Category Archives: Nihilism

Rosh Hashanah is the first day of the New Year of the Jewish calendar. That day and the following day are holidays on which Jews everywhere celebrate the beginning of the year. But the manner of this particular Jewish celebration is very unique. The holidays main ceremony is actually shofar blowing.On the morning of the holiday, usually in the synagogue and in the midst of the prayer service, the shofar is blown a measured number of blasts. Is this how Jews celebrate the beginning of the year? What does shofar blowing express, and how is it related to Rosh Hashanah?When we study the sources and customs of the holiday, we notice the special emphasis placed on the topic of kingship. On Rosh Hashanah we declare Gods kingship in the world. Kingship is not about control. Gods control of the world is absolute and does not necessitate mans declarations. Kingship entails a certain relationship between a king and his subjects. If the subjects do not accept the kings status and what it implies, there is no kingship. God is king of the universe because we, human beings, accept His kingship and declare it.What are we busy with on Rosh Hashanah? With examining the significance of Gods kingship in the world and with anointing Him. Blowing the shofar is the high point when we stand and express through the shofar blasts that we recognize Gods kingship and our choice to be His subjects.Rosh Hashanah is considered the Day of Judgment when God decrees what kind of year each person will have. Will we merit health for the upcoming year? A good livelihood? Satisfaction? Happiness? All these questions are open and we must admit that the unknown is far greater than the known. On Rosh Hashanah, the Talmud teaches us, All the inhabitants of the world pass before the Almighty. Every person gets his own personal examination in which it is determined what his fate will be during the upcoming year. cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });The connection between these two aspects of the holiday the declaration of Gods kingship and Rosh Hashanah also being judgment day is expressed in the words of the Midrash:In the moment when the Blessed be He sits on the throne of judgment... God ascends with acclimation, at a time when Israel takes their shofarot and sounds them before the Blessed be He. God stands up from the throne of judgment and sits on the throne of mercy... and God has mercy on them and switches their treatment from the attribute of judgment to the attribute of mercy (Leviticus Rabbah 29, 3).This midrashic description connects the shofar blowing with judgment. Through the shofar blasts we succeed in switching judgment to mercy. Is this a segula, some remedy or protection? Is it magic? Not at all.When we declare at the beginning of the New Year that we accept Gods kingship, and we express this by blowing the shofar, we become Gods emissaries. We take upon ourselves the Jewish purpose of repairing the world under the kingdom of God. Gods kingship is not a spiritual concept disconnected from reality. In the world that God rules, life looks different, relationships among people are different, holiness prevails, and pettiness must disappear.Accepting Gods kingship is accepting a mission. We members of the Jewish nation carry an important message to all of humanity. The more we internalize the Jewish message embodied by the Torah and its commandments and express kiddush Hashem, sanctifying Gods name with our actions, the better we carry out our mission.Judaisms message in a nutshell is: Repairing the world under the kingdom of God. The significance of this message is important since Judaism is positioned between two opposites, between nihilism and hedonism, and between spirituality that calls for abstinence and human society. Judaism differs from both these extremes and speaks of a life of holiness within human society, of morality that does not erase the person but establishes relationships between one person and another. The kingship of God does not contradict the world and the world does not contradict the kingship of God. Judaisms expectation is that reality, as it is, will adjust to the spiritual values of holiness and morality.As the New Year approaches, we declare our faith that the kingship of God can be actualized in reality, and we declare our willingness to act so that this hope is fulfilled. We call this fulfillment, in its entirety, geula, redemption.Shana tova to the entire Jewish nation! Shana tova to the entire world! The writer is rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites.

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Rosh Hashanah: The year when hope is fulfilled - The Jerusalem Post

Story by| Jan Bronauer, Contributing Writer

Illustration by| Xie Yihui, Staff Editor

*note* : This article contains citations which can be accessed at the end.

Sometimes I wish you and your brother werent so smart because then you wouldnt break your head over all these problems, my mother once said to me. This was during a conversation when I had just returned home from my semester abroad, and when I was overflowing with new questions about the world. During that semester, I had learnt about the structural causes of issues such as racism, underdevelopment, or corruption, and I couldnt help but wonder what I was to make of this newly gained awareness. The structural nature of these issues seemed to defy any feasible solution, and one way to cope with what I learned was to question the role which wealth, education and convenience play in our lives. But this was difficult in a society where convenience is worshipped and luxury is an essential good. At the time, many things in my life seemed in flux. It seemed as if critical thinking had turned on itself and debilitated me in the process.

Conversations with my peers confirmed that I am not the only one who has experienced such debilitation during their time at Yale-NUS College. In fact, the very purpose of the Common Curriculum is to promote critical, creative and active thinking [1], thereby inherently exposing students to the risk of feeling debilitated by what they study. But we cannot say that we have not been warned.

In Philosophy and Political Thought 2, Hannah Arendt cautions us that nihilism is a danger inherent in the thinking activity itself [2]. She defines nihilism as the inversion, and not just the questioning, of the values in our society. As such, nihilism is a possible, but not inevitable, outcome of the thinking process [3]. More dangerous than nihilism, therefore, is non-thinkingthat is, the absence of questioning our preconceived values [4]. If we fail to question the content of the values and rules in our society, we risk committing actions in the name of obedience which we did not mean to commit. Therefore, Hannah Arendt warns us that nihilism is a possibility of critical thinking, but that the more dangerous prospect is not to think critically at all.

