We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Unless you give yourself 4 or more hours in the gym daily like an anorectic, no. For practical purposes, it is of no use for that.
All exercise which fatigues and stresses the body is good for mental health, fitness, and vitality, and it probably slightly raises calorie-burning and is better than sitting, but exercise alone can never help you lose 10 lbs of belly lard. It's wishful thinking.
We and others have written about the topic of self-esteem and self-respect ad nauseum. There is healthy narcissism and unhealthy narcissism; there is healthy self-hatred and unhealthy self-hatred. Pride is a mortal sin, but pride in a difficult accomplishment seems like a good reward.
We generally consider self-respect as something which must earned against some inner or outer obstacles, struggles against fear, temptation, or external resistances and challenges. We generally think of self-esteem as similar to self-administered mother's love or God's love. That is, unearned and undeserved. A modest dose of that never hurts and few of us are thoroughly evil or worthless. A good dose of humility never hurts either. We all have plenty of reasons for self-contempt and self-disappointment, and those deserve our attention however unpleasant that may be. I do not trust people who are not open to doing that job on themselves.
Worrying about choosing a career is a First World Problem, isn't it? All that most people need and want is a job in which they can succeed and survive. Extra money is even better and many people prefer that even if the responsibility is onerous and stressful.
Another problem with the "career" idea is that it implies a lifelong occupation with some sort of upward trajectory. Today, however, many if not most people change jobs, or careers, during their lives. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not.
Work that "does good for others"? All compensated work does good for others or it would have no monetary value, but the work which does the most "good for others" is work that creates jobs. It makes sense to claim that it is the entrepreneur and the inventor who do the most good for others and for society as a whole.
Want to do good for society and for others? First thing: be independent and self-sufficient. Second thing: support your family and raise them well, if you have one. Those are the most valuable things a person can ever do.
What about the idea of a "calling" or a mission? Interesting idea but usually only applied to religious or medical paths and most people would like to be writers, artists, or musicians if they could. I have never heard anyone claim a calling to software sales, but far more people build interesting, fulfilling, and useful lives doing the latter than the former.
Many are called but few are chosen. Missions and passions make for good hobbies if they do not seem to work as income-producing jobs. Everybody needs cool hobbies and sports, and a stimulating social life, to round out a life so it's a good idea to make time for one's passionate pursuits too.
Distance running, like any extended-time cardio (eg swimming, elliptical, rowing, bike, etc), procures no health or fitness benefits. Worse, distance running damages the body, often permanently.
If you must use running for the cardio component of a fitness program, two to four quarter-mile or even half-mile sprints per week is plenty. Treadmill sprints are kinder on the joints than a road. The comparable anaerobic sprint approach applies to any cardio exercises. For cardio, it is the spurts of max. intensity that matter, not time wasted.
(I am reminded to add that, for those over 75 or 80, aerobic cardio is great and much better than sitting.)
There are no cures for the most serious, chronic psychotic mental illnesses. Such patients can be helped in many ways but can never be normal, and many such patients, for a variety of reasons, do not cooperate with help that is offered.
Very few of these people are violent, and many of them just prefer to be left alone to live in their strange worlds.
How does one "help" such patients when they have no desire for help and treatment but are unable to live in the real world? Asylums existed for a reason.
It is a thoughtful essay, but I will object to the term "policy" because it implies government action in a situation in which nobody knows what is best to do. "Help" has to be individualized, not manualized.
The best-organized and rational program I have seen is the New Atkins.
If you want to look good, have maximum vigor, and save your joints, back, and heart, it's a good tough program which will shrink your belly, your stomach, and your appetite.
Once you reach your target, the plan focuses on maintenance. Not easy in a world of temptation.
They are physiologically correct in general, and especially in noting the trivial effect of exercise on fat loss. Exercise is for strength and vitality for white-collar and otherwise sedentary people, but not for fat loss. Lose fat, exercise better, get stronger, feel better, and fight aging.
