Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
We introverts need our solitude, and in a world lousy teeming with extroverts, we can easily see the bright side of the 'social distancing' that prudence demands in the face of the Wuhan Flu. It offers us a good excuse to avoid idle talk and social dissipation.
"I really would love to attend the block party and partake of the pot luck, but given my age-related susceptibility and the enormity of the WuFlu threat . . . ."
Related:
Peggy Noonan advertises her ignorance in this opening sentence:
This coronavirus is new to our species—it is “novel.” It spreads more easily than the flu—“exponentially,” as we now say—and is estimated to be at least 10 times as lethal.
Why is it "novel"? It is a form of flu, and it is not unique in spreading exponentially.
Noonan seems to think that 'exponentially' is some newfangled buzzword. Not so. It has a precise mathematical meaning, and the Wuhan Flu — to use my preferred politically incorrect moniker — is not unique in spreading geometrically (exponentially) as opposed to arithmetically.
If you have forgotten, or have never learned, the difference between arithmetic and geometric progressions, Dr. Math has a simple and clear explanation for you.
For perspective, consider that in recent years 30,000 to 40,000 Americans each year have been killed in car crashes, and that thousands and thousands die each year of various strains of influenza the names of which are not bandied-about by the 24/7/366 media. The Maverick advises: resist group-think and mass hysteria. While taking reasonable precautions, live your life and consider what really matters. This is not to say that the COVID-19 virus is not a serious threat. It is, and it is being dealt with by a serious president who gets called a 'racist' and a 'xenophobe' for his eminently sensible travel bans. People such as Joe Biden who hurl these epithets are moral scum and need to be denounced as such.
There are things about which people should be panicked [or at least seriously concerned].
For example, the contempt for America and capitalism taught to a generation of young Americans from elementary school through college is worthy of panic. The extreme levels of economy-collapsing debt we are irresponsibly piling onto the backs of future generations to maintain “entitlements” is worthy of panic.
So is the premature sexualization of children—encouraging them to choose their own gender and taking 5-year-olds to public libraries for “Drag Queen Story Hour.”
But such things hardly register with most Americans.
I feel awful for kids today. They are relentlessly told that global warming poses an “existential threat” to life on earth. They are relentlessly told that President Donald Trump poses an “existential threat to America”—the words used, for example, a few weeks ago by Frank Rich in New York magazine, and used by the “moderate” Michael Bloomberg repeatedly in his speeches.
And now they are told their families had better stock up on toilet paper because only God knows when they will be unable to leave their homes.
It was a Democratic president who told Americans, during World War II no less, that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” He is a liberal idol, in part for saying that.
That is more or less exactly what Trump has been saying. Yet he’s an “existential threat” to our country.
Now chill out and have a beer. May I recommend a
Some of the Democrat candidates for president are calling for Medicare for all, in those terms. The call makes no sense. Medicare is a U. S. government program for American citizens 65 years of age and older. (There are minor exceptions that don't affect my main point.) Now even Democrats know that not every citizen is 65 or older. So the call makes no sense for that reason alone.
If the Dem dogs weren't such lying "pony soldiers" to use Joe Biden's bizarre phrase, if they were intellectually honest, then they would admit to be calling for universal health care, where 'universal' covers citizens and illegal aliens. The mendacious bunch would also own up to wanting a single-payer system, one that outlaws private health insurance. Outlawing private insurers such as Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, Aetna, etc., would do away with the supplemental plans now available to part B Medicare recipients.
Next Lie: "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan." (Barack Obama)
Contemporary liberals spout nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem. True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony. The moralists of old understood something when they classified gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins.
Obesity is not a disease; so, speaking strictly, there cannot be an epidemic of it. There are two separate issues here. One is whether obesity is a disease. But even if it is classified as a disease, it is surely not a contagious disease and so not something there can be an epidemic of.
I know that 'epidemic' is used more broadly than this, even by epidemiologists; but this is arguably the result of an intrusion of liberal-left ideology into what is supposedly science. Do you really think that 'epidemic' is being used in the same way in 'flu epidemic' and 'obesity epidemic'? Is obesity contagious? If fat Al sneezes in my face, should I worry about contracting the obesity virus? There is no such virus.
Obesity is not contagious and not a disease. I know what some will say: obesity is socially contagious. But now you've shifted the sense of 'contagious.' You've engaged in a bit of semantic mischief. It is not as if there are two kinds of contagion, natural and social. Social contagion is not contagion any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck. 'Social' in 'socially contagious' is an alienans adjective.
