Wendy KaminerReseñas

I have long been frustrated with the self-help movement. To me, all those books out there are saying, "You aren't good enough." And they are written, for the most part, by people who have a limited experience with the wide range of people who might be looking at their book. Writers, in other words, who don't really know what they are talking about.

So I loved finding this book. Although written in the early 1990s it holds true today. Kaminer examines several types of "recovery" movements, then moves into other self-help movements. She examines what the authors are saying and determines that most of them contradict themselves, are not based on clear thinking, and, worst of all, encourage a status of victimhood and dependency. "You can't help it." "You need help." "You can't do it alone".

Kaminer is especially ruthless when she discusses how this movement has muddied the waters of what is really abuse. Now any kind of difficulty can be labeled as abuse, as traumatic, "as bad as being in a concentration camp". The notion is absurd but I happen to know someone who has bought exactly this argument about her own childhood, that it was worse than being in a concentration camp. Come on! It's so ridiculous. And Kaminer is not afraid to say so, often with laugh-out-loud humor.

More people need to read this book. It might shake them loose of that feeling that they need someone else to approve what they do, to tell them what to do.

Read during Winter 2002/2003

I first heard of Wendy Kaminer when I read a review of her book "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional." I didn't read that one but I think I will now, since Sleeping with Extra-terrestials was so thoughtful and provocative. The subtitle is "The Rise of Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety" and it is a free-ranging discussion of the influence of religion, New Age spirituality, and other less than rational movements. It was published in 1999 but is even more apt now. I found some of her arguments confusing, esp. the chapter called 'Pious Bias' but everything made me think and I hope that is the goal.

I've had the pleasure (?) of serving on several non-profit boards, mostly related to libraries and library systems or college associations. As I have told my daughter several times when she complains about a board member, boards see the world differently than an employee, and boards have very different responsibilities than employees. The major role for the board is to hire and fire the executive director. When trust breaks down between the board and the executive director, a board has no choice but to hire a new one. In the case of Romero versus his board described in this book, Kaminer describes not only a break between several members of the board and their executive director, but a profound disagreement among board members themselves over basic principles of the organization.

"When a not-for-profit group idealizes itself , regarding its own rectitudes a fact, not a contingency, it presumes to embody an essential, altruistic, if not sacred, mission, and criticizing the group becomes the equivalent of criticizing or betraying its great cause. Then members, unwilling to leave the group will find ways to love it, rationalizing felonies as well as misdemeanors." (The Catholic church's unwillingness to face the implications of the priest pedophile scandal springs to mind.)

It has been my observation that organizations formed to promote idealistic principles have a cohesion that works very well until the need for a professional manager becomes inherent because of the increased work load of that organization. The choice of the new director is crucial because if the ED doesn't necessarily share those original ideals, or doesn't come from the ranks of the members, there tends to be a shift over time in the goals of that association. Now the focus is on keeping the organization going (gotta pay the ED's salary and infrastructure, after all) and raising money to fund the infrastructure (which, in order to increase the ED's power base, must necessarily grow.)

Increasing wealth for the ACLU became an issue as well during the Bush years. "I doubt that many members ever considered the relevance of widely publicized governance failures [Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom all occured around the time:] by corporate boards to their own roles as fiduciaries. The ACLU board would not, or could not, seriously entertain the notion that its leaders might be as likely to abuse power as the leaders of multi-billion dollar corporations, absent substantial checks on their behavior."

The problems began with an agreement signed by the new executive director accepting a grant from the Ford Foundation that included the general rider prohibiting any organization accepting a grant from promoting, or engaging in "violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state." i.e. a restriction on political advocacy.. Now most people would not think much of that but those passionate in support of speech would not want to sign anything that could potentially restrict speech. Romero's mistake was that he didn't inform the board of this rider. Some colleges and universities opposed the rider and when it became know the ACLU had accepted it, the proverbial vigaro hit the mix-master. And, of course, the ACLU executive board wanted the money. Furthermore, Romero hid from the board his role in helping to formulate the statement. Tsk, tsk. Then, to make things worse, Romero signed an agreement to stay on the Combined Federal Campaign program, which netted $500,000 per year, but which required that the ACLU would agree not to hire anyone on a federal watch list. The vigaro had now morphed into shit.

