#vinnie rotondaro

[eelhound]

"At a time in which a broad sense of powerlessness is increasingly being shared amongst Americans, in relation to the environment, our politics, and the economy, how should we relate to one another? What we tend to have now is mutual intolerance and culture war hate, which only propels the status quo. What we need is radical acceptance and compassion. 

To 'radically accept' does not mean we should forgo our morals, accept bad politics, or ignore violence and oppression, but instead to recognize that hate is almost always born out of trauma and wounding, and that hating hate only begets more hate. As James Baldwin once wrote, 'I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.'

In the emergent field of psychedelic therapy — which has proven remarkably effective at treating addiction, depression, and other chronic conditions, while posing little to no addictive risk itself — a treatment modality known as Internal Family Systems [IFS] is increasingly being used to strengthen the benefits of a psychedelic trip. IFS operates on the assumption that there is no such thing as a unitary self, but instead that we are composed of a variety of 'parts,' which exist in relation to each other. In essence, IFS proposes that we 'contain multitudes,' to quote poet Walt Whitman. One 'part' of you may feel like a loving parent, where another personifies your inner race car driver. In a healthy and secure place, these subpersonalities resonate and sing together, making us living embodiments of inner diversity. But when the body experiences trauma, certain 'parts' can become frozen in time, or repressed, leading others to abandon their natural roles in an effort to protect or even shame the 'exiled' parts. As a result, friction, imbalance, pain, and disharmony afflicts the entire system.

It is interesting to think about American trauma through the lens of Internal Family Systems, to consider the cultural narratives that scaffold our pain and the formative wounds that haunt the present day — many of which have largely been forgotten. If the collective American psyche took a heroic dose and reckoned with its history, good lord, who knows what would come out? A revolution? A protest? A giant comical fart?

But we aren’t ready for that. No, not even close. We haven’t even learned how to sit with ourselves and be quiet.

In some ways we are no more free than Pavlov’s dog. In others we can choose how to inform and condition our minds."

- Vinnie Rotondaro, from "How We Can Ease the Pain." Current Affairs, 12 September 2022.

[theoutcastrogue]

“In the Middle Ages, southern [Italian] feudalism wrought a society blighted by extreme inequality and virtual slavery for agrarian peasants. Serfs were tied to landscapes ruled by nobles and aristocrats, or the Catholic Church. As Margherita Ganeri, Director of the “Italian Diaspora Studies” Seminar at the University of Calabria told me, if a peasant tried to escape their lot in life, outlaws known as brigands could be hired to hunt them down, or persecute their family.

Today in Italy, many romanticize the brigands as Robin Hood-like figures, with their colorful costumes and fetching hats—and in the distant past this may have been partially true. But scholars now see how they morphed into a decidedly exploitative force, used by aristocrats to crack down on grain theft, and into mercenaries who terrorized peasants in petty local wars. Many scholars now believe the social space once held by brigands was eventually filled by the cold and violent mafia: the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria, and the Camorra in Naples.”

— Vinnie Rotondaro, “Which Italian America?” | Current Affairs, July 2022

[christianwandeler-blog]

Why it is important to be skeptical

This is a wonderful story about a student being 3 weeks into his program taking down a widely cited study in positive psychology. It makes the claim of a positivity ratio.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Losada, M. F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American psychologist, 60(7), 678.

Then it was cited 350 times now it is cited 1928 times, with an erratum added by the journal :)

Vinnie Rotondaro in her story provides some insight on how the community works (or dysfunctions)

http://narrative.ly/nick-brown-smelled-bull/

Here is a general comment of some of the involved researchers

Science and the Public: Debate, Denial, and Skepticism

http://jspp.psychopen.eu/article/view/604/html

A general comment about replicability...

https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-016-0134-3

[empiricaldaily]

"'For me, the real question is not about Fredrickson or Losada or Seligman,' Sokal says. 'It’s about the whole community. Why is it that no one before Nick—and I mean Nick was a first semester part-time Master’s student, at, let’s be honest, a fairly obscure university in London who has no particular training in mathematics—why is it that no one realized this stuff was bullshit? Where were all the supposed experts?' 'Is it really true that no one saw through this,' he asks, 'in an article that was cited 350 times, in a field which touts itself as being so scientific?' In posing this question to psychologists with relevant expertise, a partial picture begins to emerge. Some said they weren’t informed on the issue, and couldn’t comment. Others said they knew about the 2005 paper and had cited it, but with qualifications. 'My opinion of the paper has always been that it was a metaphor, disguised as modeling,' said David Pincus, a psychologist at Chapman University who specializes in the application of chaos theory to psychology. But it also emerged that others had indeed voiced direct concerns over the math underlying the theory, only to meet deaf ears."

Vinnie Rotondaro. 2013. (Title: Nick Brown Smelled Bull: A plucky amateur dared to question a celebrated psychological finding. He wound up blowing the whole theory wide open.)