The world is awash with grand announcements of spiritual rebirth, Armageddon scenarios, and self-help commercialism that are forming a global skin that circumscribes our entire mental world. Political theorist Benjamin Barber has noted that the commercialism behind the global takeover of the mental sphere amounts to a kind of "default totalitarianism." If we are not careful, then emerging pockets of positive change are in danger of being consumed by a cultural-social environment where platitudes are taken as profundities. Social critic Morris Berman, writing more than a decade ago, noted that [...]