It's hard to know what to make of this book. Kaminer presents what is undoubtedly a very biased view of events (note that I do not see bias as a negative, especially if the biased individual is correct.) Her attitude is that the other board members were sheep following a goat and she discusses Solomon Ashe's famous study of conformity to indicate how easy it is for people in a group to call "white, black," something they would never do as individuals, in order too go along with the group. But it's also true that there are people out there, professional gadflies, if you will, who delight in being the resident antagonist ad skeptic (disclaimer: it's a role I often enjoy myself.) The ACLU prides itself on being non-conformist with regard to the outside world, yet Kaminer suggests a substantial amount of comfort is acquired by conforming to an internal majority.

Kaminer does make a persuasive case for ideological impurity and myopia at the ACLU. It's just hard to tell to what degree she is right. On the other hand, the book provides some valuable insights into organizational behavior, and I recommend it highly for that reason if nothing else. There is, in organizations, an "expansive capacity for self-deception of people immersed in systems predicated on deceptive images of perfection that repel all suggestions of failure." Remember the Corvair and the o-rings of the Challenger?

This book should be required reading for prospective non-profit board members.

References: http://www.hereinstead.com/NYTIMES-ON-ACLU-PROBLEMS-2004.PDF

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

“The contrary willingness to accept untested personal testimony as public truth is at the heart of the irrationalism that confronts us today. . . Generally, the only proof offered for a fantastic belief is the passion it inspires in believers.” Kaminer’s new book decries the influence that irrational belief has on public policy. In the introduction she humorously ridicules her going to a homeopath, recognizing that it has no scientific validity, and she knows the result is due to the placebo effect, yet that effect is real to her. She argues, however, that others should not take her testimony at face value. Objective evidence should be required.

Kaminer discusses the public’s eagerness to join in the hysteria over satanic ritual child abuse, mass mourning for celebrities, how junk science and personal prejudice have influenced public policy decisions related to drugs, school vouchers, and classroom prayer. We are in danger of losing our skepticism, she argues, and that is dangerous for a democratic society. She acknowledges the personal need of many for divinities, but she suggests that a society that wears its piety in the public square craving for angels and alien abductions, not to mention Saint Diana, is more likely to look for miracles than face the challenges of living in a pluralistic society.

And she comes down quite hard on religious faith as feeding the irrational. “What’s the difference between crossing yourself or hanging a mezuzah outside your door and avoiding black cats. Believing that you’ve been abducted by aliens or that Elvis is alive is, on its face, no sillier than believing that Christ rose from the dead. . . People who believe that God heeds their prayers have probably” waived the right to mock people who talk to trees and guardian angels or claim to channel the spirits of Native Americans.” One man’s superstition is another’s sacred.

Kaminer blames the media for much of this, they quail in the face of the supernatural. Skepticism is edited out of journalistic reporting and she doubts H. L. Mencken could publish many of his antagonistic remarks about religious silliness, arguing that we risk becoming less religiously free than during the Victorian era. She is a fervent advocate of religious freedom. “Separation of church and state does not desire, much less mandate, the banishment of religious faith from public life, as right-wing rhetoric sometimes suggests. . . .The right of religious people to organize and mount political protest is, in par, a right of private association, which the government is bound to accommodate, but not support.” But she cites numerous instances of religious viewpoints appearing in work and school settings, almost universally those of Protestant Christianity.

Kaminer’s examples are witty and eerily disturbing. Together they present a rather disturbing vision of the future and she ends with a plea for a return to science, skepticism, reason, and freedom of inquiry.

“The rights and interests of individual believers clash with religious institutions when the institutions seek sponsorship of the state. Crusades to breach the boundaries between church and state constitute a much greater threat to religious tolerance than any number of evangelical atheists. Theocracies throughout history have made that clear.”

