Peterkin

I'm not a big jazz fan, but have always been partial to acoustic guitar. That goes back to a Segovia when I was in high school, then Narcisco Ypes, Julian Bream (my first LP, before I'd save up for a record player) John Williams, Leona Boyd... and there are some very fine youngsters still coming up. Just lately, though, I've bean learning to appreciate choral music. All sorts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inBKFMB-yPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6AxTDrthl8

I finally understand, rather than just know, what's meant by "tickling the ivories".

True. Neither does starving an entire field of medicine of funds. What might make it so is thoughtful, science-based research and triage-oriented application - and a lot of quite sound minds are being applied to both endeavours. For example, suicidal teenagers need help right now, not someday, when we've fixed all the old people's hips. Disoriented, sleep-deprived, paranoid veterans need help right now, not after they've offed their family and themselves. I'm not familiar with the statistics on that. Unless you count grief counselling, which I agree is often less effective than time. So, there was a physiological basis that should have been investigated, and wasn't? Fortunately, as long as funding for research is available, we are able to make some progress in these areas. I'm honestly not okay with shelving 12% http://who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-disorders of the world's health problems until all the more obvious ones have been fixed. Partly because all the obvious ones will never be fixed. Can never be fixed. They'll all just keep coming around again, and they all keep needing attention. What if we divert just 50% of moneys from elective cosmetic surgery to mental health diversification? What if we also give some creative thought to alternate - less expensive - forms of emotional help? Community support groups? Non-faith-based lay counselling? Art, music, garden and forest therapy led by experts in those fields, rather than psychiatrists? Techniques borrowed from other cultures? What if we put more effort into prevention and social programs that reduce childhood harm?

At this stage, I would not bring in the adversarial justice system, which carries its own great load of baggage, independent of the psychological issues. I think it's equally possible to get two chemists or structural engineers to testify as experts on opposite sides of a lawsuit. And I do believe brain activity is less transparent than bone fractures, less readily quantifiable than toxins. If the problem of mental health and illness can enter the political arena via gun ownership, I think it must be given a legitimate role in health care, as well. People do suffer from depression, anxiety, PTSD and eating disorders; those people need some help.

Good luck!

Because neither did the French Revolution.

Yes, it's likely. People who think deeply will consider difficult questions, whenever they live. It may well be both scientific and something else. There is certainly a broad scientific basis. There must also be - it's inescapable - a broad cultural basis. To what extent religion and politics imply is problematic, very difficult to determine. There are so many contributors to modern psychiatry, each with his and her own school of thought, biases, backgrounds, etc., you'd have to take that aspect case-by-case. No, I don't think think so. I absolutely do not believe that health care professionals are actively attempting to 'dehumanize' their patients or clients. I think the more valid question is: To what extent are mental health professionals influenced by the cultural norms and demands of their time and place? To what extent are they themselves convinced that adjustment to those norms is necessary to happiness. (You have to remember: every society demands a certain degree of conformity of its functional members.) Possibly. But the physiological aspect of emotional suffering cannot be ignored. This invariably happens when the helping professions gain social and economic status. A whole self-perpetuating system is set in motion, which is bound to influence the practice of those professions in a number of ways - most of those ways being opaque or completely invisible o the practitioners themselves, but felt by the clients and glaringly evident to the critics of the system. Like the young man mumbled: "....it's complicated..." There is too much material there to deal with in a forum post. In order to continue, I think it would be more productive to break down into simpler, separate questions or subject areas. And maybe - I know it's a big ask - leave the dead philosophers out of it FTM; they tend to add unnecessary complications.

I wasn't impressed by Updike; his view of teenagers was nothing like my experience. I've never had any patience with fictional adolescence, no matter how old the adolescent in question... I forgot earlier to mention [extracurricular] Trollope, Heller, all Steinbeck novels - he was my gateway to long fascination with the Arthurian legends, and via that, to Roman history. Science fiction didn't enter until my early 20's with The Martian Chronicles.

I know that. It is to that end I have studied anthropology, mythology and - to a limited degree - the history of the Christian churches. It's trying to explain what I understand about religion that leads into a quagmire. Besides understanding, there is also attitude and taste. I prefer informed cognition to befuddled 'contentment', and I do not confuse living near a cave, a dumpster and a folly with living well. Clearly, he explicitly stated that contentment had no part in the people's oppression. He did not suggest any such thing. He laid out the mechanisms of industrial capitalism, in which both government and religious institutions were instrumental in preserving the imbalance of power and material wealth and subjugating the masses through fraud and coercion. You're quite welcome to do so, but I wish it were done with sound textual and contextual understanding. In any case, neither your opinion nor mine affects what Marx wrote 180 years ago, in England. It's a reference, not a gospel. That has no bearing on Marxist analysis.

