Giving Us All Grief

Eric at Classical Values has a nice post up on grief mongers and their lawyers. Each little grief enacted into our common law (by judges decisions on what claims are actionable) adds friction to the system. A kind of creeping arthritis. The grief is justified and now everyone suffers. But just a little from each. So it creeps up until movement is so painful it stops.

Eric also sent me a link about a mother who is trying to stop the legal use of methadone because her son died from some that was diverted from the legal market. Let me amend that. Her action will not lead directly to that but this will. And there is a strong connection between the two.

One commenter calls for help for the grief stricken mother.

Laura says:
March 11, 2011 at 10:29 pm

There are good suggestions in these comments.

I just wanted to appeal on Katie's behalf to anyone reading this who can HELP her, in real-time, to do what your heart may be calling you to do and help her, with legal expertise, etc.

I have some good suggestions too.

OK. I'll help: END DRUG PROHIBITION

So people in the presence of an overdose are not afraid to call 911. So the antidote for opiate poisoning is freely available for those who want it.

===

So far as I can see not one suggestion here will make things better. Oh. People will get punished. But we have been down that road for 95+ years with no measurable effect (except the addition of a crime problem to a drug problem).

Stop letting your pain drive you into stupidity.

1. More punishment = more profit for dealers
2. More profit for dealers = more dealers

Is that what you had hoped to accomplish?

And that is not all I suggested:

Now if Henry had only obeyed the law...........

It is a damn shame but you just can't seem to be able to make people obey the law. Pity. Obviously I need to get more into the spirit of things so I did:

We have to get that methadone off the street. It is unfair competition for heroin.

So who do I think the real culprit is? Henry's parents - the grief stricken one(s) - for getting a divorce.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Losing Empathy

I was stuck in a doctor's office the other day and all they had to read was woman's magazines. You know the kind. Full of pictures of waifs in bikinis plus lots of beauty and relationship angst. Except for the breast reduction surgery before and after pictures. Well any way other than the bright spots (you know - the semi naked women) - not a lot of fun. So I was interested when I came across a bit about botox injections reducing the empathy of the injected.

...after Botox treatment, the subjects took more time to read the angry and sad sentences. Although the time difference was small, it was significant, he adds.

Could this explain why Nancy Pelosi seems so out of touch with the American people? Why their anger does not register well with her? Maybe.

What ever the case about her emotions the botox sure hasn't done a lot for her looks.

The Pain In The Brain

I just learned somethin new today abou pain. What I learned is that Arthritis pain is processed in the brain's 'fear center'.

Researchers at The University of Manchester have discovered that arthritis pain, unlike that induced as part of an experiment, is processed in the parts of the brain concerned with emotions and fear.

So repeated pain trains you. It causes your experience of pain to be more painful. Which is a good thing since it will tend to reduce the stress on the areas in pain. The more it hurts the less you use it.

"We thought that arthritic and acute experimental pain would be processed within the same areas of the pain matrix," Dr Kulkarni continued. "But, although both activated both the medial and lateral pain systems, arthritic pain prompted increased activity in the cingulate cortex, thalamus and amygdale within the medial system - the areas concerned with processing fear, emotions and aversive conditioning.

"This suggests that arthritic pain has more emotional salience than experimental pain for these patients, which is consistent with the unpleasantness scores they themselves gave. The increased activity in the areas associated with aversive conditioning, reward and fear, which are less commonly activated during experimental pain, suggests they might be processing fear of further injury and disability associated with the arthritic pain."

This is very important because I think fear, if it reaches a high enough level, is experienced as pain. On top of that it is likely that extreme fear memories can be experienced as pain as well.

Which points out something another study looks at. Fear memories are at the heart of PTSD as I discussed in PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System. One of the keys tying this all together is this study: Fear memories, the amygdala, and the CB1 receptor. It turns out that cannabinoids are a part of this signaling mechanism and that the strength of the signal is in part genetically determined.

All this corroborates what I have been saying for years. The idea that "drugs cause addiction" is superstition. People in chronic pain chronically take drugs for pain relief. It doesn't matter if the pain is from a broken bone or rape memories. The same drugs work to provide relief.

The drug war is a persecution of people in pain.

Cross Posted at Classical Values and at The Astute Bloggers

Walking On Broken Glass

I was having an e-mail exchange with one of my commenters and the difficulties of life came up. My commenter was talking about his relationships and the "walking on egg shells" feelings you get in your relationships with some loved ones. Parents, siblings, offspring. Here is a little of what I had to say:

I finally learned that the "perfect childhood" is an illusion. My pain, however, prepared me to help others. Which in the ideal case is what it is supposed to do and what you are supposed to do.

