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Waiting For Superman

My Journal

2/15/14


Today I don't want to be introspective. I want to just be superficial, which is kind of different for me, not in an arrogant way, just in a factual way. I thought it was interesting when I read an article about a guy who decided to follow Ben Franklin's schedule for a day. Ben left time for study and to deal with spiritual things. The author said he almost never did that, and it was an interesting thing for him to do. Thinking about big things like God and purpose and why we are here and doing research into those questions is something I grew up doing and something I do all the time. How can you not wonder about that? How can you just go through life and just go to work, come home, be with your someone, party sometimes and that is it. That is satisfying? Really? Don't you wonder about things as a whole? Don't you wonder why we are here or how, or do you just take science's or God's word for it and leave it at that. I guess in a way you could have more of your emotional energy available to fritter away on personal drama. That might be interesting. I know it is kind of a weight on me to wonder about my, and our purpose, to wonder what or who else is out there, and it is a huge itch I am just dying to scratch to see everything as it really is. I used to think I would just go to heaven and God would explain it all to me and I could live with that. Now I am not so sure I will ever know, and ugh, that is annoying.

But to live without that burden, to me is to live in a closet. To live in the small world of what I see now. I just need to get out into the air and breath and wonder, and make wild guesses and hope. So with that comes the burden of what I don't know, of making choices and just not knowing if they are the right ones because I can't have all the information. I can't see past death or into the new millennium, so I have to make some of my best guesses blind.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Culture of Our Discontent



I loved many insights made in this book. As with many conclusions that are drawn from information gained in the fields of evolutionary biology and anthropology, I do not assume that all of the information presented in this book is law. I see the information gained here as a smattering of fact presented in conjunction with common sense conclusions, and the author's bias. It helps my opinion of the book that I agree with many of the conclusions the author has drawn. She brings attention to the lack of real evidence we have that the Western way we treat mental illness is working. She questions the use of drugs in many scenarios, but I believe has a realistic respect for the undeniable aid drugs have given to some who truly need them to function. One of the most interesting points she brings home is that other cultures are worth learning from when it comes to treating mental illness, and even defining it. She calls for those of us in Western culture to drop our arrogance and view even primitive cultures as a source of education about human nature. That outlook, along with the evidence she puts forth made this book a wonderful educational experience for me.



The Following are quotes form the book by Meredith F. Small:


Pg. 127 - Western Culture is no different from any other culture in producing conditions that encourage expression of particular psychologies. We cannot assume that our metal illnesses are all biological - that is, biochemical - while their mental illnesses are all culturally constructed.

Pg. 146
like any good tribe, we have collectively agreed that genes, physiology, biochemistry, and biology are where the answers must lie, even though no one has really demonstrated that our belief system, and our treatments, are any better than poisoning chickens, casting a spell, or trance dancing.

Pg. 149

The author is interviewing Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard.

What is missing from both diagnoses, Kleinman feels, is an understanding of how the human mind is entwined with the whole experience of being an individual embedded in a family, a culture, and a society. Mind and body cannot be separated, and both are affected by everything else in life.

pg. 156

The Western medical model of mental illness is dangerous because it is arrogant. We have the best medical facilities, the most sophisticated technologies, and the most comfortable life. Surely we should also be the happiest people on Earth. Yet with all these advantages, it appears that mental illness, especially depression, is ubiquitous in Western culture. By unquestioningly accepting out own belief system, we run the risk of not learning from other cultures that might, in fact, be coping much better.

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