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| Dr. Lustig's most recent comprehensive critique & guidance about our health & health system |
Politics must pay greater attention to foreseeing new conflicts and addressing the causes which can lead to them. But powerful financial interests prove most resistant to this effort, and political planning tends to lack breadth of vision. What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?
For all our limitations, gestures of generosity, solidarity and care cannot but well up within us, since we were made for love. (p.36)
59. At the same time we can note the rise of a false or superficial ecology which bolsters complacency and a cheerful recklessness. As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted to think that what is happening is not entirely clear. Superficially, apart from a few obvious signs of pollution and deterioration, things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is for some time. Such evasiveness serves as a licence to carrying on with our present lifestyles and models of production and consumption. This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen. (pp. 36-37)
After you've carefully considered the above, chew (mentally) on these thoughts:
[T]he main reason for high triglycerides has nothing to do with LDL-C; rather, it’s the refined carbohydrates and sugars in your diet. Again, the #1 risk factor for heart disease isn’t LDL-C; it’s the insulin resistance of metabolic syndrome, of which triglyceride is a much better biomarker than LDL-C.
People were not being asked to believe something they knew to be false; they were being asked to put their faith in something new. “There is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work. “It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.”
I'm not sure who Carter is quoting above. My best guess is FDR. Alas, this was a public library read, so I don't have access to go back to check. But in any event, it's the thought that counts, right?
The ravaging of Libya, which suffered the world’s first aerial bombing in 1912, confirmed that the emerging New Man, theorized by Nietzsche and Sorel, and empowered by technology, saw violence as an existential experience – an end in itself, and perpetually renewable.
In courtroom fashion, [James Fitzjames] Stephen bored away at weaknesses in [John Stuart] Mill’s proscription of coercive interference with personal liberty, which Mill himself recognized and had sought to patch. Society had no say over personal conduct, Mill insisted, unless it harmed others. To that “harm principle,” Stephen made familiar objections. The distinction between harm to self and others was unstable. Besides, Mill gave no usable gauge for the wrong of coercion or the worth of liberty. Mill’s arguments for free speech either failed or clashed with his utilitarian principles.
When a person seeks out an altered state, we reflexively think of it as a moral failing. But what happens when feelings and sensations are the goal? In cases where altering the external stress is impossible, our mindsets can get reflexively fixed, and sometimes the only place to insert a wedge is in the sensory pathways themselves.
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