ShrinkWrapped

Decadence

def:

1. deterioration, esp of morality or culture; decay; degeneration

2. the state reached through such a process

Anthropologists have pointed to evidence of the reverential treatment of the deceased as one of the first signs of humanity's advance from the primitive to a nascent civilized state.  In Judaism, for example, the body of the deceased is treated with the utmost care and reverence:

Jewish Death and Funeral Rituals

While the preservation of life in Judaism is of paramount importance, taking precedence over nearly all other priorities and observances, death is not therefore abhorred or devalued. Instead, death is seen as a part of life and a part of God's plan. The extensive mourning rituals in Judaism do not indicate a rejection or protest of death, but demonstrate the great value Judaism places on life in general and the life of each individual person.

Upon the death of a Jew, the eyes are closed, the body is covered and laid on the floor, and candles are lit next to it. The body is never left alone as a sign of respect. Those who stay with the body are called shomerim (guards). Eating, drinking, or performing mitzvot are prohibited near the body, as such actions would mock the person who is no longer able to do such things.

In Jewish law, being in the presence of a dead body causes ritual uncleanness. Thus a kohein (member of the priestly family) may not be in the presence of a corpse, and those who have been must wash their hands before entering a home, whether or not they actually touched the body.

Most Jewish communities have a special group of volunteers, the "holy society" (chevra kaddisha) whose job is to care for the dead. This work holds great merit since those they serve can never repay them. They are responsible for washing the body and preparing for burial in accordance with Jewish custom. (For more information on the chevra kaddisha, see this PBS article.)

A few weeks ago I was at a meeting with a member of the local chevra kaddisha, and was struck by the spiritual preparation she engaged in prior to even encountering the body.

At one time it was universally accepted in the heirs to Judeo-Christian Civilization that each life was precious; for most, the idea that a Creator had endowed each of us with "certain inalienable rights" was a baseline; all else followed.  Now, the sanctity of life and of the body has been eroded in this most post-modern of post-modern times.  The body has become commodified, that is, it is no longer a holy vessel but merely an hedonic avatar. 

The news is not promising:

Planned Parenthood, a Social Disease

The mission of Planned Parenthood has changed since the days of founder Margaret Sanger. Among the eugenicist's progressive efforts, in 1939, Sanger conceived the "Negro Project" to reduce the population of "inferior" black Americans [1]. Today, Planned Parenthood claims to deliver "vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide."

Noble language. But visiting PPF's abortion-focused website makes traditional Americans feel dirty. Reading "Healthy, Happy and Hot," a PPF affiliate's guide to the "rights" of young HIV-carriers, sends traditionalists looking for a hot shower and strong soap.

Apparently, if you are young and HIV (+) your rights to pleasures of the body trump your partner's right to know that you carry the HIV virus.  If there is nothing sacred about the body, then anything goes.

But that is not the worst news of the day.  Apparently, an "artist" from among our elder cousins in England, where they are farther along on the road to decadence, has taken a logical step and is being celebrated for it:

'Devotional' painting of artist's dead mother shortlisted for award

The emaciated and lifeless body of 100-year-old Annie Mary Todd lies propped up in the refrigerated room of the undertaker's funeral parlour.

With a hospital band still visible on her wrist, her long bony fingers caught in a half grip and her mouth locked in a gummy rictus, the image of the corpse captured by the dead woman's daughter, artist Daphne Todd, has been shortlisted for a prestigious art prize.

Last Portrait of Mother is described by the painter as a "devotional study" completed in the three days following Mrs Todd's death in April last year. The work beat more than 2,000 other pictures to make it to the final stage of this year's BP Portrait Award, now in its 31st year.

...

Ms Todd described the process of painting her dead mother as "therapeutic". ...

...

However, she accepted that the painting, completed in two canvases, has the power to shock. The artist admitted that her daughter and brother – he has never seen the picture and is unlikely to do so – were "upset" and "uncomfortable" at the work. "Painting is a form of digesting something. It is an analytical process but it was actually quite therapeutic. It gave me something to do after she died and a reason to be with her," she said.

Mrs Todd had been in hospital in the two weeks before her death. When her condition deteriorated her daughter dashed to be at her bedside but arrived too late. "She was still warm and propped up like that. I told them in the hospital I would like to paint her and they arranged a sympathetic undertaker," she said.

The artist spent three days at work in the cool room at the funeral parlour but said her mother's body was then "beginning to colour a little bit". "I would have been uncomfortable to go on," the artist said, although she said she found the undertakers "cheerful" to be around.

The "artist" used her mother's body for her own purposes, to help herself feel better.  In our idiotically therapeutic age, such an excuse allows anything, no matter how foolish or misguided.  This is the use of a body as a commodity.

In a purely material sense, there can be nothing so immanent as a soul, so there is minimal distinction between the animate and inanimate body.  (Note that the painting gave her "something to do ... and a reason to be with her.")  The "artist's" denial only breaks down when the decomposition advances far enough to be "uncomfortable."

Art has long since become decadent.  We celebrate those artists who shock and "transgress."  The aim of art is no longer to bring beauty or illuminate the presence of the divine but has become purely hedonic and visceral.  Art now celebrates its own decadence and prizes are given for those who most clearly express the self-loathing of the modern post-civilized man. 