As I was reviewing some of Kaminer’s magazine articles I stumbled upon a very recent commentary which I quote in its entirety:

“Sometimes I put my faith in sectarian rivalries, which helped derail the most recent proposed school-prayer amendment to the Constitution. Last year, an organization in Arkansas, Put God Back in Public School, decided not to press for the introduction of school prayers in Arkansas (instead, they demanded state funding for special Christian schools). The group reconsidered the value of school prayer after its founder Kathy Smith, consulted with God: ‘I asked God, “Do you want me to change the law to put prayer in the schools?” He said no. If you do that, kids would have the right to pray to other gods, too. They could pray to Buddha. God doesn’t want that. There is only one God.’

What more can I say but ‘Amen’.”

An interesting essay on group think as Wendy Kaminer observed it in the leadership of the ACLU. She showed how a change in leadership to someone willing to deceive the executive board was not admonished by the board, but instead praised while his critics were forced off the board.

This is not her best piece of writing and reads in some areas as her venting her frustrations, but it was interesting and gave me pause to think about how collective conformity rules over individual truths.

This is something of a dilemma; do I rate this based on whether I personally found this to be of interest (a “good read” generally) or do I evaluate this as a disgruntled-but-seemingly-fair dissertation on some very specific, very recent issues within one organization by an ex-member of high standing? Typically I choose the former (which in this case might be 2 stars) instead on the latter (4), but for this one I’ll say a average 3 as, really, hardly anyone will read my “review” and perhaps four people will ever see my rating. I might as well segue into a discussion of just how awful the Jimmy Fallon Show is or, even more pressing, why every small pothole repair now requires two Boston police officers.

In case anyone actually reads this (um…Hi Mom, How’s retirement thus far?) I’ll add my typically useless two cents about this book. If I go on the basis of my personal take, I felt this quite brief book read as something of an activist pamphlet with an appended quasi-psychological profile of the perils of groupthink conformity as it may eventually crush independent, rational opinion. The subsequent inclusion of issues revolving around the First Amendment on private campuses was more palatable as this relates to Kaminer’s narrative about internal strife within the ACLU over the last eight years. This incremental fracturing – according to her thesis – is already negatively influencing the way the organization operates in the public realm.

Whereas I certainly don’t consider her concerns “nitpicking,” I also don’t know that this is ready-for-Primetime in popular book form (that is, something my dismal local libraries would actually own a copy of). With all the other crap we’re bombarded with day-to-day, these, no doubt, troubling issues seem a bit tame. Obviously her reasoning is that these issues have been increasing exponentially and the whole infrastructure of the ACLU is at stake, therefore there’s no time like the present to get this information out there. I can respect that, but as a general reader I felt less than engaged through most of it. Perhaps my cynicism leads me to suspect that the ACLU – like other such large organizations – already had far worse, and certainly more numerous, bones in the proverbial closet. Despite Romero’s roguish leadership, I blithely assumed money laundering, political blackmail, and the like might have already been defining characteristics…since like 1922! I don’t watch CSI:Reno or whatever and I don’t think I’ve even seen more than one Michael Moore movie, but it seems to me that anytime an organization exceeds six people and seven-figure funding, a Denver prostitution ring supplying the money for Taliban Bazookas can’t be far off. Am I wrong? Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

Anyway, if I put aside what my wife says is my distorted world-view (one that’s rarely contradicted), I might read this as the story of a recently displaced, passionate ACLUer bravely exposing wrongdoings in the face of internal ridicule. Kaminer’s agenda is nothing more than reforming the recently maligned organization so it can pursue civil liberty protections unhampered as it once did. That’s great and I certainly wouldn’t deny this is her intent. I suppose I would say that I’m less shocked by the story than shocked that others may find the story shocking.

Reviewed in blog at http://www.sea-of-flowers.ca/weblog/sea/archives/2004/07/20/sleeping-with-a.php and Blogcritics at http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/19/213121.php

This review has been rewritten since it was first published. A more extensive review appears in my own Web log).

