ABCs OF LANGUAGE
Words are magical. They are like musical notes, which when strung together, create a symphony of meaning and feeling. As the speaker, we are the composer, arranger, conductor, and musician. So it's up to us to choose our words carefully and to present them clearly and concisely. Sadly, some people don't pay enough attention to their words, and as a result, they and their words are often ignored. Let's remember that words are the building blocks of language, communication, and relationships.
 Page Menu  Site Menu
ABCs OF WRITING
There are four kinds of writing: prose, poetry, prose poetry, and aphorisms. Prose is information formatted in sentences and paragraphs. Poetry is imagery formatted in lines and stanzas. Prose poetry is imagery formatted like prose. And aphorisms are concise bits of wisdom formatted in sentences. Good writing is a smooth flow of lucid, logical, linguistic linkages. In short, good writing is a link between think and ink.
Page Menu Site Menu
A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES (ROMEO AND JULIET)
While it is engaging and stimulating, most political debate is nonetheless a charade based on the fallacy of false choices. Both sides put on a good show for the naive public, but neither side truly addresses the waste, fraud, and abuse endemic to government. Like professional wrestling, politics is theater with mock anger, pretend punches, choreographed cliffhangers, and orchestrated outcomes. If we don't learn to distinguish between reality and theater, we will turn our reality into a theater of the absurd.
Page Menu Site Menu
A TASTE OF HONEY
Life is like our taste buds. Our tongue has taste buds for sweetness, saltiness, sourness, and bitterness. Likewise, life has the sweetness of success, the saltiness of humor, the sourness of disappointment, and the bitterness of failure. In order to curb our gustatory and emotional craving for the addictive pleasure of sweetness and saltiness, we must learn to accept the counterbalancing displeasure of sourness and bitterness.
Page Menu Site Menu
ADDICTION & AMBIVALENCE
Addicts are frustrating and maddening. They ask for help but then reject it. After a while, we get frustrated and angry with them and tell them to leave us alone. How can we help addicts without getting angry and rejecting them? We must recognize that addicts are ambivalent about their addiction, in that they love the euphoria, but hate the sickness. So we must help them to understand their ambivalence and the dual nature of addiction with its euphoria and sickness, which are inextricably linked. Likewise, we must cope with our ambivalence towards addicts, in that we love them, but hate their addiction.
Page Menu Site Menu
ADDICTION IN PHYSICIANS AND NURSES
Physicians and nurses are prone to addiction, because they both have knowledge of and access to addictive drugs, and therefore a false sense of security with these drugs. Unfortunately, they forget that addictive drugs are a deadly paradox: the more you know them, the more they fool you; the more you use them, the more they control you; and the more you enjoy them, the more they hurt you. It is wise for physicians and nurses to be proactively on guard against becoming addicted to addictive drugs.
Page Menu Site Menu
ALARM-GATE
The climatologists and epidemiologists at the Henny Penny institute of pseudo-science have inadvertently performed a public service. Climate-gate and flu-gate have immunized the public against media-spread alarmism.
Page Menu Site Menu
ALL FINE ARCHITECTURAL VALUES ARE HUMAN VALUES, ELSE NOT VALUABLE (FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT)
Architects are the unsung heroes of buildings. Working quietly behind the scenes, they design the beauty and functionality of homes, hospitals, houses of worship, schools, stores, theaters, museums, and skyscrapers. With imagination, creativity, and precision, architects convert empty space into rooms, ergonomic furniture, artwork, atria, cathedral ceilings, clerestory windows, stained glass, skylights, and landscaping. So let's celebrate the magic of architecture and incorporate all of its beauty and functionality into our lives.
Page Menu Site Menu
ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE (AS YOU LIKE IT)
Life is a series of predictable, progressive, overlapping stages. Childhood is a time of education; adulthood is a time of dedication; and old age is a time of meditation. Each stage has meaning, dignity, and purpose. The purpose of life is maturation, purification, and elevation. The formula for life is cooperation, amelioration, and celebration.
Page Menu Site Menu
AND HOMELESS NEAR A THOUSAND HOMES I STOOD (WORDSWORTH)
We are homeless hybrids. Split between the natural world and the spiritual world, we wander and wonder, vacillating between fact and faith, ever searching for a home. Weak and needy, but proud and petulant, we have no ecological niche and must rely on wits and luck. Like orphans who feel frightened and forlorn, and fight to be the favorite, we hope and pray that God will have pity and take us home, even if only for a visit.
Page Menu Site Menu
ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS (HIPPOCRATES)
Art is magic. With the speed of light, it travels from our senses to our sensibilities to our soul. With the skill of an alchemist, the artist translates a story of common pain into a picture of uncommon beauty. Like God, who created us and all life from dust and dirt, the artist uses dust and dirt to memorialize God's creation.
Page Menu Site Menu
ART & SCIENCE
Art and science are complementary. Like our two cerebral hemispheres, they synergistically enhance our intellect. Art relies on the analogical, non-linear, backward reasoning of induction, while science relies on the logical, linear, forward reasoning of deduction. Since logic requires both induction and deduction, society requires both art and science. Just imagine if we could somehow blend the artistic genius of Rembrandt and Mozart, with the scientific genius of Einstein and Pasteur. Our problems just might be solved.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEAUTY IS MORE THAN SKIN DEEP
Women's obligatory pursuit of beauty is a terrible burden. A beautiful face requires luxuriant hair, bright eyes, gleaming teeth, perfect features, and flawless skin. A beautiful body requires a slender, shapely figure, with no fat or flab. And a beautiful appearance requires monogrammed, designer clothes with matching accoutrements. Sadly, these lofty standards impel many women to be obsessed with fashion, jewelry, cosmetics, nail salons, beauty parlors, cosmetic surgery, and image, all of which can ironically ruin a woman's life and health. Women should be freed from the inanity and insanity of vanity, so that they can dedicate themselves to life, love, health, and work, and let their appearance take care of itself. Beauty is sincere and dear, not artificial or superficial.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEDLAM
Bedlam is more than a medieval psychiatric hospital. It is a metaphor for institutionalized chaos, confusion, and insanity. Today, when we think of Bedlam, we shake our heads and cluck our tongues at the primitive barbarism of early psychiatry. But someday doctors of the future will likewise shake their heads and cluck their tongues at the primitive barbarism of today's psychiatric hospitals. So let's contain our hubris, be objective about our hospitals, and accept our place in history. Today's modern medical center is tomorrow's Bedlam.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF ADDICTION & GUNS
Addiction is like a trigger. Triggers fire guns that shoot bullets which kill people. Likewise, addiction ignites insatiable craving that triggers violence which kills people. Incendiary and unnecessary, addiction is a loaded gun, and a phantasmagoria of gory dysphoria.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF ADDICTION TO PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
We have a silent epidemic of addiction to prescription drugs. Many people are hooked on analgesics, tranquilizers, antidepressants, and sleeping pills that were prescribed by their physicians. Ironically, the imprimatur of the physician’s prescription pad misleads many patients into a false sense of security and a life of addiction that the physician is often slow to diagnose or treat. It’s wise for physicians and patients to discuss the addictive potential of prescription drugs.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF ADVERTISING
No matter what we are doing, we are constantly barraged with advertising; it permeates television, radio, movies, theater, print, and the internet. This relentless, ubiquitous advertising is much more sophisticated than we realize, because it employs subtle, subliminal messages that influence our unconscious. So no matter how inviting and friendly advertising appears to be, we must learn to recognize and resist its mesmerizing messages.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF ALCOHOL
Alcohol, an addictive depressant and social lubricant, tricks and traps you by creating the fleeting euphoria of relaxation and confidence, but the sustained sickness of anxiety and despair. The euphoria of relaxation and confidence, and the sickness of anxiety and despair, are opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness, and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, alcohol creates, aggravates, and perpetuates the very sickness it seems to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF BIG PHARMA
Big Pharma is the preeminent force in healthcare. It controls medical schools, medical research, medical journals, medical certification, continuing medical education, health insurance, and health policy. Big Pharma indoctrinates physicians, patients, and governments with a pharmaceutical orthodoxy that excommunicates all non-believers as sinners, heretics, and lunatics. In order to liberate healthcare and promote scientific progress, Big Pharma should fund independent, ongoing research into its excessive influence over healthcare. But let's not hold our breath waiting for this to happen.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF BREAKING POINTS
Nothing in nature is perfect, including us. We all have sensitive nervous systems with many imperfections, and breaking points that manifest themselves at the worst possible times. So let’s take prophylactic measures to ward off these breaking points and avoid unnecessary catastrophes. Physicians and nurses should ask their patients about stressors in their lives and possible breaking points. This is not a call for more psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, or hospitalizations. Rather, this is a call for more sympathetic and supportive social services that recognize the imperfections and breaking points in human nature.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF BUZZWORDS
Linguists seem curiously tolerant of certain buzzwords that obfuscate rather than communicate. These buzzwords comprise oxymora, redundancies, and put-downs. For example, "political correctness" is an oxymoron, because politicians are notoriously dishonest and incorrect; "climate change" is a redundancy, because climate always changes; and "let’s all come together and move forward" is a put-down, because it suggests that we are unruly children who need to be controlled. Buzzwords are noxious nonsense and newspeak that subliminally undermine our integrity, maturity, and autonomy. George Orwell’s novel 1984 is prescient and timeless.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF CAFFEINE
Caffeine, an addictive stimulant and social lubricant, tricks and traps you by creating the fleeting euphoria of mental energy, but the sustained sickness of mental lethargy. The euphoria of mental energy and the sickness of mental lethargy are opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness, and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, caffeine creates, aggravates, and perpetuates the very sickness it seems to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF COLA
Cola, an addictive stimulant and social lubricant, tricks and traps you by creating the fleeting euphoria of hydration and energy, but the sustained sickness of dehydration and apathy. The euphoria of hydration and energy, and the sickness of dehydration and apathy, are opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness, and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, cola creates, aggravates, and perpetuates the very sickness it seems to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF CONTACT SPORTS
Contact sports (such as boxing, hockey, rugby, and American football) are parodies of manhood and atavistic, anachronistic, sadomasochistic, barbaric bacchanalia, which create the euphoria of victory, machismo, and fun, but the sickness of injury, disability, and pain.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF FOOLISHNESS
The world is full of foolish behavior. No one is immune from being foolish. How can we prevent foolishness? The best way is to avoid addictive substances, because they impair our judgment and make us impulsive. But if we do use addictive substances, we must be on our best behavior, and on guard against faux pas, or worse. Sadly, society is long on notoriety, but short on sobriety.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF GAMBLING
Gambling, an addictive behavior and social lubricant, creates the fleeting euphoria of hope and wealth, but the sustained sickness of hopelessness and poverty. The euphoria of hope and wealth, and the sickness of hopelessness and poverty, are polar opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness; and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, gambling creates, aggravates, and perpetuates the very sickness it seems to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF IDEOLOGIES
Ideology is a fancy term for someone’s theory. Somehow, words sound more impressive when they have more syllables. But before we subscribe to fancy theories, we should reduce them to plain, simple language, and see if they really make sense and help us. Otherwise, complexity vexes us with perplexity, and we feel very theory weary.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF MARIJUANA & HASHISH
Marijuana and hashish are addictive hallucinogens that trick and trap you by creating the fleeting euphoria of knowledge and wisdom, but the sustained sickness of confusion and paranoia. The euphoria of knowledge and wisdom, and the sickness of confusion and paranoia, are opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness, and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, marijuana and hashish create, aggravate, and perpetuate the very sickness they seem to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF NEWSPEAK
Politicians who urge us to "come together and move forward" are, in effect, herding us like cattle. Let's elect politicians who function as individuals, and encourage us to do the same. Or is it too late?
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF OPEC & THE HORMUZ HUSTLE
The smooth dudes, who ooze raw crude through the crucial Strait of Hormuz, monetize moods, but refuse to schmooze. So let's defuse Hormuz and disabuse these dudes of elitist views, by replacing gilded gravitas and crap with rap, and hype and hoopla with hip-hop.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF OPIOIDS
Opioids are addictive narcotics that trick and trap you by creating the fleeting euphoria of analgesia (pain-free), but the sustained sickness of hyperalgesia (pain-sensitivity). The euphoria of analgesia and the sickness of hyperalgesia are opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness, and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, opioids create, aggravate, and perpetuate the very sickness they seem to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF SCARE-CARE
Scare-care is a poor substitute for healthcare. Healthcare experts who manufacture public hysteria about controversial issues, without acknowledging the legitimacy of opposing points of view, are not advancing public health. Healthcare is not monolithic, and there are legitimate questions about such sacred cows as vaccines, statins, tranquilizers, antidepressants, and global warming (climate change). Healthcare requires balance and fairness, not bias and fear.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF TOBACCO
Tobacco is an addictive depressant that tricks and traps you by creating the fleeting euphoria of aeration and relaxation, but the sustained sickness of suffocation and desperation. The euphoria of aeration and relaxation, and the sickness of suffocation and desperation, are opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds you to the sickness, and the sickness makes you crave the euphoria. Ironically, tobacco creates, aggravates, and perpetuates the very sickness it seems to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEWARE OF VIOLENCE
We are torn between verbiage and violence. Our intelligence tells us to resolve disputes patiently and peacefully. But our anger tells us to end disputes fast and forcefully. How can we resolve this dichotomy? We must own up to our tendency to impatience, anger, and violence, and learn to express this tendency verbally, safely, and humanely, because violence is ruinous, but patience is luminous and numinous.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEYOND BIOLOGY 1
We are social mammals, and all of our activities are emotionally charged with thoughts and memories of our relationships. These thoughts and memories control much of our lives, including such physiological activities as sleeping and eating. In order to correct sleeping and eating disorders, such as insomnia, anorexia, bulimia, or obesity, we must understand their emotional associations and social context. Sleeping and eating are more than rapid eye movements and peristalsis; they are also dreams and reassurance. Both sleeping and eating revolve around our need for love and security. We are more than biological beings, and it's impossible to overestimate the significance of our emotional and social life.
Page Menu Site Menu
BEYOND BIOLOGY 2
Even though our mind is abecedarian; even though our behavior is not egalitarian or humanitarian, but authoritarian, antiquarian, barbarian, and contrarian; and even though our society is a vivarium, our body a terrarium, our blood an aquarium, and our breath a cinerarium; our lives are still an honorarium.
