Originally Posted by The Rani

Surprise!
Since you are an established author, if you ever want someone to co-author about a book with you about the futility of modern medicine, let me know. I am serious.



Ya, those are the insurance company ho's that I mentioned earlier. What a disaster.
I'm not sure that I know the solution to this one either. Maybe more self-help groups, like AA but for different diagnoses? Insurance companies simply do not pay for therapy anymore, nor do public health care plans. And all psychiatrists (whether they will admit it to you or not) know that psych meds in the absence of other forms of treatment do absolutely nothing. The exceptions, again, being people who have been stable on their meds for many many years. And even those people are prone to relapses.

What kills me is this is so friggen obvious it's mind-boggling. And I'm a layman. God, what a system.

One thing is certain: callow greed has no limits. If the 2010 elections are the model for the remainder of the USA as some intend, then perhaps Barack Obama is the American equivalent of Marcus Aurelius in the Roman Empire -- the last Philosopher King after which comes a succession of stooges and thugs before the inevitable demise. If it took 200 years to create America it might take fifty years to destroy it. The sorts of people who stand to profiteer most are the ones who would try to impose the perverse economic and political life that it could trick gullible Americans into accepting onto the rest of the world. Sure, it would be profitable. Plenty of people profiteered off German, Italian, and Japanese militarism during the last Crisis.

A policy to privatize Medicare to a profiteering monopolist -- and that is the only way that it could be run as a private entity -- would demonstrate the depravity of a political system that then serves only small classes of plutocrats and executives.

I've got a question about Ryan's proposal to replace Medicare with vouchers that elders would use to purchase their own insurance. Wouldn't that end up with those elders who were oldest and sickest being priced out of insurance?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

One thing is certain: callow greed has no limits. If the 2010 elections are the model for the remainder of the USA as some intend, then perhaps Barack Obama is the American equivalent of Marcus Aurelius in the Roman Empire -- the last Philosopher King after which comes a succession of stooges and thugs before the inevitable demise. If it took 200 years to create America it might take fifty years to destroy it. The sorts of people who stand to profiteer most are the ones who would try to impose the perverse economic and political life that it could trick gullible Americans into accepting onto the rest of the world. Sure, it would be profitable. Plenty of people profiteered off German, Italian, and Japanese militarism during the last Crisis.

A policy to privatize Medicare to a profiteering monopolist -- and that is the only way that it could be run as a private entity -- would demonstrate the depravity of a political system that then serves only small classes of plutocrats and executives.

Marcus Aurelius? He's not even C-C-C-Claudius!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Marcus Aurelius? He's not even C-C-C-Claudius!

Who would you guess that he is?

Originally Posted by Deb C

Who would you guess that he is?

Gaius Marius, IMO.

Decius Metellus Caecelius?

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Decius Metellus Caecelius?

Why would you choose a fictional character?

Originally Posted by Odin

Gaius Marius, IMO.

Very similar possibilities if the Middle East violence escalates and more war is expanded, Obama may have to increase troop size by demand versus request. I would have a tendency to agree that, like Gaius Marius, Obama and and the past few presidents are significant in America's transformation from Republic to Empire. Their decisions have opened some gates and set in motion the fueling of those who will take it even further to that fruition.

Originally Posted by Deb C

I would have a tendency to agree that, like Gaius Marius, Obama and and the past few presidents are significant in America's transformation from Republic to Empire. Their decisions have opened some gates and set in motion the fueling of those who will take it even further to that fruition.

I'm a fan of the Spenglerian analysis of cultures-civilizations. Basically, it's the "Fourth Turning" analysis for culture-civilizations.

We are in the transition from culture (where the culture actually grows) to civilization (where the culture ossifies and ultimately declines).

Currently, we are in the Late Republic period, if you want to compare us to ancient Rome.

This is where the Domaination of Money (where we currently reside) tranistitions into Force-Politics (where we are going).

It will take us about 100-200 years to complete the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengle...lization_model

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

You are actually an M.D.? I didn't realize that.

I, on the other hand, am a J.D.

I should have become an M.D. I'm much better at math/science than I am at legal analysis/writing.

These days, I spend most of my time reading and writing about medical conditions.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm a fan of the Spenglerian analysis of cultures-civilizations. Basically, it's the "Fourth Turning" analysis for culture-civilizations.