It may well be that some day in the not too distant future we will have progressed far enough to determine whether or not the Divine exists within us.  Mind clones and uploads may render the question of the existence of a soul moot.  However, even if the soul is a fiction it is a fiction that supports the best within us; if we surrender our souls, our Civilization will follow shortly thereafter.

Addendum

An e-mail reminder from WRL:

Please do not when listing predicted catastrophes omit one of our all-time lulus: Y2K! Never has so much been predicted so bad for so many, without result.

Y2K was the "perfect" catastrophe: The media tried to terrify us, some people panicked, billions were spent and at 12AM, January 1, 2000...nothing happened.

Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Ever since I can remember, I have been a "news junkie."  From Middle School on I would read the New York Times cover to cover on a daily basis.  It occurs to me now that were we to isolate any one of those days and examine it in detail we would be forced to the conclusion that civilization has always been doomed and the end has always been near.  Everything is always SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL, generally in 24 point font.  In part, this is an artifact of the ethos of the news business, "if it bleeds it leads."  Catastrophes, real and imagined, sell newspapers.  Yet that would discount the fact that we did spend much of the 20th century on a knife's edge, with global disaster always only 30 minutes away, the approximate time for an ICBM to reach New York or Moscow.  It is likely that many of the various catastrophes predicted in the past and present (DDT, Alar, Dioxin, an impending ice age {in the 1970s}, global warming, H1N1, to mention a few) gained their emotional intensity as a displacement from the reality of actual threats to life, individually and collectively; that does not mean we should now dismiss Catastrophism.  We should never forget that Civilizations and life forms do not have any assurance of survival.  In the past, great Civilizations and dominant life forms have gone extinct; in fact, such extinction is, so far, the default mode for the natural world.  Which brings me to some thoughts about the current crises which appear to threaten our continued comfortable existence in the dawn of the second decade of the 21st century.

The accelerating pace of change is disorienting for everyone.  It is not only the Medieval Jihadists who are fighting a rear guard battle against modernity.  It is also our elites who find themselves out of their depth and at a loss for how to solve our problems.

We do not have to invoke the Four Technological Horsemen of the Apocalypse that Bill Joy described ten years ago to appreciate that our already extant WMD, in the hands of various unsavory characters, represents a paradigm shift that does not bode well for those who appreciate Civilization.

When Saudi Arabia goes nuclear

Last week, a news item appeared which should send a shiver down the spine of anyone concerned about the future of the Middle East. In a story out of Riyadh, the official Saudi Press Agency announced that the kingdom has decided to go nuclear.

That’s right. The same country which boycotts Israel, finances the spread of radical Islamist fundamentalism worldwide and, less than a decade ago, spawned 15 of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks, now plans to develop nuclear technology.

 As the man says, read the whole thing; the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East should alarm all.

At the same time as the nuclear clock moves closer to midnight, a more prosaic threat looms.  Various countries can no longer pay their bills; this is a development that has doomed past Civilizations:

It's Starting...

Greece is now junk and has finally come clean about its debt: €135bn over the next three years is what they need to just service their debts, especially after interest rates went up 16%.

Spain was downgraded by S&P from AA+ to AA.

Watch for a shorts on Italy next.

Why is this all of concern?

Because, at the end of the day, the US is in the exact same situation as Greece, as is the rest of Europe and Japan (for different reasons). This means that sovereign debt is the new bad boy, the 500-lb gorilla that will dominate financial markets.

Here's the problem: while the US can print all the money it wants - unlike Greece - this doesn't solve the problem, it is the same as digging the hole deeper. While this isn't the end of the dollar, it does mean that the dollar must go down: given that interest rate increases are out of the question for the Fed (because then the sovereign debt hole becomes the bottom of a mining shaft with no ladder headed up) and the Fed will keep inflation down, then the only thing left is to devalue the dollar.

You might think the economy is doing better, but it really isn't: debts of all kind continue to increase faster than economic growth. This is, to repeat a theme, a catastrophe brewing that is unprecedented.

More here from M_O_M, summarized in this mot:

Let The Games Begin!!

Germany is looking like the bad guy here, but is that fair? If the real problem is the sovereign debt in multiple nations, Germany cannot bail them all out.

I doubt the US, China, or anyone else could bail out all the economies in trouble, even if they wanted to do so.  What makes it all worse, whether considering Iran's bomb or the world's debt bomb(s), is that no one has any idea how to get us out of this. 

Liberals (Democrats in America, Labour in Great Britain) are left with nothing more than their smears:

The Coming End of Liberals Who “Cry ‘Racism’ at Every Turn”?

This conversation came to mind when I read today a Christian Science Monitor article linked on at least two of my favorite blogs.

“A bright line was crossed on the 20th [of March],” says Christina Botteri, a spokeswoman for the Tea Party Federation. “The left constantly attacks conservatives as racist, as dumb, as evil, but what happened on the 20th is a sitting congressman, with the full voice and credibility of the House of Representatives, accused a group of citizens with whom he philosophically disagrees of assault and then refused to help find the persons responsible. They need to help us find the people responsible or apologize for making it up.”

