As I got older as a GP I found more and more young people were suffering problems caused by taking drugs [illicit ones I mean, often obtainable at school] All the different drugs that young people take are different from each other with different side effects and consequences. Kids who take drugs visit their doctor much more often than kids who don’t take drugs but often the actual complaint from the kid would apparently be nothing to do with drugs, perhaps they did not feel very well. Often they looked upon their drug taking as normal and fairly harmless even though the grades they were getting at school would be sliding down the scale and their parents were becoming very worried for them.
It was difficult to give the kid a good reason to give up the habit that they recognised as valid. Telling them that the habit would shorten their life, make them fail their exams and mess up their brains and relationships did not seem to cut much ice. Many drugs are demotivating and very harmful to fulfil ambition or potential. [Not true for nicotine or caffeine but nicotine has a host of harmful effects, caffeine less so, fortunately for us coffee drinkers]
One idea that did seem to wake them up a bit, and not used at drug clinics was this; “Sooner or later you will be in work and be responsible for others, like I am in work at this minute. How would you feel if I stared at you with glazed eyes and just suggested that you should chill out and don’t worry, taking no notice of what you said or what you were worried about?
If you work hard, for years, to get a skill so you can earn your own living it gives you a feeling of satisfaction. What if you can get that same degree of satisfaction from taking a ‘recreational’ drug? Where will that leave you, where will it leave society? Have a nice day!"
Friday, January 27, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Wisdom
“When I think of all the crap I learnt at High School, it’s a wonder that I can think at all.” Paul Simon song.
I am an admirer of Paul Simon, his music, lyrics and style. The quote, to me, reverberates with interesting complexities, many of them contradictory.
It echoes feelings of adolescent intellectual rebelliousness. Of course, Paul Simon is very clever. There are elements of both wisdom and foolishness in the possible meanings and thoughts which can stem from the line. There are resonances of J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’; I am sure that Paul Simon is a J. D. Salinger fan.
I think I was born with very high levels of intellectual rebelliousness myself, it can lead you into trouble and out of trouble, it takes wisdom to control it but wisdom is in short supply and difficult to find. Or is it? In King John, one of Shakespeare’s characters says, “Wisdom cries out in the streets, but no one listens”. It is a very profound statement, wisdom is easy to find; all you have to do is close your eyes, relax, and ask yourself what a wise person would suggest you should do. Notice that I say ‘what a wise person would advise you to do’, not what the wise person would necessarily do, because wise people are much better at being wise for others than they are at being wise for themselves.
Wisdom requires quite a lot of knowledge as well as good systems of thought and, very sadly much of what people think they know, and firmly believe, really is total crap. Ignoring what you learn from High School will not help at all. Treating everything you think you know with healthy scepticism helps a lot but it cannot be the complete answer. We have to make decisions, sometimes we have to make them very quickly indeed, and sometimes the very worst decision is to make no decision at all but just keep threshing the possibilities over and over again in the mind. It may be here that what you learnt from High School can save your life, or even more importantly, somebody else’s life. (There is a song, which I like, and fits me; ‘Somebody saved my life today’, for me that person is Fay, my wife, now you see why I love, admire and care for her so much.)
I am an admirer of Paul Simon, his music, lyrics and style. The quote, to me, reverberates with interesting complexities, many of them contradictory.
It echoes feelings of adolescent intellectual rebelliousness. Of course, Paul Simon is very clever. There are elements of both wisdom and foolishness in the possible meanings and thoughts which can stem from the line. There are resonances of J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’; I am sure that Paul Simon is a J. D. Salinger fan.
I think I was born with very high levels of intellectual rebelliousness myself, it can lead you into trouble and out of trouble, it takes wisdom to control it but wisdom is in short supply and difficult to find. Or is it? In King John, one of Shakespeare’s characters says, “Wisdom cries out in the streets, but no one listens”. It is a very profound statement, wisdom is easy to find; all you have to do is close your eyes, relax, and ask yourself what a wise person would suggest you should do. Notice that I say ‘what a wise person would advise you to do’, not what the wise person would necessarily do, because wise people are much better at being wise for others than they are at being wise for themselves.
Wisdom requires quite a lot of knowledge as well as good systems of thought and, very sadly much of what people think they know, and firmly believe, really is total crap. Ignoring what you learn from High School will not help at all. Treating everything you think you know with healthy scepticism helps a lot but it cannot be the complete answer. We have to make decisions, sometimes we have to make them very quickly indeed, and sometimes the very worst decision is to make no decision at all but just keep threshing the possibilities over and over again in the mind. It may be here that what you learnt from High School can save your life, or even more importantly, somebody else’s life. (There is a song, which I like, and fits me; ‘Somebody saved my life today’, for me that person is Fay, my wife, now you see why I love, admire and care for her so much.)
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Words and Meanings
Alice in Wonderland said that words mean ‘whatever I want them to mean’. Lewis Carroll was a mathematician so he knew how much truth may lie in the absurd.
Many disputes, from personal to international are not founded on true realities but more on the different meanings ascribed to words. People are murdered because they will not give loyalty to a particular group of words.
Who owns the meanings of words? The compilers of dictionaries perhaps, but they base their conclusions on nothing more weighty than common usage.
Words and their meanings change with time, they are truly democratic, belonging to the people. Efforts by authoritarian groups and individuals to ‘own’ or control the meanings of words always fail in the end. The very ambiguity of words is also a strength a necessity and a thing of beauty, they are alive just as we are alive and evolve as we evolve.
An interesting word is ‘GOD’; There are those who define this word in ancient and simplistic ways and then write books to prove that the poor fellow does not exist. For the average educated person anthropomorphic gods are, philosophically speaking, ‘dead in the water’ anyway, so proving that an elderly gentleman is no longer sitting in the sky organising every atom in the universe does not really deserve books and fame. Wholly abstract, virtual or spiritual definitions or understandings suffice without recourse to possibilities which deny reason.
The only thing that needs to be abandoned is the use of intimidation, violence or cruelty to prove that a given definition is true, the validity of any idea is inversely proportional to the intimidation necessary to support its existence.
Many disputes, from personal to international are not founded on true realities but more on the different meanings ascribed to words. People are murdered because they will not give loyalty to a particular group of words.
Who owns the meanings of words? The compilers of dictionaries perhaps, but they base their conclusions on nothing more weighty than common usage.
Words and their meanings change with time, they are truly democratic, belonging to the people. Efforts by authoritarian groups and individuals to ‘own’ or control the meanings of words always fail in the end. The very ambiguity of words is also a strength a necessity and a thing of beauty, they are alive just as we are alive and evolve as we evolve.
An interesting word is ‘GOD’; There are those who define this word in ancient and simplistic ways and then write books to prove that the poor fellow does not exist. For the average educated person anthropomorphic gods are, philosophically speaking, ‘dead in the water’ anyway, so proving that an elderly gentleman is no longer sitting in the sky organising every atom in the universe does not really deserve books and fame. Wholly abstract, virtual or spiritual definitions or understandings suffice without recourse to possibilities which deny reason.
The only thing that needs to be abandoned is the use of intimidation, violence or cruelty to prove that a given definition is true, the validity of any idea is inversely proportional to the intimidation necessary to support its existence.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Grandad's quote of the week
'The veracity of any belief is inversely proportional to the degree of violence people are willing to inflict on others to support that belief’
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