scientists:
See, for example, Kevin Dunbar, ‘Scientific Creativity' from
The Encyclopedia of Creativity,
Ed. Steven Pritzker and Mark Runco (Waltham, Massachusetts: Academic Press, 1999): 1379-84; available at
utsc.utoronto.ca/~dunbarlab/pubpdfs/DunbarCreativityEncyc99.pdf

‘If you're a scientist and you're doing an experiment':
From a PopTech conference talk by Kevin Dunbar, ‘Kevin Dunbar on Unexpected Science', accessible online at poptech.org/popcasts/kevin_dunbar_on_unexpected_science

As he told the neuroscience writer Jonah Lehrer:
See Jonah Lehrer, ‘Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up',
Wired,
January 2010.

‘Think about it':
All quotations from Jerker Denrell are from my interview with him or from Jerker Denrell, ‘Vicarious Learning, Undersampling of Failure, and the Myths of Management',
Organization Science
2003 (14): 227-43; and Jerker Denrell, ‘Selection Bias and the Perils of Benchmarking',
Harvard Business Review,
April 2005.

research into media commentators who make predictions:
Jerker Denrell and Christina Fang, ‘Predicting the Next Big Thing: Success as a Signal of Poor Judgment',
Management Science
56 (2010): 1653-67; see also Joe Keohane, ‘That Guy Who Called the Big One? Don't Listen to Him',
Boston Globe,
9 January 2011.

‘The Dome has a clear brand':
Ros Coward, ‘Wonderful, Foolish Dome',
Guardian,
12 March 2001.

‘Musing over failure is not a particularly American activity':
Neil Steinberg,
Complete and Utter Failure,
3.

‘Downfall … brings us to the ground':
Natalie Goldberg, The Great Failure (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 1-2.

“At bottom … no one believes':
Sigmund Freud,
Reflections on War and Death
(New York: Moffat Yard, 1918), Google Books digitised version, 41.

‘Making a killing in business':
Sam Keen, Foreword to Ernest Becker,
The Denial of Death
(New York: Free Press, 1973), Kindle edition.

One typical set of terror management experiments:
The Rutgers experiments are Mark Landau et al., ‘Deliver Us from Evil: The Effects of Mortality Salience and Reminders of 9/11 on Support for President George W. Bush',
Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin
30 (2004): 1136-50.

Christians show more negativity towards Jews:
Jeff Greenberg et al., ‘Evidence for Terror Management Theory II: The Effect of Mortality Salience on
Reactions to Those Who Threaten or Bolster the Cultural Worldview',
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
58 (1990): 308-18.

Moralistic people become more moralistic:
Abram Rosenblatt et al., ‘Evidence for Terror Management Theory: I. The Effects of Mortality Salience on Reactions To Those Who Violate or Uphold Cultural Values',
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
57 (1989): 681-90.

more intense reactions of disgust:
Jamie Goldenberg et al., ‘I Am
Not
an Animal: Mortality Salience, Disgust, and the Denial of Human Creatureliness',
Journal of Experimental Psychology
130 (2001): 427-35.

one such paper states:
Ibid.

sympathetic to the theory of ‘intelligent design':
Jessica Tracy et al., ‘Death and Science: the Existential Underpinnings of Belief in Intelligent Design and Discomfort with Evolution',
PLoS One
6 (2011): e17349.

‘Well,' Becker told him:
See Sam Keen, ‘How a Philosopher Dies'; available online at
samkeen.com/interviews-by-sam/interviews-by-sam/earnest-becker-how-a-philosopher-dies

‘Gradually, reluctantly':
Sam Keen, Foreword to Ernest Becker,
The Denial of Death.

as the contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel points out:
All Nagel quotations are from ‘Death' in
Mortal Questions
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 1-10.

Jean-Paul Sartre:
Quoted in Irvin Yalom,
Staring at the Sun
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), Kindle edition.

also one of the happiest:
Two examples are an Ipsos Global survey that put Mexico third, detailed in ‘World is Happier Place Than in 2007 - Poll', unbylined report, Reuters, 10 February 2012; and the 2010 findings of the Happiness Barometer project, sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company in association with Complutense University of Madrid, which put Mexico in first place: see www.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/happiness_barometer.pdf

‘to ask her to “protect me tonight …”‘:
Quoted in Elizabeth Fullerton, ‘Booming Death Cult Draws Mexican Gangsters, Police', Reuters, 13 May 2004.