Emphasis added. It seems, as Elizabeth Scalia puts it, “strange how Democrats in power seem to be incapable of doing anything, anymore, but cry “racism” at every turn? This is not the sign of a party (or an ideology) secure in itself.”

And maybe now we’re seeing what some have called a “paradigm shift” with conservatives having gained the media clout to stand up to the oft-repeated and long inaccurate accusation.

And there is this:

The real reason liberals accuse Tea Partiers of racism

I have said something like this before, but at the risk of being a bore, and because of the times in which we live, I will repeat myself:

The real reason liberals accuse Tea Partiers of racism is that contemporary American-style liberalism is in rigor mortis. Liberals have nothing else to say or do.  Accusations of racism are their last resort.

[Both bloggers are former Liberals, as am I, which proves nothing but is instructive.]

The Republicans, on the other hand, have had little better to commend them.  It often seems that we merely trade one set of protected leeches for another when we change parties.  Even the Tea Parties, while offering some hope for positive change, do not (yet) have a coherent philosophy that offers a promise that we can extricate ourselves.  However, a way out of this mess suggests itself.  Charles Hugh Smith places the Tea Parties into an historical perspective: [HT: NS]

A Meditation on the Tea Party Movement

New political movements are powered by an emotional understanding that the status quo is untenable in some profound way.At some key juncture, the alternatives crystallize in a politically coherent fashion. In Colonial America, dissatisfaction with British policy and politics did not necessarily require a war of Independence; that "solution" only crystallized when moral revulsion at perceived British corruption and greed sparked by the Great Awakening (circa 1740s and 1750s) reached a powerful coherence with Enlightenment ideas of self-governance and liberty and a fear of indebtedness and loss of autonomy.

While it is fashionable to dismiss the Civil War as some sort of financial battle for dominance by the Northern Elites, that is not what the participants felt or what motivated their actions.

The status quo political powers are mystified by the Tea Party; we're giving them unemployment, tax credits and healthcare/sickcare coverage; we're buying them off with the same entitlements we offer our other constituencies; why aren't they silent and complicit like everyone else? Why don't they just take the swag and shut up like everyone else?

Lost in their moral rot, the status quo "leadership" cannot understand the Tea Party's anger. The Elites do not understand why the Tea Party rebels don't have the self-serving sense to just take the swag and go back to watching TV. What fires their enthusiasm for rebellion?

The British Parliament was equally confounded in 1773. The Colonists are well-off, and protected by the Empire; what is their problem?

The Tea Party is as yet an unformed movement. It might fade, gutted by co-option or intense factionalism, or it might transform one or both of the zombie parties, or it might eventually coalesce into a true political party. No one can say, but what powers the Tea Party--a sense that the nation has lost its moral bearings and its Elites have over-reached--will not fade. Those truths cannot be mocked, discredited, or co-opted out of existence; regardless of whether the status quo manages to quash the Tea Party or not, those truths will only gather force as the status quo's "nascent recovery," its deeply corrupted governance and its over-reach fail, and the status quo's foundation is revealed as a sandy sinkhole of fraud and lies. 

The entire Meditation is well worth your time and while you are reading it, think about how this peculiarly American tendency to toss out our failed elites can dovetail with the Resilient Communities concept championed by John Robb.  As the individual becomes more empowered by our technology, the elites lose their monopoly on power and (the ability to define) virtue.  Finally achieving "Power to the People", though not in the ways that 60s Liberals ever could have imagined, may well the way we will get out of this handbasket.

Character Matters

The European Union experiment may founder on a clash of cultures.  An historical perspective is useful at times of crisis:

Europe in Crisis

 The latest sickening bout of stock market turbulence underlines the point I made on this blog last December; the next stage of the global economic crisis is centered in Greece.

That’s an unpleasant reality for our European friends who have spent much of the last decade chattering about American decline and the coming crisis of the dollar.

As usual during the last 100 years of inexorable European decline, they missed the main event: Europe once again has blundered its way into a major crisis.

...

The euro was a glorious fudge.  The Latin countries plus Greece could enjoy the benefits of German discipline and virtue while carrying on with traditionally unsustainable public and private sector policies.  In the old, pre-euro days, the southern economies had to pay high interest rates on their debt; wary investors knew that inflation and devaluation were likely and so demanded interest rates that would compensate them for the risk.  The lira, the drachma: everyone knew they would lose value over time against the Deutsche mark and even the dollar, and interest rates reflected this understanding.  But as the southern countries moved into the euro, calculations changed.  For the last twenty years, countries like Greece and Italy were able to borrow money at essentially the same rate that Germany could.

Germany has a well deserved reputation of hard work, efficiency, and a rather cold-blooded rationality (which in the past became captive to the worst irrationality of the last century.)  Greece, in common with other Southern climed cultures, has a reputation of irresponsible spending and a fiscal insouciance which they have traditionally dealt with by allowing their currency to drift downwards in order to recalibrate their relations with those who trade with, and lend to, them.  As Walter Russell Mead points out, the structure of the Euro does not allow for such relatively pain-free recalibration.  And the sticking point may cause the entire European edifice to collapse:

This is a political crisis for Europe rather than a financial crisis because the only way out for the PIGS [Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain] involves a large bailout from the northern countries led by Germany and France.  Germans especially don’t want to pay.  It has been clear for some time that the Greeks cheated and lied their way into the eurozone, and for years they have pursued selfish and foolish economic policies.  Why, Germans ask with some force and logic, should German taxpayers who cannot retire until their late sixties pay the bill so that Greeks can retire at 55?