Friedrich Nietzsche, by contrast, famously declared that God is dead and announced the hour of the great contempt, when our long-held values and beliefs are dissolved. This hour seemed near as I was talking to my mother about the beliefs and values I had come to question [5]. It seemed as if I started to lose the fabric that connected me with everyone around me. I was Lu Xuns Madman; the pathological and the normal at the same time. I had shattered the true world which I had lived in throughout my childhood, and I was glaring into an abyss altogether devoid of truth. In his declaration, Nietzsche was not talking about the death of God Himself, of course, but about the realization that any true world is inherently an illusion. This realisation is the hour of the great contemptthe emergence of nihilism. But, unlike Arendt, Nietzsche tells us that nihilism is a normal condition [6] and even a necessary step towards enlightenment. It seems, then, that nihilism may be a desirable component of a liberal arts education after all.

Before jumping to this conclusion, we must understand that Nietzsche only refers to active nihilism as desirable, and explicitly rejects a passive, submissive and resigned kind of nihilism. In short, he condemns defeatism and praises vitality in embracing the uprooting of our values and beliefs. Ironically, this process of uprooting norms is the very ideal of the typical liberal arts student, but it seems to offer little purpose in the real worlda world where there is no truth to be found. This gives rise to the ultimate liberal arts contradiction: We are meant to work hard towards worldly success, yet we learn to undermine this very notion of success we are meant to work hard for.

After we become aware of this contradiction, we face a choice: Either we hold on to an illusion and achieve worldly success, or we live our life without any such success. Since I like to believe that a liberal arts education cannot possibly leave us at such an unfavorable crossroads, I propose that there is a third option: we embrace the illusion while remaining aware of its illusory nature. In other words, we maintain a subjective real world while accepting that there is no true world.

At this point, let me answer why we should concern ourselves with this talk about truth in the first place? First, the earlier we experience the hour of the great contempt, the sooner we can reconcile the abolition of the true world with our own personal lives. This entails, for instance, realizing that our dream of becoming a politician, a banker, or a musician is our own original notion of success. In this way, we tailor our own life to ourselves. Yes, this tailor-made notion of success is an illusion, but it exists in our subjective real world and is therefore inherently meaningful (insofar as our life itself is inherently meaningful).

Second, understanding the impossibility of truth makes us humbler and more resilient. For instance, if someone were to call us out for aspiring to be a banker, we can acknowledge their accusations because, in a way, they are right. There is no denying that chasing after anything in lifeeven living life itselfinevitably requires some degree of illusion. We cannot possibly defend our ambition as the right thing to do because there simply is no right thing to do. All we can say is that it is the right thing to do for us and at this particular point in time. This is clearly a subjective judgement, and so is the other persons accusation against us. But who am I to say that my notion of success is more right than theirs? Therefore, to be called out on our illusions must not surprise us; if it does, we have failed to identify the illusion as such.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, separating the true world from the real world creates conscious subjectivity; that is, subjectivity which we are aware of but choose to hold on to. Perhaps we can agree that it is oddly liberating to read a novel which we are not required to read. At last, we can let ourselves devour the pages without calculation or the fear that we missed something important. What matters most is the feeling we get from living through the plot. Life is similar. Even while knowing that things such as love, success, and joy are merely illusory pleasures, we can embrace the subjective impact they have on us. With the abolition of the true world, we have maintained a world of feelings that is untouchable, because it is subjective. Nobody can tell me whether or not I feel love for someone because this feeling is self-contained within me. The real world, then, is within each of us.

As disorienting as this time of debilitation was, I am ultimately grateful for it. I have grown more resilient and rooted in lifean illusory life, but a life nonetheless. Even if critical thinking turns on itself, who is it really that turns on our critical thinking? Correct, our critical thinking. The key is to overcome this endless process of mutual suspicion, to understand and accept the unknowability of truth, and to be satisfied with subjectivity instead. We came into this life wanting oranges, but life gave us lemons. This liberal arts education has taught me how to make lemonade.

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Nihilism or Enlightenment? My Journey to Understanding the Point of Critical Thinking - The Octant

Passion of Christ. (Wikimedia (CC BY 3.0).)

COMMENTARY: The noise of mob rule can leave no one at peace a peace which is only found, ultimately, in union with Christ.

The present civil unrest in American U.S. society is the culmination of a long descent from the Judeo-Christian ethic a descent which began in earnest with the onslaught of World War I. Europe committed spiritual suicide in a war which led to casualties on a massive level and ended in an equally devastating pandemic of influenza (which historians note, was spurred on, in part, by the close-quartering and mass-movement of troops throughout the U.S. and Europe during and after the war).

World War I was the fruit of nihilism the denial of objective truth already begun in the 19th century. I have used the word nihilism for this denial because when nothing is absolutely true then there is no certain path in either reason or faith. Pope emeritus Benedict XVI referred to this as the dictatorship of relativism. Anarchy is its political equivalent.

The denial of objectivity was characterized by two things a century ago which have gained more ascendancy with the passage of time: the discovery of relativity in science which indirectly led to a relativity regarding all truth and especially moral truth. (As Catholic historian Paul Johnson notes, Einstein himself protested against making this leap from objective science to the moral realm.) ````Nonetheless, however unfairly, Einsteins scientific discovery was coupled with Sigmund Freuds psychological discoveries, which together with the rising popularity of Marxism and Darwinism, brought the whole issue of personal responsibility into question. Indeed, the philosophical relativism of the 19th century embodied by Marxism and Darwinism, affirmed that all universal truths were either a result of the projection of human need or human emotion or some invisible and inhuman force but not objective thought grounded in sense experience and in the fact that a transcendent God does exist and does take an interest in human affairs.

Relative to Catholicism

Naturally, then, this denial of objective truth, when applied to Catholicism, has had very destructive results. Reflecting on this, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gave a talk published as Difficulties confronting the faith in Europe Today (May 2, 1989) when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in which he recounted that there were three basic areas of difficulty in Catholic doctrine today caused by this relativism of truth.