Page Menu Site Menu
BIG PHARMA AND LITTLE DOCTORS
The relationship between the drug industry and doctors is upside down and backwards. Although the drug industry is motivated primarily by profit, lacks clinical experience and judgment, and has a history of egregious dishonesty, the drug industry nonetheless dominates doctors. The drug industry's economic might, political connections, deceptive marketing, biased research, and self-serving educational functions render even experienced doctors little more than medical students who seek a passing grade and prize the prescription pad as a badge of honor and raison d'être.
It's no wonder that doctors and medical journals are now half-heartedly and belatedly trying to emancipate themselves from the drug industry's hegemony and patronage, while the drug industry is hypocritically trying to maintain the status quo. And it's no wonder that healthcare is so frustrating, expensive, confusing, ineffective, and dangerous. How sad for doctors, patients, and patients' families, who suffer along with patients and struggle to pay inflated medical bills.
Those who seek to defend the drug industry's right to monopolize healthcare, gouge the public, and make rapacious, extravagant profits should read Mark 8:36, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
Page Menu Site Menu
BLESSED ARE THE MEEK, FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH (MATTHEW 5:5)
Society is hypocritical. It preaches civility and courtesy, but praises aggression and audacity. We mock Caspar Milquetoast, but emulate Rambo and the Terminator. As children, we learn that bullies control the playground, and as adults, we learn that dictators and tyrants control the world. If we want to live in a more civilized world, we must reject bluster and bravado, and instead learn to respect and appreciate the meek. To quote Swami Sivananda, "Meekness is not weakness."
Page Menu Site Menu
BLUEPRINT FOR WRITERS
Writing is like building a skyscraper. The writer must be the architect, contractor, janitor, interior decorator, real estate agent, and doorman. As architect, the writer envisions the concept and blueprint for the writing. As contractor, the writer turns the blueprint into sentences and paragraphs. As janitor, the writer edits the sentences and paragraphs. As interior decorator, the writer embellishes the edited sentences and paragraphs. As real estate agent, the writer presents the embellished, edited sentences and paragraphs to the public. And as doorman, the writer greets all readers. In short, the writer is reaching for the sky and taking you along.
Page Menu Site Menu
BREAD & CIRCUS
Imperial Rome pacified the common people with free food and gladiator contests at the Colosseum, which the satirist, Juvenal, called bread and circus. Sadly, little has changed since those days; governments continue to pacify the common people with bread and circus. But today, the bread is welfare, provided by the liberals; the circus is warfare, provided by the conservatives; and the Colosseum is television, provided by the media.
Page Menu Site Menu
BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO (NEIL SEDAKA)
Relationships are paradoxical. Although many relationships end badly, no one ever expects this to happen. And the bad endings always catch us by surprise. This happens in marriage, family, friendship, and business. So why do these bad endings surprise us? Perhaps it’s because many relationships are based on fantasy, denial, distortion, and transference, and can’t survive the light of day. Like dreams, relationships abruptly end when we wake up, and then the nightmare of breaking up begins.
Page Menu Site Menu
BUT I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP, AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP (ROBERT FROST)
Despite significant social and scientific progress, society is still fraught with sickness, injustice, violence, and conflict. We’ve come a long way from the Middle Ages, but we still have a long way to go. So let’s not get too puffed up about the information explosion, by confusing facts and data with knowledge and wisdom. And let’s not congratulate and honor ourselves, until we can actually feed the hungry, heal the sick, and achieve peace, without destroying ourselves or the planet.
Page Menu Site Menu
BUT THY ETERNAL SUMMER SHALL NOT FADE (SHAKESPEARE SONNET 18)
Grieving is bittersweet. At first, we are overwhelmed with the shock and bitterness of losing a loved one. But after a while, after the shock starts to wear off, we begin to reminisce about the sweetness that we shared with our loved one. Still later, after the bitterness and sweetness begin to recede, we start analyzing our relationship with our loved one, and come to new understandings. So the grieving process is lengthy, complicated, and ultimately productive. Let's give ourselves ample time to go through the whole process and come out a better person.
Page Menu Site Menu
CAMP ESPERANZA
The miraculous rescue of 33 Chilean miners at Camp Esperanza (Hope) was a poignant, riveting resurrection reminiscent of birth itself. Securely sealed in a protective capsule (amniotic sac) and connected to a lifeline (umbilical cord) that traversed a long tube (birth canal), each miner was carefully rescued (delivered) from a dark cave (womb) by coworkers (midwives), who lovingly reunited the miners (babies) with their joyous wives (mothers), wrapped them in a (receiving) blanket, and carried them on a stretcher (cradle) to the physician (pediatrician) in the hospital (nursery), while the mining company (father) greeted everyone, took pictures, and paid the bill. Thank God for miracles!
Page Menu Site Menu
CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM
The eternal conflict between the rights of the rich (capitalism) and the needs of the poor (socialism) confounds society. This conflict defies all political and economic solutions, and each country tends to waver back and forth. Some countries have reached tipping points and are in danger of collapse. Why can’t this conflict be resolved? Perhaps it’s because money is really not the issue. Instead, the issue is society’s inability to provide people with real peace and health, without which no political or economic system can truly succeed.
Page Menu Site Menu
CAVEAT CELEBRITY
Celebrity is a mixed blessing. It offers the opportunity for comfort, candor, and philanthropy; but it also offers the opportunity for extravagance, self-indulgence, and self-destruction. Ironically, many celebrities lead short, unhappy, meteoric lives that are both fascinating and revolting. So let's be grateful for our modest, mundane, mediocre lives which enforce a measure of normality, rationality, and reality.
Page Menu Site Menu
CAVEAT COURT
Legal justice is an oxymoron. All too often, courts milk the public via the judge (sacred cow), the gavel (cattle prod), the lawyer (cowboy & cowgirl), the trial (cash cow), the witness (auctioneer), the jury (steer), the bailiff (bull), and the verdict (cow pie).
Page Menu Site Menu
CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN (THE SOUND OF MUSIC)
Mount Everest is more than the tallest mountain on earth; it is a metaphor for the ultimate challenge. Life presents each of us with a unique series of opportunities and challenges. The task in life is to seize opportunities, face challenges, and turn challenges into opportunities. Each of us is a lone mountain climber scaling a unique mountain. And each of us needs creativity, courage, companionship, determination, and luck.
Page Menu Site Menu
CONNUBIAL CONUNDRUMS
There's no middle ground with marriage. It's either good or bad; it's either the boon or the bane of our existence. If it's good, it offers a bounty of love, companionship, security, and reassurance. But if it's bad, it offers nothing but an expensive, oppressive, omnipresent prison. So let's spend more time selecting and caring for our marriage partners and avoid the dilemma of choosing between a bad marriage and a devastating divorce.
Page Menu Site Menu
CONSENT MAKES THE LAW (CONSENSUS FACIT LEGEM)
Informed consent is a redundancy, because being properly informed is a precondition of consent. Without being properly informed, a patient or client cannot give any legitimate, binding consent. Therefore, it is imperative that all professionals withhold any request for agreement or signatures, until after all information and questions have been fully addressed.
Page Menu Site Menu
CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS
The eternal conflict between conservatives (fundamentalists) and liberals (humanists) is, in part, linguistic. The former adhere to literal and denotative language, while the latter adhere to figurative and connotative language. Perhaps this conflict reflects a fallacy of false choices, because both kinds of language are equally valid and not mutually exclusive. So let's syncretically reconcile our political and religious differences, by increasing our semantic tolerance of language.
Page Menu Site Menu
CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS
Conversations are defined by context and driven by purpose. The context of a conversation is its background, which involves the past and present. The purpose of a conversation is its goal, which involves the future. So when you're having a conversation, try to ascertain its context (past and present) and purpose (future). This will make your conversations more meaningful, constructive, and satisfying.
Page Menu Site Menu
CYBERPHOBIA
The internet is a modern miracle but a mixed blessing. It enables us to search and communicate with the rest of the world; but it also enables the rest of the world to search and communicate about us. Like most progress, the internet enhances our lives, but compromises our privacy. Since the internet is a sine qua non of modernity, let's not worry about things we can't change and can’t do without. And let's not succumb to Ludditism or paranoia and reduce our lives to cloak-and-dagger pulp fiction.
Page Menu Site Menu
CYBERSPACE IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER
Apart from Facebook and YouTube, most of cyberspace is blind and deaf, because we don’t see or hear the people we correspond with. Paradoxically, this enhances our communication, because we focus more on words and feelings, and are not as distracted by irrelevant superficialities. Ironically, the blind and deaf, like all disabled people, have special understanding that abled people lack.
Page Menu Site Menu
DEATH BE NOT PROUD (JOHN DONNE)
Life and death are inseparable. From the moment of birth we begin to die, because our cells are programmed to grow, mature, and die by a process called apoptosis. But nevertheless, death often comes as a surprise, even to doctors and nurses, who try to forget that every symptom, injury, or sickness is yet another memento mori. The burden of life and death is too heavy for the medical profession to cope with by itself. In order to alleviate this burden and improve patient care, doctors and nurses should have interdisciplinary conferences with clergy, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and other non-medical experts, who can help to illuminate and mitigate the universal paradox of life and death - the danse macabre.
Page Menu Site Menu
DIAGNOSIS & PROGNOSIS
Physicians treat sickness by probing the past and present (diagnosis), prescribing medicine or surgery, and predicting the future (prognosis). But sometimes physicians are wrong, because they’re so focussed on esoteric scientific knowledge, that they ignore plain common sense by overlooking obvious questions, such as the patient’s contact with toxins and addictions, both of which are common causes of sickness. A wise physician knows that knowledge plus common sense is wisdom, but knowledge minus common sense is nonsense.
Page Menu Site Menu
DIAGNOSIS: FACT OR FICTION
Physicians regard diagnosis as the sine qua non of healthcare. Without a diagnosis, physicians are at a loss as to how to help patients. But there are many patients with mysterious symptoms who cannot be diagnosed, and thus never receive any help. Moreover, there are many patients with recognizable symptoms who are diagnosed, but still never receive any real help. So physicians should establish some basic commonsense healthcare principles that apply to most or all patients, regardless of diagnosis. For example, everyone can benefit from a diet that eliminates all toxins and addictions, such as pesticides, heavy metals, sweets, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and drugs. It's time to advance beyond the limitations of diagnostic medicine by employing some basic commonsense principles and not allowing the diagnosis to become a Procrustean bed, hospital bed, or death bed.
Page Menu Site Menu
DIET AND CULTURE
Diet and culture are inseparable. Each culture has its own special dietary habits. Some of these habits are good, but some are bad. Unfortunately, the bad habits of addiction often outweigh the good habits of nutrition. The bad habits of addiction can undermine the security and progress of a culture. It is important for each culture to study its dietary habits and to distinguish between nutrition and addiction. This will enable each and every culture to fulfill its own unique potential. This will also enable all cultures to live in peace and harmony with each other.
Page Menu Site Menu
DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF AFFECTIVE DISORDERS
The affective disorders of mania and depression are common psychiatric diagnoses. The diagnostic and therapeutic categories for affective disorders include psychoanalytical (oral fixation), psychopharmacological (neurotransmitter imbalance), physical (acute & chronic disease), psychological (low self-esteem), sociological (low social status), dietary (toxins & addictions), and lifestyle (sedentary & solitary). In my experience, the most pragmatic and effective categories are dietary and lifestyle, both of which empower the patient to make immediate, constructive changes that may obviate the need
for more expensive treatment.
Page Menu Site Menu
DO NOTHING FROM RIVALRY OR CONCEIT, BUT IN HUMILITY (PHILIPPIANS 2:3)
Life is not a contest or a conquest, but a quest for the best in each and every one of us.
Page Menu Site Menu
DOCTORS AND NURSES
Life is competition for survival. This competition breeds conflict and jealousy, which affect all relationships, including those between spouses, siblings, neighbors, and co-workers. So we shouldn't be surprised that there is some conflict and jealousy between doctors and nurses. However, we must ensure that no internecine competition ever affects the quality of patient care.
Page Menu Site Menu
DOCTORS ARE NOT DEMIGODS
"By the authority vested in me, I hereby confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Medicine." With these magic words, spoken 37 years ago, the president of the university sanctified my four years of hell in medical school. But little did I realize that the hell of sickness and searching for answers had just begun. It took me decades to realize that traditional healthcare does not have all the answers, and that alternative healthcare does have some answers. So I find it disturbing that some medical doctors condemn alternative healthcare, and even suggest that alternative doctors do not deserve the title of doctor. I believe that healthcare should be complementary, and that medical doctors should be complimentary to their alternative colleagues. Despite their exalted status, medical doctors should strive to be humble, open-minded, and respectful, and give their patients every opportunity to receive help.
Page Menu Site Menu
DON'T FORGET THE DISAFFECTED
Professional leadership is an oxymoron. Professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, are trained to be passive, compliant followers, who reflexively accept and promote the party line. Moreover, professions tend to dismiss, ostracize, and marginalize disaffected members, who challenge the prevailing ideology and policies. This is counter-productive because art and science advance by dissension, as well as consensus. So let's stop cloning the status quo, and instead let's promote real progress by including the disaffected.
Page Menu Site Menu
EDUCATION: PRO & CON
Education is a paradox. It teaches us to memorize facts and idealize teachers, but it doesn’t teach us to analyze, criticize, or theorize. As a result, we are enlightened with facts, but benighted with factoids. Filled with the helium of higher education, our head is in the sky, and our feet are barely touching the ground. Let's counterbalance the enervating effects of higher education with the energizing effects of skepticism, spontaneity, practical experience, common sense, and exercise. The purpose of education is to help us own and stimulate our natural faculties, and offer innovation, not to clone or adulate faculty, and offer ovations.
Page Menu Site Menu
ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY (ANDREW JACKSON & WENDELL PHILLIPS)
Sometimes government is like ranching, and citizens are like cattle. Cattle think that ranchers are taking care of them by providing them with food, water, and land. Likewise, citizens think, hope, or pretend that governments are taking care of them by providing them with rights, protection, and money. But in reality, both cattle and citizens are being manipulated, measured, and marketed for profit. Sadly, citizens are being manipulated by media, measured by pollsters, and marketed by venal governments, which callously use citizenship like a branding iron.
