Dan Snyder Quotes

MARTIN SELIGMAN, LE GOUROU SCIENTIFIQUE Du mouvement humaniste est vraisemblablement née la psychologie positive. Mais il est indéniable que cette dernière surpasse l’humanisme des années 1960, braquées sur une forme de nirvana individuel et sur l’apologie du me, myself and I. La psychologie positive encourage le développement d’une personne saine dans une «société saine», l’une étant indissociable de l’autre. De plus, cette approche nouvelle ne partage pas la méfiance de ses aïeuls envers la méthode scientifique. Au contraire, elle s’en sert pour réclamer que l’on accorde au «positif» une place aussi importante qu’au «pathologique», ni plus ni moins. C’est ainsi qu’en 2002, dans un dernier chapitre du Handbook of Positive Psychology, les éditeurs Charles Snyder et Shane Lopez, tous deux docteurs en psychologie, signaient la «déclaration d’indépendance au modèle médical». Cet ouvrage marquait le coup d’envoi de cette science du bonheur dont la naissance officielle est généralement attribuée à Martin Seligman. Avec ses airs de méchant garçon plus brillant que ses maîtres, il procura l’étincelle qu’il fallait pour révolutionner les principes humanistes vieillissants. En 1998, lors de son passage à la présidence de l’American Psychological Association, il invita les psychologues américains et ceux du monde entier à aider les gens à être heureux.   L’histoire de Nikki Aussi surprenant que cela puisse paraître, Martin Seligman s’est d’abord fait connaître par son intérêt pour «l’impuissance apprise» (learned helplessness). À fin des années 1960, il démontra que, lorsqu’on lui inflige de petits chocs électriques, un animal finit par s’installer dans une forme de résignation acquise. Il consacra les premières années de sa carrière scientifique à ce domaine lugubre jusqu’au jour où Nikki, sa fille, lui apprit une leçon remarquable qu’il raconte comme une parabole.

Full Disclosure: when Dan DiDio approached me about doing one, I was wary to say the least. Nowadays events often mean character deaths or reboots or company-wide publishing initiatives and so on. But the run Greg Capullo and I had on BATMAN was, for better or for worse, idiosyncratic - about our own hopes, our fears, our interests. It was just... very much ours. Even so, I told Dan that I *did* have a story, one I'd been working on for a few years, a big one, in the back of my brain. It was about a detective case that stretched back to the beginnings of humanity, a mystery about the nature of the DC Universe that Batman would try to uncover, and which would lead him and the Justice League to discover that their own cosmology was much larger, scarier and more wondrous than they'd known. But I wasn't sure it would make a good "event". Dan, to his credit, said, "Work it up and let's see." So I did. But in the course of working it up, I reread all the events I could think of. Just for reference. Not only recent ones, but events from years ago, from when I was a kid. And what I discovered, or rediscovered, was that at their core, events are joyous things. They're these great big stories, ridiculous tales about alien invasions or cosmic gems or zombie-space-cop attacks that have the highest stakes possible - stories where the whole universe hangs in the balance and nothing will ever be the same again! They were *about* things, and - what I also realized while doing my homework - when I was a kid, they were THE stories that brought me and my friends together. We'd split our money and buy different parts of an event, just to be able to argue about it. We'd meet after school and go on for hours about who should win, who should lose... Because even the grimmest events are celebratory. They're about pushing the limits of an already ludicrous form to a breaking point. So that's what I came back with. I remember standing in my kitchen and getting ready to pitch DARK NIGHTS: METAL to Greg, having prepared a whole presentation, a whole argument as to why, crazy as it was, it was us, it was *our* event. I said "It's called METAL," and Greg said, "I'm in," before I could even tell him the story. And even though Dan thought it was crazy, he went with it, and for that I'm very grateful. In the end, METAL is a lot of things - it's about those moments when you find yourself face to face with the worst versions of yourself, moments when all looks like doom - but at it's heart it's a love letter to comic storytelling at its most lunatic, and a tribute to the kinds of stories, events that got me thought hard times as a kid and as an adult. It's about using friendship as a foundation to go further than you thought you could go, and that means it's about me and Greg, and you as well. Because we tried something different with it, something ours, hoping you'd show up, and you did. So thank you, sincerely, from all of us on the team. Because when they work, events are about coming together and rocking out over our love of this crazy art form. And you're all in the band, now and always.

While wisdom dictates the need for education, education does not necessarily make one wise. I remember a man when I was growing up who was extremely well educated and had two master’s degrees. He could wax eloquently on many subjects but had a very difficult time sustaining himself economically. In fact, he would frequently mooch off of anyone who would take pity on him. On the other hand, many of the greatest achievers in our society never finished college. That includes Bill Gates Jr., Steve Jobs, and Dan Snyder, who is the owner of the Washington Redskins. This does not mean that higher education isn’t highly desirable and beneficial, but it does indicate that the wise use of knowledge is more important than knowledge itself.