The first regards the complete disappearance of the doctrine of creation from theology. The demise of metaphysics goes hand in hand with the displacement of the teaching on creation. Their place has been taken by a philosophy of evolution (which I would like to distinguish from the scientific hypothesis of evolution). This philosophy intends to discard the laws of nature so that the management of its development may make a better life possible. Nature, which ought really to be the teacher along this path, is instead a blind mistress, combining by unwitting chance what man is supposed to simulate now with full consciousness (Difficulties). The results of this denial blur the distinction between God and the world so that the world becomes God.

The second area is a new idea of Christ. If one denies a transcendent deity and yet claims to be a Christian what does one do with Christ? He says there are two models, both equally disturbing. One sees Jesus as just a good middle class male who preaches a simple doctrine of love and pacifism, and never challenges anyone to anything. The other is the failed revolutionary. Now in both these versions there runs a common thread, namely, that we must be saved not through the Cross, but from the Cross. Atonement and forgiveness are misunderstandings from which Christianity has to be freed (Difficulties).

The third unfortunate consequence is the denial of the afterlife. If there is no transcendent God and Jesus need not have suffered the cross to redeem us then the afterlife described in Scripture is one we create here ourselves by better social structures. This is the better world of Utopia. Where the Kingdom of God is reduced to the better world of tomorrow, the present will ultimately assert its rights against some imaginary future. The escape into the world of drugs is the logical consequence of the idolizing of Utopia. Since this has difficulty in arriving, man draws it to himself or throws himself headlong into it (Difficulties). Young people have been imbued with this escape from reality because there is nothing certain they can hold on to as truth.

Toss Out the Cross?

The results of the new Christology, which presents a Christ without a Cross is to humanize Jesus so much he ceases to be divine. The Cross and all his suffering during the passion become a regrettable incident he could have avoided. The Cross is called absurdity itself, not in the sense of St. Paul who contrasts its higher wisdom with Greek philosophy, but in the sense that it is senseless. Jesus did not choose the Cross but only suffered the humiliation of Golgotha because the politics of the time were not ready for his revolution. As a result, he threw himself into the blackness of the unknown as what might be supposed an irrational act of faith which itself is anti-intellectual. He hopes against hope that God will make sense of this meaninglessness and his cry, My God, my God why have you forsaken me? expresses the fact that he really has no idea why he is there.

This interpretation of Jesuss passion and death culminating in an ultimate cry to his father is completely contrary to Catholic teaching on the subject. Jesus did not have faith because he did not need faith. He is the only person in Scripture to whom faith is not attributed. Traditional Catholic theology, even expressed in the teaching John Paul II, affirms that Jesus has the vision of God in heaven in his human mind from the moment of his conception. He does not merit heaven for himself but only for us. He is always in command even in his passion. No one takes my life from me, I have power to lay it down and take it up again. (John. 10:18)

Though Jesus feels abandoned on the Cross does he think this to be the case in what we call his higher intelligence? How could he be deserted by God by himself? He cannot cease being the second Person of the Trinity, nor God made man, nor a sinner, nor lose the Beatific Vision once he has it. He is only abandoned externally to the will of his enemies and though he feels this deeply (the Passion was a matter of horrific suffering) he knows he is not. Catholicism has always expressed this as: God withdrew his protection but preserved the union. The cry from the Cross is the first verse of Psalm 22 and if one reads the psalm through, the innocent psalmist is suffering terribly, but his concluding verses are very far from a cry of despair. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord! proclaims David near the end of the poem.

Nowhere Peace but in Christ

For those who do not believe in the afterlife or the Beatific Vision, their attempts to create Utopia lead to a dead end. Pope Benedict thought it was to explain their despair of saving themselves that modern culture has taken refuge in drugs. More recently, and at an alarmingly increasing rate, secular society has indulged in a new sort of drug: Rage. Rage which destroys the other as other (thus, racism, abortion, etc.) is a convenient scapegoat for the inability the impossibility to save oneself. Stupid rage which destroys property and society is like a drug and like a drug it must be controlled. As with the other deadly sins pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth-- if one must ascetically challenge and control sex, one must control anger with an aesthetic discipline grounded in the cardinal virtues. To strive for such virtues, however, requires a return to objective truth which culminates, theologically speaking, in the Cross and resurrection.

If faith is true, then reason can enter the soul again. Satan loves noise because it rejects and corrupts the ability to think. The noise of mob rule can leave no one at peace, and even if protests at injustice are accompanied by the best motives, the noise in a soul inhibits the objectivity necessary to carry out such protests with peace of mind and peace of soul a peace which is only found, ultimately, in union with Christ.

Dominican Father Brian Mulladys latest book is Captivated by the Master: A Theological Consideration of Jesus Christ (EWTN).

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Nihilism and the Passion of Our Lord - National Catholic Register

How about crowd sourcing a timeline for all of Trump's enablers?

Kingdaddy Monday, July 20, 2020 12 comments

Steven Taylors concise summary of Trumps mishandling of the pandemic is extremely useful. I would propose that we need the same type of timeline for his enablers. Not only must Trump go, but so too all of the people who gave him the gas can and matches, then stood by as he burned down the country. What were they doing at key moments since January 2017?

While the list of enablers is quite long, perhaps it would be sufficiently manageable if we were to limit it, for starters, to the US Congress. Take, for example, US Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colorado). As the screenshot shown above from his web site suggests, he is a very typical Republican senator who, among other typical behaviors, trumpets his ability to bring federal benefits to his state, and enjoys being photographed with the troops, a folksy shorthand to young men and women who have committed to putting themselves in harms way in defense of the rest of us.

Just a couple of weeks ago though, due to the Trumpian time dilation effect, it feels like months a major story concerning the troops broke. Russian agents were paying the Taliban bounties for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan, and the current regime had done nothing about it. After the story appeared in The New York Times, Trump and White House officials focused on defending themselves against accusations that presidents should read their daily intelligence briefings. They did not state whether would be any action against Russia.