Page Menu Site Menu
EUGENICS & EUTHENICS
There are two competing philosophies about societal progress: eugenics and euthenics. Eugenics seeks to improve gene pools, while euthenics seeks to improve the environment. In both cases, scientists study, measure, and quantify various parameters. But in neither case do scientists consider such unquantifiable parameters as courage, creativity, compassion, humility, and self-sacrifice, all of which are essential for societal progress. So let’s not succumb to a fallacy of false choices, by overlooking the ineffable, immeasurable human spirit.
Page Menu Site Menu
EXPERTISE VS. EXPERTOSIS
Expertise is a paradox. The world is full of experts who can’t explain or solve any problems, but expect us to defer to their expertise. How can we address this absurdity? We must insist that all experts offer pragmatism and progress, not pontification and prevarication. We don't need experts who are smitten with their smarts and suffer from expertosis, diplomatosis, academic neurosis, and apotheosis.
Page Menu Site Menu
EXTROVERTS & INTROVERTS
As social mammals, our sociability spans a continuum from extroversion to introversion. Extroverts are outgoing and talkative, while introverts are reserved and reticent. Since these contrasting styles are inborn and largely unchangeable, we should all conduct an honest assessment of our personalities and then structure our lives accordingly, while leaving room for growth and change, both in ourselves and others.
Page Menu Site Menu
FABLES AND FAIRY TALES
Fables and fairy tales are timeless wisdom, and no one is too old, or too educated, to learn from them. The potential beneficiaries of such wisdom include doctors, scientists, journalists, teachers, lawyers, and politicians. I propose that the curricula for all higher education incorporate the study of fables and fairy tales. Let's learn to view society from the perspective of such fabulists and social critics as Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm. Let's learn to identify and criticize the pretentious, unjust, and absurd nature of society's arrogant power structure.
Page Menu Site Menu
FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNO OR THE DESCENT TO HELL IS EASY (VIRGIL'S AENEID)
Addiction is a portal to hell. It's easy to become addicted, and it's easy to find fellow addicts. But it's hard to cure addiction, because society is based on addiction. The entertainment industry is based on glorifying addiction; the food and beverage industry is based on sugar, vanilla, chocolate, cola, caffeine, and alcohol addiction; the tobacco industry is based on nicotine addiction; the criminal justice industry is based on incarcerating drug addicts; and the healthcare industry is based on treating addiction with addictive drugs. As a hellish phantasmagoria of addiction and euphoria, society is long on notoriety, but short on sobriety.
Page Menu Site Menu
FACING DEATH
Facing death is life's final and most frightening challenge. What will happen to us? Will we disappear, or will we enter a new dimension and be greeted by loved ones who predeceased us? And what will happen to our loved ones who we leave behind? Will they be able to cope with losing us? Will they miss us, or will they forget us? Alas, we are mortal and can't answer any of these questions for sure. So we must have faith in our Creator who brought us here and then decided to reclaim us. Amen.
Page Menu Site Menu
FATE VERSUS FREE WILL
Notwithstanding all of its creative brilliance and originality, Freudian theory nonetheless harkens back to, and borrows from, the Classics. For example, Sophocles plays Oedipus Rex and Electra form the basis for Freud's theories of the oedipus and electra complexes. These plays and theories all serve as metaphors for the power of the unconscious and fate over the conscious and free will. In general, Eastern philosophy believes in the former, while Western philosophy believes in the latter. But regardless of culture or philosophy, we must all come to terms with these eternal dichotomies, and reconcile our lives according to them. A satisfying and productive way to do this is through the medium of art, which magically transcends all dichotomies by means of imagination, creativity, symbolism, and the juxtaposition of opposites.
Page Menu Site Menu
FIDES ET RATIO (FAITH AND REASON)
Truth is elusive, and we all feel the pull between faith and reason. While extremists adhere exclusively to one, and ignore the other, most of us recognize that life requires a realistic and practical combination of both. Faith teaches us to be dependent and obedient, while reason teaches us to be independent and objective. Since life requires all these qualities, we should avoid extremism and instead practice eclecticism by tempering faith with reason.
Page Menu Site Menu
FLOWERS ARE FOREVER
As symbols of beauty and vitality, flowers are a natural gift for loved ones. Flowers remind us that the purpose of life is to live and enjoy life. Unlike us, with all of our ambivalence, flowers have no problems with anger, guilt, depression, or suicide. They simply want to live, thrive, and reproduce. So we should celebrate flowers, and incorporate them into our lives. We need to be reminded that life is a gift that should be enjoyed.
Page Menu Site Menu
GHOSTWRITING & PLAGIARISM
Ghostwriting is an oxymoron and quasi-legitimate form of plagiarism. The difference between ghostwriting and plagiarism is that the former pays for someone else's writing, while the latter steals it. But both practices are reprehensible, because they mislead the public for the sake of false economic gain and ego gratification. So it's important to ascertain the true authorship of anything we read, because the relationship between author and reader is sacred.
Page Menu Site Menu
GIVE A HOOT ABOUT ECOLOGY
Facing our second-story kitchen window, a small Screech Owl named Hoot nestles in the hollow limb of a tall oak tree in our backyard. It’s winter now, and we watch Hoot with binoculars, admiring her heart-shaped face, huge yellow eyes, ear tufts, curved beak, large talons, and brindle plumage. During the day, Hoot sleeps and sunbathes, but at dusk she awakes, and her head swivels back and forth, searching the yard for prey. Suddenly, Hoot is airborne and swallowed up by the night sky. At the foot of the oak tree are rodent carcasses that Hoot regurgitates after digesting. Somehow, this cute little raptor has captured our hearts, and we even love her haunting hooting and screeching. Backyard biology offers a bounty of natural beauty and biodiversity.
Page Menu Site Menu
GLOBAL DEATH ROUNDS
The deteriorating global financial crisis is end-stage pseudo-hypo-faux-commercialism caused by a metastatic cancer of cronyism, phoneyism, baloneyism, and tax-free, off-shore, alias bank accounts, which have rendered the marrow of our body politic necrotic, despotic, and idiotic. The various economic stimulus packages are emergency, involuntary transfusions, walletectomies, and bypass operations performed with great, ravenous, venal graft. The prognosis is guarded and depends on plausible deniability, persuasive posturing, pathological passivity, and perpetual deep sedation provided by the media under the supervision of spin doctors, hypnotherapists, and ventriloquists.
Page Menu Site Menu
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (CHARLES DICKENS)
Life is full of great expectations and equally great disappointments. Time and again our hopes are dashed, but each time they resurrect themselves like the mythical phoenix. This eternal hopefulness is the essence of life, because without it we succumb to disappointment and give up on life. So let's be grateful for our great, albeit unrealistic, expectations, but let's try to temper them with the wisdom gained from past disappointments.
Page Menu Site Menu
HEALTH & HOMEOSTASIS
Health is homeostasis. Homeostasis is an internal feedback system that stabilizes and balances our body chemistry, so that our organs work smoothly and efficiently with each other. Sickness is the disruption of homeostasis, which we treat with pharmaceuticals. But pharmaceuticals adjust one homeostatic mechanism by disrupting another, which leads to more sickness and more pharmaceuticals. This is why pharmaceuticals are so profitable but have so many side effects and adverse reactions. And this is why healthcare should minimize pharmaceuticals and maximize holistic factors, such as lifestyle, diet, exercise, education, recreation, and relationships.
Page Menu Site Menu
HEALTH & SICKNESS
Like the two ends of a seesaw, health and sickness have an inverse relationship. As health goes up, sickness goes down. As health goes down, sickness goes up. By balancing the seesaw in favor of health, we can avoid sickness and the merry-go-round of endless doctors. Sadly, most doctors focus on sickness, but ignore health. In fact, doctors define health as the absence of sickness. But health is more than the absence of sickness, just as life is more than the absence of death. Health is our most important goal, just as life is our most important possession.
Page Menu Site Menu
HEAVENLY FATHER
It sounds trite, but my father was a great guy. Lacking sophistication, but not dedication, he supported us in a comfortable home, while he worked in a filthy factory. After ten hours of standing at a noisy machine and inhaling clouds of toxic dust, he came home cheerful and loving, without self-pity or resentment. One day, my father surprised me with a bicycle he built from spare parts that he found in the basement of our tenement. I loved that multi-colored bike, because my father built it for me with his hands and his heart. God, thank you for my father. Now I know what to expect from You.
Page Menu Site Menu
HOW TO UNDERSTAND SELF-HARM
In order to understand self-harm, we must study Sigmund Freud’s theory of the libido (life wish) and mortido (death wish). Sadly, Freud’s theory of the mortido has lost currency. As a result, the mortido is alive and well, and flourishes as self-harm in all its protean manifestations, including accidents, addiction, tattoos, body-piercing, bad relationships, criminality, and suicide. Let’s dust off our copies of Sigmund and Anna Freud’s work, and re-learn their seminal lessons.
Page Menu Site Menu
HOW TO UNDERSTAND ROYALTY
Royalty are like a religious order. Religious orders have a calling and take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, while Royalty have gall and are endowed with property, audacity, and expedience. Religious orders condemn deep, mortal sin and cloister with mystery, brethren, and agony, while Royalty condemn cheap, awful linen and cloister with crystal, leather, and mahogany. Religious orders save souls and serve God and the poor, while Royalty save gold and are served like gods by the poor. Religious orders offer deliverance and parity, while Royalty offer indifference and parody.
Page Menu Site Menu
HUMAN KIND CANNOT BEAR VERY MUCH REALITY (FOUR QUARTETS BY TS ELIOT)
TS Eliot's brilliant poetry is based primarily on his penetrating insight into the frailty of human nature. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock reflects Eliot's insight into our timidity, while The Wasteland and The Hollow Men reflect Eliot's insight into our shallowness. With the skill of a psychoanalyst, Eliot penetrates our facade and exposes our fragile ego, but offers sympathy and support. Poetry is the universal language of truth, unity, and peace.
Page Menu Site Menu
HUMAN NATURE & AMBIVALENCE
Human nature is contradictory. We are all burdened with conflicting emotions about life and death. At any given moment, we can feel positive and negative emotions, which tear us in different directions. How can we cope with this? We should accept the limitations of human nature, both in ourselves and others, but at the same time, we should also strive to retain control of our behavior. Ultimately, our lives are determined by our behavior, not by our emotions.
Page Menu Site Menu
I'M NOBODY! WHO ARE YOU? (EMILY DICKINSON)
There are two kinds of people: somebodies who think they’re nobodies, and nobodies who think they’re somebodies. If you’re the former, avoid the latter.
Page Menu Site Menu
INDIVIDUAL HEALTH & PUBLIC HEALTH
Individual health and public health are inseparable. Both are essential elements of a successful society. In order to promote individual health, physicians must also promote public health and function as medical sociologists, with an eye on quality of life, social justice, international relations, and world peace. The path to world peace begins with the physician's commitment to individual health and public health. Peace and health are inseparable.
Page Menu Site Menu
IN PRAISE OF DISABLED PEOPLE
The world is full of disabled people who are routinely stigmatized, marginalized, and ostracized. We shun the disabled, because they frighten and depress us by reminding us of life's limitations. Let's reverse this systematic exclusion of the disabled by recognizing that they are not memento mori or bed-ridden burdens, but rather heroic figures who can teach us how to face and overcome life's inevitable challenges.
Page Menu Site Menu
IN PRAISE OF FATHERS
When it comes to parenting, we tend to overestimate mothers and underestimate fathers. We assume that mothers are more devoted and caring than fathers. This is unfortunate, because parenting does not depend on gender, and in many families, it is the father who provides the love and nurturing for the children. So let's not disregard or diminish the role of fathers; they love their children just as much as mothers do, and sometimes more.
Page Menu Site Menu
IN PRAISE OF MULTILINGUALISM
Communication is a miracle. We communicate with many different languages, dialects, idioms, abbreviations, and accents. So our communication is often imperfect and subject to misunderstanding. We should treat these misunderstandings with patience and kindness, especially when they occur with foreigners who are multilingual and speak our language with an accent. The accents, foibles, and faux pas of multilingualism are not defects or adversity, but tributes to perfect diversity.
Page Menu Site Menu
IN PRAISE OF PIONEERS
Nothing is free, and everything has a price, whether it be financial, physical, or emotional. But there is an especially heavy price for going up against the system, because the system doesn't tolerate disagreement or opposition. So I salute all brave souls who correctly challenge the system and bear the consequences. These brave souls are the greatest pioneers in civilization, and they deserve to be honored.
Page Menu Site Menu
IN PRAISE OF THE ELDERLY
Life is a paradox. We want to live, but we don't want to age or look old. This is unrealistic, because living and aging are inseparable, and old age is inevitable. So we must learn to view life longitudinally and inclusively by honoring the elderly. Wizened but wise, the elderly yearn to teach us that senescence is not convalescence or obsolescence, but the very essence of our soul's solitary sojourn in space, time, and fate.
Page Menu Site Menu
IN PRAISE OF THE LAITY
Society's institutions are controlled by oxbridge-ivy-league professionals, who ostensibly represent "the best and the brightest." Government is controlled by top lawyers; medicine is controlled by top doctors; banking is controlled by top economists; and education is controlled by top professors. The net effect is that society is controlled by homogeneous coalitions of elite professional insiders who cloak their arcane activities with esoteric jargon. I propose that all societal institutions be controlled by redbrick laypersons who can apply common sense and function as conduits between the professionals and the public. This will provide some long-overdue transparency and accountability over wealthy, powerful, inscrutable institutions whose members tend to be arrogant and condescending. Sometimes the brightest are not the best.
Page Menu Site Menu
INDEPENDENCE: PRO & CON
Despite its obvious benefits, independence is nonetheless a mixed blessing. On the positive side, it enhances our individuality by leaving us free to think, believe, say, and do as we wish. But on the negative side, it endangers our individuality by forcing us to accept responsibility for our errors of judgment. So how can independence be properly enjoyed? I propose that young people in their twenties, thirties, and even forties, need wise mentors who can guide them in life. Ideally, parents should participate in the selection and supervision of these mentors. Realistically, we never outgrow our need for parenting.
Page Menu Site Menu
IS CHOCOLATE ADDICTIVE?