Medically, each pound of spare adipose tissue over-stresses your heart, and your knees and hips. Not good. Also, strong and thin is good for sex.
If you just don't care, that's fine too. It's a free country. Very few have the self-discipline needed to do hard things persistently and obviously many people do not care very much about how they look or feel.
I have no problem with overweight people. I just assume that other things are more important to them than physical fitness, and they are right about that. It is not for everybody.
Overwhelming medical consensus is that Chronic Lyme Disease does not exist - unless Lyme goes untreated. It is easily treated, once diagnosed.
Nonetheless, many still cling to the idea of Chronic Lyme. Few physicians buy into this, but if they do, I will consider it quackery until I see convincing data.
As with the anti-Vac brigade, some people can not be persuaded by facts.
Let's assume that few people in the Western world are content to be "who they are naturally," ie without improving themselves by effort or training.
Thus many women wish to behave in a ladylike fashion, many men in a gentlemanly fashion. In the West, people have something we term an "ego ideal" to which they aspire. The ignorant wish to be more knowledgeable, the fearful wish to be more courageous, the cool-hearted wish to be warmer, the weak to be stronger, the unmannerly or boorish to be more civil or refined, the unpopular to be more engaging and interesting. Not all, but many.
Many people work on these aspirations through example or from books, etc. People do this because nobody's "natural self" is of much value or interest to others.
Ego ideals are, in part, culturally-defined. If a man's ego ideal is to be a tough wise guy with years of jail time, he studies that. If Bill Clinton's trailer park gals wish to learn charm and refinement, they read Emily Post or the modern equivalent.
Unless you are a genius, nobody cares much about your "authenticity." That is for your diary or your analyst but please spare the rest of us.
My point here is not really about becoming ladylike, however defined. It is that it takes practice, and some failure, to try to become who you want to be.
However, I think it is barking up the wrong tree to try to psychoanalyze this grievance-collection and grievance-manufacturing by the most privileged and indulged kids in the world. No reasonably balanced person reacts to such non-events. It is a fad, like hula-hoops. Faux outrage, microaggressions, and hate hoaxes are all the rage on campus this year. One might almost imagine that the ignorant kids have nothing to study. What it's really all about is cry-bullying, a manipulative power tactic which only works on spineless women and beta males.
Those are the same administrators who will buy their 3 year-olds Cocoa Puffs at the supermarket when they cry. Same stunt, same result. Too many spineless people out there who are afraid of saying "Shut up and grow up" the way normal people would do. Or, in the campus case, "Shut up and get back to your differential equations."
It seems, as a limit, five is the maximum for closest friends, and 100-150 about the max for solid pals plus solid acquaintances. That seems about right to me, depending on how pals and good acquaintances are defined (in this case, by frequency of contact). (h/t, Insty)
It's not really new news, but getting fat at some point in life does seem to alter some physiologic processes for the long term. It seems to retrain the body for a high-caloric life, for a fat life; resets some homeostatic buttons including altering or almost eliminating satiety signals for some period of time.
Despite the interesting physiology, I feel the article overstates the thesis and minimizes the role of human agency, human choice. Resisting temptation, calculating consequences, etc. is what makes us different from other animals. For those who have been heavy at some point in life, though, that is more challenging. Mind over matter.
Moral of the story: Don't "let yourself go" because you may live to regret it.
I think of it as physician-eased dying, and I see no important moral issues in the topic at all. Anesthesia and analgesia are among the handful of categories of mercies which modern medicine has to offer and to deny the comfort these tools can offer terminal patients seems sadistic and immoral to me.
I read this short piece, Death and the Psychiatrist, and do not feel that it was worth publishing (or linking, except as an example of a weak essay). Of course, I saw plenty of dying during my medical training. There are many ways to die, but the worst one is to die in agony and terror. Nobody needs that.
