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May 4, 2015

Visions of a Positive Future vs Fixing a Pathological Present

By Rob Kall

it is not enough to resist the system and the problems that exist. It is absolutely inadequate to aim for repairing the symptoms of what is broken. We need big, positive visions which lift our sights higher, towards horizons where there are bright futures, not scotch tape and bubblegum fixes for the pathological system we currently inhabit.

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Originally Published on OpEdNews



it is not enough to resist or fight the system and the problems that exist. It is absolutely inadequate to aim for repairing the symptoms of what is broken. We need big, positive visions which lift our sights higher, towards horizons where there are bright futures, not scotch tape and bubblegum fixes for the pathological system we currently inhabit.

Back in the early eighties, when I was a lonely pioneer in the field that has become Positive Psychology (I called it Positivity back then,) most of the world of psychology focused on pathology. Clinical psychologists asked the questions:

  • What is the diagnosis?
  • What are the pathological symptoms?
  • What is the etiology that has led to the current clinical pathology?
  • What treatments, interventions and drugs are needed to eliminate the symptoms and pathology?

    • I had a different idea. How much can we help people by, instead of fixing what is broken or pathological, teaching them how to move in positive directions, helping them to develop positive skills. Instead of treating symptoms, we could help them develop habits and behaviors and attitudes that would lift them, regardless of the symptoms, towards greater health, happiness, inner strength and well-being. Of course, there was and is a place for pathology oriented "treatment" of psychological problems, but people back then were not talking about positive ways to lift people towards robust health, as opposed to the mainstream model of helping people to be not ill. I had an overhead transparency that something along the lines-- Be Well, not not-sick.

    Since those early days, starting, for me in 1981, the field of Positive psychology has emerged as a major new idea that has sprouted wings and legs of its own. The International Positive Psychology Summit meeting has over 1000 attendees and hundreds of presentations, and Positive Psychology has become a field unto itself with graduate departments at major universities.

    Today, I'm prepping for an interview with Henry Giroux, a big picture thinker, and just published an article by Nathan Nahm, who, in his article today, concludes, "It is high time that every one in America woke up for the reality we face. Stupid or not, we cannot have a useful prescription to our problem, if we don't have a correct diagnosis."

    Nahm is talking about our economic political situation. Nahm's remark and Giroux's big questions in the writings and interviews I'm reading in preparation for our interview, remind me of my quest, earlier in my career, to re-think the way that we help people become and stay psychologically healthy.

    And Giroux says, in his book, The Violence of Organized Forgetting,
    "It is not enough for people of conscience only to expose the falseness of the stories we are told. Educators, artists, intellectuals, workers, young people and other concerned citizens also need to create alternative narratives about what the promise of democracy might be for our communities and ourselves."


    The field of positive psychology has evolved by describing different aspects and elements of living a positive life and maintaining a positive state of mind, attitudes, emotions, even ways of seeing-- ie., the phenomenology of positivity.

    Why can't the same concept be applied to people, to cultures, to nation states, to politics and economics? We can ask the questions:

  • What policies and behaviors, what underlying beliefs are good for all people, good for the environment, good for future generations?
  • What laws and values cultivate and support, in a sustainable way, justice and health, optimal living, maximal growth and education for all?
  • How do we build and maintain a culture of empathy, compassion and kindness, which protects people from predators-- sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists, oppressors-- in a way that protects all our humanity?

    • This work is under way. Economists like David Korten and Gar Alperovitz and Thom Hartmann are writing and speaking about economic models that support workers and the commons. YesMagazine explores such positive visions as their mission. We need to make this a bigger, stronger movement. We need t build a wave that creates a vision and which supports a whole culture, which includes political platforms, academic studies and grassroots movements.

    I've been writing a lot about bottom-up visions and values-- citing the writings of E.F. Schumacher, the research of Primatologists and anthropologists who have made it clear that we humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years in more humane, more empathic, kinder cultures that were wiped out by civilization and industrialization. We need a future positive anthropological vision of what we can become, what we can return to-- smaller, more local, more caring, kind, empathic, connected, interdependent, cooperative, at harmony with nature.

    As I said at the beginning of this article, it is not enough to resist the system and the problems that exist. It is absolutely inadequate to aim for repairing the symptoms of what is broken. We need big, positive visions which lift our sights higher, towards horizons where there are bright futures, not scotch tape and bubblegum fixes for the pathological system we currently inhabit.

    Those visions will include positive visions and models for ecology, energy, food, healthcare, economics, education, politics, power, justice, freedom, democracy, media, entertainment, for starters.

    There will be characteristics that will apply to all-- sustainability, justice and fairness, kindness and empathy, empowerment of agency and consciousness, basic rules and regulations.

    These big visions and questions will set out possible futures with solutions that may or not be compatible with the existing system, the existing powers that be. We talk about exploring outer space and the bottoms of the deepest ocean trenches-- as unexplored territories. Well, we also need to explore new possibilities, the possible human, as Jean Houston described, and the positive future-- unexplored ways that we can ALL live together and survive healthily and happily on this one and only planet we call home.




    Authors Bio:

    Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind.  Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives  one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big)  to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project. 


    Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

    Over 200 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Rob is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com

    Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

    To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article. For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V..  and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years. Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

    Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript. . 


    To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


    Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook. His quotes are here

    Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.



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