When it comes to resilience, the self-help industry has it all wrong - Macleans.ca

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In a new book, an expert in community resilience argues that our emphasis on individual responsibility is preventing us from making better social policies

Michael Ungar is a professor of social work at Dalhousie University in Halifax, a family therapist and the Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience. In short, he is a world expert in the still mysterious quality that enables some individuals and communities to survive and thrive in the aftermath of trauma ranging from childhood sexual abuse to natural disasters.

Q: You are arguing we do need the will to change and to take the first steps, but real change—which is essentially altering the world around us even in small ways—usually requires resources beyond our personal power? A: If self-help actually worked then we should be seeing a decrease in mental and physical health problems. You would think the cumulative impact of everyone buying yoga mats and endless you-can-do-it TED talks would be to generate a healthier population.

Q: Perhaps the most arresting story in your book concerns the social worker tasked with watching over three teen girls in a motel room. She asked them to draw their imagined futures. They couldn’t. Nothing and no one had ever implanted those images in their minds. A: It’s very much the world that triggers us to be whatever we can be. It’s difficult to have a vision of your future without having had any experience of what that could be. The language—or the images—we use is based on experience.

Q: There are several flashes of anger in Change Your World. I don’t often see the word cynicism deployed in scientific studies by Canada Research Chairs. But not only do you really not like the self-help advice route, you call out several people, including Eckhart Tolle and even the Buddhist nun down the street from you whose spiritual quest is financed by her ex-husband. A: Which is true! Sure, she can go off and sit in a monastery for three years if somebody is paying the bills.

 

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He's got a point, but he misses the mark. Yes we need community. Nomanisa Island But we need the 'community' to teach and enforce personal responsibility. Immediate and extended family was meant to be our foundation, NOT Govt.

That is actually 100% incorrect. If we all got our shit together, even a small increment, we would see huge positive changes to societies around the world.

He’s wrong

If there is no emphasis on individual responsibility, society is lost.

I'm an expert in rugged individualism, one of our founding precepts. Leftist bullshit like this from has led to fractured families, rampant vagrancy & panhandling in our once great cities, censorship & unrelenting hate toward half the country. Shall I go on? Wise up.

This clown

Oh wait I get it because individual responsibility replaces the need for such policy

Wrong.🙅‍♀️ “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” ~ Confucius

Institutional systems in the structure. We can’t do anything it’s build right in. Seriously I am starting to think that PHD is code for the communist party

1. We changed the world around them. Yup by vilifying boys and putting boys down (ie: the patriarchy and toxic masculinity) 2. Universities administrators =give priority to girls 3.overwhelmingly teachers are female 4.forcing women to believe they are victims

Key words Community =tribalism Social environment = socialism or Marxism Big government = communism Taking away individuals responsibility = socialism Almost certain if you open this guys closet there is a red flag with a hammer and Sickle

“Expert”

I would hope so

True story.

That is not an expert.

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