We are in the transition from culture (where the culture actually grows) to civilization (where the culture ossifies and ultimately declines).

Currently, we are in the Late Republic period, if you want to compare us to ancient Rome.

This is where the Domaination of Money (where we currently reside) tranistitions into Force-Politics (where we are going).

It will take us about 100-200 years to complete the process.

Trouble with this ideas is that Rome is in a class by itself. There are no other civilizations in history that followed the same pattern. A sample set of one does not a trend describe.

What I do think is that we may be ripe for a Caesar. The people obviously are hungry for one. But perhaps that statement requires some explanation; Caesar has been vilified by his conservative opponents and their modern counterparts to the point where he has become, in the imagination of many, simply a tyrant and his assassins liberators. The truth is more complex.

The Roman Republic was designed to govern a city-state. Its original purpose was to preserve the dominance of an elite class (initially the Patrician class only) while preventing any one member of it from becoming so powerful as to be a threat to the rest. Pursuant to the first goal was the rigged voting in the Assemblies that denied poor people any effective voice, and the retention of the Senate as the senior governing body. To the second, the divided leadership under the two Consuls, who served only for a year, as did all other elected magistrates except the Pontifex Maximus. The revolt of the Plebeian order forced reforms including the creation of the Tribune of the Plebeians and the Plebeian Assembly, and allowing rich Plebeians into the Senate and the magistrates. (Interestingly, by the late Republic one of the two Consuls each year had to be a Plebeian because of a public ceremony a Consul had to preside over for Plebeians only.)

The acquisition of the empire was what made the Republic non-functional. It was too clumsy and corrupt a government form to administer the provinces well. Also, the enormous wealth that flowed into Rome from the provinces concentrated the power of the nobility (which was no longer just Patricians) to the point where the poorer people increasingly got the shaft. Many reformers tried to address this, including the Gracchi brothers, Marius, and Caesar. By Caesar's time the Republic was so corrupt that it had completely lost the allegiance and support of most of the people. When Caesar crossed the Rubicon into Italy with this army, he was greeted everywhere he went with cheers and flowers, no opposition except from the Senatorial class. True, he was a dictator, and the people had no say in government under him (although he continued to hold elections for the traditional offices and even ran for Consul himself on one occasion), but they had had no say in the Republic's governance either, and Caesar was on their side while the rich and powerful who ran the Republic had not been. He was extremely popular. The Roman people made him a god after he was assassinated. In fact, it was all he could do to keep them from deifying him before that! He gave Rome the first truly capable government it had had since Sulla, and unlike Sulla Caesar was a liberal, and hence the people were quite pleased with him.

Similar to the Romans in the late Republic, the people of the United States have lost control of the government, which is now run for the benefit only of a noble class of wealthy and powerful people. Someone who would move in, wipe the slate clean, and provide a government that would support the people's interests and put the elite in their place would have a lot of popular support. Unfortunately I don't see a Caesar on the horizon. We may need to seek a different path.

What followed after Caesar was of course the end of the Republic under Augustus, but to show that this is not inevitable I give you a very good parallel to Gaius Julius Caesar in a more recent time: Napoleon Bonaparte. Like Caesar, Napoleon was a military officer with political ambitions in a time of a corrupt republic. Like Caesar, Napoleon seized power and made himself a dictator. Like Caesar, Napoleon provided his country with good, efficient, and enlightened government; France enjoyed greater liberties and a closer enactment of the ideals of the Revolution under his dictatorship than under the republic which preceded him, and his reforms throughout Europe paved the way for the democratic revolutions which followed. When he was defeated militarily and the monarchy restored, it was a constitutional monarchy rather than the absolute monarchy of before the Revolution, and Napoleon's reforms were for the most part retained. A few decades later, after more political upheavals and a lost war against Germany, France finally achieved its first true, lasting republic, the Third Republic, in 1870. France has been governed by a republic ever since, except briefly during the Nazi occupation. Between 1815 when Napoleon fell and 1870 55 years passed. 55 years after Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE brings us to 14 CE, the year Augustus died and the beginning of the reign of Tiberius. In the one case, a lasting republic. In the other, a monarchy that endured until Rome fell. If that isn't enough to caution us against drawing hasty parallels, we are simply blind.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm a fan of the Spenglerian analysis of cultures-civilizations. Basically, it's the "Fourth Turning" analysis for culture-civilizations.