Wendy Kaminer's book, "Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials, The Rise of Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety" is interesting. She says that her objective is to write against irrationalism but I see this book more as an examination of how the New Age is becoming, in effect, a significant minority religion in America.

Wendy Kaminer was a lawyer in New York, and a contributing editor of the Atlantic Monthly. She seems to be a writer and a social critic. She appears to be a fairly typical Eastern liberal intellectual. Her writing is rich and dense. I have the impression that she has reworked magazine articles and essay into a more coherent form, and I think she hasn't completely succeeded. She repeats some ideas, and some of the arguments are a bit disorganised.

She doesn't come across as a hardline atheist or enemy of religion. She seems to be more of a free-thinker and skeptic. She seems to be concerned to promote a secular public space in which religious values are respected but kept private except to the extent that they coincide with broadly accepted values that support a peaceful secular society. She does clearly say several times that she finds that New Age gurus and the priests, ministers and rabbis of organized religion tend to profess equally irrational beliefs.

She skewers the writers and readers of come-and-go bestsellers like "The Celestine Prophecy" and "Mutant Message from Down Under," and writer-lecturers like Neil Donald Walsch and Marianne Williamson. She points out that these writers are cashing in, big-time by spiritual teachings that make people feel good about themselves. She also deals with the relatively incoherent, vaguely Hindu ideas of the New Age. She points out that many New Age writers encourage people to accept and tolerate evil in the world as part of karma or destiny. She points out that some writers have condoned murder because murder victims are in agreement with their murderers on an eternal, cosmic level!

She goes on to look at the lecture and training programs for personal growth. She asks the question about why Americans appear to be ready to place their trust in this stuff so easily. She nails the renegade ex-Catholic hippie priest Matthew Fox for his vague and rambling theories and his efforts to sacralize New Age values within the Christian tradition. Some New Age writers like Neil Donald Walsch make grandiose claims of direct communication with the divine. Some New Age gurus, in her experience, are very sensitive about their own teachings and react very badly to criticism. She says "In a culture preoccupied with self-esteem, megalomania is a virtue, I guess."

She says that the New Age is intolerant. It treats the established organized religions as unenlightened and authoritarian. Also, while the New Age seems to have room for all kinds of beliefs, it does not accept skepticism and science. New Agers dismiss skeptics as "witch-hunters." In theological terms, one would say that the New Age believes in selective pluralism. It claims tolerance for itself against other religions and against government scrutiny, but it preaches that it is a more enlightened religion than mainline Christianity and Islam.

She discusses feminism and the New Age. She says that many women today try to have it both ways. They want equality, but they also want to be intuitive and emotional and to have all the other stereotypical feminine attributes. She calls this female chauvinism and argues that it has flourished within the spirituality and alternative-healing movements. She points out that while in earlier generations these ideas empowered women by giving them a particular area of safety and personal authority, today they hold women back.

She examines the New Age's obsession with justifying itself scientifically, or at least explaining its beliefs by faith in new and innovative science. She deals with the unjustified popularity of Indian medicine as presented by Deepak Chopra and mentions the various New Age ideas that try to tie spiritual beliefs into someone's half-baked understanding of the quantum physics.

She discusses false claims of sexual abuse, and her discussion spins off into a fascinating discussion of the way in which subjective reports of personal experience, no matter how ludicrous and incredible, have become elevated into unassailable truth in post-modernist philosophy, in certain styles of therapy, and in popular culture.

I found a theme running through the book. The New Age preaches freedom and innovation in theory but in practice it encourage subordination to the pronouncements of predatory and self-serving writers, lecturers, teachers, coacher and gurus.

I thought that her general premise that organized religion and the New Age are equally irrational led her to overlook a couple of criticisms of the New Age. There are intellectual differences between the major religious traditions and the New Age.

