Chronic pain in particular often doesn’t have a discrete material location, or an identifiable cause. “That doesn’t fit into the rubric of what it means to be a Western medical practitioner,” said Daniel Goldberg, a bioethicist at East Carolina University and author of the recent book “The Bioethics of Pain Management.” This leaves its sufferers vulnerable to skepticism, prejudice, and “accusations of malingering,” he said. It doesn’t help that many pain medications are addictive, and some people really do feign pain to scrounge their next prescription.Because pain has such a strong psychological component, finding objective tools to diagnose it is not a simple proposition. Research emerging in the last few years has suggested that certain types of pain create a distinct signature in the brain, and even that sensitivity to pain might be connected to brain structure. But the idea of a practical and affordable tool for measuring all kinds of patient pain is a distant dream at best. And that leaves pain susceptible to doctors’ prejudices, including unconscious ones. What it comes down to is: Do they trust their patient’s account of their own pain?
Don't
Today I am hearing on the internet that it is insensitive to celebrate Father’s Day because such celebrations could bring pain to those whose fathers are dead, or whose fathers were bad, or who wish that they could be fathers but cannot. I heard the same arguments on Mother’s Day. I have also read recently that to express delight in an alcoholic drink is insensitive to alcoholics. Basically, to give open thanks for anything, or to take visible and audible delight in anything, is a mortal insult to countless people. So don’t do it. Never praise aloud, never give thanks publicly, never honor or celebrate except silently, in your heart. Confine all public discourse to what public discourse is really for: complaining.
For the most part, conservative groups on campuses simply wish to study the Bible together, pray and worship in ways that deepen their own sense of Godliness. These groups welcome nonbelievers.They might even let someone like myself – a Christian of a different stripe – sit down and discuss their views. A campus is, or ought to be, a space where contradictory ideas are allowed to flourish, where genuine and deeply respectful debate can occur.
I would urge colleges and universities to give these kids their keys back. Let them elect officers in their organization who actually adhere to the ideas promoted by the group. That’s the essence of democracy.
As long as these groups don’t practice hatred or discrimination, or try to impose their views on others, let them be.
Our intellectual communities flourish when there are all kinds of ideas circulating, even ones we find curious or objectionable.
Becoming obsessed with a tiny detail in the landscape – the hoverfly – has given Sjöberg a broader perspective than many naturalists. “You realise there’s a lot of habitats disappearing, even on this island, but it’s not as easy as you think to destroy nature.” To take one example, there are no farms left on Runmarö (such smallholdings are not “economic”) and its flower-rich meadows are turning to forest. This is bad for sun-loving species such as butterflies, but Sjöberg points out it will benefit hundreds more wildwood-loving species of beetle….Optimism, feels Sjöberg, is not the easy option. “Optimism takes time and deep knowledge. If you know a lot about flies you have at least one area where you can read nature and realise it’s not a dystopian novel you are reading.” Optimism is also more constructive. “If the prognosis is too gloomy, you just don’t want to think about it,” he says. “If you want to save the world, the best thing is to create some sensitivity towards nature and the joy of it. You cannot go on about CO2 all the time. No one can be angry or afraid forever. If you want to change the world, you have to build it on some kind of joy.”
[gallery] austinkleon:
One of 164 collages created by special effects pioneer Norman DawnDawn was a relatively obscure yet historically significant early special effects cinematographer, inventor, artist, and motion picture director, writer, and producer. He worked with many important film pioneers including Mack Sennett, Carl Laemmle, Irving Thalberg, and Erich von Stroheim. The Dawn collection consists of 164 display cards that illustrate over 230 of the 861 special effects Dawn created in more than 80 movies.Constructed personally from his own field notebooks and methodical records, the cards contain original oil, watercolor, pencil, and ink sketches used to sell the effects to skeptical film executives and directors; production and personal photographs; detailed camera records; film clips and frame enlargements; movie reviews, advertisements, and other trade press clippings; explanatory texts and recent sketches to illustrate his methods; and pages from an unpublished autobiography.
The entire collection is now available online.
I must also describe how those who are to be baptized at Easter are instructed. Whoever gives his name does so the day before Lent … and this is before those eight weeks during which, as I have said, Lent is observed here … on the first day of Lent…a throne is set up for the bishop in the center of the major church, the Martyrium. The priests sit on stools on both sides, and all the clergy stand around. One by one the candidates are led forward in such a way that the men come with their godfathers and the women with their godmothers. Then the bishop questions individually the neighbors of the one who has come up, inquiring: ‘Does he lead a good life? Does he obey his parents? Is he a drunkard or a liar?’ And he seeks out in the man other vices which are more serious. If the person proves to be guiltless in all these matters … the bishop … notes down the man’s name with his own hand. If, however, he is accused of anything, the bishop orders him to go out and says: 'Let him amend his life, and when he has done so let him then approach the baptismal font.’
This particular practice seems very wrong to me. I believe that the sacraments are means of grace — very important means of grace — and that the primary grace they bestow is that of empowerment to obedience. If I could “amend my life” without the grace of the sacraments, then what need would I have for them?
It is true that the Apostle warns against taking the sacrament unworthily. But it is also true that many passages in the New Testament warn against turning people away without good reason, and we are encouraged in the great parable of the Wedding Feast to go out into the streets and urge strangers to join the celebration.
I could never belong to a theologically liberal church because one of the most characteristic practices of such churches is to offer the Eucharist even to those who have not been baptized, which renders the sacrament of Baptism pointless, empties it of all significance. But by the same logic I could never belong to the Roman or Orthodox churches, because they deny the grace of the Eucharist to believing Christians who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The former practice seems to me frivolous; the latter I find cruel.
You would never know, from reading Malik’s account, that the Renaissance was a time when belief in magic thrived at the highest levels of the state, with Elizabeth I regularly consulting spirit-seers. You would have no idea that Kepler (a prototypical Renaissance figure Malik doesn’t discuss) was as devoted to horoscope-making as he was to astronomy, or that Machiavelli (another archetypal Renaissance figure who doesn’t even appear in the book’s index) posed fundamental questions about the role of ethics in politics.Nor would you realise that Immanuel Kant (whom Malik, in a lengthy and reverential discussion, celebrates as having “revolutionised moral thinking”) described Jews as “a nation of cheaters”; that Voltaire was an ardent adherent of the pre-Adamite theory of human origins, according to which Jews and “negroes” were relics of an inferior pre-human species; that “Darwin’s bulldog” T H Huxley, praised by Malik for his criticisms of evolutionary ethics, developed a detailed classification of racial types; or that the German rationalist, biologist and virulent critic of religion Ernst Haeckel (another vastly influential thinker who is not discussed) defended theories of eugenics and racial inequality that helped shape a pattern of thinking in which Nazi crimes could be claimed to have a basis in science.
The Quest for a Moral Compass is a rationalist history of ethics in which all of the repugnant and troubling elements of rationalism have been airbrushed, Soviet-style, from the record. To be sure, the absence from the book of the sleazy side of rationalism may come in part from mere ignorance. In any event, it’s clear that Malik prefers not to know. From one angle this may be the normal dishonesty of an evangelising ideologue: Malik has a world-view to promote, and he’s not going to let awkward facts get in his way. From another perspective, The Quest for a Moral Compass is a testament to the perplexities of secular faith. Like Lecky, Malik writes in order to prop up a belief in moral progress. The difference is that while the Victorian sage appears to have had few doubts regarding the creed he was promoting, Malik often seems as anxious to persuade himself as to persuade his readers.
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Beautiful illustrations from the Prague Zoo, 1963, found at Oliver Tomas
