A Beautiful Land Archives - Susan Beth Miller

Disgust, Ethnicity, and Fiction

Post #5On December 27, the NYTimes (Molly Young) published an article--“How Disgust Explains Everything” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/magazine/disgust-science.html. The article looks at Paul Rozin’s early work on disgust as an emotion that helps us know what is safe to eat. The author examines as well the evolution of scholarship to explore disgust's broader interpersonal and moral functioning.Not much was said by Young about disgust in intergroup relations so I want to comment a bit on that subject. Disgust frequently operates powerfully and lethally in intergroup relations. Characterizations of the ‘other’ as disgusting have through the centuries been associated with acts of extreme violence—including [...]

On blogging

This is my first effort at a blog post so I am a bit anxious. Noting that, and being a clinical psychologist, I thought I would reflect a bit on anxiety and the writing process. Anxiety often results from fears of being exposed as foolish, untalented, presumptuous or having some other flaw of character or performance. We may not identify what’s making us anxious but if we do and it’s something about us that might not look okay when seen by others, it’s a straight shot from such exposure to shame, a topic I’ve written quite a lot about [...]