Besides assigned reading - I can't recall most of them; The Mayor of Casterbridge, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, and A Tale of Two Cities - I read some very good poetry, Siddhartha, The Tontine, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Centaur, The Sun Also Rises, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Doctor Zhivago (that was a slog!) and most of Shaw (that was a ball). Some of them in math class, and I did get caught, but my math teacher understood how lousy I was at his subject.

Ceiling, cobweb, light-fixture, no God...

I didn't say I was sure; I said no known enemies. Does this have any connection to the topic?

in order to slip the punch/question perhaps = religion is not your enemy Not a translation that springs automatically to mind. Thank you. I actually knew that, back when I was attempting to explore the various sources and benefits of religious belief. Since then, the subject has shifted in several directions. In none of those areas am I directly involved with a religion, as either friend or foe, either beneficiary or victim, either advocate or denouncer. I find the phenomenon of spirituality, its historical ritualization, co-optation and institutionalization interesting, but have no personal use for it. Again with the post-cryptic! I have no known enemies.

There are a number of assumptions expressed above of which I question the practicabilty. The ideas, however, are excellent.

That's quite true. It was a poorly formatted question. Sorry.

Sure, assuming they're able to pay a higher price, and if the vendor has anything they want. In most cases, the vendor has four other products that are identical or similar. You want anything else, the vendor shrugs: there is nothing he can do about supply. He usually doesn't. And the vendor across the street has identical or similar products with a different logo. Why and how would a different product exist, and if it did, how would a random shopper in a department store know it? Have you actually tried this? "None of these dresses have pockets. I need pockets" "We don't have any dresses with pockets." "Why not?" "I don't know, sir. They come without pockets." "Well, I want to lodge a complaint." "Crooked zippers, uneven hems, incorrect sizing... I'm sorry, sir, there's nothing on the complaint form for pockets." Etc. That's the venue I'd prefer, assuming one were available to everybody. Yell at the car? Or learn to sew your own dress? Both are viable options that have little discernible impact on "the market" Good one! Plenty of funds and free time available .... until you run up against the patent, the challenges of advertising and marketing, the Dragon's Den or amazon. Theory doesn't always match practice.

Not impossible. I suppose a few 100+year-olds fall down stairs, crash cars or get murdered. But certainly rare. Of course, "old" is an elastic concept. If you have nothing beyond a little hypertension at 65, that says nothing about the bone loss or kidney stones you may have at 66. Time passes and life takes takes its toll. Most of us have to put up with some inconveniences.

They patent mundane things that can be produced in enormous quantity of identical item at low cost. The consumer is stuck with those five models, especially if three of them brands are owned by the same corporation. (Did you ever have buy a pair of eyeglasses between 2000 and 20018? They were all the exactly the same shape, including the expensive 'designer' ones.) Where does an individual consumer voice the demand?

Well, Okay then!

I tried that approach first. It didn't work.

With great effort, difficulty and expense. But they good news is, they rarely get damaged in winter. And, obviously, they only exist in municipalities, not in the wild country, where snow may build up 12-14' deep and hard packed. Wires all the way through Tornado Alley? Don't think that's such a good idea. Especially at 1% loss per 100 miles of wire. It's a pretty solid box, but some people have poked holes through the side. Of course, there is the unmentionable aspect: Reduce Demand! Yeah! And this stuff! https://www.solarfabric.com/

One person's [particularly the OP's] inability or unwillingness to describe, define or explain the concept he or she wishes to discuss, does, however, limit the possibilities of a discussion, as other people's inability to grasp the incoherent idea of the OP, does also. We have very few clues as to who that may be, which gives us very little basis for bias. There may be an idea, but as long as it's incomprehensible, it has constrained scope for development, which is probably why it hasn't. If you define your terms, before launching a proffered solution to an unspecified problem in an unspecified category of unspecified subjects in an unspecified context for an unspecified purpose according and unspecified principle - sure. IOW - What are you talking about?

I don't even know what this means.

I understand that your are attempting "to further clarify your position", but your position has no evident relation to the statement I made regarding 20th century secularism; therefore I cannot regard it as a response.

Not really.... but I'm used to that.