This was a month with lots of Zoom meetings, twelve of them. I had a couple of meetings with my friend Henk who lives in Scotland. I met with a very supportive book club member discussing some challenges facing the club. I met with my nephew René who lives in Calgary. I had a condominio meeting. Pat and I met with our friends Ken and Trish. I attended five Collective Presencing sessions at The Stoa. And we had an ABC meeting.
I wrote another essay, COVID-19 Culture War, and an article, My Reflections on The Stoa.
We faced another unexpected challenge that required immediate attention. Pat discovered termites! The exterminators found only two areas with termites, by our kitchen sink which had damage, and by the service entry sink, which had the start of a tunnel. Our situation could have been much worse. The cost of treatment was high, $38,350 pesos. As retirees with limited resources, unexpected expenses are challenging. But we are grateful that we could at least handle this financially. And Pat and I handled the stress reasonably well.
The ABC meeting this month was a Special Event. Out book selection was Collective Presencing by Ria Baeck. She joined our meeting from Belgium and this necessitated a special time, 9 AM, for us. A few attendees connected quite well with the content of the book and I was pleased with the discussion. I had provided attendees with An Introduction to a Beginner’s Guide to Collective Presencing.
I do not write much about Pat on this website. She is a very private person and she wants to keep it that way. But I will say that she is my strongest and best connection to the real world. I tend to have my head in the clouds. Pat has her feet firmly on the ground, something I surely need for balance.
Readings
The Atlantic and the Limits of Reasonableness by David Klion
But what really comes through is the institutional voice of The Atlantic, which makes itself felt in nearly every contribution: clean, authoritative, high-minded, rigorously empirical, more than a bit self-righteous—and, once you’ve heard it enough times, utterly tedious.
At one time this magazine captured my thinking quite well, but it no longer does so.
The hidden factors that could produce a surprise Trump victory by David Siders
By almost every measure that political operatives, academics and handicappers use to forecast elections, the likely outcome is that Joe Biden will win the White House.
Yet two weeks before Election Day, the unfolding reality of 2020 is that it’s harder than ever to be sure.
Has the Drug-Based Approach to Mental Illness Failed? by John Horgan
One of the most impressive, disturbing works of science journalism I’ve encountered is Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, published in 2010. In the book, which I review here, award-winning journalist Robert Whitaker presents evidence that medications for mental illness, over time and in the aggregate, cause net harm. In 2012, I brought Whitaker to my school to give a talk, in part to check him out. He struck me as a smart, sensible, meticulous reporter whose in-depth research had led him to startling conclusions. Since then, far from encountering persuasive rebuttals of Whitaker’s thesis, I keep finding corroborations of it. If Whitaker is right, modern psychiatry, together with the pharmaceutical industry, has inflicted iatrogenic harm on millions of people. Reports of surging mental distress during the pandemic have me thinking once again about Whitaker’s views and wondering how they have evolved. Below he answers some questions.