What was Cory Gardner talking about in the days after the story broke? In his Twitter feed and his Facebook posts (pretty much the same content), Gardner said nothing about the Russian bounties. Gardner did continue to promote his earlier idea to label Russia a sponsor of state terrorism. To his credit, Cory Gardner after the Times published the story did not undercut past Cory Gardner. Unfortunately, he also let Trump off the hook, saying that Congressional Democrats had the same information. Of course, if that were true, he is implicitly assuming that they had the obligation to read it, and paid them the backhanded compliment that they probably lived up to that high standard. He is also implying that the President of the United States has no more obligation to review intelligence and act on it than a member of the House or Senate.

It did not take me long to unearth how Gardner enabled Trump through the painfully familiar pattern of first ignoring something horrible that Trump did, then attempting to shift blame when confronted with that fact. It would not be hard to expand that effort to more senators, and more moments like these. Imagine if there were a crowd-sourced effort to map every senators response or non-response to a terrible Trump action or statement. Children in cages, betraying the Kurds, hawking hydroxychloroquine, violating the Hatch Act on the behalf of a Trump-friendly bean tycoon, pardoning Roger Stone, saying that white supremacists included some very fine people, chasing non-existent election fraud in a transparent effort to suppress voting, firing the FBI director for not swearing loyalty to Trump personally, forcefully clearing Lafayette Square of peaceful protesters so that he could hold a Bible for the camerasWhat was the senator from the great state of [fill in the blank] doing that day, and in the days afterwards?

If it were not for this group, Trump would be a toxic clown, instead of an active threat to public health, the economy, Americas standing in the world, and our political system. They deserve just as much scrutiny of their cynical and pointless efforts to stay in office, in lieu of what they could have done to prevent these calamities, as does the Current Occupant.

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A Timeline Of Nihilism And Fecklessness - Outside The Beltway - Mobile Edition

Your TV GPS, Globe TV critic Matthew Gilberts look at the week ahead in television, appears every Monday morning on BostonGlobe.com. Todays column covers July 20-26.

WHAT IM WATCHING THIS WEEK

1. The corporate setting can be soul-crushing, as Dilbert, The Office, and Better Off Ted have noted. But Comedy Centrals cheeky Corporate, one of my pet favorites, takes that idea to new blackly comic heights. Matt and Jake (played by co-creators Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman) are junior execs in training at the nefarious Hampton DeVille company, a kind of Amazon whose slogan is We make everything. The guys know theyre buying into evil, but their cynicism and passivity keep them in the race. Its nihilism at its most entertaining. The third and final season is starts Wednesday on Comedy Central at 10:30 p.m.

2. COVIDs Hidden Toll, the latest installment of PBSs Frontline, looks into the immigrants and undocumented workers who help maintain Americas food supply during the pandemic. Workers talk about having to choose between their health and their jobs, as well as what they say is a lack of protection from their employers. Its on WGBH 2 on Tuesday at 10 p.m.

3. Exploitation? Explication? Revelation? Love on the Spectrum is a new reality show about the world of dating for young adults on the autism spectrum. It joins Born This Way, The Good Doctor, The A Word, Parenthood, Atypical, and Speechless in bringing special needs into the mainstream. Netflix will make the five hour-long episodes available on Wednesday.

4. Get ready for tears. The Dog House sets up dogs with humans to see if theyre compatible. Each episode shows the arrivals of pets at a rural British rescue organization, tells their stories of abandonment, and looks into the lives of the people who might adopt them. Cameras in the pen record the first meetings between the dogs and their prospective new owners. Its on HBO Max on Thursday.

5. Rage ritual, anyone? Nine strangers, each undergoing stress, attend a wellness retreat in Costa Rica in a new unscripted series called Lost Resort. They work with a team of alternative healers who push them to their limits, with rage rituals and vulnerability circles. Premiering on TBS at 10 p.m. on Thursday, the reality show is from the producers of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and will of course feature hookups and breakups along with all the healing.

CHANNEL SURFING

Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia A limited series about Mafia families in New York in the 1970s and 80s and the feds trying to take them down. Netflix, Wednesday

The Pale Tourist Jim Gaffigan delivers a new stand-up set. Amazon, Friday

Rogue Trip Bob Woodruff and his 27-year-old son, Mack, travel to overlooked destinations. Disney+, Friday

RECENT REVIEWS

I May Destroy You An intense, intricate series about sexual trauma. HBO

Father Soldier Son A complex documentary portrait of a wounded warrior and his young boys. Netflix

P-Valley A compelling drama series about the workers at a Mississippi Delta strip club. Starz

Little Voice A musical rom-com series featuring songs by Sara Bareilles. Apple TV+

Stateless A six-part drama about life in the dirty, bureaucratically impacted limbo of an Australian refugee camp, featuring Cate Blanchett. Netflix

Ill Be Gone in the Dark A docu-series about true-crime author Michelle McNamara and her search for the Golden State Killer. HBO

Perry Mason The legendary attorney, played by Matthew Rhys, gets a backstory in this series, to mixed effect. HBO

Love, Victor A sweet, somewhat simplistic coming-out series aimed at young adults. Hulu

Laurel Canyon A two-part docu-series about the vibrant L.A. music scene in the 60s and 70s. Epix

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.

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This weeks TV: Corporate humor, dating on the spectrum, and dogs seeking forever homes - The Boston Globe

Numerous criticisms of medical science have been articulated in recent years. Some critics argue that spurious disease categories are being invented, and existing disease categories expanded, for the aim of profit. Others say that the benefits of most new drugs are minimal and typically exaggerated by clinical research, and that the harms of these drugs are extensive and typically underestimated by clinical research.

Still others point to problems with the research methods themselves, arguing that those once seen as gold standards in clinical research randomised trials and meta-analyses are in fact malleable and have been bent to serve the interests of industry rather than patients. Here is how the chief editor of The Lancet medical journal summarised these criticisms in 2015:

Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.

