Tuesday, November 27, 2007




People seem to get great satisfaction out of bashing others. Often we don’t even know the full scope of the problem, but join in the bashing. The president is a good subject for bashing. Poor George W. Bush gets blamed for everything. He appears to have made some bone headed decisions, like running for office. The truth is that many of the things for which he is blamed would have occurred with anyone at the helm. He has taken some pretty severe bashing. It’s easy to be a critic and everyone enjoys the roll of the Monday morning quarterback. When the team loses, the first words are, “fire the coach.” Many presidents have been the victims of bashing. Harry Truman’s approval rating was 20% when he left office. We are like Huck Finns’ pap with too much liquor. Huck said, “whenever his liquor begun to work, he most always went for the government.”

The medical profession is also the subject of much bashing. Most medical historians agree that the greatest medical discovery was the circulation of blood by William Harvey in 1628. The medical establishment thought he was crazy and refused to accept his theory. No one would believe that Galen, the Roman physician, could be wrong. Galen thought the center of circulation was the liver. A century before Harvey, the Spanish physician and theologian Michael Servetus correctly postulated how blood circulated through the heart, lungs and into the body. Servetus was not only bashed, he was burned at the stake for his ridiculous theory. Medical history is full of such stories.

Semmelweis was ridiculed and had to move to another country because he suggested that doctors wash their hands before delivering a baby. Of course, what he proposed virtually eliminated childbed fever, because washing your hands killed germs.

Freud continues to be bashed. He had the idea that early experiences, as well as primitive and evil impulses exist in our minds in a repressed state, in the subconscious, and wait for the opportunity to manifest themselves as neurosis, anxiety, depression and other mental disorders. The way we behave and our emotions are influenced by these subconscious and repressed impulses. Freud invented the field of psychoanalysis. Many claim today that this is all hog-wash and even suggest there is no such thing as mental illness. Many doctors fell that all we have to do is take the right combination of tranquilizers or antidepressants and we will be “normal.” It’s easy to bash old Freud because psychiatry like the government is not a pure science.

I’m trying to become more understanding and tolerant of all the ignorance which surrounds me off the porch. There sure seems to be a lot of it and it’s hard to keep my tongue in check. Like Huck Finns’s pap, I am going to try and stick mainly to the government like everyone else does. It’s a great target, almost as good as other folk’s religion.

1 Comments:

Blogger jeff ludwick said...

Isn't it amazing how people in our country take such pains to criticize everything and everyone around them but never look in the mirror. we have evolved into a society that says "it's my way or the highway". porches like yours will likely be banned or at the least persecuted in the near future......

6:45 AM  

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