We are in the transition from culture (where the culture actually grows) to civilization (where the culture ossifies and ultimately declines).

Currently, we are in the Late Republic period, if you want to compare us to ancient Rome.

This is where the Domaination of Money (where we currently reside) tranistitions into Force-Politics (where we are going).

It will take us about 100-200 years to complete the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengle...lization_model

My comparison with Marius is actually based on Spengler's model, though I have my own twists on it that are not based on his German Idealist gobbly-gok and political biases as well as adding the data of the last 80 years, especially the non-Christian element of the last 2T. My thinking on the Universal State period is closer to Toynbee's.

Spengler was certainly prophetic when it comes to the influence of money and mass media

Originally Posted by The Rani

I'm glad that someone sees this is obvious. You might be in the minority.
The trend is for the industry (medical and pharmaceutical) to emphasize "chemical imbalances," a scientifically inaccurate term, and market medications as a way to resolve these imbalances. What they don't tell you is that nobody knows for sure how these drugs work. For example, Prozac increases the level of serotonin in your brain within days, but the antidepressant effects usually take weeks to appear. And here's the kicker ... nobody knows why that is. There are theories, like reconnections and restructuring of neurons, but really who has dissected human brains in a controlled study to figure it out for sure? For obvious reasons, it can't be done. Even PET scans tell you where the activity is changing, but they don't tell you why or how.

Psychotherapy is a way of altering brain structure in a natural and more permanent way. It takes more time and effort than prescribing meds, though, so a lot of people would rather simply take the pills. Doctors and drug companies are happy to oblige. A friend of mine, recently divorced, told her family doc that she felt sad sometimes (a completely NORMAL reaction to divorce) and immediately received an antidepressant prescription. That is what it has come to.

I agree with you completely. I take Paxil, but I hope to get off of it eventually and have psychotherapy and practice meditation to that end.

That friend of yours getting anti-depressants for "normal" non-clinical depression, I think, is just more evidence of how much more restricted our society's notion of "normal" has become.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Why would you choose a fictional character?

He's more real than the real ones.

Originally Posted by Deb C

Very similar possibilities if the Middle East violence escalates and more war is expanded, Obama may have to increase troop size by demand versus request. I would have a tendency to agree that, like Gaius Marius, Obama and and the past few presidents are significant in America's transformation from Republic to Empire. Their decisions have opened some gates and set in motion the fueling of those who will take it even further to that fruition.

The biggest thing Marius did besides have far more terms than was legal, was to professionalize what had once been a citizen army. I think we're a bit past the time of Gaius Marius. We haven't yet had our Sulla, but for a while I was wondering if Dubya were it.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm a fan of the Spenglerian analysis of cultures-civilizations. Basically, it's the "Fourth Turning" analysis for culture-civilizations.

We are in the transition from culture (where the culture actually grows) to civilization (where the culture ossifies and ultimately declines).

Currently, we are in the Late Republic period, if you want to compare us to ancient Rome.

This is where the Domaination of Money (where we currently reside) tranistitions into Force-Politics (where we are going).

It will take us about 100-200 years to complete the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengle...lization_model

Yup. We sure are. Boni vs Populares, each side totally intransigent, and a poor old clever-but-obsolete Silent caught in the middle.

Mega-Unraveling'R'Us.

P.S. Instead of the Gracchi brothers, we have the Roosevelt Cousins. Instead of Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, we have the entire Missionary Generation, of whom she'd make a marvelously typical member.

Originally Posted by Odin

I agree with you completely. I take Paxil, but I hope to get off of it eventually and have psychotherapy and practice meditation to that end.

That friend of yours getting anti-depressants for "normal" non-clinical depression, I think, is just more evidence of how much more restricted our society's notion of "normal" has become.

I'm beginning to understand the rapid rise of New Age spiritual counselors and the like. You used to be able to go to your psychotherapist; now s/he gives you 6 minutes and an expensive pill to pop, and a long, weary round of "no, that didn't work..."

