GLT: a New School of Thought
I have noticed that a very large number of people around me have EMPTY LIVES, and that they fill the void with the most ridiculous, useless, and often very destructive preoccupations, for example, faculty members in psychology departments becoming absorbed in petty departmental politics and getting all hot and bothered about university policies that are completely trivial and don’t really matter to anyone.
The world generally is filled with such people, in our government, in industry, in education. I have a new method of therapy for such people: I call it Get a Life Therapy (GLT). You have to kidnap the person who has filled the emptiness with ridiculous and destructive things, and put them in an obscure motel room with great privacy. Tie the person in a chair, with his hands restrained so he cannot cover his ears. And then, for 48 consecutive hours you scream at the top of your lungs: “Get a Life! Get a Life! Get a Life!” At the end of that time, the person is released on his own recognizance to discover more constructive ways of living.
So I was thinking of marketing this new method of treatment, and wondering if there is a way of making vast sums of money with it, since it would be as good or better than most other forms of therapy from what I have seen of my own crazy field. Or maybe it could just be an altruistic act, not for money, with no profit coming to me other than the knowledge that I had helped a few people live more fully and creatively. As I continued to think and think about all this, a disturbing question came floating into my mind: Is this treatment itself an instance of the disease it purports to cure? I think not.