... that our times call for, they are precisely these, self-restraint and compassion. The last decade has seen a steady rise of reports portraying an increase in emotional ineptitude, desperation and recklessness in our families, our communities, and in our collective lives. A spreading emotional distress can be read in numbers showing a jump in depression around the world, and in the reminders of a surging tide of aggression -- teens with guns in schools, freeway mishaps ending in shootings, disgruntled ex-employees massacring former fellow workers. No one is insulated from this erratic tide of outburst and regret. It reaches into all our lives one way or another. Academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. People with high IQs can be stunningly poor pilots of their private lives. In fact, one of psychology's open secrets is the inability of grades, IQ, or SAT scores, despite their popular mystique, to predict unerringly ...

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