Why then are you fat? You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong sorts of food and refuse to exercise. For most people that's all there is to it. It's your fault. It is not the result of being attacked by a virus. It is within your power to be fat or not. It is a matter of your FREE WILL. You have decided to become fat or to remain fat. When words such as 'epidemic' and 'disease' are used in connection with obesity, that is an ideological denial of free will, an attempt to shift responsibility from the agent to factors external to the agent such as the 'evil' corporations that produce so-called 'junk' food.
There is no such thing as junk food.
There are public health problems, but obesity is not one of them. It is a private problem resident at the level of the individual and the family. The totalitarians of the contemporary Democrat party don't want you to know this. They want total control, including control of what you eat. They want, so to speak, the whole enchilada.
Here are some arguments pro et con as to whether or not obesity is a disease.
When it comes to hydration there are two schools of thought. I have spoken with medical doctors who claim that it suffices to drink when one is thirsty. The massage therapists, on the other hand, to a woman recommend the drinking of prodigious quantities of water.
Now water is the philosopher's drink (Henry David Thoreau) and the via media is his path. So I tread the middle path between the sawbones and the back rubbers. First thing upon arisal is the downing of two 12-ounce glasses of purified water. That is against my druthers, a half a cup (4 oz) being all I desire at that time of the morning. But I pound 'em down. That is followed by two cups of strong java. A most excellent diuretic! Then a third glass topped with some orange juice — an 80-20 mix — before I leave the house for the morning constitutional which features three episodes of clear micturition, two in the wild, leaning upon my staff, gazing into the Apeiron, the third back at the shack. And then I maintain the inflow for the rest of the day sipping Perrier and San Pellegrino and the effluent of my reverse osmosis tap. Two more cups of coffee for a total of four for the day. No sugary drinks. And no booze until the weekend. And a moderate quantity of that.
Your body is a temple, not an amusement park, pace Anthony Bourdain, who brought his nihilist life to a fitting conclusion by hanging himself.
And if it is a temple, you might want to think twice about defacing it with tattoos, the graffiti of the human body. Leave the tats to the drunken sailors and rough trade that one might find on the waterfront.
Here, at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
As long as this blog has been online, 14 years now, I have railed against the misuse of the the word 'addiction.' Thanks to Dave Lull, I am pleased to see that Peter Hitchens takes a similar line in a First Things article. Excerpt:
The chief difficulty with the word “addiction” is the idea that it describes a power greater than the will. If it exists in the way we use it and in the way our legal and medical systems assume it exists, then free will has been abolished. I know there are people who think and argue this is so. But this is not one of those things that can be demonstrated by falsifiable experiment. In the end, the idea that humans do not really have free will is a contentious opinion, not an objective fact.
So to use the word “addiction” is to embrace one side in one of those ancient unresolved debates that cannot be settled this side of the grave. To decline to use it, by contrast, is to accept that all kinds of influences, inheritances, and misfortunes may well operate on us, and propel us towards mistaken, foolish, wrong, and dangerous actions or habits. It is to leave open the question whether we can resist these forces. I am convinced that declining the word “addiction” is both the only honest thing to do, and the only kind and wise thing to do, when we are faced with fellow creatures struggling with harmful habits and desires. It is all very well to relieve someone of the responsibility for such actions, by telling him his body is to blame. But what is that solace worth if he takes it as permission to carry on as before? Once or twice I have managed to explain to a few of my critics that this is what I am saying. But generally they are too furious, or astonished by my sheer nerve, to listen.
Related: The Case for Nicotine
The liberal wussification initiative needs ever more victims, ever more government dependents, and ever more sick people. Hence the trend in this therapeutic society to broaden the definition of 'disease' to cover what are obviously not diseases. Need more patients? Define 'em into existence! Theodore Dalrymple talks sense:
There are cheap lies and expensive lies, and the lie that addiction is a disease just like any other will prove to be costly. It is the lie upon which Washington has based its proposed directive that insurance policies should cover addiction and mental disorders in the same way as they cover physical disease. The government might as well decriminalize fraud while it is at it.
The evidence that addiction is not a disease like any other is compelling, overwhelming, and obvious. It has also been available for a long time. The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s definition of addiction as a “chronic, relapsing brain disease” is about as scientific as the advertising claims for Coca-Cola. In fact, it had its origin as a funding appeal to Congress.
To take only one point among many: most addicts who give up do so without any medical assistance—and most addicts do give up. Moreover, they do so at an early age. The proximate cause of their abstinence is their decision to be abstinent. No one can decide not to have rheumatoid arthritis, say, or colon cancer. Sufferers from those diseases can decide to cooperate or not with treatment, but that is another matter entirely. Therefore, there is a category difference between addiction and real disease.