Everyone loves chocolate. The Latin name for chocolate is Theobroma, which means food of the gods. Apparently, even the gods love chocolate. We love chocolate, because it helps us to love and feel loved, which is why it’s a favorite gift for Valentine’s Day. But chocolate's connection with love is illusory. In reality, chocolate is an addictive stimulant-aphrodisiac that tricks and traps us by creating the fleeting euphoria of feeling loved, but the sustained sickness of feeling love-starved. The euphoria of feeling loved and the sickness of feeling love-starved are polar opposites that reinforce each other: the euphoria blinds us to the sickness, and the sickness makes us crave the euphoria. Ironically, chocolate creates, aggravates, and perpetuates the very sickness it seems to cure.
Page Menu Site Menu
IS HEALTHCARE A RELIGION?
Doctors proudly declare themselves scientists. But is this really true? Although science is based on the scientific method of predictability and reliability, healthcare is often unpredictable and unreliable. Perhaps healthcare is, in part, a religion, in which the doctor (priest) inquires about symptoms (sins), offers sympathy (forgiveness), makes a diagnosis (blessing), prescribes a bitter pill (penance), and performs a procedure (baptism), in order to cure (save) the patient (parishioner) of sickness (guilt), reverse disability (damnation), restore health (grace), and ensure longevity (heaven). Faith is the science of conscience and prescience.
Page Menu Site Menu
ISRAEL VERSUS ARABS
Like two roosters trapped in a cock fight, Israel and the Arabs are co-equal victims in a world that is motivated by conflict, gore, and profit, rather than cooperation, health, and peace. Let's stop blaming the victims, and let's put the blame where it belongs: the failure of the world's academics and physicians to solve man's problems and change man's mindset.
Page Menu Site Menu
IT IS A WISE FATHER THAT KNOWS HIS OWN CHILD (MERCHANT OF VENICE)
Share and share alike. These wise words mean that good fortune should be shared with others. But bad fortune should also be shared. As an elderly man, my father taught me a poignant lesson in sharing bad fortune. As a physician with chronic health problems, I told my father that I was so determined to improve healthcare, that I was willing to walk on hot coals. My father stunned me by replying that he would like to walk on the hot coals before me, just to cool them off. By trumping my metaphor and sharing my burden, my father's self-sacrificial sympathy became his eloquent legacy of loyalty and love. Wise, loving fathers are a gift from God.
Page Menu Site Menu
IT'S DANGEROUS TO BE RIGHT WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS WRONG (VOLTAIRE)
Sadly, the 21st century has seen a spate of state-sponsored, sadistic schemes to incarcerate great human rights activists, thus suggesting that these states callously regard their citizens as serfs and slaves. To quote Lord Acton, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Page Menu Site Menu
IT'S NOT SO ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR DOCTOR
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's unforgettable characters, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, are a study in contrasts. Holmes, the addict, autodidact, and astute bohemian, is a perfect foil for Watson, the abstemious, formally educated, dull doctor. Together, Holmes and Watson represent Doyle's intrapsychic conflict: Holmes is the free-spirited (albeit Victorian) id, while Watson is the stodgy stumbling superego. Doyle resolves this intrapsychic conflict by aligning Holmes (good id) and Watson (superego) against the evil Professor Moriarty (bad id) in a battle of wits (ego). Doyle’s masterpiece memorializes Freud's tripartite structural theory of id (instinct), superego (conscience), and ego (intellect) so skillfully that it seems "elementary."
Page Menu Site Menu
KINDNESS
Every spring, a bluebird flies down our chimney, gets trapped in the flue, and makes a tremendous racket trying to free itself. But birds cannot fly vertically, so eventually the little fellow falls into the woodstove, exhausted and defeated. Then we gently rescue him, take him outside, and watch him fly away. Like the bluebird, man is trapped, unable to escape or ascend. And man is waiting for the gentle hand of kindness to lift him up.
Page Menu Site Menu
KUDOS TO PATHOLOGISTS
As an intern, I rotated through anatomic pathology and performed autopsies under the supervision of senior pathologists. Although my graduating medical school class was 90% male, with no non-whites, these pathologists were a surprisingly and delightfully diverse and avant-garde group of physicians who enriched my understanding of life. They were kind, helpful, knowledgeable, philosophical, and unquestionably the best teachers I encountered in my medical education. They correlated the basic sciences with clinical medicine and taught me to actively question, think, and analyze, rather than passively accept, believe, and memorize. Although my internship ended many years ago, and I did not become a pathologist, I still have fond and appreciative memories of these pathologists. Each one was a gem, and it was a privilege to know them.
Page Menu Site Menu
KUDOS TO SURGEONS
Healthcare is a profound process that alters both physician and patient. Medical education is a demanding, exacting, life-altering process that trains physicians to alter the patient's anatomy (surgery) and physiology (medicine). Anatomical alterations are the exclusive domain of surgeons, whose training is the longest and most demanding of all specialties. Surgeons require not just knowledge, but also strength, stamina, speed, acuity, and dexterity. Surgery is so central to healthcare that the history of surgery is the history of healthcare.
Page Menu Site Menu
L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO (JOHN MILTON)
Life is full of dilemmas. No matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to escape or resolve these dilemmas. What should we do? We should resist the temptation to resolve these dilemmas prematurely and impetuously. Instead, we should delay action and seek new, creative solutions. Let's strive to be more penseroso (thoughtful and serious) and less allegro (active and happy). Let's cerebrate, not celebrate.
Page Menu Site Menu
LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
Although it's called the "land of opportunity," America is no paradise. But then again, no country is perfect, and all have their faults. So how should we evaluate and compare different countries? What standard should we use? I prefer the standard cited by the English lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, who said "A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation." Opportunity is nice, but compassion and mercy are nicer.
Page Menu Site Menu
LET EVERY MAN BE MASTER OF HIS TIME (MACBETH)
If you don't have enough time to take care of your health, you will spend a lot of time suffering and going to doctors. And after you have taken the doctor's medicine, you will still spend a lot of time suffering. The time that you spend suffering and going to doctors is often a waste of time. If you spend your time promoting and protecting your health, you will have lots of free time to enjoy yourself.
Page Menu Site Menu
LET'S PROMOTE FEMINISM
Society has always been patriarchal, even in its mythology and religion. The Book of Genesis says that God, the Father, created Eve to be a companion and helpmate for Adam. Sadly, women have always been second-class citizens subordinate to men. I propose that this universal sexist bias against women is the root of all other bias, including paternalism, elitism, racism, ethnocentrism, and ageism. The best and most efficient way to correct such bias is to extirpate sexism and promote feminism. Patriarchies are passé.
Page Menu Site Menu
LIFE AND DEATH
Both medicine and law grapple with issues of life and death such as abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. Notwithstanding facile positions promoted by political extremes, these issues remain vexing dilemmas, which require Solomonic wisdom. Sadly, most professions seem long on facts, but short on wisdom. Perhaps we have yet to properly define or articulate these dilemmas. And perhaps there is no more eloquent articulation of these dilemmas than Hamlet's words, "To be or not to be, that is the question..."
Page Menu Site Menu
LIFE IS A LOCKED-IN SYNDROME
The locked-in syndrome is more than just a brainstem stroke with quadriplegia. The suffering and courage of locked-in patients has captured the public's imagination, because we can all identify with such patients. We realize intuitively that the locked-in syndrome is a metaphor for the loneliness, helplessness, and hopelessness of life. With few exceptions, we are all "locked-in" bad jobs, bad relationships, bad marriages, and bad financial, legal, or health problems. Let's dedicate ourselves to finding the key that opens all locked-in states.
Page Menu Site Menu
LIFE IS NOT A CARTOON
Apart from the venomous variety, most cartoons are animating and captivating, insightful and delightful. With levity and brevity, their comical characters and incongruous captions convey sophisticated satire. This satire is important social commentary, because it highlights life’s abundant absurdities and inequities. As artists and social commentators, cartoonists can rescue us from ourselves and each other by reminding us of how fate interweaves our fantasies, foibles, and fears with life's miracle, mystery, and misery.
Page Menu Site Menu
LIFE IS NOT A TELEVISION SOAP OPERA
Television is hypnotic and addictive. The programs, commercials, graphics, and colors are designed to overwhelm our minds. In effect, we are being brainwashed to suspend our judgment and buy products we don't need. If we can't stop watching TV, we should simply get rid of it. I don't own a TV and haven't watched it in years. Getting rid of my TV was liberating. It gave me more time to think, read, write, socialize, exercise, relax, and sleep. I'm sure it will do the same for others. We need to live our real lives, not the fantasy lives of TV characters.
Page Menu Site Menu
LOBBYISTS: PRO & CON
Lobbyists are a mixed blessing. They can inform and educate public officials, but they can also mislead and bribe public officials. How can we promote the former, but prevent the latter? The key to the relationship between lobbyist and public official is integrity and oversight, both of which are sadly in short supply, because money has eclipsed morality and reality.
Page Menu Site Menu
LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIPS
Since all of our feelings are ambivalent, it's no surprise that love-hate relationships are so common. No matter how hard we try to have pure feelings, it's impossible. Let's accept ambivalence as a fact of life, and reconcile ourselves to the painful, embarrassing inevitability of love-hate relationships. And let's learn to appreciate love, even if it's sometimes tinged with hate.
Page Menu Site Menu
LOVE OF LIFE
Love is like food. Food nourishes metabolism and fills us to live. Likewise, love flourishes symbolism and wills us to live. This is why we love food and share it with people we love.
Page Menu Site Menu
MEA CULPA
Blame is a one-way street. We tend to blame others, but not ourselves. But if we are honest with ourselves, we realize that right and wrong, and good and bad, are a two-way street. So let’s have more balanced, honest conversations with ourselves and others, and stop our sanctimonious pretense, because it's a dead-end street that goes nowhere.
Page Menu Site Menu
MEDICINE AND MONEY DON'T MIX
Healthcare is ostensibly based on objective scientific research. But who conducts and/or sponsors this research? All too often, it’s the very companies whose products are being studied, and thus have obvious conflicts of interest. As a result, this “research” becomes little more than a euphemism for advertising and marketing. As the shield between life and death, healthcare should be based on science and mercy, not business and commerce.
Page Menu Site Menu
METAPHORS & SIMILES
As figures of speech, metaphors and similes are poetic pairs, tropes of truth, études in similitude, zeitgeist insights, and epiphanies of finesse, which wryly remind us that humanity is interrelated, and should never be underrated or berated. Somehow, metaphors and similes magically make us meet and smile, even if only for a while.
Page Menu Site Menu
MIND-BODY DUALISM
Mind-body dualism is as old as history, and as current as today. This eternal dualism has been explored by many great philosophers, and it remains a central issue in today's materialistic world. For example, it informs conflicts between faith and reason, religion and science. It also informs conflicts between psychologists, who treat the mind, and physicians, who treat the body. In order to resolve these conflicts, we must revisit the conundrum of mind-body dualism in a multi-disciplinary fashion, so as to minimize polarizing polemics and facile solutions.
Page Menu Site Menu
MOTHER EARTH
Our relationship with Earth is paradoxical. We struggle with the forces of nature and seek to dominate Earth, but we need Earth’s air, water, food, and shelter to stay alive. We travel and explore Earth, but we need Earth’s energy to overcome gravity and inertia. We claim to own land on Earth, but when we die, the land reclaims our bodies. In the midst of our struggles with the forces of nature, we tend to forget that life is a magical, mysterious gift that Earth creates, controls, cancels, and recycles. Life and death have no meaning apart from Earth.
Page Menu Site Menu
MOTHER NATURE
Mother Nature designed us to drink milk. We are mammals, which means that mothers feed their babies with breast milk. So milk is not only nutritious, but also comforting. If you feel anxious or depressed, have a glass of organic whole milk and you'll feel better. I've noticed that people who dislike milk, also dislike eggs. Since milk and eggs both represent female sexuality, perhaps these people find it hard to accept female sexuality. We must all remember that Mother Nature is a woman.
Page Menu Site Menu
NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION (PLATO)
Most inventions are created just in the nick of time, thus proving that necessity is the mother of invention. Without the pressure of necessity, we don't feel motivated to be creative in the first place. So we should try to accept, and even welcome, the pressure of necessity as a prerequisite, and hopefully a prelude, to invention, creativity, and progress. Our pressing political, economic, social, and scientific problems are open invitations to invention.
Page Menu Site Menu
NOTHING IS SOFTER OR MORE FLEXIBLE THAN WATER, YET NOTHING CAN RESIST IT (LAO TZU)
Water is life, and the water cycle is the fountain of life. Drenching and quenching, water hydrates and animates, then liquifies and purifies life's essential and existential, but unmentionable, stenches.
Page Menu Site Menu
ONCE UPON A TIME...
Storytelling is a timeless, universal form of entertainment, education, and inspiration. Scripture, myth, legend, fable, and fairytale are fantastic, unforgettable stories that magically blend fact and fiction with logic and illogic. So let's rediscover our love of bedtime stories and apply the magic of childhood to our drab, dull, adult lives.
Page Menu Site Menu
PACIFISM, NOT PASSIVISM
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." With these incisive words, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. diplomatically expressed his frustration with the prevailing silent acquiescence and tacit consent to America's egregious discrimination against people of color. Like his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King was assassinated, but both men will live forever in the pantheon of human dignity, civil rights, and social justice.
Page Menu Site Menu
PAGING DR. FREUD
Psychiatric intervention is reflexively synonymous with pharmacotherapy. Modern psychiatry is dominated by reductionist, mechanistic psychopharmacology, which focuses almost exclusively on synapses, neurotransmitters, and SSRIs. Unfortunately, modern psychiatry has largely dismissed the seminal work of Sigmund and Anna Freud. The former described structural theory (id, ego, and superego); topographic theory (conscious, preconscious, and unconscious); oedipus and electra complexes; and transference and countertransference. The latter described ego defense mechanisms: repression, denial, rationalization, sublimation, identification, displacement, projection, and reaction formation. In my opinion, it is difficult, if not impossible, to truly understand someone’s motivation and behavior without an appreciation of these two great pioneers.
Page Menu Site Menu
PARADOXOLOGY
Life is a parade of paradoxes. We are perpetually perplexed by dizzying dualities: pain-pleasure, reality-fantasy, right-wrong, tragedy-comedy, faith-reason, fate-free will, and life-death. How can we resolve such perennial puzzles? We should ponder and wonder, while accepting that life's daunting dualities are not galactic accidents or cosmic conundrums, but individual lessons and meticulous memorandums from our Creator, who poignantly pinpoints each of us with predetermined paradoxes that design, define, and refine our spiritual confinement, personal alignment, and final assignment.