There is a difficult line one must walk in discussing cultural traits.  Since culture is the summation of the individual abilities and faults of the people who make up that culture (and can be greater than or lesser than the sum of its parts, depending on circumstances) the probability of trespassing on various identity group boundaries is significant.  Yet, if we ignore the contribution of culture to our current complex of problems we will never be able to address our problems.

Europe attempted to address cultural differences by pretending they do not exist.  In America we have traditionally enjoyed incorporating parts of the culture that newcomers bring with them as part of an implicit equation: Newcomers would assimilate in public while maintaining their culture in their private lives.  In return we would celebrate your cultural background and incorporate what was most valuable into the dominant American culture.  As long as you accepted that the American tribe was more significant than your tribe of origin, and that the American idea was primary in defining your over-riding tribal identity, the transaction worked.  Unfortunately, the idea of America has been weakened by the PC idea of multiculturalism and the relative diminution of the idea of assimilation. 

In a delicious example of historical irony, the current administration has taken Europe as its model just when the European idea is threatening to fracture and collapse.  Interesting times...

Addendum: [HT: Glenn Reynolds] Spain downgraded, Europe debt crisis widens

On Goldman Sachs...

I'm with John Crudele:

A former senior trader sounds off on the firm

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be shocked if the subcommittee has anything yet that proves Goldman did anything illegal. A public relations disaster, yes. A legal crisis, not yet.

So, it's also safe to say that the Securities & Exchange Commission, which in a shocking coincidence filed civil charges just days before financial regulation was to be debated in Congress, probably doesn't have the goods yet, either.

My view of this whole situation stays the same: Goldman did things, perhaps with the tacit permission of the US Treasury, that probably were against the law. [Emphasis mine-SW]

However, Subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin (D- Mich.) didn't have much time yesterday to understand the real crimes that occurred, not with so many e-mails to read, snarky comments to make and grandstanding to do. But he did make a decent case that Goldman only had Goldman's best interest in mind when it packaged most of its deals.

I will leave you with some parting words from my e-mail writer, the former senior Goldman trader. "My former employers (several major firms) had an official (if not published) policy that it is only a crime when you get caught," he wrote.

By the way, if Congress is interested, this e-mail writer would be happy to testify about how Wall Street has gone astray. And the information I have on Goldman's questionable actions are on my desk. Just come and get it.

Anyone want to wager on the likelihood that Congress will actually investigate the nature of the relationship between GS and the Treasury?

Banking Regulations: Preventing the Last Crisis

There is a peculiar disconnect between what goes on in Washington, DC and is dutifully reported on in the pages of the MSM, and the reality of life on the ground.  Nowhere is this disconnect more obvious than in the legislative wrangling over the Banking Bill. 

The Financial crisis of 2008 stemmed from a gigantic bubble in housing that was arrived at over a ten year period in which homes were sold to people who couldn't afford them and then were used as ATMs to maintain a life style that was even more unaffordable.  This bubble was facilitated by a compliant Fed, an activist government which believed that increased home ownership would lead to increased stability and prosperity, and some very smart players on Wall Street who figured out how to make money off the bubble.  When the bubble burst, as bubbles are wont to do, the resulting recession revealed all the problems that the auditors had missed.  Now that the dust has begun to settle, our esteemed representatives in Washington, some of whom were complicit in the mess in the first place (and either know it, which means they are as sleazy as the people they are accusing of malfeasance, or don't know it, which means their ignorance is the stuff of legend) are endeavoring to write legislation to ensure that we do not have a repeat of the crisis.  Meanwhile, by effectively designating various favored institutions as "too big to fail" (an appellation that the legislation will undoubtedly enshrine as the law of the land) they make the next meltdown inevitable.  Courtesy of Matthew Stevenson comes this description:

Guns, Guts, And Geithner

In general, regulators tend to be recent college graduates who are padding their resumes until going to business or law school, or they are career bureaucrats, immersed in one or two minor regulatory issues. Most miss the big picture, as nearly every regulator did in reviewing the balance sheets of A.I.G., Merrill Lynch, or Washington Mutual. For better or for worse, financial profits — to regulators challenged to understand the strike prices of futures contracts — look like magic. [Emphasis mine-SW]

The problem with entrusting them with the health of the financial system is that few, at least in my experience, understand anything about how banks, brokerage businesses, and hedge funds operate or how they make money.

As the ideal regulator, look no further than Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who now is pushing financial reform as hard as he once peddled deregulation and “market solutions” for most banking problems.

I would be willing to wager a considerable sum that most regulators have no idea what they are regulating.  How many Washington bureaucrats know what a derivative actually is and how they are actually traded?  More importantly, how many Congressmen and Senators know what it is they are trying to regulate?  If Chris Dodd and Barney Frank don't understand how they contributed to the disaster, how on earth could anyone expect them to regulate the banking industry?  If they do understand how they contributed, who could expect them to protect the consumer/taxpayer, as opposed to the friends who have enriched them and their cronies in the process?