These problems arise because of a few structural features of medicine. A prominent one is the profit incentive. The pharmaceutical industry is extremely profitable, and the fantastic financial gains to be made from selling drugs create incentives to engage in some of the practices above. Another prominent feature of medicine is the hope and the expectation of patients that medicine can help them, coupled with the training of physicians to actively intervene, by screening, prescribing, referring or cutting.

Another feature is the wildly complex causal basis of many diseases, which hampers the effectiveness of interventions on those diseases taking antibiotics for a simple bacterial infection is one thing, but taking antidepressants for depression is entirely different. In my book Medical Nihilism (2018), I brought all these arguments together to conclude that the present state of medicine is indeed in disrepair.

How should medicine face these problems? I coined the term gentle medicine to describe a number of changes that medicine could enact, with the hope that they would go some way to mitigating those problems. Some aspects of gentle medicine could involve small modifications to routine practice and present policy, while others could be more revisionary.

Lets start with clinical practice. Physicians could be less interventionist than they currently are. Of course, many physicians and surgeons are already conservative in their therapeutic approach, and my suggestion is that such therapeutic conservatism ought to be more widespread. Similarly, the hopes and expectations of patients should be carefully managed, just as the Canadian physician William Osler (1849-1919) counselled: One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine. Treatment should, generally, be less aggressive, and more gentle, when feasible.

Another aspect of gentle medicine is how the medical research agenda is determined. Most research resources in medicine belong to industry, and its profit motive contributes to that obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance. It would be great if we had more experimental antibiotics in the research pipeline, and it would be good to have high-quality evidence about the effectiveness of various lifestyle factors in modulating depression (for example). Similarly, it would be good to have a malaria vaccine and treatments for what are sometimes called neglected tropical diseases, the disease burden of which is massive.

The current coronavirus pandemic has displayed how little we know about some very basic but immensely important questions, such as the transmission dynamics of viruses, the influence of masks on mitigating disease transmission, and the kinds of social policies that can effectively flatten epidemic curves. But there is little industry profit to be made pursuing these research programmes. Instead, great profit can be made by developing me-too drugs a new token of a class of drugs for which there already exist multiple tokens. A new selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) could generate great profit for a company, though it would bring little benefit for patients, given that there are already many SSRIs on the market (and, in any case, their demonstrated effect sizes are extremely modest, as I argued in a recent Aeon essay).

Also read: Can We Push Pharma Innovation Without Giving Away Pricey Patents?

A policy-level change, for which some now argue, is to reduce or eliminate the intellectual property protection of medical interventions. This would have several consequences. It would, obviously, mitigate the financial incentives that appear to be corrupting medical science. It would probably also mean that new drugs would be cheaper. Certainly, the antics of people such as Martin Shkreli would be impossible. Would it also mean that there would be less innovative medical research and development?

This is a tired argument often raised to defend intellectual property laws. However, it has serious problems. The history of science shows that major scientific revolutions typically occur without such incentives think of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Breakthroughs in medicine are no different. The most important breakthroughs in medical interventions antibiotics, insulin, the polio vaccine were developed in social and financial contexts that were completely unlike the context of pharmaceutical profit today. Those breakthroughs were indeed radically effective, unlike most of the blockbusters today.

Another policy-level change would be to take the testing of new pharmaceuticals out of the hands of those who stand to profit from their sale. A number of commentators have argued that there should be independence between the organisation that tests a new medical intervention and the organisation that manufactures and sells that intervention. This could contribute to raising the evidential standards to which we hold medical interventions, so that we can better learn their true benefits and harms.

Returning to the issue of the research agenda, we also need to have more rigorous evidence about gentle medicine itself. We have a mountain of evidence about the benefits and harms of initiating therapy this is the point of the vast majority of randomised trials today. However, we have barely any rigorous evidence about the effects of terminating therapy. Since part of gentle medicine is a call to be more therapeutically conservative, we ought to have more evidence about the effects of drug discontinuation.

For example, in 2010 researchers in Israel applied a drug discontinuation programme to a group of elderly patients taking an average of 7.7 medications. By strictly following treatment protocols, the researchers withdrew an average of 4.4 medications per patient. Of these, only six drugs (2 per cent) were re-administered due to symptom recurrence. No harms were observed during the drug discontinuations, and 88 per cent of the patients reported feeling healthier. We need much more evidence like this, and of higher quality (randomised, blinded).

Gentle medicine doesnt mean easy medicine. We might learn that regular exercise and healthy diets are more effective than many pharmaceuticals for a wide range of diseases, but regular exercise and healthy eating are not easy. Perhaps the most important health-preserving intervention during the present coronavirus pandemic is social distancing, which is completely non-medical (insofar as it doesnt involve medical professionals or medical treatments), though social distancing requires significant personal and social costs.

In short, as a response to the many problems in medicine today, gentle medicine suggests changes to clinical practice, the medical research agenda, and policies pertaining to regulation and intellectual property.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under a Creative Commons license.

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What Is Gentle Medicine? - The Wire

Amid the pandemic lockdown, streaming platforms have become the storehouse of zombie thrillers. Not all that long ago, Netflix Brazil presented to us their own remake of Charlie Brooker's 'Deadset' titled 'Reality Z' and now joining the slate of the genre is Netflix Brazil's second original, 'Kissing Game' aka 'Boca-a-Boca'. It sounds lie your regular teen drama, a name raunchy enough to flock bored teens to the streaming platform for an easy Friday binge. But while the satirical coldness of 'Reality Z' isn't prevalent in the Esmir Filho thriller, there's an in general nihilism and rebellion sprinkled throughout the six-part miniseries, that burns slow enough to keep one on the edge about what exactly the source of this virus, and who the real villain is.

