We shot this quick behind the scenes video at WNYC’s studios in New York City after Harper’s Magazine contributor Gary Greenberg concluded his interview with Leonard Lopate.
Click to find out why Greenberg thinks that there may not be a difference between soldiers who thrive from trauma (those who use positive psychology in their lives) and sociopaths. And learn if Greenberg uses positive thinking in his own life.
Greenberg’s cover story, The War on Unhappiness: Goodbye Freud, Hello Positive Thinking, appears in the September 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine. You can also listen to Greenberg’s interview on the Leonard Lopate show here.
Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Gary Greenberg discussed positive psychology on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show today. Greenberg’s cover story, The War on Unhappiness: Goodbye Freud, Hello Positive Thinking appears in the September issue of Harper’s. Have a listen to what Greenberg says in explaining how positive thinking became so ingrained in American culture.
Harper’s Magazine contributing editor and author of Manufacturing Depression (which originally began as an article in Harper’s) Gary Greenberg was on Salt Lake City’s RadioWest yesterday talking about positive psychology. His cover story, The War on Unhappiness: Goodbye Freud, Hello Positive Thinking appears in the September issue of Harper’s. Have a listen to what Greenberg has to say on the subject.
Here's Harper's Magazine Contributor Dan Baum with his gun. Read his cover story in the August issue.
Dan Baum is the author of Happiness is a Worn Gun: My Concealed Weapon and Me, the August cover story for Harper’s Magazine. Since the piece was published, readers have expressed a great deal of interest in learning more about Baum and his take on guns. Baum answers several Facebook fans’ and readers’ questions below.
Q: An excellent fascinating read. I wonder, though, if you considered (and then perhaps chose to ignore) horrific statistics on accidental gun deaths of children due to careless gun management by recreational owners?
A: Every child killed accidentally by a gun is an unimaginable tragedy, but to say the statistics on such incidents are “horrific” is a misstatement. In 2007, 137 Americans, aged 0 to 19, were accidentally killed by firearms — a rate of 0.17 per 100,000. That’s about half what it was in 1998, so an already-rare event is getting, happily, even rarer. Again, this isn’t to dismiss these tragedies as unimportant. Each one is, which is why we hear about each one — and thus think it happens often. But if we’re going to debate the role of guns in society, it’s important to stick to the data.
All that said, I am a big believer that the gun community does a dreadful job of policing its own behavior. No gun store should sell a gun without selling a safe with it. (People often argue that a gun locked in a safe doesn’t do any good in an emergency, but that isn’t true. I bought for $25 a little steel safe that opens electronically when I punch in a code. I can get to my gun instantly, but nobody else can.)
Gun owners who don’t secure their guns, and gun stores that don’t press safes or other safety devices on their customers should, I think, be drummed out of the corps. Failing to secure one’s guns against children’s curiosity or burglars should be as uncool in this society as smoking indoors. Gun guys rail against government telling them how to live, but if they’re not going to behave responsibly, they leave government little choice. A lot — a whole lot — of what could be done to reduce gun death could be done with no government intervention at all. Given how much a lot of the gun community despises government, you’d think they’d be all over this.
Q: I work in corrections, and… I’ve see how lifestyle choices are the major contributor to the risk of a violent end. Random acts of madness are truly rare and on the decline — here in Canada as well, where the right to bear arms is viewed as a bit mad in itself (Alberta excepted). What do you think (if anything) might shift such an ingrained, firmly-held belief that violent death awaits around every corner?
A: As I wrote in the Harper’s piece, I get the sense that the desire to own and carry guns often precedes the belief that violent death awaits around every corner. Guns are hugely attractive. They are perhaps the best-made consumer products we can buy. What else that you buy today will be functioning exactly as well 100 years from now as it is today? I actually think Michael Moore had it right in Bowling for Columbine. The problem in the United States isn’t guns, it’s fear — fear that serves many, many interests and thus will be hard to squelch.
Q: Brilliant piece … do you have other hobbies you might shed some light on?
Bicycles, and am on a one-man jihad to get everybody to swap his car for one. Don’t get me started.
Q: It was an excellent and important article, though personally I wanted Mr. Baum to draw a stronger conclusion. Does he think that concealed, or open, carry is a net positive for a society? Does it actually decrease crime? Or does it just enhance the potential consequences of anger, intoxication, and stupidity? Could the answers be different for different parts of the country, or for different settings (urban, rural, suburban, etc.)? Does he feel that there is, or could be, a non-paranoid, non-right-wing gun culture?
