Article Of Faith

 

https://apple.news/AN7nlmhN5Rku8XphHr10nEw

Very interesting article which I might have ignored had it not been in Scientific American.  It does make some excellent points. I remember reading an article in the LA Times perhaps 30 years ago which pointed out that while Europe was very secular and non-religious, that was in terms of organized religion. Most Europeans were, in fact, quite spiritual. They believed in something, whether it was an amorphous spirit of humanity or the Gaia hypothesis.

I used to complain (when the Next Generation was still an ongoing series), that, while every starship had a counselor, it seemed wrong that there weren’t any chaplains.  Chaplains are an essential component of military service and I couldn’t see the “non-military” but somehow incredibly militaristic Starfleet not having a chaplain’s corps.

I expected America to follow Europe’s lead and then, eventually, the rest of the world to get there too. However, organized religion in Europe has not ceased to exist, so I expected it would still remain an important, if minority, part of human existence.

In the decades since, the decline in organized religion in America has been following the European model. (Europe starting it all back in the days of the French revolution and we just taking own sweet time to get around to it.)

 Furthermore, the decline in organized religion in Europe has also increased (with the exception of new immigrants, especially Muslims).

In other words, it more and more looks as if Star Trek had it right and I had it wrong. Organized religion may in fact continue to fade away in the world as it has in Europe, while a generalized, individualized spirituality will likely remain.

Which means I’m also in agreement with this article. Counselors (along with their psychiatrist/psychologist colleagues) should be aware of spirituality, if not religion. It can be a very useful tool in treating emotional disorders.

>The study also revealed key opportunities in patient care, particularly for younger and seemingly secular patients. Psychiatric folklore has long suggested that psychotic, manic and obsessive patients gravitate more toward spirituality, as do older adults. Our findings, however, suggest that patients benefited from SPIRIT irrespective of their diagnosis or age. Apparently, depressed millennials are just as likely to want and benefit from spiritual psychotherapy as geriatric patients.

Our results also suggest that spiritual care is not only for religious individuals. The largest group of patients to voluntarily attend SPIRIT (39 percent of our sample) were individuals with no religious affiliation at all. Apparently many nonreligious people still seek spirituality, especially in times of distress. In fact, such individuals may be most likely to attend spiritual psychotherapy because their spiritual needs are otherwise ignored.<

Nursing Home Memories

 The Gabbling Goose

The Gabbling Goose 

She gabbles on

A sudden burst from nowhere 

A sudden cry of pain.

A call from 90 years ago

That grates upon our nerves

We cling to life

With wrinkled hands

Our pain is more

Than can be borne

Even with her silence

Which all too often fades

“Mama! Mama!”

Is all she knows

All she can remember,

Is 30 years too late

Mama’s  gone

Lost little girl

She cannot kiss 

Away the pain

Yesterday is gone

Ended many years ago

No mama here

To keep you safe

Gabble on

Old gabbling goose

Cry out for childhood

And for comfort’s home

The woman’s gone

The school girl too

Mother-wife no longer here

Grandma vanished from the land

Only here a toddler child

Hurting and alone

Crying out for mama

Yet dying all alone

Pardon Me, But Your Panic Is Showing

Want to talk about the Ebola crisis? The one that's threatening the end of America? The one that's going to kill every single human being in the country over the next couple of days?

Tell you what. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Trim my beard. Maybe take a quick shower. Next to the kitchen. Get a nice cold beer. Make myself a really good sandwich.

Meanwhile, you do all the screaming, shrieking, foaming at the mouth, and soiling yourself in terror you want. But when I get back, maybe we could talk about some of the serious problems confronting this country.

Please?

The Constitution and Me

The Supreme Court's involvement in the healthcare issue has become very interesting side show. One is tempted to say freak show.  Extremely strange and utterly irrational arguments are  being made even by the justices themselves.  I'm certain that everyone is heard the broccoli argument. Apparently, many otherwise rational people think that providing for health care for Americans is the same thing is ordering them to buy broccoli.  One is tempted to say that this argument is idiotic. However, it is more than that.  It is borderline insanity.

The argument only makes sense if one assumes that the government is not a necessary evil, but an unnecessary and even cancerous evil.  One can only assume that the radical right-wing justices believe in anarchy.  This would explain their irrational fear of government.

It should be noted here that I have said all along that the radical right-wing of the Republican Party is wrong to state that Obamacare, as they refer to it, is unconstitutional.  A law of this nature is new, so the question is open. 

This statement should be: We do not know if the law is constitutional or unconstitutional. We must test it in court and find out. 

I consider this law to be appallingly bad.  Since it is a radical right wing Republican law designed and created in one their private little think tanks, this is not surprising. Radical Republicans believe there is a private solution to every problem, but it is economically impossible to create an effectively functioning health care system which actually provides healthcare using a for-profit model. Private enterprise simply cannot perform this function.

Not long ago, Mr. Santorum was asked a question regarding our current system.  A college student was the questioner. The student said he didn't "think God appreciates the fact that we have 50,000 to 100,000 uninsured Americans dying due to a lack of healthcare every year," citing a 2009 study out of Harvard University.

"Dying?" Santorum answered before going back and forth about the validity of the study.  After all, who cares if tens of thousands of Americans die every year? At least, it doesn't matter as long as you can pretend that they didn't die. The game of pretend is utterly essential to the Republican worldview.

In spite of Mr. Santorum's reaction, I think most people would agree that Harvard University is not noted for its extremely inaccurate, politically motivated distribution of misinformation.

If those tens of thousands of Americans had had the good luck to have been born in Germany, Japan, Canada, or any other wealthy nation in the world, they would be alive today.  Sadly, they were born in America, a nation too poor to provide a national healthcare system to its citizens.

It ain't easy being poor. I guess we Americans better just get used to it.