The major religions have systems of personal and public ethics and are concerned about justice. While the Christian left thinks the Christian right is overly focussed on sexuality, and right thinks the left are all commies, they all have strong ethics and willingness to work in the world to change it. The New Age is all about self-esteem and feeling good. As for justice - remember what some New Age writers said about murder. That may not be completely fair. Some New Agers have a sort of non-violent, tree-hugging anti-corporate ethic but they can't seem to stop meditating and navel-gazing long enough to do anything. They dream of changing the world, but they won't live in the real world.

Kaminer would seem to agree that the adherents of the New Age tend to be self-absorbed and grandiose, and out of touch with the real world but she can't seem to make the other points I've mentioned.

It is a good little book to read and think about. It doesn't try to catalogue all the New Age writers and lectures or their theories. It doesn't try to examine the evolution of the ideas of the New Age and their circulation in popular culture in depth. It has enough factual observations and evidence to support the main arguments. It raises real concerns about the role of the New Age in popular culture and it should make people re-examine language and concepts that we tend to take on board, ignorantly, from the media and popular culture. It is written forcefully and with wit and elegance.

There are at least two types of eloquence: one is stating the case in a manner that those already in agreement will applaud, and the other is arguing persuasively. Kaminer's book has been hailed for its exhortations and wit by foes of the "self-help" movement, whatever that is exactly. Fans of the books that she criticizes are undoubtably outraged. The skeptical will be unimpressed.

The irony is, one of Kaminer's chief complaints about the somewhat ill-defined self-help movement is that it blunts our critical thinking: she wants a nation of critical thinkers who won't analyze this book too closely. Kaminer doesn't offer any analytical evidence of how the self-help movement actually affects our society, she merely utters extremely vague warnings" "imagine the effect ... ." Nor does she have much evidence as to how people typically use self-help: a reader might gain useful insights without letting the book rule their life or joining a cult around the author. The "self-help movement" is a phrase that is tossed around a great deal, but what is Kaminer actually referring to? Any book that lumps together Norman Vincent Peale, Wicca, Alcoholics Anonymous and M. Scott Peck is covering a lot of ground. (It has never occurred to me to think of Wicca as a "self-help movement"; I guess Kaminer just doesn't like it and decided to throw it in for good measure.) All of philosophy and theology could be thrown into such a broad categorization. It would have been better if Kaminer had stuck to specific criticisms of specific books instead of trying to generalize about such a variety of works.

Kaminer's main arguments are two - one is that if you agree with her, the two of you will share the pleasure of sneering smugly at others. Secondly, she keeps informing us that whatever it is doesn't appeal to her as if we should be just overwhelmed that ***!!!!Wendy Kaminer!!!!*** doesn't approve.

I actually read this a long time ago. It came back to me when I was reading Paul Collins' fascinating The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine, and read the discussion of phrenology in the early 19th century. Kaminer seems to assume that the idea of self-help is a recent phenomenon, falling back, I suppose, on the common tendency to think that things are going to pot these days but were much better at some vague time in the past. Actually, books of advice have been extremely popular since the the printing press made reading materials generally available: they were the best sellers of 16th century England. In her book, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, Jennifer Fleischner tells us that Abraham Lincoln "bought a copy of The Elements of Character by Mary G. Chandler. One of many of its kind, a popular Victorian genre ... . It was written in the common self-help blend of psychological and moral language." Moreover, most of these books are based, legitimately or otherwise, on psychology and/or religion, both of which predate our time. Kaminer has indicated a respect for psychology in other books, and religion certainly preceded the founding of the Republic that she argues is now endangered by self-help books. So what has happened? She compares, for example, a belief in the 12-step higher power with devotion to a political demagogue. In the first place, a disembodied, individually conceived "higher power" is not capable of running for President-for-Life. In the second place, how does this differ from religion in general (which Kaminer never directly deals with)? Indeed, religious movements seem to me to be far more likely to be used for demagoguery: when was AA a voting bloc?

Some people do get pretty silly over these books, but is that because of the book, or because they're silly? Are their individual lives actually better or worse without the book? I know several people who work professionally with alcoholics who think that AA can be tremendously helpful. Sure, it would be better if no-one was inclined towards alcoholism, but that isn't one of the choices. The members of AA, et al., feel that they are better off with the program than without it. Kaminer gives us no reason to believe that she is a better judge of what is good for them than they are.