A sheer mirror of the social issues plaguing a ranch-dependent rural town, 'Kissing Game' puts under the microscope more than just the dangerous virus that starts attacking teenagers after a night of drugs and raving gone wrong. It tackles social media and the adult society's response to a crisis that the world is now all too familiar with, through a story that even though not exactly worth a must-watch recommendation, does deserve its due nod for being so strangely unique.

The story kicks off with the free-spirited Bel dragging her relatively introverted best friend Fran (Iza Moreira) to a local rave in the village on the outskirts of their town. Soon after, Bel is traumatized by a growing numbness in her body and a dark bruise around her mouth. She gets admitted to the local hospital but nobody can figure out just what is afflicting her. Bel's situation worsens as she turns into what can be labeled as this show's version of zombies, who somewhat glow in the dark. At least their eyes and veins do. It is soon revealed that the disease was contracted from the rave and everybody is at risk. Why? Because of the titular game of course; Bel kissed a stranger at the party and thus arose what they keep calling a 'kissing orgy'. Everybody kissed everybody and it's a lot of making out under neon lights and against slow-mo transcendental music. Sadly, as aesthetic as the scenes were probably meant to be this whole lot of kissing becomes hard to overlook.

But once you're able to overlook it, Filho and his cast of what looks like seasoned actors create a fluid web of secrets and mysteries, as they indulge in seeking answers to questions their parents want to stay blind to. Social media works its charm at exposing all the nitty-gritty of the disease and how one of their own contracted it. Soon it becomes a story of outcasts and rebellion as teenagers do what they do best and both overexaggerate and demonize people who don't pander to their silly mockery of the disease. There's also an ongoing mystery about the school principal's daughter that is revealed only at the end of the penultimate episode and surprisingly enough - there's a cure - or an antidote to living with this virus, because get this - it targets teenagers the worse because they are most prone to suppressing their feelings.

As the story progresses, people flock to natural cures and apothecaries in the wild as a unique amalgamation of the village life and the city coming together to find a cure to the spreading epidemic - perhaps a commentary on how instead of outcasting, compassion and support should be the tone in today's times. Filho also notices the power and privileged enjoyed by the rich as they continue to exploit the not-so-privileged in the name of family and economy whenever it is convenient for them. The rebellion comes from the teenagers who just want to have fun, smoking up and getting laid - something their very religious society vehemently condemns, especially if they are gay. Bullying and hate crimes shine through as well, binding together all the contributing factors that strive to divide the society at a time when they all must come together, and go back to their roots to find peace and help. And somehow all of this blends together to make for a thought-provoking, if not compelling watch.

In its own way, 'Kissing Game' is reminiscent of the 2014 horror, 'It Follows', where people were being targetted for having sex. The Brazilian thriller is also a funny reminder for breaking social distancing norms and works best for people who 'don't enjoy drinking other people's saliva', as character Alex Nero (Caio Horowicz) puts it. Yet it is the narrative being that from a teen's point of view that strikes the most. Fran, a possibly closeted lesbian battling her own reserved trauma of watching her twin die at the age of nine, is both mature and vulnerable at the same time. As her mother reflects while looking over an unconscious Fran lying in isolation at the hospital, "I knew this one would cry only when she had to." It is these touching moments, the desperation of family's doing their utmost to save their children, and the consideration for teens raising an alarm that strikes a chord. More than god complex, these kids are driven by the knowledge of apathy their parents are known to possess. So it's no wonder they take matters in their own hands, trying to find a cure for the plaguing virus.

'Kissing Game' is now available for streaming on Netflix.

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'Kissing Game' Review: Drugs, nihilism and a mysterious virus make this Netflix thriller stand out - MEAWW

By Roger Bowen

the White House will be adorned by a downright moron

H.L. Mencken

My partner of 50-plus years and I live at one of the most remote spots on Americas East Coast, also one of the most beautiful. Our small fishing village gives genuine meaning to the heavenly words peace and quiet. We do hear the occasional gunshot during the fall deer hunting season and fireworks on July Fourth, but these noxious interruptions to our psychic balance mercifully pass. When the noises end the bald eagles, sharp-shinned hawks, snowshoe hares, foxes, bobcats, chickadees and chipmunks come out of hiding and life as we love it returns in all its fullness.

COVID-19 thus far has been tolerable. Only 18 souls in our county have been infected; just one has died. Nevertheless, most residents and visitors wear masks whenever they travel to the nearby shire town, they practice social distancing, they wash their hands after every visit to the local post office or grocery store, and they avoid crowds. Our neighbors prudence and regard for community welfare reassures us that we live exactly where we should.

More worrying to us are the health and safety of our two children and two grandchildren. One child lives just north of Boston, the other, and mother of our grandies, lives on Long Island while her husband works in Manhattan. They all hope to visit us at the end of this month. It is an annual ritual that enriches the spirits of us all. Several years ago, when our grandson was just 5 years old and his baby sister only 2, he placed his kiddy rocker on the deck looking out onto the Atlantic, and quietly uttered, You know, Maine is the only place where I can really relax.

What frightens me more than the virus is our President and his most ardent supporters. Trump is a philosophical nihilist who has no firm convictions about anything other than his own glorification. His nihilism has been embraced by his diehard base. They are the ones who defiantly proclaim that they can defy government mandates to wear a mask because they are free, even as they fasten their seat belts, pay taxes, send their children to school and obey the laws of civil society.

To date, Trump has told them what they want to hear: wearing or not wearing a mask is a personal choice made by freedom-loving individuals; CDC guidelines are voluntary; malarial medication and Lysol kill the virus and somehow the virus will magically disappear on its own accord. Thats leadership.