You used to be able to go to your priest, but going *only* by their public pronouncements, you're more likely to get a lecture on abortion, birth control, etc than any real cure of souls. Your pastors are up to their ears in politics. So what else is left?

Support your local witch, and remember the lesson of the little kid's lucky talisman. (The kid believed it brought luck in sports. And so it did - because the kid believed it.)

Our system is broken. As is our system of delivering basic primary care.and our entire educational system for all the valiant efforts of all involved. And many, many others.

Originally Posted by Odin

I agree with you completely. I take Paxil, but I hope to get off of it eventually and have psychotherapy and practice meditation to that end.

That friend of yours getting anti-depressants for "normal" non-clinical depression, I think, is just more evidence of how much more restricted our society's notion of "normal" has become.

The normal feelings of grief, sadness and anger are unfortunately viewed as a weakness by some in our society. All we have to do is look at the TV commercials by the pharmaceutical companys to understand they prefer that we think sedation is preferable than having human emotions. The drug industry plays into the need for too many medications.

It's a sign of wisdom that you see that therapy and other healthy lifestyles are part of an emotionally healthy life.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Trouble with this ideas is that Rome is in a class by itself. There are no other civilizations in history that followed the same pattern. A sample set of one does not a trend describe.

Rome is just one of the examples of a civilizational longwave.

Spengler noticed that they follow similar developmental trends (like turnings) and are basically fractally self-similar with resepect to the overarching ideas of the culture-civilization.

Every culture-civilization is different and uniquely geography dependent.

It's a good starting point if you think that 2000-year waves exist.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I'm beginning to understand the rapid rise of New Age spiritual counselors and the like.

Yes, they fill a void.

Unfortunately, they often fill that void with junk food.

All is not lost in the field of medicine. There are doctors out there that actually care about patients and not just money. Rachel Naomi Ramen M.D. Is one of the most innovative and compassionate doctors.

Here's a short Bio:

Rachel Naomi Remen is one of the earliest pioneers in the mind/body holistic health movement and the first to recognize the role of the spirit in health and the recovery from illness. She is Co-Founder and Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program featured in the Bill Moyers PBS series, Healing and the Mind and has cared for people with cancer and their families for almost 30 years.

She is also a nationally recognized medical reformer and educator who sees the practice of medicine as a spiritual path. In recognition of her work she has received several honorary degrees and has been invited to teach in medical schools and hospitals throughout the country. Her groundbreaking holistic curricula enable physicians at all levels of training to remember their calling and strengthen their commitment to serve life.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

Rome is just one of the examples of a civilizational longwave.

Spengler noticed that they follow similar developmental trends (like turnings) and are basically fractally self-similar with resepect to the overarching ideas of the culture-civilization.

Every culture-civilization is different and uniquely geography dependent.

It's a good starting point if you think that 2000-year waves exist.

Well -- I don't. That is, I don't see anything that could possibly produce such a thing. Nor do I see any recurring long-term patterns in any civilizations current or defunct. Not very many civilizations in history have even survived as long as 2000 years, and those that have (ancient Egypt, China) don't exhibit anything like a common historical pattern; between those two for example, Egypt was a very stable, conservative society whose only disruptions came from foreign invasion and conquest, while China's history shows a recurring pattern of fragmentation and civil war followed by periods of stable central authority. Totally different. Rome showed a steady rise in power to a plateau, stagnation, and then collapse. Western Europe, a history of constant struggle among nation-states, with no single authority ever able to exert dominance over the whole civilization.

If every civilization is different and unique, then how can one identify any patterns, even in principle? The patterns would lie in those aspects that are NOT unique. While there surely are some, they don't allow the recognition of historical cycles on a grand scale. At least, not that I can see.

I've never read Spengler and I guess one of the things I'm doing is asking for a reason to do so. Can you tell me what he based his ideas on, in capsule? That might tell me if it's an idea worth exploring.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

I'm a fan of the Spenglerian analysis of cultures-civilizations. Basically, it's the "Fourth Turning" analysis for culture-civilizations.

We are in the transition from culture (where the culture actually grows) to civilization (where the culture ossifies and ultimately declines).

Currently, we are in the Late Republic period, if you want to compare us to ancient Rome.

This is where the Domaination of Money (where we currently reside) tranistitions into Force-Politics (where we are going).

