Posts Tagged ‘addiction’

Overdosing on Awesome

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Overdose of Yellow

I know what you are thinking, “those pain medications are really getting to his head.” Unfortunately I’m not talking about narcotic pain medication in the title.  I was going over some (un)conscious marketing blogs today, and I started noticing a theme in the rhetoric of the authors. Almost each and every one of them rants and raves about how everything is “awesome.” When rhetorically analyzing a text, it is important to explore what words the text uses, and how those words contribute directly to the text’s persuasiveness.  It didn’t take long for me to build an initial hypothesis about how and why such a flood of “awesome” positivity exists in this subculture: it’s all in the hype. (more…)

Good News: You Can’t Have it All

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

jamesray349-200pxMany personal development gurus posit that you can and should have it all, that every area of your life can be perfected without any need for compromise. Consider this quotation from personal development guru James Arthur Ray’s website:

“You really can enjoy total abundance financially, relationally, mentally, physically and spiritually…” ~James Arthur Ray, Master of Hyperbole

The total abundance James Arthur Ray is really enjoying is an abundance of total bullshit. Not surprisingly, Ray’s tagline is “As seen on Oprah, Larry King, and The Secret,” sources not exactly known for their journalistic integrity.

Nothing real exists in “total abundance.” Not atoms in the Universe (approximately 1080), not the amount of money in circulation, and not even “abundance mentality”–which is sometimes present and sometimes not, no matter how often or intensely you visualize your goals. Perhaps Ray is referring to mathematical abstractions? “You really can enjoy counting a total abundance of integers. The possibilities of multiplication are unlimited!” (more…)

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What is Beyond Growth?

Beyond Growth is a collaborative blogging project focused on critiquing and expanding the personal development field. Noting a lack of critical discourse in personal development, Duff McDuffee and Eric Schiller founded Beyond Growth in the hopes of using it as a platform to foster growth and responsibility. We touch on a wide variety of topics, mostly centered around whatever we are interested in at the time.
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