Page Menu Site Menu
PARASITOLOGY 101
The world is full of parasites. They are in our air, water, food, home, bedding, and clothing. They even live in and on us. Some of these parasites are harmful; some are harmless; and some are even helpful. How can we deal with all these parasites, and how should we feel about them? First, we should maintain proper hygiene and take all necessary precautions. Second, we should seek medical care when necessary. Third, we should be philosophical and recognize that life is a complex, endless food chain, in which we are both predator and prey, diner and dinner. In short, parasites are part of the price that we pay for living.
Page Menu Site Menu
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Life is full of unfinished business. We are all burdened with a backlog of unsolved mystery and unresolved history. How do we balance this backlog with the pressures of the present? We should peruse the past, in order to prepare ourselves for projecting the present into the future. We are never finished with the past, and must live with it forever.
Page Menu Site Menu
PEACE & HEALTH
Life requires both peace and health. Without either peace or health, life is diminished and in danger. War is triply dangerous: it kills people, and it interferes with the peace process and healthcare. Peace and health are inseparable, and the damage of war is irreparable.
Page Menu Site Menu
PEACE POETRY
Religions are based on scripture, which is mostly poetry. So it only makes sense that religious conflict must be resolved through poetry, and not through politics, negotiation, or war. I propose that all religious conflicts be redefined poetically, so that they can be resolved without bloodshed, winners, or losers. So let's sharpen our pencils, not our swords; send missives, not missiles; and apply our minds to metaphor, simile, rhyme, meter, and prosody, but not pomposity, animosity, ferocity, atrocity, or monstrosity.
Page Menu Site Menu
PHYSICIAN IMPOSSIBLE
A physician with a sick family member is faced with the difficult, if not impossible, task of relinquishing the role of physician and accepting the role of co-patient. This role reversal is an awkward dilemma for all parties and should be discussed openly with flexibility and compromise. One possibility is an ad hoc clinical alliance between the treating and non-treating physicians which bridges the divide between physician and patient, so that irrespective of the outcome, all concerned will feel they did their best, and will not be haunted with doubts, regrets, or guilt.
Page Menu Site Menu
PLACEBOS: TRICK OR TREAT
Psychoanalysis teaches us that there are two kinds of thinking: primary process and secondary process. Primary process is magical thinking characteristic of children. Secondary process is rational thinking characteristic of adults. Since we never really outgrow our childhood, we never fully give up our primary process thinking. Ironically, education sometimes promotes primary process thinking, rather than secondary process thinking. This happens in medical education, in which medical students are taught that the use of placebos promotes a sense of "healing" in the patient, and moreover, promotes a sense of "success" in the physician. Sadly, a sugar pill is being used to "treat" both patient and physician. Since health care is ostensibly based on science and secondary process thinking, it's time to dispense with placebos and to stop dispensing them to patients.
Page Menu Site Menu
"PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MORE." (OLIVER TWIST)
Regarding most institutions, it has been said that the wrong people have the keys. This cynical remark has much truth and raises questions about the legitimacy of our institutions. Oftentimes, luck and circumstances determine who runs the institution and who resides in the institution. I propose that we re-think the whole issue of institutions, including prisons, mental hospitals, and orphanages. These institutions are a blot on society, and their residents deserve much better treatment than they receive. Surely, society can develop more humane ways of dealing with unfortunate people, who are often unable to change their dysfunctional lifestyles.
Page Menu Site Menu
POETS & PARENTS
Poets are like parents. Parents lose sleep, worrying about their children. Likewise, poets lose sleep, worrying about their poems. With reams of ingenuity and dreams of perpetuity, both poets and parents preserve the present in order to pacify the past and nurture the future.
Page Menu Site Menu
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: PRO & CON
As a sociolinguistic philosophy of equality and reform, PC is a mixed blessing. It sensitizes us to the negative nuances of normative labels, but it also sanitizes language and paralyzes communication. Stripped of spontaneity, simplicity, and clarity, we speak like politicians who fear faux pas and resort to qualification, equivocation, and obfuscation. Sometimes, PC is just veridical indefiniteness and lame sameness, both of which stultify results and reduce everything to nothing.
Page Menu Site Menu
POLITICAL SCIENCE: FACT OR FICTION
Political science is an oxymoron. Since politics often involves secret alliances, hidden agendas, broken promises, equivocation, and misrepresentation, it's hard to imagine that politics is scientific. And it's not hard to imagine that politics is, in fact, inimical to science. So science should free itself from politics, and politics should stop masquerading as science. As abstraction and distraction without traction or action, politics is full of infractions and deserves a total retraction, not a trusting reaction.
Page Menu Site Menu
POLITICS & RELIGION
Politics and religion are philosophies that function as software for the hardware of our mind. Liberalism and humanism are read-and-write software that updates but corrupts old files; while conservatism and fundamentalism are read-only software that copies but freezes old files. Stymied by the incompatible software of competing philosophies, our mind scans cyberspace seeking new, syncretic software.
Page Menu Site Menu
POWER TENDS TO CORRUPT (LORD ACTON)
Despite abundant examples of how money and power often lead to corruption, we continue to be surprised each time another example is uncovered. Why are we so surprised? Perhaps we unrealistically elevate powerful people as exemplars of morality who can function as perfect leaders. Let's resist this temptation and recognize that powerful people are often driven by ambition, greed, and hubris, and must be viewed with a measure of skepticism and cynicism. And let's demand that powerful people provide the public with real evidence of transparency and accountability.
Page Menu Site Menu
PRESCRIPTION FOR HAPPINESS
There are two kinds of happiness: real, inner happiness; and false, superficial happiness. Real, inner happiness is the spontaneous contentment that comes from good health, creative work, and loving relationships. False, superficial happiness is the contrived fun that comes from addictions, possessions, and power. It's important to distinguish between the two kinds of happiness, and to not settle for false happiness.
Page Menu Site Menu
PRESCRIPTION FOR PEACE
Aesop's fable "Androcles and the Lion" tells the story of Androcles, who removed a thorn from a lion’s paw, and was subsequently rescued by the very same lion. The moral of this story is that kindness can sometimes turn a dangerous enemy into a great friend. So let's not be too quick to hate our enemies. Instead, let's treat our enemies as potential friends, by demonstrating kindness and compassion. It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them.
Page Menu Site Menu
PRESCRIPTION FOR PESSIMISM
Life is unfair. Some people seem blessed with opportunity, while others seem cursed with obstacles. So it is natural for some people to feel optimistic, while others feel pessimistic. How can we cope with the deadening, disabling feelings of pessimism? The trick in life is to turn obstacles into opportunity by using courage, creativity, and perseverance. It's amazing how often this formula works, and I encourage all pessimists to give it a try.
Page Menu Site Menu
PRESCRIPTION FOR PTSD
Society is plagued by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Despite its epidemic, protean, and refractory nature, PTSD receives little more than cookbook pharmacotherapy with tranquilizers and antidepressants. Prior to any pharmacotherapy, PTSD should first receive interdisciplinary therapy with spiritual, psychological, vocational, marital, and family counseling. Moreover, since PTSD is sustained sympathicotonia, PTSD needs regular aerobic exercise, which stabilizes the autonomic nervous system, and the elimination of all addictive substances (including sweets, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and drugs), which destabilize the autonomic nervous system and aggravate anger and depression.
Page Menu Site Menu
PRESCRIPTION FOR WORRY
Life is precarious, and there are many things to worry about. Our most common worries are money, relationships, and health, in that order. Unfortunately, this order is backwards. That's why we're so unhappy. If we reverse this order, each worry solves the next worry. Good health leads to good relationships. Good health and good relationships lead to financial security. And all three lead to happiness. In order to reduce our worries, we must establish the proper priorities. This is my prescription for worry.
Page Menu Site Menu
PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL (PROVERBS 16)
Success is intoxicating. It can mislead us into reveries of pride, privilege, perks, petulance, and grandiosity. Sadly, this sometimes happens with physicians, attorneys, and public officials, who serve the public and should know better. How can this be prevented or corrected? Continuing medical and legal education should promote humility and gratitude by requiring some pro bono work for the disadvantaged in prisons, orphanages, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters. It is wise to remember that titles are not entitlements.
Page Menu Site Menu
PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS: FACT OR FICTION
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by The American Psychiatric Association (APA) contains a growing number of psychiatric disorders that parallel the growing number of psychiatric drugs produced by Big Pharma, so that there is at least one psychiatric disorder for every psychiatric drug. This curious coincidence is fortunate for the financial interests of Big Pharma and makes some people wonder, with justifiable cynicism, if DSM and APA are subservient to Big Pharma, with all its substantial inducements.
Page Menu Site Menu
PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS: FACT OR FICTION
Psychiatric drugs ostensibly help patients by correcting imbalances in neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine (adrenaline), and norepinephrine (noradrenaline). Unfortunately, this simple and straightforward theory doesn’t translate into practical results. Instead, psychiatric drugs tend to hurt patients by creating new neuropsychiatric problems, which complicate and aggravate pre-existing psychiatric problems. Perhaps the real mechanism of action for psychiatric drugs is a folie à deux between doctor and patient, which has been cultivated by Big Pharma, whose economic might exerts enormous control over medical schools, medical societies, medical journals, and the media.
Page Menu Site Menu
RATIONALITY AND REALITY
As the most intelligent species, we are prone to hubris and self-deception. We tend to equate our intelligence with honesty, rationality, and infallibility, although our history is replete with quite the opposite. We seem to forget that life is often overwhelming, and that we are constantly tempted by escapism. So as we advance our science, technology, and belief systems, we must be humbly mindful of our many shortcomings and question our assumptions about reality. Let's remember the insightful words of T.S. Eliot, who said, "Humanity cannot bear very much reality."
Page Menu Site Menu
READERS & WRITERS
Readers and writers are polar opposites. Readers start at the beginning and work forward, while writers start at the end and work backward. Readers and writers explore reason and reality from different directions, but they meet each other along the way.
Page Menu Site Menu
RELIGIOUS VOWS
Although noble in intent, religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are nonetheless draconian and difficult, if not impossible, to keep. So it should come as no surprise that many votaries unwillingly succumb to destructive behavior. Prospective votaries should carefully consider the superhuman effort it will take to honor their vows. And religious institutions should alleviate the extreme burdens placed on votaries, who wish to serve humanity and deserve to be treated humanely.
Page Menu Site Menu
RESPECT EGO BOUNDARIES
"Ego boundary" is a psychoanalytic term that refers to the ego function of distinguishing between self and non-self. One example of an ego boundary problem is the person who invades your privacy and violates your dignity by making gratuitous, unkind remarks to or about you. How should we respond to such remarks? In general, it is best not to respond, for if we do, we only dignify the unkind remark and invite more of the same. So let's not reward boorish, uncouth behavior, and instead demonstrate that it is unworthy of comment. Let's promote a healthy respect for ego boundaries.