The most important message of the last ten years, illustrated by such diverse events as 9/11 and the exponential growth of the internet, is that the ferment, indeed the birth of the future, is taking place in a decentralized manner.  It is on the fringes that amazing things are happening.  Central authority, if incapable of incorporating adequate information in the economy of a half century ago, has now been so outclassed by reality that any attempt at Centralized command and control is near irrelevant.  Yet just as the fallacy of a centralized approach is being exposed time and again, our imperial rulers in Washington, who cannot even balance their own checkbook, are attempting to control more and more of the economy.

David Brooks understands

The Goldman Drama

But, alas, we are living in the great age of centralization. Some Democrats regard federal commissions with the same sort of awe and wonder that I feel while watching LeBron James and Alex Ovechkin.

The premise of the current financial regulatory reform is that the establishment missed the last bubble and, therefore, more power should be vested in the establishment to foresee and prevent the next one. [Emphasis mine- SW]

If you take this as your premise, the Democratic bill is fine and reasonable. It would force derivative trading out into the open. It would create a structure so the government could break down failing firms in an orderly manner. But the bill doesn’t solve the basic epistemic problem, which is that members of the establishment herd are always the last to know when something unexpected happens.

Here is my prediction: Congress will pass a law increasing "regulation" over  banks and markets.  In a few years we will learn, after the fact, that a significant percentage of financial trading will have moved into areas untouched by the bill.  Further, the bill will lead to innumerable unforeseen consequences and will have done nothing to change the "too big to fail" rubric or to protect the American taxpayer from having to pick up the pieces.  As well, the more Congress "regulates" the less it will actually have to do with finance in the real world, which will increasingly exist in exotic forms in cyberspace, far from the reach of Regulators who won't even know where to look until after the next disaster.  If it is true that the military always prepares to fight the last war, it is even more true that Regulators always prepare to regulate legacy transactions.

Rediscovering the Wheel

Where Id was, there shall Ego be.

- S. Freud

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine devoted three pages (in the on-line version) to an article by Daniel Carlat, a well known Psychopharmacologist.  It is an interesting article that documents his transformation from a committed biological Psychiatrist to whom patients were collections of symptoms toward which to direct medication to a Psychiatrist who understands his job to include understanding who his patients are and that their problems are not merely the output of a deterministic, biological machine (the brain.)

Mind Over Meds

... over the past few years, research studies have shown that therapy is just as effective as medications for many conditions, and that medications themselves often work through the power of placebo. In one study, for example, researchers did a meta-analysis of studies submitted by drug companies to the F.D.A. on seven new antidepressants, involving more than 19,000 patients. It turned out that antidepressants are, indeed, effective, because on average patients taking the pills showed a 40 percent drop in depression scores. But placebo was also a powerful antidepressant, causing a 30 percent drop in depression scores. This meant that about three-quarters of the apparent response to antidepressants pills is actually due to the placebo effect.

Nobody knows exactly how the mysterious placebo effect works, but it is clear that it has impacts on the brain that can be seen as clearly as medication effects. In one study conducted by pain researchers at the University of Michigan, subjects were given an ache-inducing injection of saline into their jaws and were placed in a PET scanner. They were then told that they would be given an intravenous pain treatment, but the “treatment” was merely more saline solution, acting as a placebo. The PET scan showed that the endogenous endorphin system in the brains of the subjects was activated. The patients believed so strongly that they were receiving effective treatment that their brains followed suit. Presumably, a corresponding brain change occurs when depressed patients are given placebo pills.

Like placebo, psychotherapy has typically been considered a “nonbiological” treatment, but it has become clear that therapy, like placebo, also leads to measurable changes in the brain. In an experiment conducted at U.C.L.A. several years ago, with subjects suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, researchers assigned some patients to treatment with Prozac and others to cognitive behavior therapy. They found that patients improved about equally well with the two treatments. Each patient’s brain was PET-scanned before and after treatment, and patients showed identical changes in their brain circuits regardless of the treatment.

In depression treatment, too, pills and therapy each lead to brain changes, but in this case they appear to be intriguingly distinct.

It is a long article and worthwhile if you are interested in understanding the forces acting upon American Psychiatry which have led us to where the field is today and some of the particular forces that pressed Dr. Carlat toward the field. 

Psychiatry cannot be removed from the culture in which it is embedded.  A Psychiatry that sees people as complex automatons responding to levels of neurotransmitters, in which treatment consists of re-equilibrating those neurotransmitters, is a soul-less Psychiatry that has embraced a form of Collectivist thought. 

[There are two major problems with the neurotransmitter theory of depression:

1) We have nowhere near the precision necessary in our scans or in our treatments to re-calibrate neurotransmitters.  It will be quite some time before we can approach that level of sensitivity in our science.

2) The focus on Neurotransmitters also neglects the dramatic impact our interrelatedness has on our functioning.  The placebo effect is merely one aspect of the impact other people have on us.  It is a derivative of the Transference relationships that form the bedrock of our character.] 

When I wrote about The Sovietizing of American Therapy, I was concerned with the trend of Psychotherapists consciously understanding as one of the goals of Psychotherapy the advancement of "diversity (and) social justice."