They believe Trump when he describes the Black Lives Matter movement as manipulated by radical leftist fascists; they believed Trump when he said some of the racists in Charlottesville are good people. They believe Trump when he tells them that his tax reform benefits every American; Wall Street just smiled. They believe him when he denies he is Putins puppet, when he denies being briefed about Russia paying the Taliban a bounty for killing American soldiers, when he promises to make America great again, etc. Trump has told over 18,000 lies since assuming office and his base seems to have swallowed most of them. One of the great elitist cynics of the 20th century, H L Mencken, once wrote: No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain people.

Americas Bill of Rights was written to protect Americans from government overreach and to enshrine the rights of the individual. Now as never before, at least in my lifetime, have the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and to redress grievances meant more. Of course, rights are meaningless unless you exercise them.

Now is the time to prove Mencken was mistaken. Do not be taken in by Trumps lies, listen to the CDC experts and vote this November to remove Trump from office. Our democracy is at stake. And I want our grandchildren to grow up unencumbered by fears, of COVID and of the egotist occupying the White House.

Roger Bowen held nonpartisan elective offices in Gouldsboro for 10 years. He currently works (remotely) for a Washington, D.C., higher education nonprofit.

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Lets turn the tide this November - The Ellsworth American

During the past few years before, I had struggled withand then firmly said goodbye tothe Catholicism of my upbringing, and I was searching for a new philosophy of meaning that did not seem to depend on so many leaps of faith.

Introduction

When I was in the second year of my undergraduate degree, I was utterly enamored with the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. It would not be overstating it to say I thought he was the greatest philosopher in history (not that I had read that many then!). Perhaps the timing in my own life contributed. During the past few years before, I had struggled withand then firmly said goodbye tothe Catholicism of my upbringing, and I was searching for a new philosophy of meaning that did not seem to depend on so many leaps of faith. Heideggerand, to a lesser extent, Friedrich Nietzscheseemed to promise just that. In their philosophies was thinking that directly and consistently spoke about Being, existence, nihilism, and many of the other big spiritual questions that consumed me. At the same time, my formal studies were dedicated to human rights law and cosmopolitanism, much of it inspired by the horrors of the Holocaust, which had liquidated millions of Jews, LGBTQ persons, Roma, and others. So imagine my horror upon discovering that two of my intellectual heroes were so closely aligned with the Nazi movement; worse, Heidegger had actually joined the Nazi Party and had insisted others do the same. Needless to say, I took considerable comfort from authors such as Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida, who insisted that there was no need to let this association cloud ones appreciation for Heidegger as a philosopher. One simply needed to detach the treasure trove of philosophical riches from the nasty politics, which were not that important anyways.

Ronald Beiners excellent, recent book Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right would no doubt have been a disappointment to my younger self, who was determined to insulate his intellectual heroes from reprisal. Beiner insists that we need to take the problems of Nietzsche and Heideggers politics far more seriously than we typically do. This is particularly true for progressive thinkers, who have been strangely willing to draw liberally from the two German firebrands, while ignoring the reactionary bent of their views. Troubling though this may be, Beiners case is very compelling. By the end, one is left with little doubt that Nietzsche and Heideggers politics needs to be seriously rethought.

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Far Right

The great majority of men have no right to life, and serve only to disconcert the elect among our race; I do not yet grant the unfit that right. There are even unfit peoples.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

For a long time, the standard approach of progressive admirers of Nietzsche and Heidegger has been something halfway between creative interpretation and acting as a public relations agent. Nietzsche and Heidegger were not political thinkers, the line goes. They were concerned with metaphysics, the history of philosophy, the problem of nihilism, and other issues far beyond the nitty gritty of the political realm. Yes, they do occasionally make problematic statements, and there is that little embarrassment of Heidegger joining the Nazi party and making anti-Semitic remarks. However, it is important to remember that they grew up as rural Germans in conservative households and simply held many of the unfortunate but predictable prejudices shared by most men and women of their time. When invoking their work, make the requisite apologias and then move on to discussing the real philosophical meat.

Beiner minces no words in insisting that we stop relying on these well-worn tropes. He points out that many of the more ambitious commentators on the far-right, including Richard Spencer, have long found a great deal of intellectual solace in Nietzsche and Heidegger. And Beiner suggests that it is time to accept that there are reasons for this attraction. As Beiner puts it:

Highly relevant to the contemporary neofascist revival is the fact that since the Enlightenment, a line of important thinkers has considered life in liberal modernity to be profoundly dehumanizing. Thinkers in this category include, but are not limited to, Maistre, Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, and Heidegger. For such thinkers, liberal modernity is so humanly degrading that one ought to (if one could) undo the French Revolution and its egalitarian ideal and perhaps cancel out the whole moral legacy of Christianity. For all of them, hierarchy and rootedness are more morally compelling than equality and individual liberty; democracy diminishes our humanity rather than elevating it. We are unlikely to understand why fascism is still kicking around in the twenty-first century unless we are able to grasp why certain intellectuals of the early twentieth century gravitated towards fascism

From here, Beiner does a deep dive into Nietzsche and Heideggers work that spans several hundred pages. He points out that the conventional excuse that they were largely disinterested in politics does not bear out when examining their writings closely. Nietzsche wrote voluminously on history, morality, and civilizational traits, with plenty of commentary on contemporary 19th century politics peppered throughout. He was also infamously sexist, famously declaring in Thus Spoke Zarathustragoest thou to woman? Bring a whip. In his 1889 work Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche even comes to mourn the decline of the patriarchal family, claiming that all rationality has clearly vanished from modern marriagethe rationalist of marriagethat lay in the husbands sole juridical responsibility, which gave marriage a center of gravity, while today it limps on both legs. He endlessly critiques the vulgar egalitarianism of liberal modernity, invoking a more ancient ideal of a noble aristocracy that rose above the mediocrity of the herd and its banal needs. Nietzsche was also unafraid to call for force to bring about an end to liberalism, constantly invoking martial rhetoric when describing the new philosophers who would bring about the future. By the end of Beiners long chapter on the formidable German, he has assembled a damning array of textual evidence showing that whatever else he was, Nietzsche was a reactionary figure. And he was a figure who condemned a huge array of modern political systems for their egalitarianism and soft concern for the well-being of the unworthy mediocrities. Nietzsche desired for these political systems to be replaced by harder, stratified hierarchies, where the strong would be uninhibited by obligations towards the weakwhether these weak be women, the sick, a wide variety of other cultures, etc.