Page Menu Site Menu
ROMEO AND JULIET (SHAKESPEARE)
To varying degrees, every mixed marriage is a potential Romeo and Juliet with feuding families. How can we avoid such a tragic outcome? How can different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and languages live in peace and harmony? First, we must advance beyond the tired, passive shibboleths of diversity and tolerance, by actively befriending those who are different from us. Second, we must free ourselves of negative stereotypes and recognize that feuds are "much ado about nothing." Otherwise, our world will not survive.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR COMPETITION
Competition is a mixed blessing. It can motivate us to improve our performance, but it can also dominate us with fears of inadequacy. The best way to deal with competition is to compete with ourselves, but not with other people. Try to focus on achieving your goals and improving your abilities, but don't worry about how you compare with other people. Learn to accept yourself and appreciate your unique humanity, regardless of whether you achieve your goals.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR COURAGE
It takes courage to live. Problems loom large; resources are scanty; pessimism is pervasive; and the air is heavy with hopelessness and helplessness. So how can we persevere, let alone prevail? We should remember that we are not alone and turn to the emotional support of family and friends, who can provide us with sympathy and encouragement. We should also turn to the divine guidance and mercy of our Creator, who is rooting for us, but will always love and accept us even if we fail.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR CREATION
The superabundance of natural and man-made disasters in the world, none of which can be corrected, suggests that the world is imperfect and incomplete, and that God should have spent more time on Creation, and less time on recreation, by working a half day on the Sabbath. Perhaps Genesis is our nemesis, and Creation itself must be repaired by a Messiah who understands every frailty, faith, anguish, and language, and responds with a healing message of love for everything and everyone.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR DISCRIMINATION
Discrimination is natural and instinctive, but limiting and destructive. It's only natural to fear and avoid people who appear different. But this fear poisons our mind, limits our relationships, and destroys our opportunities for growth. So discrimination victimizes the bigot as well as the object of bigotry. How can we deal with discrimination? We should expect and accept it as a natural, albeit hypervigilant, defense mechanism that needs remediation through education, reassurance, and positive experiences.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR FDA
Like most regulatory agencies, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is compromised by financial conflicts of interest with the very industries it ostensibly regulates. These conflicts of interest raise questions about the integrity and/or agenda of the FDA, and thereby frighten and confuse the public. The first priority of a new FDA commissioner is to restore the public's confidence in this vital agency by eliminating all of its cozy relationships with industry. Let's make sure that FDA doesn't stand for Force Drugs and Devices on Americans.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR FEUDS
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an intractable feud impervious to negotiation and in need of a new perspective. I propose that we eschew the polarizing, stigmatizing rhetoric, and instead redefine this conflict as a humanitarian health crisis based on dehydration, hunger, addiction, and insatiable cravings, all of which aggravate conflict by making people frustrated, angry, and violent. To stop a feud, change the food.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR FLU: LEMONS & LIMES
We are all familiar with the ravages of infectious disease, including MRSA, VRE, multi-drug resistant TB, and most recently, the flu. I have found that lemon (or lime) juice is helpful in treating such infections. Lemon juice is a concentrated form of Vitamin C and a natural antibiotic and antiviral agent. It's important to dilute lemon juice in water, because pure lemon juice is so acidic that it can dissolve the enamel on our teeth. It's also important to avoid taking too much lemon juice, because lemon juice is so acidic that too much can create a metabolic acidosis. Don't assume that just because a little bit of lemon juice is good, a lot is even better. Let's learn to appreciate nutrition, because food is live medicine.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR HOSPITALS
The hospital is a battlefield in which doctors and nurses fight sickness. Doctors are officers, and nurses are enlisted. Doctors have authority, issue orders, enjoy comforts, and receive rewards; while nurses lack authority, take orders, do dirty work, and receive blame. This gross inequality is counterproductive, because it hurts nurses, creates internecine conflict, subverts the hospital’s mission, and subjects patients to suboptimal healthcare. The Hippocratic Oath should include the doctor-nurse relationship.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR JERUSALEM
Despite the conflicts in Gaza and the West Bank, the central issue between the Israelis and Palestinians is philosophical, and based in Jerusalem. Like most cities, Jerusalem is divided by competing political and religious philosophies. Unfortunately, the competition associated with these well-meaning philosophies often creates unintended conflict. I propose that Jerusalem, and other cities, counteract such conflict by developing a new, non-political, non-religious, non-competitive philosophy based on our common humanity. Such a philosophy would emphasize that all people, regardless of politics or religion, or any other divisive factor, share common origins, needs, and rights.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR LOGICAL REASONING
There are two kinds of logical reasoning: deduction and induction. Deduction reasons forward from cause to effect, and from general to particular; induction reasons backward from effect to cause, and from particular to general. Deduction is the logical reasoning of science; induction is the analogical reasoning of the arts. And faith is the illogical, ontological, cosmological reasoning of religion, which can either complete or deplete our sanity and humanity, depending on our civility and humility.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR LOVESICKNESS
People who are lovesick and love-starved are sick from addictions and starving for nutritious food.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR MARRIAGE
Marriage is an unconscious attempt to recreate and repair childhood traumas. So it's no surprise that marriage frequently ends in a traumatic divorce. Considering the prevalence and pain of divorce, people should be married by a lawyer and divorced by a clergyman. Let's practice prevention and merciful intervention.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS
Medical school is an intense, demanding process of education and preparation, in which young people are transformed into physicians. Since this process coincides with physical and emotional maturation into adulthood, medical school is a time of great change. The task for the medical student is to incorporate all these changes into a unified, cohesive identity. The best way to accomplish this is for the medical student to focus on being humble, by identifying with the poor, sick, and disadvantaged. This will help to neutralize the inevitable hubris that comes with being a physician.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR MDs
The role of a doctor is impossible. First, the doctor must recognize that he or she is sick and scared, just like the patient. Second, the doctor must weave a tapestry of hope and hopelessness, by functioning as clinician and magician, scientist and alchemist, parent and priest, athletic director and funeral director. All of this haunts doctors and alienates them from their families and communities. Doctors should not be expected to function as apologists or salesmen for a healthcare system that obviously does not have all the answers.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR POVERTY
Poverty is pandemic. It has an ever-tightening death grip on every country and reduces many lives to squalor and hopelessness. Why is poverty so ubiquitous and intractable? Perhaps our hubris and greed have blinded us to the reality of hunger and need. Let’s renew our commitment to the Earth and its inhabitants by becoming stewards, caretakers, and friends, rather than landowners, bosses, and fiends.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR SELF-ESTEEM
Self-esteem is a paradox. Each of us feels unique and uniquely important, but society regards and treats us as ordinary and unimportant. This discrepancy threatens our self-esteem and alienates us from society. How should we deal with this troubling discrepancy? We should recognize that our uniqueness is a hidden treasure that can only be discovered by our loved ones, and most of all, by our Creator, who endowed each of us with an aspect of His own divinity.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR SUCCESS
Apart from the few gifted people for whom everything comes easy, most of us have to work hard to achieve anything. Often our efforts are unsuccessful, and we must deal with failure, disappointment, and discouragement. However, we must remain hopeful and persevere with dedicated, continued efforts. Like the basketball player who makes a second effort by charging the basket after shooting the ball, we must make secondary and tertiary efforts to achieve our goal. To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill: Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never, never.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR TECHNOLOGY
Today's world is a virtual reality that has been morphed, warped, and dwarfed by technology. We live in a world dominated by TV, radio, movies, internet, and cell phones. All of this technology is a mixed blessing: it connects us with others, but it disconnects us from ourselves. In order to reconnect with ourselves, we must "disumbilicate" ourselves from technology, by spending at least one hour a day in solitude, silence, and inner reflection. Let's rediscover the soothing nature of aloneness, which allows us to commune with ourselves.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR THE GATES FOUNDATION
The most neglected diseases are poverty, hunger, homelessness, and addiction, all of which are intractable and ubiquitous. These pandemic diseases are especially devastating, because they leave victims stigmatized, ostracized, and isolated - without opportunity, hope, or the will to live. The Gates Foundation should approach these diseases as interrelated elements of a single syndrome and fund non-pharmaceutical interdisciplinary research which seeks new understanding and practical treatment modalities. Let's shine a light of attention and compassion on those who are neglected and helpless.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS
The War on Drugs is a failure. Physicians have failed to cure addiction, and governments have failed to cure corruption. What should we do? We should understand that addiction and corruption are related, because both involve people wanting something for free: addicts want a free high, and corrupt public officials want free money. Sadly, human nature is flawed by a childish, greedy craving for fun and freebies. To quote Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR TRUTH
The information age is upon us, and we are drowning in facts, but starving for truth. Despite all the scientific and technological advances, our problems remain the same, and our institutions are failing. Even worse, our institutions are shirking their responsibility by covering up their failures with hype, hoopla, razzle-dazzle, and misdirection. However, one bright spot is the free and open internet, which has exposed and challenged the hegemony of the stagey, elitist mainstream media. Now we need a plenipotentiary truth and reconciliation commission that will provide us with full transparency and accountability over our previously trusted institutions.
Page Menu Site Menu
Rx FOR VIOLENCE
Violence is a worldwide mysterious plague that infests every level of society. It baffles and intimidates teachers, doctors, lawyers, police, and politicians. What is violence, and why is it so powerful and pervasive? Violence is a predictable and inevitable consequence of addiction. The addict suffers with insatiable cravings, frustration, and anger, all of which frequently lead to violence. The best way to deal with violence is to identify and treat the underlying addictions.
Page Menu Site Menu
SALT: PRO & CON
Our free and easy access to table salt is a mixed blessing. Salt enhances the taste of food and helps to maintain electrolyte balance and fluid volume; but it also causes hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, we must monitor our total daily salt intake, so that we have enough but not too much. In my experience, the average healthy adult needs about 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 8 glasses of water per day. I prefer plain (non-iodized) sea salt, because sea salt has more trace elements (like iodine) than land salt, and because we only need iodine in very small amounts.
Page Menu Site Menu
SAVE THE CHILDREN
Children are a paradox. Their innocence and ignorance make them good lie detectors and truth reporters. Lacking sophistication, children tend to blurt out unpleasant truths that adults try to ignore. This curious paradox has been memorialized in Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Emperor's New Clothes. So let's learn to appreciate the simple but painful truth of children. We need their honesty, just as they need our protection. To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., "Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children."
Page Menu Site Menu
SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY
Truth fuses science and philosophy. Science tells us what’s true, while philosophy tells us what’s truly important. Without this crucial fusion, we wallow in confusion.
Page Menu Site Menu
SCIENCE NEVER SOLVES A PROBLEM WITHOUT CREATING TEN MORE (GEORGE BERNARD SHAW)
Sometimes science is just lab-oratory.
Page Menu Site Menu
SCIENCE VS. TECHNOLOGY
Many people equate science with technology. This is unfortunate, because the two are not the same. Science is a pure pursuit of knowledge with no agenda, while technology is applied science with a political and/or commercial agenda. Therefore, science should lead technology, and not the reverse. Sadly, we live in a world in which technology leads science. This is why politics and commerce are so prominent, but scientific discoveries are so rare. We need a new scientific revolution, in which pure science exists for its own sake, and not for the sake of politics and commerce.
Page Menu Site Menu
SCIENTISTS ARE NOT DEMIGODS
We are ambivalent about scientists, because we are in awe of their almost magical ability to understand and control the forces of nature. Like modern-day Merlins, they thrill and mystify us with their jargon, potions, equipment, procedures, and results. But we tend to forget that science is incomplete, imperfect, experimental, and a work-in-progress. This is why scientists can't fully heal us or solve all of our problems, and this is why they occasionally hurt us or the environment. So let's respect and appreciate scientists, but let's not worship them or give them our unqualified trust.
Page Menu Site Menu
SELF-ACCEPTANCE
Self-acceptance is the ultimate act of courage and compassion. After all, none of us really likes himself, and we all pretend to be someone we're not. The road to self-acceptance is bumpy, and there is much denial and pretense along the way. How can we expedite or ensure self-acceptance? We should regard self-acceptance as a lifelong goal that needs constant self-examination plus nurturing from family, friends, and professionals. The world would be a better place, if we could all learn to accept ourselves and others.
Page Menu Site Menu
SEVEN DEADLY SINS
The Seven Deadly Sins are lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, greed, anger, and pride. Unfortunately, these sins pertain to individuals, but not groups, and thereby, exonerate societal sins. I propose that the Seven Deadly Sins should be supplemented with Society's Seven Deadly Sins: hunger, thirst, homelessness, sickness, illiteracy, bigotry, and poverty. These sins violate basic human rights and reflect institutionalized societal neglect. Let's evaluate and grade societies accordingly.
Page Menu Site Menu
SHERLOCKIAN REASONING
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a tour de force of backward writing, in which the author retrospectively writes from the end to the beginning. Thus Doyle creates masterful mysteries that contrast Dr. Watson’s plodding, deductive, a priori reasoning from cause to effect, with Sherlock Holmes’ incisive, inductive, a posteriori reasoning from effect to cause. Needless to say, none of this is elementary.
Page Menu Site Menu
SHIFTING GEARS
Like a car that accelerates by shifting gears, society progresses by shifting science, technology, philosophy, and the arts. However, while shifting, both society and cars are temporarily disengaged. Hopefully, our endless and dispiriting sickness, poverty, corruption, and wars are just an extended interval of disengagement, and soon, God willing, we will finally and mercifully get in gear and be on our way. Vroom Vroom! Beep Beep!
Page Menu Site Menu
SKIING AS METAPHOR
Skiing is more than an Olympic winter sport that has captured the interest of average people. It has become a metaphor for life, because it epitomizes the strength, courage, and endurance that life requires. But life also requires flexibility, which we seem to lack. Life asks us to zigzag right and left around obstacles, as if we are on a slalom course. But we like to proceed fast and straight, as if we are schussboomers. Since life is a slalom, but we are schussboomers, it's no wonder that we so often plow headlong into problems.
Page Menu Site Menu
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS
Social entrepreneurs are altruistic visionaries whose innovative ideas help to launch beneficent new businesses. Sadly, many of these businesses fail financially, because the entrepreneurs are more motivated by idealism than pragmatism. In order to succeed, the entrepreneurs must team up with accountants and managers whose pragmatism can shelter and nurture the entrepreneurs’ altruistic vision, which is sometimes worth its weight in gold.
Page Menu Site Menu
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Society's legal system is a mixed blessing. It provides us with the stability of law and order, but it also provides courts and attorneys with the ability to defraud us with impunity, none of which goes unnoticed. Many of us have the impression that courts tend to promote pre-determined biased agendas, which consistently benefit the powerful and wealthy. Sadly, there is often a world of difference between legal justice and social justice, even in so-called developed countries.
Page Menu Site Menu
SOCIAL MEDIA: PRO & CON
Social media are a mixed blessing. They facilitate private and public communication, but they can also blur the boundary between the two, and in doing so, violate confidentiality, privilege, and proper judgment. It’s important to remember that all communication includes trusting disclosures that deserve to be honored.
Page Menu Site Menu
SOCIETY AND SUPERIORITY
Society is stratified. Dictatorships have tyrants and victims; monarchies have royalty and commoners; governments have officials and citizens; military have officers and enlisted; hospitals have doctors and nurses; and businesses have bosses and workers. Stratification is a lopsided, stagnant system, in which a few fortunate people luxuriate in elitism, while many people vegetate in defeatism. Stratification devastates scientific progress and social justice by beatifying a few, but mortifying many. In short, stratification lacks science, conscience, and prescience.
Page Menu Site Menu
STEREOTYPING: PRO & CON
The world is a kaleidoscope of activity. In order for us to understand all this activity, our brain sees stereoscopically and thinks stereotypically. Thus we reduce all this activity into patterns that enable us to cope with the present and predict the future. But sometimes these patterns distort reality and create problems. For example, we tend to stereotype other people and (mis)treat them accordingly. Let’s monitor and moderate our stereotypical thinking by recognizing its limits and giving each other a chance.
Page Menu Site Menu
SUNSHINE IS THE BEST DISINFECTANT (LOUIS BRANDEIS)
The world is full of cruel, audacious dictatorships that routinely violate human rights. These violations are outrageous, infuriating, and heartbreaking. But private citizens, governments, and non-governmental organizations are often helpless to effect change. Perhaps our best option is a media campaign to expose all violations and guilty parties. Hopefully, this will shame dictators and their henchmen into better behavior, and sensitize us to governmental abuse of power. To quote Lord Acton, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Page Menu Site Menu
SUPPORT GROUPS: PRO & CON
Support groups are a mixed blessing. They can provide us with information, sympathy, structure, and hope; but they can also subject us to misinformation, criticism, oppression, and misery. How can we maximize the good, but minimize the bad? We should accept help from carefully screened support groups, but we should also recognize that no individual or group has all the answers, and we should not completely surrender our independent judgment to others. In the final analysis, our life is our possession and responsibility.
Page Menu Site Menu
SYMBOLS VERSUS SUBSTANCE
Society is long on symbols, but short on substance. We are awash in religious, political, professional, and commercial symbols that promise but don't deliver. Why is there such a disparity between symbol and substance? Perhaps it's because our language is largely symbolic and subject to misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and manipulation. So let's try to clearly distinguish between the symbols and substance of society by minimizing the former and maximizing the latter.
Page Menu Site Menu
TAKE IT IN WHAT SENSE THOU WILT (ROMEO AND JULIET)
Knowledge with common sense is wisdom, but knowledge without common sense is nonsense.