The reason Psychoanalysis (the discipline from which all current Psychotherapies derive) has been considered dangerous to society by totalitarians from the Soviets to the Nazis to the current Chinese, is that the goal of Psychoanalysis is to enlarge and enhance the autonomous functions of the  patient's ego.  In other words, our goal is to minimize the resources that our patients must devote to their unconscious conflicts (which includes the resources the Narcissist must devote to maintaining his unconscious grandiosity) so that they have more psychic energy to devote to those choices they deem more positive and satisfying in their lives.  Autonomous agents are always a threat to totalitarians.

When Psychotherapists adopt a political stance as part of their therapeutic weltanschauung, they have left the field of enhancing autonomy and entered the field, albeit with the very best of intentions, of social engineering; they are allowing themselves to become agents for enhancing soft totalitarianism.  It would behoove any such therapist to undergo some self-analysis and determine from whence his need to control arises.

 Whether one sees the goal of their work to regulate aberrant neurochemistry, or to promote "social justice", in both cases the individuality of the patient is subsumed by the approach and the theories that support the approach.

Freud's ancient aphorism is now understood to mean that where we were once slaves to our desires and conflicts, Psychotherapy should aim to free us as much as possible from the control of our unconscious and enlarge our Conscious mind's purview.

America is the world's first and greatest nation dedicated to the proposition that the individual counts for more than the identity of the collective (tribe) from which he emerged.  Psychiatry must maintain its focus on the individual if it is to enhance our freedom(s), which, after all, should be the goal of any Psychotherapy.

Is it National Brotherhood Week Already?

From Tom Lehrer, That Was the year that Was (1965):

One week of every year is designated National Brotherhood Week. This is just one of many such weeks honoring various worthy causes. One of my favorites is National Make-fun-of-the-handicapped Week which Frank Fontaine and Jerry Lewis are in charge of as you know. During National Brotherhood Week various special events are arranged to drive home the message of brotherhood. This year, for example, on the first day of the week Malcolm X was killed which gives you an idea of how effective the whole thing is. I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another and I know there are people in the world that do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that. Here's a song about National Brotherhood Week.

Here is a picture from a protest against Sarah Palin in Eugene, Oregon, courtesy of Ed Morrissey:

In reality, National Brotherhood Week used to be celebrated the third week of February.  Alas, the practice ended, apparently without these protestors being aware of the fact, in the 1980s.

1938 and 2010

In 1938 Czechoslovakia was surrendered by the Allies to Nazi Germany in an effort to avoid a War between the Allies and the Axis. 

Munich Agreement

The Munich Pact ... was an agreement permitting Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without the presence of Czechoslovakia. Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September). The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of territorial demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Nazi Germany, France, Britain, and Italy. The Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses were situated there, and many of its banks were located there as well. Thus, when Britain and France gave the Sudentenland to Germany, it was implied that they allowed Germany to take over all of Czechoslovakia as well.

The state of Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference, therefore the Munich Agreement is sometimes called the Munich Dictate by Czechs and Slovaks.... The phrase Munich Betrayal ... is also used because military alliances between Czechoslovakia and France were not honoured.

The Allies surrendered by pieces until finally, Hitler over-reached and made War unavoidable.

Our current war with radical Islam parallels World War II but few in power recognize the parallels, primarily because the disparity in military and economic power between the West and radical Islam is so large.  Strategists like Tom Barnett are quite comfortable with the idea of containment of Iran because of this power disparity.  Yet, that is the product of conventional thinking about war; our struggle with radical Islam has little resemblance to conventional warfare and such a limited point of view blinds us to the myriad ways in which the battle is currently being lost and the "gathering storm" which makes more overt violence inescapable.

Last night, my Middle Son offered his perspective on the most recent surrender to violent Islamists.  His post was provoked by a phone call:

I Thought This Was America!

Last night I got a phone call from my older sister. Our relationship is really good nowadays, but we don't talk all that often because she's a super busy doctor and there's a time difference between our two households. I figure, a phone call at that hour from her is a little noteworthy, and it was. My sis is a very smart girl, and she keeps up with the news, but she's not as enthusiastic about current events as I am. She sounded upset..., "Reed, did you see the new South Park?" I had not. I was going to see the re-run that was playing at 9:00 here, and it was supposed to be the new episode titled "201." It's the continuation of the previous week's episode, "200" which was both hilarious and poignant. She told me the episode was going to make me feel outraged, and that she was so fired up that she wanted to go out and do something about it. She even asked me, "Reed, what can I do? I feel like this isn't even America," to which I responded with the, "I thought this was America" line. I was planning on watching the episode on it's second run last night at 9:00, but they actually refused to show it, and showed a different episode instead. 

I was able to catch the episode online today, and my sister was right. I am outraged, I'm upset, I'm angry, I'm even a little bit scared. For those who haven't heard anything about this episode, the premise is that Islam has a special power that makes it immune from criticism and apparently they were right. The yellow-bellyed executives at Comedy Central caved to terrorist threats and censored not only the image of Muhammad but also even the mention of his name. It gets even worse... Comedy Central was obviously ashamed of their cowardice, they even went so far as to censor an entire speech about giving into fear and intimidation. Muhammad wasn't even treated with the least bit of negativity or disrespect, other than the mention that nobody dares ridicule him or the Islamic faith.