It isn’t a matter of whether I think concealed carry is a net positive or negative. The data demonstrate that it really doesn’t matter much one way or the other. (I think widespread concealed carry may have something to do with the big drop in crime in the past twenty years, but unlike John Lott and his acolytes, I don’t think it’s the whole story.) Anger, intoxication, and stupidity will, like the poor, always be with us. The track record of widespread concealed carry, though, shows that the angry, the drunk, and the stupid — if they’re carrying guns — aren’t giving in to the temptation to express themselves with gunfire.
As for a non-paranoid, non-right-wing gun culture, yes! I’m on a six-week road trip this summer around the Midwest interviewing people about their gun lives for a book I’m writing, and finding that most gun people I meet are neither. It’s the paranoid and the politically motivated who hog the spotlight and the airwaves, but it seems there is a — dare I say it? — silent majority.
Q: I really appreciated the author’s attention the mind frame of what it is like to carry a gun. My personal reaction to open carry is that it is an uncivil intimidation tactic, in a disingenuous guise of “protection.” It seems completely at odds with living a decent life in “free” society. Dan’s article is pretty clear that he’s sensitive to this, but I’m wondering if he can speak to how this apparent contradiction is managed in gun-ownership culture at large.
I’m with you on open carry. I think it’s aggressive, intimidating, obnoxious, and dumb. The open-carry people will say they’ve been pushed to it by a pervasive anti-gun prejudice in this country, and their position is not completely unreasonable. (Again, my book will address this.) Gun guys have won every political battle they’ve fought in living memory, yet still feel beleagured and I’m starting to get a sense of why that is. Their desire to push their guns literally under our noses is not a completely irrational reaction, but I think they’re making a mistake. I think it will freak people out and lead to tougher laws against it — which, of course, will set off another round of needless squabbling.
Harper’s Magazine today announced that Thomas Frank has joined the magazine as its monthly columnist. Beginning with the December issue, Frank will pen TheEasy Chair column, which will replace the Notebook. The Easy Chair was published from October 1851 to February 1984, focusing on politics, the events of the day, culture, as well as literary topics. The column reflects the great legacy and tradition of Harper’s Magazine.
Ellen Rosenbush, editor of Harper’s Magazine, said, “Tom is the most incisive political observer and cultural critic of our time and we are absolutely overjoyed that he will be writing for us on a regular basis.”
Frank said, “It is a great honor to be invited to write the longest-running column in American journalism. I look forward to following in the tradition of William Dean Howells, Bernard DeVoto, and Lewis Lapham.”
Frank, who has been a contributing editor to Harper’s since 2004, was most recently an opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal since 2008. His last column for the Journal will appear on August 11. Frank is the author of four books, all of them having to do with the cultural inversions of our times: The Conquest of Cool (1997), about the advertising industry; One Market Under God (2000) concerning the myths of the New Economy; and What’s the Matter With Kansas? (2004) about the red-state mindset. His book about conservative governance, The Wrecking Crew, was published in 2008. Frank founded The Baffler magazine in 1988, and he edits it to this day. Born 1965 in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank grew up in the suburbs of that city. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Virginia (1987), and a PhD in American History from the University of Chicago (1994).
Former Harper’s MagazineEasy Chair columnists include:
Donald Grant Mitchell, 1851-1853
George William Curtis, 1853-1892
(eight year hiatus after Curtis’s death)
William Dean Howells, 1900-1920
Edward S. Martin, 1920-1935
Bernard DeVoto, 1935-1955
John Fischer, 1955-1974
Lewis H. Lapham, 1975-1982
Michael Kinsley, 19821983
Helen Rogan, Oct-Nov 1983
Lewis H. Lapham, 1983-1984
Founded on June 10, 1850, Harper’s Magazine (www.harpers.org) is the longest-running general-interest magazine in America. Itexplores the issues that drive the national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, the Annotation, Findings, and the iconic Index. Harper’s has received eighteen National Magazine Awards. The magazine is owned and published by the Harper’s Magazine Foundation. Monthly previews of Harper’s Magazine are available online at www.harpers.org/PR/highlights.
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