In the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, the military issues daily reports that suggest tactical victories but offer little hint about how the war is going.
.. “You can get pulled into watching the laser dot on a target and watching it blow up,” said Kevin Benson, a retired Army colonel who teaches intelligence analysis to officers at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. “After that, it can be hard to hear that you’re not making progress, because you saw it.”
.. “I don’t know anyone outside of a political commercial who thinks we need to send large numbers of troops into Iraq,” said one intelligence official who has worked closely with the Centcom analysts.
Instead, analysts say the dispute centers on whether the military is being honest about the political and religious situation in Iraq and whether a bombing campaign can change it.
.. “What are the strategic objectives here? There are none. This is just perpetual war,” said David Faulkner, the former targeting director at Centcom who worked alongside the Iraq analysts. “People say: ‘Oh, you’re military. You like that.’ No, we don’t.”
.. In order to report bad news, current and former officials said, the analysts were required to cite multiple sources. Reporting positive news required fewer hurdles.
The Muddied Meaning of ‘Mindfulness’
Although mindfulness teachers regularly offer the practice in disenfranchised communities in the United States and abroad, the powerful have really made mindfulness their own, exacting from the delicate idea concrete promises of longer lives and greater productivity. In January, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kabat-Zinn led executives and 1 percenters in a mindfulness meditation meant to promote general well-being.
.. Mindfulness as “keeping in tune” has a nice ring to it. But it’s “focused on the task at hand” that appeals to managers, like Jackson, who are conscious of performance goals. Might workplace mindfulness — in the cubicle or on the court — be just another way to keep employees undistracted and to get them to work harder for nothing but airy rewards?
.. Maybe the word “mindfulness” is like the Prius emblem, a badge of enlightened and self-satisfied consumerism, and of success and achievement. If so, not deploying mindfulness — taking pills or naps for anxiety, say, or going out to church or cocktails — makes you look sort of backward or classless. Like driving a Hummer.
.. Thank you for this. As a long-time Zen Buddhist practitioner, I find myself dismayed when I see these practices being adapted in ways that run contrary to their true spirits. Lately the trend is “mindfulness” in the workplace, which usually means teaching folks to meditate so they can better endure endless, stressful work hours and/or increase productivity when performing tasks or producing products that may cause personal or environmental harm. True mindfulness, however, strives to change the very conditions that cause stress and physical/spiritual harm. It’s not an adaptive technique; it’s cultural revolution. The very people who believe they are being served by learning these techniques are actually just becoming more compliant tools.
Rev. Robert Schuller, 88, Dies; Built an Empire Preaching Self-Belief
But for more than 40 years, Dr. Schuller was an apostle of positive thinking and a symbol of success. A charismatic shepherd, he was one of television’s first preachers to reach audiences around the world with a hopeful message of self-healing and self-empowerment.
.. He retired as the pastor of the Garden Grove Community Church on the first day of 2006, handing over leadership to his only son, Robert A. Schuller, and leaving the church deeply in debt, largely because of the lavish building project. His son was pushed out within two years, setting off a family feud when his sisters and their husbands took control of the church in 2008
The Problem With Positive Thinking
A year later, I checked in on these women. The results were striking: The more positively women had imagined themselves in these scenarios, the fewer pounds they had lost.
.. Why doesn’t positive thinking work the way you might assume? As my colleagues and I have discovered, dreaming about the future calms you down, measurably reducing systolic blood pressure, but it also can drain you of the energy you need to take action in pursuit of your goals.