Page Menu Site Menu
THANK GOD FOR CHAPLAINS
Society's institutions are a mixed blessing. They provide us with colleges, hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, and the military. But they also subject us to regimentation, which can be overwhelming, depersonalizing, and depressing. One refuge from such regimentation is the chaplain, who provides much-needed emotional and spiritual care for people of all faiths. So let's reach out to chaplains and receive their unique and vital help. Literally and figuratively, chaplains are a godsend.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE ART OF MEDICINE
Modern healthcare is imperfect and full of treatment failures. These failures are disappointing and dispiriting for both patient and physician. Fortunately, healthcare can be enhanced by turning to the fine arts and art therapy. Art is a magical modality, which offers patients a refuge from pain and suffering, and a sanctuary for solace, self-expression, symbolism, and supplication. Let's elevate the art of medicine to a fine art that heals the body, mind, and spirit.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE CROOKED TIMBER OF HUMANITY
The crooked timber of humanity is Immanuel Kant's sour, cynical metaphor for man's imperfection. As a student of humanity, Kant succumbed to the occupational hazard of misanthropy, and failed to appreciate the positive aspects of humanity, such as compassion, creativity, and the conquest of the unknown. Despite crooked timbers, loose screws, leaky plumbing, faulty wiring, and dim bulbs, humanity remains the Creator's crowning achievement, and we should always be proud of that.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE DOCTOR PATIENT
The most important role of the doctor is as a patient, because then, and only then, can the doctor truly understand how frustrating and frightening it is to be sick and seek help. This understanding enables the doctor to identify with patients and relate to them in a more effective, compassionate, and humble manner. And this, in turn, improves the doctor-patient relationship, patient compliance, and treatment outcome. In short, having been on both sides of the stethoscope, scalpel, and gurney, the doctor-patient is uniquely motivated to practice and advance the art and science of healthcare.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE GREATEST DECEPTION MEN SUFFER IS FROM THEIR OWN OPINIONS (LEONARDO DA VINCI)
Many believe and opine, but few perceive or define.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE IMMUNOLOGY OF PREJUDICE
Despite our best efforts, we continue to be plagued with prejudice in all its ugly manifestations. Why is prejudice so resistant to all intervention? Perhaps there is a biological component that we are overlooking. Perhaps prejudice is similar to an immune response, in which we automatically recognize and reject foreign protein as potentially dangerous.
Our immune response is a mixed blessing, because sometimes the foreign protein is dangerous, but other times the foreign protein is harmless. Sometimes our immune response protects us, but other times our immune response turns on us and creates self-destructive autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic heart disease, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, lupus, and colitis.
I propose that prejudice is a self-destructive autoimmune disease, in which we automatically and incorrectly reject harmless people who appear to be foreign and dangerous. Let's treat the pernicious disease of prejudice with familiarity, tolerance, reason, good will, and hope.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE LADY DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH, METHINKS (HAMLET)
The US Institute of Medicine’s squeaky clean bill of health for the troubled vaccine industry is all too predictable. As the sacred cow of modern medicine, vaccines enjoy scientific and legal immunity. How ironic that vaccines enjoy more immunity than they convey.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE (MARSHALL MCLUHAN)
The media are misleading. They spin, spike, and hype the news with liberal or conservative bias, but offer no nonpartisan reportage, thus suggesting that the media and politics have covertly concocted, coopted, and adopted each other. This creates a conundrum best captured by the American humorist, Mark Twain, who said, "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you're misinformed."
Page Menu Site Menu
THE ODD COUPLE
Literature and theater abound in famous pairs of contrasting characters. Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton, and Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. Why do we love these characters so much? Perhaps they humorously remind us that each of us is an "odd couple" with contrasting characteristics. And perhaps our contrasting characteristics result from the cognitive dissonance between our two complementary cerebral hemispheres: the left, which controls language and linear thought; and the right, which controls visual-spatial and non-linear thought.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH
Our pursuit of truth seems endless, because the endpoint is never reached. No matter how much we discover, we never uncover the ultimate basis of reality. Particle physics and genetics are a case in point, because both seem to be blind alleys. So it appears that God’s secret is safe, and our potential for mischief and mayhem is mercifully limited. It's indubitable that God is inscrutable, and His laws are immutable.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE RETROSPECTOSCOPE
History can be a harsh judge. It can reduce our lives to facts, without regard for circumstances or mitigating factors. This seems to happen especially with great people, who have foibles and flaws just like the rest of us. Before we judge such people, we should try to understand the times and circumstances of their lives. This will enable us to better appreciate their contributions, and at the same time, to forgive their errors. Sooner or later, we will all be part of history, and we would like the same merciful judgment.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE RIGHTEOUS GENTILES
The Holocaust was a time of contrasts. There was evil and good, cowardice and courage, and silence and protest. Although the net effect was death and devastation, the courageous protests will live on forever. Some of the greatest acts were those of the Righteous Gentiles, who risked and even sacrificed their lives to fight Nazism and thwart its genocidal motives. The world will never forget the great work of Oskar Schindler, Corrie Ten Boom, Raoul Wallenberg, Miep Gies, and Sophie and Hans Scholl of the White Rose, all of whom, along with many others, have been memorialized in history and the Holocaust Museum.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Life is a terminal condition. Sooner or later, everyone dies. Each of us lives in the shadow of death, while trying not to think of it. But some of us must think about death, because of a life-threatening injury or illness. How can we live while thinking about death? While death is frightening and depressing, it is also clarifying and motivating. It helps us to focus on life and its limited time-frame, so that we don’t waste time or take it for granted. Perhaps each of us should spend more time thinking about our death, so that we don’t waste our life. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)
Page Menu Site Menu
THE SINGLE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN COMMUNICATION IS THE ILLUSION THAT IT HAS TAKEN PLACE (GEORGE BERNARD SHAW)
Communication is like an asymptote. Asymptotes are geometric figures in which a curved line approaches, but never quite reaches, a straight line. Likewise, communication approaches, but never quite reaches, the straight truth, due to repressed facts, feelings, and memories. So we can never quite connect with ourselves or others, no matter how hard we try. Tantalized, we struggle with all the nuances of our asymptotic identity, asymptotic communication, and asymptotic relationships, all of which is symptomatic of being human and longing for contact.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION
String theorists tell us that reality has eleven dimensions. This means that our four-dimensional space-time continuum is incomplete. Perhaps one of these still-undiscovered dimensions is spiritual and corresponds to the afterlife. Let’s console ourselves about the inevitability of death, by recognizing that death is not necessarily final, and that we may someday be reunited with our loved ones.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT (HAMLET)
Mankind memorializes time. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. We also commemorate decades, centuries, and millennia. The end of the 19th century is called fin de siecle, and the end of the 20th century is called Y2K. With Y2K, we worried about our computers and expected a messiah. But instead, we got a witches' brew of terrorism, war, corruption, economic depression, and natural disasters. Prophetically, poetically, and noetically, the first decade of the 21st century has unceremoniously ushered in the pandemonium millennium. Now, more than ever before, time must be realized, not just memorialized.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE
Aesop's fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare contrasts the slow, steady, sure progress of the tortoise with the rapid, erratic, ruinous non-progress of the hare. The tortoise symbolizes the modesty and humility that lead to success; while the hare symbolizes the arrogance and grandiosity that lead to failure. The timeless wisdom of this fable teaches us to slow down, calm down, and think about what we are doing.
Page Menu Site Menu
THE TREE OF LIFE
People are like trees. With their roots planted firmly in the soil, trees stand tall and straight, and survive inclement weather. Likewise, people whose roots are planted firmly in family grow up strong and healthy, and survive adverse events. But without strong roots, both people and trees become weak and frail. Ideally, society is like an orchard, in which the strong and healthy shelter the weak and frail, so that all life has a chance to be fruitful.
Page Menu Site Menu
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Notwithstanding the many well-reasoned theories of personality, we remain a mystery to ourselves and others. Nevertheless, these theories, which represent the work of physicians and psychologists, provide us with a language and structure that elucidates personality. Sometimes one theory is more applicable to a particular situation. So it is wise to familiarize oneself with as many theories of personality as possible, including those of Freud, Meyer, Rank, Sullivan, Adler, Horney, Reik, Deutsch, Jung, Erikson, Frankl, Hartmann, Kris, and Lowenstein. In order to understand a patient's disease, we must understand the patient.
Page Menu Site Menu
THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?
Concerns about the current economic crisis and suicide are evocative of a haunting film called “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?" in which a dispirited contestant in a Depression-era dance marathon commits suicide, after learning that the marathon is a cruel hoax, and that the winner receives no prize money. As the specter of a looming worldwide depression, the current economic crisis is an important reminder that poverty is ubiquitous and ruins many lives. For too many people, life is a compulsory lottery with great advertising but no prizes.
Page Menu Site Menu
TIME & HAIR
Time is like hair. Either you have too much or too little. Time and hair epitomize the perverse realities of Mother Nature. She seems to delight in testing and torturing us with excess and deficiency. How can we improve our relationship with Mother Nature? Perhaps we don't really understand her, and we are trying to bend her to our will. What is Mother Nature's will, and where do we fit in? Are we part of her plan, or are we an exception to her plan, and therefore her adversary? These questions must be answered before we continue our struggles with Mother Nature.
Page Menu Site Menu
TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM (MAN OF LA MANCHA)
Dreams are amazing. They incorporate the natural with the supernatural, the eidetic with the prophetic. One minute we’re socializing with friends, or struggling with careers, and the next minute we’re flying, or swimming to the bottom of the ocean. Free of our reality (conscious) and conscience (superego), dreams are a safe (symbolic) enactment (fulfillment) of secret (forbidden) feelings (fantasies) of our inner self (id) that our mind (ego) ignores (suppresses) and denies (represses). By fusing our conscious and unconscious, dreams tell us who we are, and who we can become.
Page Menu Site Menu
TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE DIVINE (ALEXANDER POPE)
Despite our best efforts, we are all fallible and make mistakes. Some of these mistakes are trivial, while others are serious, and even fatal. How can we best cope with our fallibility? First, we must recognize and accept our fallibility as inevitable. Second, we must provide safeguards for our fallibility, such as checklists and oversight by colleagues. Third, we must treat our mistakes with acknowledgment and apology, not denial and cover-ups. And finally, we must analyze our mistakes, in order to avoid repeating them. Fallibility is an inherent part of the human condition, and we must not be ashamed of our humanity.
Page Menu Site Menu
TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON...
...and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die (Ecclesiastes 3.1-2)
Unless the deceased is a centenarian, death never seems timely. And death is never less timely than when it affects the young. But we must remember that life and death are inseparable, and that medicine involves death as well as life. So let's fight for life, but learn to accept the inevitability of death. And let's focus on the quality of life, and not just the quantity.
Page Menu Site Menu
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE (HAMLET)
The tyranny of being graded and trying to measure up to other people's expectations is a lifelong burden on all of us; it begins in kindergarten and never ends. If we allow it to, grading can dominate and ruin our lives by turning us into sycophants and slaves who curry favor, bury feelings, and hurry through life. How can we free ourselves from this tyranny? We should accept less than perfect grades, and focus on developing our own unique individuality. It's better to be rejected for who you are, than accepted for who you're not.
Page Menu Site Menu
TOMORROW! TOMORROW! I LOVE YA TOMORROW! (ANNIE)
Hope is the essence of life. It encourages and enables us to go on living. Without hope, we give up and succumb to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." How can we keep hope alive? We must dedicate ourselves to work that gives our lives meaning, purpose, and a kind of perpetuity. So that even after we're gone, there will always be a tomorrow.
Page Menu Site Menu
TOYS: PRO & CON
Toys are playthings that can spark creativity. Children use toys to develop their imagination and grow into adulthood. But adults use toys to stifle their imagination and revert to childhood. Toys are a magical device for the magical time of childhood, which, sooner or later, we must all leave behind. Toys are for children, not childish adults.
Page Menu Site Menu
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE
Universal healthcare is more than a noble ideal; it is a sine qua non of modern civilization. While the financial costs must be borne fairly by everyone, the key ingredient is the personal responsibility of the patient, who must maintain a healthy lifestyle, free of all self-destructive habits, such as alcohol, tobacco, and junk food. Universal healthcare needs universal self-care.
Page Menu Site Menu
WANTS VERSUS NEEDS
We have four basic needs that must be satisfied: hunger, hygiene, home, and hope. Hunger requires a nutritious diet that eliminates all addictive substances. Hygiene requires that our food, water, air, and home are free of toxins. Home requires safety, comfort, and companionship. Hope requires the freedom to be ourselves and pursue our unique talents. If we satisfy these basic needs, we will not be tortured with endless wants and wars.
Page Menu Site Menu
WAR AND PEACE
War plagues us, and peace eludes us, because we overlook the connection between war and sickness. War and sickness are inseparable, just as peace and health are inseparable. In order to promote peace and health, we must first cure the universal sickness of dehydration, malnutrition, and addiction, all of which create frustration, anger, and violence, and ultimately lead to war.
Page Menu Site Menu
WAR AS METAPHOR
War has become a popular but unfortunate metaphor and euphemism for society's failures. The "wars" on drugs, illiteracy, and poverty have all been lost, and the war on terrorism seems endless. Since war connotes conflict, violence, and death, we should dispense with this malevolent metaphor, and instead find beneficent metaphors that are more conducive to peace and health. Words have power and meaning, and they should be chosen carefully.
Page Menu Site Menu
WASHINGTON, DC: FACT OR FICTION
America’s political devolution into a perpetual pattern of polarizing polemics, impossible impasses, diabolic diatribes, grudging gridlock, groveling governance, pretentious pretense, extraneous extravagance, deliberate debt, and plummeting plausibility, strongly suggests that Washington, DC is little more than a Potemkin village hiding Faustian bargains.
Page Menu Site Menu
WEANING
The purpose of weaning is not to remove milk from the infant's diet. The purpose of weaning is to weaken the maternal-infant bond, so that the infant can be introduced to other people and other food. The maternal bond is the most powerful and enduring relationship in our lives. In fact, we never fully separate from our mothers. We just find maternal substitutes, like food, friends, teachers, spouses, and doctors.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT ARE SPIN DOCTORS?
Spin doctors are political and corporate media-meisters, who bend, mince, twist, torture, and trash the truth with nuanced innuendos, linguistic legerdemain, word wizardry, imaginary imagery, fantastic fantasy, fluffy puffery, and plausible deniability. In short, spin doctors are lovable liars and rogues in vogue who specialize in hyper-uber-hoopla.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT ARE THE PROFESSIONS?