Toward the end of her book, she expresses her hope that we will drop all this nonsense and learn to think sharply and insightfully. She doesn't explain how she expects people who are too moronic to read these advice books critically are supposed to effect this transformation.

I really enjoyed this book. Kaminer honestly tells the reader her thoughts and doesn't try to cloud them in some kind of authoritarian mist. She critiques the self help movement without stooping to it's level. Not providing answer but spurring the reader to think for herself by providing questions and insights.½

A cutting, and often humorous, analysis of the self help and recovery movement. I read it when it came out, and it seems even more relevant now. After all these years I remember the section where she compares a shopaholics anonymous-like meeting to a meeting of Cambodian refugees. Should be read by anyone who takes themselves too seriously.

Highly entertaining and extremely well-written supported by source references. If you are in the UK a lot of it seems more pertinent to the US. However, the final chapters on Junk Science, Therapy culture are Cyberspace are definitive works in the struggle against contemporary nonsense.

Many people would admit to a certain scepticism when it comes to religions or beliefs other than their own. For some, the mere idea that another person's point-of-view is equally valid to their own would be seen as ludicrous, even blasphemous. But Wendy Kaminer posesses no such qualms. She fully realizes that every belief system has inherent illogic qualities. What she can't understand is why others have a hard time when it comes to a rational discussion on the topic.
SLEEPING WITH EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS is Kaminer's ode to the irrational, a witty and incisive commentary on irrational beliefs of all kinds. Not merely content to stick to established religions, Kaminer examines New-Age Mysticism, Reincarnation, Feminine Intuition, Self-Help Books, Repressed Memories, and Cyberspace. What she discovers, at times, can be alarming.

In a series of essays, Kaminer disects the recent North American trend to believe ANYTHING. In researching healers, mystics, and gurus, Kaminer presents the reader with one simple truth: If someone says something sincerely enough, or loud enough, we will believe it, no questions asked. If someone has talked to angels, we believe it. If someone has a repressed memory of child abuse, we believe it. If someone has talked to the spirits of our ancestors, we believe it. All without one single shred of evidence of any kind.

Kaminer does not dump on religion. She fully realizes the value a belief system can provide the average individual. But the apparent willingness of the public to adhere to anyone who proclaims something forceful enough can be an eye-opening experience.

In one precise example, she cites a 'study' presented by Pat Robertson, which showed that the crime rate in America has risen steadily ever since prayer was removed from public schools. That, Mr. Robertson proclaims, is proof positive that a lack of prayer in school leads to criminal activity. The flaw in this logic, as Kaminer astutely points out, is that the crime has also been on the rise ever since man first walked on the moon. Therefore, space travel has directly contributed to the rising crime rate. The ease with which the public accepts one statement without any thought to alternatives is frightening.

Kaminer is simply saying, "Ask questions." Don't be content to blithely follow the teachings of someone without examining that person first. Rationality is in ever decreasing supply these days, as people are more and more prone to 'jump on the bandwagon' of anything presented with apparent authority. In her section on 'Junk Science', Kaminer exposes the irrationality of scientists as well, who jumped aboard the 'Cold Fusion' debate, despite the fact that no hard evidence was ever provided. Simply seeing it on television was enough to convince scores of people that cold fusion (a pipe-dream) had been created. In another very telling moment, Kaminer tells of how she was greeted with boos and hisses on a talk show, when she asserted that a father who yells at a child is not the same thing as a father who assaults a child. Despite no evidence being presented, the audience would rather agree with the 'victim', rather than think it through.

Kaminer may be preaching to the choir. While her presentation is a breath of fresh air for some, there are others who would not see the value in this book, dismissing it as mere nonsense, or hatred. But of course, those who would be quick to dismiss the book without reading it, are precisely the sorts of individuals that Kaminer is writing about. Think about that.

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