I have a relative who is borderline mad, schizophrenia. If he takes his medicine he is fine. He hates taking his medicine. Says it deprives him of an interesting life of the mind. Being borderline schizophrenic myself I understand that. Schizophrenia is a big help to creativity if it doesn't turn into madness. Gifts and curses. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

Well I have lead a very interesting life so far and for that I am eternally grateful.

When I get that "walking on egg shells" feeling I like to listen to "Walking On Broken Glass" by the EURYTHMICS. It expresses the feeling well.

Now everyone of us was made to suffer
Everyone of us was made to weep
But we've been hurting one another
And now the pain has cut too deep...
So take me from the wreckage
Save me from the blast
Lift me up and take me back
Don't let me keep on walking...
Walking on broken glass

Walking On Broken Glass - lyrics

Walking On Broken Glass - music video

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Politics and Pain

Front Page Magazine is doing a symposium with a number of leftist who have broken with the faith. Tammy Bruce has some very interesting things to say about the kind of people the left tends to draw from.

Narcissism, while frequently thought of as “self-love,” is in fact the opposite. It is self-obsession based on victimhood and paranoia. Narcissism is actually the belief that everything that happens, happens because of you, or revolves around you. As an example, feminist narcissists see the pro-life movement as being against women, or as a jihad against women, as opposed to an expression of those peoples’ concern for life. The issues for narcissists, whether they be feminist, gay or black, is always about them, surrounding them, or about how the opposition is out to get them. Paranoia is a key factor in narcissism and easy to exploit.

Victimhood. What makes a person in his/her late teens think they are a victim? What could happen in child hood to give a person that mind set? Tammy goes on:

Leftist politics, like a vicious circle, rely on the damaged as footsoldiers, while the most damaged, the “Malignant Narcissist,” as I explain in The Death of Right and Wrong, move into positions of power and leadership, furthering the cultural and political destruction of our culture and of the left in general.

From my personal experience on the left I would have to agree. I think my main attraction to the left came from two points. One is the natural sympathy for the victims of injustice, human nature. The second was that I was a victim of severe child abuse and felt at home with other abused kids standing against injustice. The narcissim Tammy talks about is real. However, it is for most not something chosen but inflicted on them. This is the biggest mistake of the right. The idea that the origins of the left are in malevolence and not in human nature. More specifically brain chemistry.

Phyllis Chesler expands on that theme:

As a Jew, I was always concerned with the suffering of others--and while I agree with the earlier analysis that this victim-identification can be both megalomaniac, narcissistic, and ultimately irrational, rigid, totalitarian, I also still believe that trying to help others, to repair the injustice in the world, is an ethical choice.

Too true.

John R. Bradley has noticed Tammy's money quote and comments:

Tammy Bruce's observation, that "Leftist politics, like a vicious circle, rely on the damaged as foot soldiers," is nowhere more relevant than the love affair of the Left with the Palestinians. The great French writer Jean Genet, who had a sympathy for the Palestinian cause, nevertheless got it just right when he wrote in Prisoner of Love that they only really come into their own when a camera is trained on them and they are playing the role of victim, basking in the media spotlight.

Victims. Nothing but victims. I noted in my article The Origins of Islamic Rage in which Phyllis Chesler reports on why Islam is the way it is, that Islam as a whole has this victim mentality. The article explains why. Child abuse.

And then Instapundit this morning links to an article about Lebanon by Michael Totten which has this to say about Lebanon:

I also wonder if this entire culture is still wracked with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and is accordingly paranoid about worst case scenarios.

So Michael diagnoses the problem from afar the same way Chesler does up close and personal. What is to be done? Well, Lebanon is famous for its quality marijuana and Blond Lebanese Hashish. So what does hashish have to do with it?

Dr. Tod Mikuriya says that cannabis is the best medicine for PTSD.

So now we know why a lot of lefties keep their bongs always at hand. They need them. The leftist cadre were always exhorting the dopers to give up the evil weed. Why? Not from any moral point surely. Of course not, it was because it dulled the will to fight. Now from a social and medical stand point might it not be best to let the left (and libertarians on the right) have their pot, mellow out and thus be less interested in fighting the rest of us and possibly even be more open to reason. Pot after all causes brain cell growth.

And why pot? Well for one thing it is unpatented. That will save a fortune in fees to the drug companies and since pot is a plant you just deliver seeds and growing instructions.

In the end Nixon's idea to use the War On Drugs to go after the left may have been one of the most counter productive things he ever did.

Cross Posted at Classical Values on 31 March 008, 0103z.