It seems common enough these days to see terminally-ill patients tortured by heroic medical efforts. I hate to hear about this. Physicians, of all people, should know when to let go even if families do not. Hope is not a plan.
When your 104-lb body is packed with cancer and wracked with pain, would you chose one more round of chemotherapy, or hospice care where you would be gently eased out of it all, floating on a sea of morphine?
It's not just the terror that Johnny might break his arm in the playground. It's not a "sticks and stones" country any more, at least among the coastal elites.
When we give up our healthy skepticism about what we read and hear, we begin to enter the realm of faith.
Much has been written about faith, especially religious faith. In a post-enlightenment world, faith has been, supposedly, relegated to the religion category but, as in ancient times, faith, superstition, and imagination continue to effect non-religious attitudes and thinking. Human nature.
Much of what we all believe is not Truth. Maybe most of it. Thus healthy skepticism. Not paranoia but cheerful skepticism.
Regarding Science and Scientism, few if any scientists are Scientism-ists. Those in the hard sciences can be hard-nosed, but even they need grants and jobs and need to feed their families.
Freud waxed creative on the topic of cultural taboos, identifying them as unconsciously or consciously interesting, but forbidden, fruits. He never, to my knowledge advocated violating cultural rules and taboos.
Homosexual temptation has been around forever, but sometimes illegal and sometimes it has been impolite to mention the topic so the taboo in that case had more to do with conversation than with behavior. In many cultures, adultery, fratricide, patricide, and matricide are basic taboos. Judaism and Christianity have abundant taboos.
Psychiatric organizations are challenged by the gradual cultural acceptance - to some extent, anyway - of behaviors once considered taboo or debauched by the culture, and perversions by Psychiatry. Despite media attention, most people still regard much behavior with revulsion. To turn the tables, often those with discomfort or revulsion are now labeled neurotic "phobics." Thus a gradual normalization of fantasy translated into real behavior.
I suppose parts of our culture have arrived there, even without Communism.
Here is a run-down of some of the outlandish things going on these days, often reminiscent of Nero and the Roman Empire. As the narrator says, nothing "sweet and innocent" here. Or loving, either. The entire "I identify as..." trend is a curious turn of phrase. I think it means "I like to pretend...". The unbound human imagination at work:
No, I don't think so. I think people fully accept the partial roles that good and bad luck play in their lives. Still, the old cliches apply: "Make your own luck," "Turn lemons into lemonade," "Make the most of the cards you're dealt."
I like to view life as a passing conveyor belt loaded with good and bad choices, good opportunities and terrible ideas, nasty surprises and pleasant surprises. But if I come down with cancer, it's bad luck.
As of now, it is mainly used with patients who do not respond to other means, but that may change. One wonders whether, like ECT, it might flick some sort of switch, or push a reset button.
The meaning of your special snowflake life. Your mission. It hearkens back to the time when America's colleges were basically Congregational seminaries with sciences and liberal arts to help produce well-lettered and knowledgeable preachers and professors.
The assumption now, of course, is that the most privileged kids in the world are helpless infants and idiots. The infantilization of college students continues unabated. Meanwhile those who do not attend colleges grow up right away.
I do not know how to account for this trend. "Extended adolescence"? There was a time when college students considered themselves fully-fledged adults, and were viewed that way too. Age 16, or 18 depending on your background, was it.
Regardless of how long the kids and the higher ed administrators conspire to delay it, everybody confronts reality and is forced to grow up eventually. Sippican's sewer line is a good metaphor.
It's a good idea in theory, but few journalists have the skills to analyze the work behind the press releases they receive. To tell the truth, I do not have the skill any more to look deeply into the work behind the reports in medical journals. This makes me a skeptic.
The best-organized and rational program I have seen is 
It's not really new news, but getting fat at some point in life does seem to alter some physiologic processes for the long term. It seems to retrain the body for a high-caloric life, for a fat life; resets some homeostatic buttons including altering or almost eliminating satiety signals for some period of time.