According to Forbes, psychoanalyst Manfred Kets de Vries writes 2,000-word essays daily starting at 5:30 a.m., producing his 100th piece since April without algorithm optimization or financial compensation. The INSEAD professor’s motivation stems from personal tragedy—over 100 family members killed during World War II, with his maternal grandparents and mother recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for sheltering Jews. Kets de Vries specifically advocates for education reform modeled after Finland’s comprehensive school system implemented from 1972-1977 and Singapore’s selective teacher recruitment that accepts only 2,000 from 16,000 annual applicants. His recent satire piece “Big Brother and the Cheerful Gulag” reflects his concern about rising extremism and democracy’s fragility, arguing that critical thinking development must begin early to counter social media’s disruptive influence. This personal mission reveals deeper structural challenges facing modern democracies.
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The Education Reform Paradox
Kets de Vries correctly identifies education as the foundational solution, but the political reality he encountered with Malaysia’s former Prime Minister—”half a million votes”—represents the fundamental paradox of education reform. While Finland’s transformation beginning in 1968 and Singapore’s teacher selection process demonstrate what’s possible, these successes occurred in relatively homogeneous societies with strong central authority. The Finnish comprehensive school system that kept all students together until age 16 required complete overhaul of teacher education simultaneously, a level of coordination that larger, more diverse democracies struggle to achieve.
The challenge isn’t just political will but scalability. Singapore’s approach of recruiting teachers from the top third of each cohort through rigorous selection processes creates prestige but may not translate to countries with different cultural attitudes toward teaching. Meanwhile, the very social media platforms that make critical thinking essential also fragment public consensus needed for education reform, creating a vicious cycle where the problem compounds the difficulty of implementing solutions.
The Leadership Vacuum and Economic Anxiety
Kets de Vries’s observation about modern leadership requiring television anchor qualities points to a deeper systemic issue: we’ve optimized leadership selection for entertainment value rather than governance capability. His earlier work Leadership Unhinged predicted the dangerous cycle where economically abandoned populations become vulnerable to leaders who validate anger without offering solutions. The economic anxiety he describes—particularly among young and middle-aged men facing job loss and depression—isn’t just an American phenomenon but a global one accelerated by automation and globalization.
The critical missing piece in this analysis is the timeline mismatch between political cycles and meaningful reform. Education changes take generations to show results, while political leaders operate on election cycles measuring mere years. This structural misalignment means that even well-intentioned leaders struggle to implement the comprehensive reforms Kets de Vries advocates. The protest dynamics he observes in France, where education ministers face street demonstrations when attempting reform, reflect this fundamental tension between immediate political costs and long-term societal benefits.
The Science Behind Expressive Writing
While Kets de Vries practices daily writing as personal therapy, the scientific foundation for this approach is robust. Psychologist James Pennebaker’s research on expressive writing demonstrates that writing about stressful experiences for 15-20 minutes over consecutive days produces measurable health improvements. Meta-analyses of over 100 studies confirm that structured writing interventions can significantly impact both physical and mental health outcomes.
What’s particularly insightful is Kets de Vries’s application of this practice to leadership development. His advice to executives to maintain journals despite busy schedules recognizes that leadership stress requires constructive outlets. The neuroscience behind this—that “journaling touches other parts of the brain”—suggests we’re underestimating writing as a tool for cognitive processing and emotional regulation in high-pressure roles.
Generational Wisdom Transfer Crisis
Kets de Vries’s emphasis on quality relationships over career optimization reveals a critical blind spot in modern professional development. In an era obsessed with networking and personal branding, his stark advice—”They should pay attention to friendships”—challenges conventional wisdom about success. The psychological concept of generativity he references represents a fundamental human need that’s being systematically undermined by digital communication and performance-driven culture.
The tragedy is that the very platforms enabling Kets de Vries to share his wisdom globally may be eroding the relationship-building capacity needed to absorb it. Social media encourages broad, shallow connections over the deep, quality relationships he rightly identifies as life-sustaining. This creates a paradox where we have unprecedented access to wisdom but diminishing capacity to integrate it meaningfully into our lives.
The Implementation Challenge
While Kets de Vries’s diagnosis is compelling, the implementation barriers are formidable. The Finnish education success required decades of consistent policy application and cultural buy-in. In today’s polarized environment, achieving similar consensus seems increasingly difficult. The very critical thinking skills needed to evaluate education reform are themselves the product of the education system we’re trying to fix.
Furthermore, the economic model supporting Kets de Vries’s unpaid writing mission isn’t scalable. Relying on individuals with personal wealth and platform access to drive social change creates inherent limitations. The question becomes how to institutionalize his insights into systems that can operate at scale without depending on exceptional individuals working without compensation.
The most challenging aspect of Kets de Vries’s mission may be that those who most need to hear his message are least likely to engage with it, creating an audience selection bias that limits impact precisely where it’s most needed.
