An intriguing but uneven analysis of perfectionism.
In this philosophical work, an author reflects on her struggles with perfectionism and the meaning of its societal expression.
Cullen aspires to be a “real writer”—but is stymied by relentless perfectionism, the unmerciful tyranny of “unrealistic expectations.” Her penchant for the perfect extends to every sphere of life—she’s peculiarly competitive when giving Christmas presents—but is particularly destructive when it comes to her creative work, which is often stifled by paralysis. The perfectionist, she explains with notable lucidity, lives precariously perched between the fear of failure and the threat of an incapacitating fatigue: “It’s exhausting to live in that failure-adverse mentality in a rolling loop of self-criticism. There’s something guiding everything I do every day, a slight nag that tells me if I don’t, everything could fail. If I don’t write or exercise or read or journal, my dream outruns me. Someone else takes the lead.” The author situates the phenomenon of perfectionism within contemporary societal demands—since it is a “cultural cornerstone” for millennials, it is partly learned by “cultural osmosis.” She lays a measure of blame for her “ingested trauma and threat of constant productivity” on the “transactional conformity” demanded by capitalism, a familiar analysis. Nonetheless, her diagnosis of perfectionism is dotted with more sparkling reflections, especially about the acceptance of conformity that is often at the heart of it, the desperate need to be recognized by the thoroughly conventional standards propagated by one’s peers: “We seek out numbers to score our worth.”
Cullen is at her best when delving into the rippling contours of popular culture, surveying its terrain for signs and symptoms of perfectionism. Perfectionism, she avers, can radiate from a deeply felt sense of one’s own inferiority and can express itself as the “recklessly mean” derision of others—she furnishes an astute accounting of this within the feverish cosmos of social media. In addition, she writes sensitively about the variability of perfectionism—the manner in which one makes infinitely unyielding demands of oneself but shows gentle leniency to others: “It’s this disconnect in what we can receive and give that makes perfectionism so scary. We allow others the gentle space of being ‘enough’ that we don’t give ourselves. We assume our actions risk other people’s good-favored acceptance, even for people we love.” Yet while the author acknowledges the conformism of contemporary perfectionism and situates the tendency within a capitalist society’s structures, she doesn’t adequately plumb what precisely perfectmeans other than to point out it is subject to “evolving standards.” At one point, Cullen confusedly mentions the ideal of an “optimistic apex where creativity flows into undisturbed beauty,” but her discussions usually revolve around the thoughtless devotion to the conventional standards of success culminating in recognition. It is telling that she ascribes greatness to the likes of Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, the latter to whom she implausibly attributes a “a singular view of the world that taps into the mirrored darkness in the world around her.” In other words, Cullen’s understanding of perfectionism seems tethered to a lack of intellectual independence and a collective mediocrity. Her disappointing conclusion is that her way out will only be discovered once she has “given up on seeing life as a race,” a cliché offered as an insight.
An intriguing but uneven analysis of perfectionism.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63676-481-8
Page Count: 264
Publisher: New Degree Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
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