It will take us about 100-200 years to complete the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengle...lization_model

What a bleak view of history! Of course, that is Oswald Spengler. I'm more a fan of Arnold Toynbee, the first historian that I ever read who made any sense other than the conventional and pedagogic role as a narrator of events, personalities, and places. Toynbee was less rigid, but he did suggest the hazard of the Universal State -- the penultimate stage of the history of a civilization (the last being its demise) -- in which a political entity encompasses a civilization and establishes a repressive and homogenized order that turns creativity into cliché. Our Western civilization has thrust off three efforts to establish a highly-centralized world order. First came that of Napoleon Bonaparte -- clearly a premature effort in view of the spectacular creativity of the nineteenth century (really, the relevant century is 1815-1914) that began in music with middle-period Beethoven and ended with early-period Stravinsky. Then came the Third Reich which, had it succeeded, would have likely put an end to any intellectual life other than antiquarian efforts while establishing a master-and-slave order that... just read The Man in the High Castle for a depiction of how things would have been. The SF novel might have been fiction, but it seems to be a fair depiction of a bleak vision of a civilization suddenly thrust into terminal rot in every possible aspect. The Soviet Union had its pompous assertion as a vanguard of a supposedly-proletarian order in which the wisest thing to be would have been an undemanding fool. Its pretensions as the Hope of All Humanity came to an end as Mikhail Gorbachev all but admitted its moral and technological failure.

So that leaves the United States, long one of the most benign Empires that the world has ever known. Maybe it would be exempt because of its democracy, tolerance, and pluralism. Yes, the United States is an Empire and has been one from its full achievement of independence in 1783, when it formally took over all lands now in the United States east of the Mississippi River except for Florida and the narrow strip of land on the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to what would become Florida. Checks and balances would stop executive despotism, almost all possible episodes of legislative gangsterism, and judicial tyranny. Most significantly, economic power remained diffuse because America was a nation of small businesses. Even the slave-owning planters who dominated the South could be described as small fish in a big sea. To be sure, those planters got the idea that their 'precious' way of life was under political attack, and we had a Civil War that decided that slavery was an abomination not to continued or be repeated. We introduced free public education and eventually allowed workers to form unions to challenge the bureaucratic power of giant corporations. We even made a hero out of Dr. Martin King, Jr.! So far, so good.

Our political weakness here is that our institutions date from pre-industrial times and are ambiguous about the potential for domination by financial power, bureaucratic elites, and mass propaganda (as in FoX Newspeak Channel and Rash Limbaugh). We have a libertarian heritage that worked very well when almost all business was small and unable to buy out the political order. But now libertarianism implies the ability of powerful people to use their economic power and media access to influence the system much as feudal lords dominated medieval kingdoms (the King typically being the biggest landowner).

We have come to a critical moment -- one that decides whether America is to be a militaristic plutocracy with a repressive order and a missionary zeal to impose its self-proclaimed glory upon much of the rest of the world -- quite possibly the entire domain of Western Civilization that includes the Americas, most of Europe (Russia could imaginably establish a limit somewhere well to the west of the western 1950 boundary of the Soviet Union through its own methods of suasion), Australia, and New Zealand. Such resembles the geographic scope of the bleak "Oceania" of Orwell's 1984.

We already see the demise of any power of working people as unions are eviscerated. Sure, we might end up with unions, but those would be the worst sorts of unions that one could have -the sorts like those in Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union that simply told workers to work harder and make greater sacrifices on behalf of their masters so that they could deserve more and hope that the masters will act out of generosity and kindness while organizing workers for mass rallies and fleecing rank-and-file workers for 'voluntary' contributions to unaccountable entities. Maybe such will be reversed in this Crisis. As giant corporations tolerate no criticism, education will be debased to rote learning and propaganda. Creative people will know well that the only lucrative and safe expression will either to resuscitate models then understood as 'classic' while avoiding any criticism of the political realities and economic order. Dissidents of any kind will be imprisoned, killed, or exiled -- if they don't sell out fast enough.

If a country like Holland chooses to prefer Russian tanks to the not-so-benign domination of American economic and political elites, then its leadership will be vilified as harshly as Fidel Castro has been.

Many of us would despise such an America. We must prevent it.