Beiners case against Heidegger is less rhetorically provocativein part because one rarely sees Nietzsches flights of rhetorical excess in dense technical works such as Being and Time. Nevertheless, Heideggers work is, in many respects, even more disturbing. Nietzsche never lived to see his work bastardized by the Nazis in films such as Triumph of the Will, which featured Adolf Hitler descending from the clouds like a modern Zarathustra trucking down his mountain. Heidegger, though, not only joined the Nazi Party; he actively worked to further its ends for several years. Even after being sidelined and growing more conflicted in the late 1930s, Heidegger never left the Party until it ceased to exist following the Allied occupation of Germany. Heidegger never apologized for his involvement or offered much in the way of an explanation, beyond some tactless whataboutism-style arguments chiding the Allies for the damage wrought against the German people.

Beyond these now well-known biographical facts, Beiner delves into Heideggers philosophy for an explanation for his damning political decisions. Perhaps the most original analysis is his take on Heideggers 1946 Letter on Humanism, which was written and published shortly after the Second World War in response to Sartres existentialism. Beiner reads Heidegger as offering a rather strange history of Western civilization as read through the filter of its philosophers. Modern times are radically banal because we have been influenced by second-rate thinkers who have forgotten to think Being. This is, of course, a classic Heideggerian injunction, which is also legendarily obscure. As Beiner approaches it, Heidegger sees modernity as radically fallen since it places the human being at the center of Being itself. The consequence is that we no longer shudder at the mystery of existence but, instead, appropriate the world for our vulgar and selfish purposes. This explains why in his 1953 book Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger castigated liberal capitalism and communism as metaphysically the same. Despite all of the overstated differences between liberal defenders of capitalism and their opponents on the political left, both ultimately agree that the point of existence is to more efficiently design and distribute better refrigerators.

By contrast, to truly think Being we need to exist in strikingly unmodern environmentslike Heideggers beloved Black Forest; and we would need to engage in a more authentic way of living with the world as a whole, unmediated by the selfishness of humanistic reason. Beiner points out that Heidegger often tries to cast this in humble, pastoral termsinvoking images of German peasants and soldiers with a distinct capacity to commune with Being. But this humility concealed a deep-rooted arrogance and ethnocentrism. The converse of Heideggers noble and conservative German peasants, who are in touch with being, is the rest of the world, which is radically fallen and incapable of producing anything of great value. Only the German volk, for Heidegger, was capable of enacting the spiritual renewal of Europe, which is why Heidegger supported the Third Reich until its dying days.

Most disturbing in all of this is Heideggers lack of repentance for such a colossal error, which was excused or even justified by an appeal to philosophical pretension. In his posthumous works, one sees Heidegger musing that one must approach history in epochal termsand that the fullness of time will vindicate his decisions. We can only hope that, like many of Heideggers prophecies, this turns out to be untrue.

Conclusion

The one weakness of Beiners book is that he never spends much time connecting his analysis of reactionary philosophers to the contemporary era and to the return of the far-right. There are some scattered comments on how Nietzsche and Heideggers work has been picked up and interpreted by figures such as Spencer and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. However, for the most part, the reader is left to draw the connections independently, which is somewhat frustrating given the promise of the title and the initial chapter. But this fact does not detract from what is an exhilarating and crisp intellectual takedown of two major philosophers. Beiner stresses that his critiques should not be taken as a recommendation to ignore or not read Nietzsche and Heidegger. He points out his own deep fascination with their work, and he encourages the reader to learn from it what one may. But Beiner is all too correct that one ought not try to foist a politically correct version of these two German philosophers on the world, stripped of all the nasty and worrying politics. Nietzsche and Heidegger may have been brilliant men, but they were also aligned with some of the most sinister movements of their time. Wrestling honestly with that fact can help us better understand our own strange politics.

Matt McManus is a professor of politics at Whitman College and the author of The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism, among other books. He can be added on Twitter via @mattpolprof

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Review: Ronald Beiner's Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right - Merion West

In The Six Grandfathers, Mount Rushmore, and our national identity July 8, ECH editor Ray Miller-Still mentions the Sioux name for Mount Rushmore no less than eight times.

He goes on to list the sins of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. What a pity. The writer correctly points out that the four images were originally conceived to represent the founding, expansion, preservation and unification of the United States. I would guess that most visitors to the site understand that. Some people apparently now believe that statues, carvings and other images of historical Americans are similar (in a way) to the saints of the Catholic Church, i.e. that they are to be personally hallowed because of their perfection, but that is not true in the case of American icons they are not saints. Their images represent an idea and an ideal most often related to an accomplishment intended to invoke inspiration, aspiration and appreciation but not veneration.

Unfortunately it seems that we have lost the ability to consider this type of nuance, subtlety and ambiguity in our national discussions. What a pity. About 10 years ago, I was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens entitled Our Incompetent Civilization. The principles he cited are timeless, namely that there are limits to virtue and that while we must learn from history we cannot let it cripple us. As we try to cleanse our history we go too far, we inflict a deeply debilitating wound on ourselves a self loathing that is polarizing and immobilizing. What a pity.

Orwell said, The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their own history. The high priests of the new totalitarianism preach this gospel of nihilism. Theyre unaware that their scripture and orthodoxy are not new, it never works, it leads to destruction but I fear we will travel down this dangerous path anew. Again, what a pity.

Brian DiNielli

Enumclaw

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