{"id":322,"date":"2018-06-28T20:20:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T20:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/?p=322"},"modified":"2018-06-28T20:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T20:22:53","slug":"avoiding-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/avoiding-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>American Scholar published a letter I wrote addressing what I believe is a very serious threat &#8211; in fact <em>the <\/em>threat &#8211; to any discussion between friends, public debate, or personal growth.\u00a0 No kidding.\u00a0 You can find the letter <a href=\"https:\/\/theamericanscholar.org\/responses-to-our-spring-2018-issue\/#.WzVAS9VKjIU\">here<\/a>\u00a0so you can see it really was published, and I&#8217;m reproducing it below.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unnatural Resources?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Toward the end of her review of Edward O. Wilson\u2019s latest book (<a href=\"https:\/\/theamericanscholar.org\/why-we-need-art\/#.WzVCR9VKjIU\">American Scholar \u201cWhy We Need Art,\u201d Winter 2018<\/a>), Natalie Angier dismisses the conceptualizing of women as a resource over which men compete as one of the \u201coff-putting adumbrations of the field\u201d (evolutionary psychology). Regardless of my own reaction to the idea of women\u2014or any human\u2014as commodities, I found her response deeply \u201coff-putting.\u201d She cannot wave off the data from multiple disciplines because it insults her view of herself, of women, of what\u2019s fair or polite or respectful. Her dismissal seems part of a dangerous trend of skittish, timid, and politically correct avoidance of history: like it or not, we humans, from our earliest days, have indeed viewed and treated each other as \u201cresources.\u201d\u00a0And if,\u00a0via biology or culture, we modern men\u2014and women, let\u2019s be honest\u2014still tend to view each other in this deeply unattractive way, that is something we must acknowledge and process in order to outgrow. No one ever got over a phobia, a prejudice, a handicap, a weakness, or a pet peeve by pretending it didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n<p>Bennett Pologe<br \/>\n<em>New York City<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Scholar published a letter I wrote addressing what I believe is a very serious threat &#8211; in fact the threat &#8211; to any discussion between friends, public debate, or personal growth.\u00a0 No kidding.\u00a0 You can find the letter here\u00a0so &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/avoiding-reality\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}