Thoughts on The School of Life...

[DManKee]

The school of life is one of the most popular psychology channels on Youtube. They have solid content that has the potential to help ordinary folks of all walks of life. However I've felt that many of their videos follow almost dogmatic perspectives with no room for alternatives.

One of their most recent videos is a case in point:

https://youtu.be/BmcM6InBjM4

In it they talk about high achievers and how we should feel sorry for them because they are people who received little love in life. I'm sure that YES, there are many cases of this but it's not entirely true. What about high achievers who do their work to better the world. People who don't do the things for recognition but for the betterment of society or even just for the activity in itself such as Pablo Picasso painting a masterpiece...should we feel sorry for him??

In the video the school of life makes it so black and white with no wiggle room. 

Finally I also noticed they place almost no emphasis on spirituality and such topics often talking about the lessons that different religions have to teach us but not showing us how application of practices such as meditation and the proper use of psychedelics could have the potential to help people. To me their work feels quite dogmatic on the western perspective on mental health.

What are your thoughts? How could the school of life improve their content? 

Thanks!

[Breakingthewall]

6 hours ago, DManKee said:

In it they talk about high achievers and how we should feel sorry for them because they are people who received little love in life. I'm sure that YES, there are many cases of this but it's not entirely true. What about high achievers who do their work to better the world. People who don't do the things for recognition but for the betterment of society or even just for the activity in itself such as Pablo Picasso painting a masterpiece...should we feel sorry for him??

I agree with that idea. the engine of human evolution is unhappiness. if we were perfectly happy, like birds for example, we would do nothing to evolve. for what? improving the perfect does not make sense

[Ulax]

@DManKee I agree pretty strongly with the school of life message.

Its very stage green. Perhaps, with some stage yellow, as a lot of the theory is based on psychoanalysis which I'd put more into the yellow category.

Its true that they will better the world. However, that can also be a form of gaining approval from their parental figure.

I agree with @breakingthewall where they talk about 'improving the perfect does not make sense'.

[happyhappy]

16 hours ago, DManKee said:

The school of life is one of the most popular psychology channels on Youtube. They have solid content that has the potential to help ordinary folks of all walks of life. However I've felt that many of their videos follow almost dogmatic perspectives with no room for alternatives.

One of their most recent videos is a case in point:

https://youtu.be/BmcM6InBjM4

In it they talk about high achievers and how we should feel sorry for them because they are people who received little love in life. I'm sure that YES, there are many cases of this but it's not entirely true. What about high achievers who do their work to better the world. People who don't do the things for recognition but for the betterment of society or even just for the activity in itself such as Pablo Picasso painting a masterpiece...should we feel sorry for him??

In the video the school of life makes it so black and white with no wiggle room. 

Finally I also noticed they place almost no emphasis on spirituality and such topics often talking about the lessons that different religions have to teach us but not showing us how application of practices such as meditation and the proper use of psychedelics could have the potential to help people. To me their work feels quite dogmatic on the western perspective on mental health.

What are your thoughts? How could the school of life improve their content? 

Thanks!

@DManKee no doubts that school of life has great content. and i can see a lot of philosophical discussions and stage yellow content coming up lately on their channel!

but the following video u talk about was somewhat black and white as you said. but , it had a lot of good points as well since most of high achievers tend to fall for the trap of seeking success and many traps which come with it.

school of life will eventually should reach for stage turqouise content if the trend continues!

[DManKee]

@happyhappy @Ulax @Breakingthewall Thank you for your perspectives. ♥️

[undeather]

I would argue that the typical underachiever suffers from the same issues - it just acts out in a different way. Also, its pretty stupid to generalize a specific psychological dynamic over a rough descriptor like "overachievers". Over the last decade, I have got to know a lot of individuals who "made it" - some of them are incredibly happy, others are miserable. The obvious answer is yes but irrelevant due to oversimplification. 

I strongly disagree with the stage yellow aspect of School of life. Its not at all an integral point of view in most of their videos.

[DManKee]

@undeather noted!