The professions are essential and beneficial, but enigmatic and problematic. Despite their exalted status, titles, expertise, and altruism, the professions are also an elite salesforce for wealthy, powerful, secretive industries. Physicians represent the drug, device, and hospital industries; attorneys represent the financial, litigation, and justice industries; military represent the weapons industry; media represent the advertising industry; and politicians represent the lobbying industry. Let’s recognize that the professions have undisclosed conflicts of interest, and judge them accordingly. But let’s not expect the professions to make any confessions.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS ADDICTION?
Addiction is a worldwide mysterious plague that infests every level of society. It baffles and corrupts teachers, doctors, lawyers, police, and politicians. What is addiction, and why is it so powerful and pervasive?
Addiction is a rebellion against metabolism, especially hunger. Metabolism requires food to satisfy hunger and create health. But addiction short-circuits metabolism by replacing food with addictive substances, hunger with euphoria, satisfaction with craving, and health with sickness. So addiction is a flight from hunger to euphoria, with a stopover in craving, and a crash landing in sickness.
Euphoria is a false heightened sense of well-being. Euphoria enables us to control our mood and avoid feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. But euphoria disables our judgment and blinds us to the craving and sickness of addiction. Ironically, addiction makes us feel more alive with euphoria, while it insidiously kills us with craving and sickness. So addiction is a bad bargain, with imaginary gains and real losses.
The most popular addictive substances are sweets, chocolate, vanilla, cola, coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Although some of these substances are considered harmless fun, they all create insatiable cravings that reinforce other addictions. For example, sweets, chocolate, vanilla, cola, coffee, and tea reinforce alcohol, tobacco, and drug addiction. So addictive substances are seductive saboteurs that masquerade as familiar friends.
Addiction is big business. The craving of addiction supports the "food" industry. "Food" companies that sell addictive substances spend millions of dollars to advertise the imaginary gains and hide the real losses connected to their products. The sickness of addiction supports the health-care industry. If alcohol, tobacco, and junk food were eliminated, many hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors would not have enough patients to stay in business. So our economy depends on addiction, euphoria, craving, and sickness.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS CHARITY?
Charity is sharing some of our good fortune with those who are suffering and in need. Sadly, some cynical people regard charity as a financial option, tax deduction, or burden, rather than a moral obligation and opportunity to be humane. These people conveniently forget that their good fortune is mostly luck, and that their lives could have been much worse. So let's count our blessings, and share some of our blessings with those in need. Charity is a measure of our humanity.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS COMPASSION?
Compassion is identification with the pain and suffering of another. Compassion is not unique to mankind, and manifests itself in other mammals, including our beloved pets. So let’s not flaunt our compassion, but instead realize that it's the very least we can offer those who suffer. Compassion isn't vocation, education, or sophistication, but identification, communication, and dedication that dare to care and share.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS COPING?
Coping is the art of living. Life is full of problems that can’t be solved. Oftentimes, coping is our only option. With that in mind, I offer my coping checklist:
C - Calmness is the cornerstone of coping.
O - Open-mindedness expands the range of coping.
P - Planning implements all available coping skills.
I - Interviewing experts elevates coping skills.
N - Never succumb to utter hopelessness.
G - Gratitude for all those who offer help.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS CULTURE?
Culture is a mixed blessing. It can be a cocoon that protects and nurtures us, but it can also be a cage that traps and suffocates us. The "cocoon" is a positive force which enables us to grow and mature so that we can face the world, but the "cage" is a negative force which disables us and stunts our growth so that we learn to fear and hate the world. The contrasting cocoon-cage quality of culture stamps personality, so that each of us is a combination of positive and negative training. And each of us must try to maximize the cocoon but minimize the cage, both in ourselves and others, so that we can live in peace and harmony. This is the goal and challenge of multiculturalism, a progressive sociopolitical philosophy of tolerance, diversity, and equality.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS FAIRNESS?
Fairness is a paradox. Somehow this short, simple, logical, peaceful word inevitably and ironically leads to endless, complex, vehement, violent arguments. Why is fairness so elusive? Perhaps fairness is so subjective and abstract that it invites selfishness, righteousness, and spite. Before we seek fairness, we must first understand its elusive, paradoxical nature.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS FRIENDSHIP?
Friendship is one of life's treasures, in which a stranger suddenly becomes a confidant and ally in life's travails. Like two musical notes or two colors that enhance each other, friends bring out the best in each other. How can we promote friendship? We must search for it and recognize it, but also test it and nurture it. Ultimately, our lives will depend on the loyalty and love of our friends.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS FUN?
The Shakespearean character of Falstaff is a tragic-comic embodiment of self-indulgence in vices. Unfortunately, many people equate such self-indulgence with fun. This is unfortunate, because most fun is imaginary, harmful, and expensive. The fun of being tipsy from alcohol, high from marijuana, or sated from sweets, is flimsy and ephemeral, compared to the lingering and painful after-effects of addiction. The sad truth is that most fun is hell you enjoy.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS HUMOR?
Humor is more than levity with physical and emotional relief; it is a window into the inner mechanisms of the mind. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Sigmund Freud theorizes that humor satisfies the libidinal instincts of verboten sexual and aggressive material, by catching the ego and superego off-guard. This theory is consistent with most humor and establishes the validity of psychoanalysis as a research tool and treatment modality. Although it has been eclipsed by psychopharmacology and relegated to the dustbin of history, psychoanalysis still has much to offer us. It reminds us that we are more than synapses and neurotransmitters; we are human and have the capacity for understanding, compassion, and choice.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?
Intelligence is misunderstood. Intelligence is equated with the speed, accuracy, and retention of learning, but learning is only half of intelligence. The other half of intelligence is unlearning the many falsehoods that we have been taught. Sadly, most people cling to their education, resist unlearning falsehoods, and perpetuate the harmful effects of these falsehoods, such as sickness, conflict, and war. Let's redefine intelligence to include unlearning, so that we can have open minds and truly promote peace and health. Intelligence is foresight, hindsight, insight, and oversight, but not brightness, righteousness, or spite. Sometimes the brightest are not the best.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS?
Mental illness is emotional sensitivity to life’s pain and pitfalls. This sensitivity is a mixed blessing, because it predisposes to both illness and insight. Sometimes, “mentally ill” people have special insights that “normal” people lack. So let’s not be too quick to diagnose and treat the “signs and symptoms” of “mental illness.” Instead, let’s listen, learn, comfort, and support, but not stigmatize, ostracize, marginalize, or hospitalize. Sensitivity is creativity, not negativity.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS MONEY?
As the universal medium of exchange, money has both objective and subjective meanings. Objectively, money represents fair market value; subjectively, money represents interpersonal trust. So money is more than just numbers, symbols, charts, graphs, and equations; it can also be compassion, communication, friendship, happiness, and hope. If we invest wisely and fairly in each other, we will maximize our return.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS NORMAL?
Society is a Procrustean bed of normalcy, in which some people, no matter how hard they try, never quite measure up or fit in, and thus are driven to retreat from society. With this retreat, the tyranny of normalcy tightens, and society shrinks by losing its individuality, creativity, productivity, and progress. Society needs variety, and sometimes it's not normal to be normal.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS PAIN?
Pain is the penalty for living: a toothache is the penalty for eating; a backache is the penalty for moving; and a heartache is the penalty for loving. Alas, life and pain are inseparable.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS POETRY?
A poem is an answer to a question or problem. Poets are philosophers who ponder questions and problems, and occasionally come up with an answer, which they call a poem. If you want to write a poem, think about a question or problem, but don't try to answer it. Let the question or problem sink from your conscious into your unconscious. Then wait until your unconscious contacts you, in a dream, a random thought, or a sudden insight, with an answer. This answer will form the basis of your poem, which will then require the poetic elements of metaphor, simile, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, meter, and special formatting. Like all creative work, poetry is a joint venture of the conscious and unconscious.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS POLITICS?
Politics is invasive, evasive, and pervasive. Politicians come and go, but politics never leaves us. Eternal and infernal, politics is false promises based on false premises, and false choices based on false voices; while politicians are impostors who posture, bandits backed by pundits, and backstabbers masquerading as backslappers. So politics is not about lying and cheating; it's about getting away with it.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS RACISM?
As the pigment that darkens the color of our skin, hair, and eyes, melanin is a mixed blessing. It protects us from the harsh rays of the sun, but it also subjects us to the harsh gaze and words of racists, who blindly and blithely dislike and disrespect all dark-skinned people. Fusing ignorance with arrogance, avarice with cowardice, and caprice with malice, racism is a pigment of the imagination and an impediment to every nation. Racism is lunacy, not supremacy.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS REALITY?
Reality is multilayered. Beneath the veneer of everyday life, lies a vexing vortex of biology, chemistry, and physics. And beneath this vexing vortex lies the calm, deliberate mind of God, who created all of reality. Our task is to illuminate reality by collating its various layers, while retaining our civility, humility, and humanity.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS REGRET?
Regret is wisdom gained with age. Throughout life, we make many mistakes, some of which we later recognize. With this recognition, comes regret and painful nostalgia. So regret is an inevitable consequence of living and learning. Let's learn to expect and accept regret, even though it is so poignant and haunting. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS RELIGION?
Notwithstanding all of its respectful liturgy and doxology, religion is, in part, frustration and anger with the Creator, who gave us enough intelligence to understand life's dilemmas, but not enough intelligence to do anything about it.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS SCRIPTURE?
Scripture is divinely inspired, but divisive, epic poetry about a promised, but disputed, messiah whose supernal power heals our infernal nature by fixing factual, but fabled, family feuds over food, fortune, freedom, favoritism, fairness, fame, fate, and faith.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS TERRORISM?
Terrorism is a Gordian knot with hydra-headed tentacles. Sadly, we’ve been hacking at the tentacles of ideology, but ignoring the knot of biology. Most terrorists are thin, malnourished, dehydrated, and addicted to nicotine, caffeine, sweets, and drugs; all of which leads to insatiable cravings, frustration, anger, and violence. Since biology trumps ideology, we should turn our attention to eliminating malnutrition, dehydration, and addiction. It's more humane to cure your enemies than to kill them.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS THINKING?
Thinking is a joint venture of our conscious and unconscious. Consciously, thinking involves the reorganization of facts to create knowledge. Unconsciously, thinking involves the germination of knowledge to create wisdom. By creating knowledge and wisdom, thinking enables us to understand ourselves and the world. To know the unknowable, think the unthinkable.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS TIME?
Time is a paradox. As children, we long for the future; as adults, we worry about the future; and as elders, we relinquish the future and relish the past. But somehow, we never seem to live in the present. Like a tightrope walker without a net, we are suspended between the past and the future, fearing that we will fall into a timeless abyss. How can we reclaim the present? Let's free ourselves from fear by recognizing that time is not limited or linear, but an eternal and endless loop, with the past and the future spliced in the present. Time is the substance of life.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE?
There are three kinds of medical science: basic (laboratory), applied (doctor’s office or hospital), and translational (patient’s home). Basic science enables laboratory scientists to educate physicians; applied science enables physicians to help patients; and translational science enables patients to help themselves. So translational medicine “translates” basic and applied science into clear, concise, practical advice that enables patients to function as partners with their physicians.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS TRUST?
Trust is an invisible question mark hanging over our relationships. We ask: Can I trust you? Can I trust God? These crucial questions defy absolute proof, and haunt us with fear and worry. What should we do? We should also ask: Can you trust me? Can God trust me? Can I trust myself? These additional questions are important, because relationships are a projection of self, and trust is a self-portrait.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS TRUTH?
Truth is like a blinding, brilliant, iridescent diamond. Diamonds have seemingly similar facets that confuse us by reflecting light in different ways. Truth, likewise, has seemingly similar facets that confuse us by reflecting reality in different ways. Truth and diamonds sparkle, dazzle, baffle, and mystify with dizzying diversity, but with the right setting, they are precious and cherished.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHAT IS WORK?
Work is the price and prize of life. As the price of life, work requires effort, dedication, perseverance, sacrifice, and results. As the prize of life, work can reward us with recognition, money, independence, maturity, and self-respect.
In short, work is the price, prize, and pride of life.
Page Menu Site Menu
WHY CAN'T THE ENGLISH LEARN TO SPEAK? (MY FAIR LADY)
Lerner and Loewe’s Cinderella-Pygmalion masterpiece, My Fair Lady, parodies the peculiarities of English language, pronunciation, and class. In “Why can’t the English?”, Sir Rex Harrison muses, “There even are places where English completely disappears. Well, in America, they haven’t used it for years!” As an American, I can vouch for the fact that Americans often feel intimidated and a bit mystified by the English accent. And as a physician who only speaks English, I salute all foreign medical graduates who have emigrated to the US or UK, and have so ably mastered English as a second language.
Page Menu Site Menu
WRITING & QUILTING
Writing is like quilting. Quilters save random remnants and swatches of fabric, then sew them together into beautiful patchwork quilts that last for many years. Likewise, writers save random thoughts and memories, then weave them together into poetry or prose that lasts forever. Both writers and quilters preserve the past, by weaving it together with the present and future.
Page Menu Site Menu
WRITING & WRESTLING
Writing is like wrestling. Wrestlers struggle with their opponents in order to pin them down on the mat. Likewise, writers struggle with their thoughts in order to pin them down on the page. Thoughts are like opponents: they have a mind of their own, and don’t like to be controlled.
Page Menu Site Menu
YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE (CAROUSEL)
Life is a solitary, lonely quest for friendship and support. Luckily, we sometimes receive the unexpected support of good samaritans who inexplicably seem to care about us. These good samaritans often play a crucial role in our lives and rescue us from certain disaster. So let's be grateful for these good samaritans, and return the favor by befriending other lost souls and hopeless cases like ourselves. Charity and kindness are the best medicine.
Page Menu Site Menu
YOUR THINKING CAP
Thought is a necessary but mysterious and frustrating function. Life requires us to make many informed decisions, but it doesn't tell us how to acquire or process the necessary information. How can we stimulate and generate thought? First, research the topic and acquire background information. Second, organize this information into a clear, concise format. Third, clear your mind of everything, and allow it all to sink into your unconscious, where it can germinate. Then your unconscious will contact you in a dream or random thought, and provide you with new answers. Simply put, your thinking cap is a metaphor for the creativity of your conscious and unconscious.
Page Menu Site Menu
|
ABCs OF LANGUAGE