South Park first made an issue of this in season 10, in their Cartoon Wars series. Back then, I was ashamed of Comedy Central's cowardice, so I wasn't really surprised that they did it again, but I'm truly disappointed. My sister said she felt like she had lost faith and I don't blame her. One of our most central values, one of the benchmarks of our republic is the freedom of speech. The First Amendment is essential to a free society. 

Read the whole thing (and I suspect you will get a kick out of his defiant picture.)

While the current effort to cozy up to Islam by attacking and denigrating Israel has been the headline news, it is the surrender of our Free Speech rights by our MSM that is truly disturbing.  Israel can still defend itself, but a people who are so willing to surrender their rights are a people who are destined to lose their freedoms.

Interestingly, Jay Adler points out a different arena in which the battle is being fought, and the results are troubling on several different levels:

Unveiling a Full Ban on Full Veils

The New York Times reports on French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to introduce

a bill in May to ban the wearing of the full veil in public places in France

including

from streets, markets and shops, according to his spokesman, Luc Chatel.

Sarkozy intends the bill, a follow up to the 2004 ban on conspicuous signs of religious affiliation in public schools, to supersede

An earlier proposal from a panel of the National Assembly [that] suggested a bill banning the full veil in public places belonging to the state, like schools and public buildings, and in areas where facial recognition is vital for security reasons: airports, banks and even public transport.

As I have suggested, here, here and here, I think the National Assembly has offered a reasoned, sensible approach. Sarkozy overreaches, beyond what can be justified in a liberal society, and the error could have long-term negative consequences.

...

The danger is this. Many European nations are facing the threat of a significant and growing immigrant population not only resistant to assimilation, but hostile to the values of the cultures they have entered. On one hand are politically correct, even sometimes themselves illiberal social elements ideologically committed to denying the nature of the problem. On the other are predictable xenophobic and racialist forces driven to excessive reaction. ...

In opposing illiberalism, liberalism needs to perceive clearly what it, itself, is.

We typically do not tolerate people walking the streets of our cities wearing masks.  If memory serves, the Courts have held that the KKK does not have the right to wear masks in public.  The veil is a mask; it is an embodiment of an intolerant, violent ideology as inimical to Freedom as the KKK.  Obviously not every Muslim woman who wears a Veil is the equivalent of a hooded member of the Klan, yet the Veil is a political statement of support for Shariah, an ideology that the proponents seek to impose upon us which would deny basic Freedoms for which our ancestors, and our children still, are donating blood and treasure.  However, even if I am incorrect and Jay has the better argument, ie that our liberalism demands that we tolerate people wearing the Veil in (some) public places, it does not matter in the long run. 

The history of our encounter with Shariah Islam, in this current iteration, is a history of a collision of the modern world with an implacable, expansionary, and extractive ideology.  Were Shariah Islam to become more tolerant and accept co-existence with the West would be for it to surrender and disappear.  This will not happen. 

At some point there will be an exponential increase in violence.  It will not be in the form of conventional armies meeting on a battlefield.  It will be in the form of unconventional and terrorist assaults, ranging from isolated "sudden Jihadi syndrome" (Major Hasan) to mass casualty assaults (9/11, 7/7, Madrid) to battles with irregular armies (Israel and neighbors), and in the very worst case scenario, WMDs.

At some point the Islamists will over-reach; it is inevitable because it is who they are, it is their nature.  They can no more accept the status quo when they think they are winning than they can surrender and assimilate. It is impossible to know when the change will occur but at some point people in the West will begin (again) to fight back.  No amount of appeasement will prevent the fight.

If only we could do what Jay suggests, and not only "perceive clearly what" we are all about but take a stand and determine there will be no more surrender of our rights, then the confrontation will be less traumatic and less deadly for all.  Our continued fecklessness invites greater danger down the road.  That is the lesson we can learn from Munich; so far we have failed our history lessons.

Listening to Nightmares

During the Bush years it was not uncommon to hear from people on the Left that George W. Bush was an incipient dictator, that he would find a way (declare an emergency, for example) and cancel the elections in 2008, and that our freedoms and liberties were at risk.  Now that the most Liberal President since Jimmy Carter is in the White House, there is an increase in the mirror image concerns about Obama. 

Peter Koelliker suggests that Obama will find a pretence to cancel the 2012 elections:

Diverting Attention

You, John, and most of your round-table sophisticates, are tilting at shadows without seeing what else is going on. Only, you say it is POTUS who is tilting at shadows. The White House is well aware of the polls. And they applaud them. They are running around the country proclaiming their hatred for the rich - not to improve their poll numbers, but – to cement them. They couldn’t care less about poll numbers – which should tell you, they couldn’t care less about elections. Why?

Barack Hussein Obama is first and foremost (by profession) a street thug and agitator. That is to say, he knows how to agitate; to divide; to provoke. His current focus is on widening the class envy split. Should he succeed in getting his financial regulation legislation passed, he will have won control over yet another chunk of our listing economy. He will have consolidated additional power. Key players on Wall Street may be in on the ruse. It is called ‘crony capitalism’.

