no regrets

There’s a fascinating (but very poorly edited) piece in the Science section of today’s New York Times, about the treacherous habit of self-examination after the fact: “The New Year’s Cocktail: Regret with a Dash of Bitters”:

Over the past decade and a half, psychologists have studied how regrets - large and small, recent and distant - affect people’s mental well-being. They have shown, convincingly though not surprisingly, that ruminating on paths not taken is an emotionally corrosive exercise. The common wisdom about regret - that what hurts the most is not what you did but what you didn’t do - also appears to be true, at least in the long run.

Yet it is partly from studies of lost possible selves that psychologists have come to a more complete understanding of how regret molds personality. These studies, in people recently divorced and those caring for a sick child, among others, suggest that it is possible to entertain idealized versions of oneself without being mocked or shamed. And they suggest that doing so may serve an important psychological purpose.

What the author, Benedict Carey, is trying to say here (but what he makes unnecessarily confusing by inserting shame into the equation) is that not blaming yourself (exclusively) for whatever went wrong helps you move on. He does describe—very gingerly—various coping strategies that people adopt for dealing with the past:

Researchers find that people think about past foul-ups or missed opportunities in several ways. Some tend to fixate and are at an elevated risk for mood problems. Others have learned to ignore regrets and seem to live more lighthearted, if less-examined, lives. In between are those who walk carefully through the minefield of past choices, gamely digging up traps and doing what they can to defuse the live ones.

Finally, he gently suggests that time heals all such wounds, if you allow time to do its thing:

With age, people apparently detoxified their regrets by reframing them as shared misunderstandings, a retrospective touching-up that in many cases might have been more accurate.

As for me, one of the best decisions I ever made was to bail on grad school. Every time I read stuff like this, I’m reminded of the fact that I have absolutely no regrets about my decision.

The Modern Language Association frequently helps out its critics with provocative session titles and left-leaning political stands offered by its members. …[I]n moves that infuriated the MLA’s Radical Caucus, the association’s Delegate Assembly refused to pass those resolutions and instead adopted much narrower measures. The [MLA] acknowledged tensions over the Middle East on campus, but in a resolution that did not single out pro-Israel groups for criticism. And the association criticized the University of Colorado for the way it started its investigation of Ward Churchill, but took no stand on whether the outcome (his firing) was appropriate.

Imagine that: in the name of academic freedom, academics who consider themselves “progressive” demand the right to promote one one point of view and to single out only one group for criticism.

The resolution as [Grover Furr] wrote it said that some who criticize Zionism and Israel have been “denied tenure, disinvited to speak … [or] fraudulently called ‘anti-Semitic.’” The resolution called this a “serious danger to academic study and discussion in the USA today” and then resolved that “the MLA defend the academic freedom and the freedom of speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel.” The resolution made no mention of the right of others on campus to embrace Zionism or Israel or to hold middle-of-the-road views or any views other than being critical of Israel and Zionism.

The substitute resolution, adopted by a vote of 63-30 said:

“Middle East is a subject of intense debate,” ….[and that] it was “essential that colleges and universities protect faculty rights to speak forthrightly on all sides of the issue,” and urged colleges to “resist” pressure from outside groups about tenure reviews and speakers and to instead uphold academic freedom. Nelson’s resolution did not identify one side or the other as victim or villain in the campus debates over the Middle East and said that academic freedom must apply to people “to address the issue of the Middle East in the manner they choose.”

This was considered too even-handed by critics. But supporters from the health majority of MLA members who voted have got the right idea:

[T]hey argued that the MLA shouldn’t be picking sides, and that the principles behind defending Israel’s critics should apply to its supporters as well. One professor said: “Academic freedom is meaningless unless it applies to all points of view.” Another said that even if 95 percent of disputes over academic freedom and the Middle East relate to one side of the argument, the principle of academic freedom should be paramount, not helping those 95 percent over the 5 percent. [e.a.]

Really? Ya think? 

That the painfully obvious bottom line about freedom of speech (that it’s for me and for thee) needs to be spelled out to 33% of the members in good standing of the MLA is a sad commentary on the American academy.

The good news is that the hard-core ideologues on college campuses are finally being challenged.