Read it all.
Very interesting, and not irrational given her age:
In the last few years I have given up on the many medical measures—cancer screenings, annual exams, Pap smears, for example—expected of a responsible person with health insurance. This was not based on any suicidal impulse.
Younger than Ehrenreich, I will continue to exercise what is called 'due diligence.'
Via Rod Dreher who adds his commentary.
Dreher has become a daily read for me. But I have to wonder: how can so prolific a writer and family man have any time left over for the practices of the Ben Op? I mean meditation, prayer, spiritual reading, and the rest. It's easy to get sucked in, Rod. Be careful. This world's a vanishing quantity, not that you don't believe it.
Those who aspire to live well must learn to curtail their consumption of mass communication media.
Let's talk about cigarettes. Suppose you smoke one pack per day. Is that irrational? I hope all will agree that no one who is concerned to be optimally healthy as long as possible should smoke 20 cigarettes a day, let alone 80 like Rod Serling who died at age 50 on the operating table. But long-term health is only one value among many. Would Serling have been as productive without the weed? Maybe not.
Suppose one genuinely enjoys smoking and is willing to run the risk of disease and perhaps shorten one's life by say five or ten years in order to secure certain benefits in the present. There is nothing irrational about such a course of action. One acts rationally — in one sense of 'rational' — if one chooses means conducive to the ends one has in view. If your end in view is to live as long as possible, then don't smoke. If that is not your end, if you are willing to trade some highly uncertain future years of life for some certain pleasures here and now, and if you enjoy smoking, then smoke.
The epithet 'irrational' is attached with more justice to the fascists of the Left, the loon-brained tobacco wackos, who, in the grip of their misplaced moral enthusiasm, demonize the acolytes of the noble weed. The church of liberalism must have its demon, and his name is tobacco. I should also point out that smoking, like keeping and bearing arms, is a liberty issue. Is liberty a value? I'd say it is. Yet another reason to oppose the liberty-bashing loons of the Left and the abomination of Obamacare with its individual mandate. [This entry is a repost from 28 December 2011. One of President Trump's many accomplishments has been to put an end to the mandate.]
Smoking and drinking can bring you to death's door betimes. Ask Humphrey Bogart who died at 56 of the synergistic effects of weed and hooch. Life's a gamble. A crap shoot no matter how you slice it. Hear the Hitch:
Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me. So I was knowingly taking a risk. I wouldn't recommend it to others.
Exactly right.
And like Bogie before him, Hitch paid the price for his boozing and smoking in the coin of an early death at age 62 on 15 December, 2011. Had he taken care of himself he might have kept up his high-toned ranting and raving for another ten years at least.
So why don't I smoke and drink? The main reason is that smoking and drinking are inconsistent with the sorts of activities that provide satisfactions of a much higher grade than smoking and drinking. I mean: running, hiking, backpacking and the like. When you wake up with a hangover, are you proud of the way you spent the night before? Are you a better man in any sense? Do you really feel better after a night of physical and spiritual dissipation? Would you feel a higher degree of satisfaction if the day before you had completed a 26.2 mile foot race?
Health and fitness in the moment is a short-term reason. A long-term reason is that I want to live as long as possible so as to finish the projects I have in mind. It is hard to write philosophy when you are sick or dead.
And here below is where the philosophy has to be written. Where I hope to go there will be no need for philosophy.
In part it is about control. I can't control your body, but I can control mine. Control is good. Power is good. Physical culture is the gaining and maintaining of power over that part of the physical world that is one's physical self.
Self-mastery, as the highest mastery, must include mastery of the vehicle of one's subjectivity. Control of one's vehicle is a clear desideratum. So stretch, run, hike, bike, swim, put the shot, lift the weight.
In short: rouse your sorry ass from the couch of sloth and attend to your vehicle. 'Ass' here refers to Frate Asino, Brother Jackass, St Francis' name for his body. Keep him in good shape and he will carry you and many a prodigious load over many a pons asinorum.
(It is interesting that the German Arsch, when it crossed the English Channel became 'arse,' but in the trans-Atlantic trip it transmogrified into the polyvalent 'ass.' Whatever you call it, get it off the couch.)
That's what it was called before it was called ObamaCare. If you don't like the latter, then you'd better vote for Trump. It might be in your best interest to inform yourself on this matter.
My Defective ObamaCare Health Insurance Product Just Blew Up
Although their presence is insufficient for happiness, their absence is sufficient for misery.
Members of the professoriat have much to complain about, but physicians have it worse.