Getting back to the November elections: The key question that should be asked is why does POTUS not seem to care about the midterms? Answer: Because Congress has already discredited itself by having been forced to govern against the will of the people. This is not something that new faces can change. If Obama wanted to finesse the point, he would right now be seeking a way to indefinitely postpone the elections altogether, citing national security (or economic crisis, whatever…). But this won’t be necessary this election. But, mark my words; it will become an issue in 2012.

I suspect even my most Liberal readers would agree that such a scenario, of cancelled elections, would be a Nightmare.  I am not interested in discussing the probability of such an unlikely event.  From his comfort with despots and authoritarians, I would not dispute that Obama might well desire a pretext under which to abrogate the Constitution and rule by decree.  Tom Friedman, the Liberal's Liberal, has repeatedly expressed his admiration for such a style of governance.  At the same time I can appreciate that many Liberals believe that George W. Bush had authoritarian inclinations.  My response to those who worry about Obama today is the same as my response to those who worried about Bush:  Our system is robustly designed to make the imposition of Despotism in the face of significant opposition a near impossible venture.  I do not think, even were he so inclined, that Barack Obama could succeed at establishing a dictatorship; in fact, I do not think he would even try.

However, the point of Nightmares is not to present us with a road map to future events but can be more profitably thought of as an attempt by our unconscious mind to warn our conscious mind of danger.

Just as the Nightmare scenarios that prevailed on the Left may well have damaged our national security, they also may have helped inoculate us against more egregious aggrandizement of the Executive branch.  So too with the Nightmares from the Right; if such Nightmares inoculate us against the worst excesses of those who would impose a Liberal Authoritarianism, such Nightmares will have served their purpose.

Robert Avrech suggests a different Nightmare:

Obama: Strike Against Iran off the Table

The Iranian nuclear program is the most important issue facing Israel, America, and the entire world. Appeasement will shift power to the Muslim terrorists in a way that is simply unacceptable to a civilized world.

Inevitably, nuclear power will trickle down to non-state players and Iran's proxie armies, Hizbullah and Hamas.

Here's what you can expect:

1. Several dirty bomb are detonated in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.

2. No one claims responsibility.

3. The Arab street erupts in spontaneous joy.

4. The UN expresses regret for the millions of dead, but points out that the Jewish State brought it upon itself.

5. America does nothing in the face of Iran's plausible deniability.

6. As Israel collapses, elements within the IAF armed with thermonuclear weapons, execute their own raids on Tehran, Qom, Riyadh, Mecca, Damascus and Cairo. Estimated dead: seventy to eighty million.

7. The UN and the Democrats demand that the surviving world-wide Jewish community pay reparations to the Arab Muslim world.

8. Muslim riots break out all over Europe, but mainly in France, Great Britain, Germany, Holland and Belgium. The Jews who are not murdered are sent to internment camps. The oh-so-sensitive Europeans heave a great sigh of relief: at last Europe is Judenrein. But the relief is short-lived as the Quisling EU imposes Sharia.

9. The price of oil hits $500 a barrel.

10. Jihadi sleeper cells in America are activated and the slaughter is immense.

If you think this is far-fetched, I would argue that this scenario is actually quite conservative.

Here is where things get tricky.  Robert Avrech's scenario is not at all unbelievable.  There is no question that the enemies of Israel (who, despite the approach of the current administration, are also our enemies) devoutly desire such a scenario; all that has kept the Arabs and Persians from, in their own words, "finishing the job Hitler started", has been a lack of capability.

Here the warning is of entering uncharted territory as Nuclear weapons proliferate and become available to less responsible states.  The risk of "dirty bombs" has traditionally been over-stated:

Dirty Bombs Revisited: Combating the Hype

In spite of the fact that dirty bombs have been discussed widely in the press for many years now — especially since the highly publicized arrest of Jose Padilla in May 2002 — much misinformation and disinformation continues to circulate regarding dirty bombs. The misinformation stems from long-held misconceptions and ignorance, while the disinformation comes from scaremongers hyping the threat for financial or political reasons. Frankly, many people have made a lot of money by promoting fear since 9/11.

Just last week, we read a newspaper article in which a purported expert interviewed by the reporter discussed how a dirty bomb would “immediately cause hundreds or even thousands of deaths.” This is simply not true. A number of radiological accidents have demonstrated that a dirty bomb will not cause this type of death toll. Indeed, the panic generated by a dirty bomb attack could very well result in more immediate deaths than the detonation of the device itself. Unfortunately, media stories hyping the threat of these devices may foster such panic, thus increasing the death toll. To counter this irrational fear, we feel it is time once again to discuss dirty bombs in detail and provide our readers with a realistic assessment of the threat they pose.

Read the whole article.

Does the fact that the effects of a dirty bomb would be far less than the Nightmare scenarios that many fear mean that we should discredit the Nightmare?  Not at all. 

The true Nightmare scenario is the successful development and deployment of nuclear weapons by a failing state motivated by an apocalyptic eschatological ideology.  When Israel was in extremis, rumors of a "Sampson Option" proliferated.  Someday the Mullahs will fall.  Can there be any doubt that a dieing Iranian Mullacracy, in its death spasms, would use any and all of its arsenal to destroy the hated Jews and Americans?

Our Nightmares exist for a reason.  They warn us of danger, even if they often disguise the danger.  We ignore the warnings at our peril.