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The BBC has an Interesting Article on how the economic crisis is leading to an emotional crisis in many men in the face of trouble providing for their families. The report on a survey that found men are twice as likely currently to report having suicidal thoughts, half as likely to discuss their trouble with friends or family, and while experience mental health problems in roughly equal numbers with women, they go untreated far more often.
This is interesting to me for several reasons. The suffering goes on largely in silence. Men don’t use health care in general to the extent that women do and they absolutely don’t use mental health care to the same extent. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s here again and back on schedule. This week I’ve got emotion, fear and stigmatization on the mind, parables, heaven and hell and success for the soul and whoopee cushions, spleens and lots and lots of protein for the body, to name just a few. So without further delay I present especially for you, the reader, the creme de la creme of the internet I happened to have stumbled across surfing the internets- Read the rest of this entry »
” Be ye Therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.”
We love and adore that which is perfect in our society. Hollywood is built on the premise that the beautiful people can sell movies, models are airbrushed to perfection to sell magazines. The Olympic games is going on currently with its motto, “Bigger, stronger, faster.”
As the records fall, it seems these athletes do live up to the motto. Just look at Michael Phelps, the epitome of the bigger, stronger, faster ideal.
Michael Phelps, olympic swimmer has a very real chance at an unprecedented eight gold medals this Olympics.
Sadly, as recent scandals in Baseball and Bicycling have revealed, the push to be bigger, faster, and stronger can lead to the use of steroids, amphetamines, or other substances with very real consequences for an athletes long term health and well being. When does the drive to perform cross the line into madness. In my day, Michael Jordan was celebrated worldwide as the greatest ever, even carrying his team to victory over my beloved Utah Jazz in one game in the finals with Forty some odd point and the flu. Today, it is Tiger Woods held in much the same esteem, having just won the US open with a severe knee injury in a playoff he counts as his greatest victory ever. My question is, at what point does this single minded devotion turn into madness.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” I think one glance a popular culture can give us an idea of how saturated we are with this. It’s everywhere.
There is not a sport in existence where people don’t make lists of the “greatest players.” It goes beyond statistics as the greatest players are the ones with championships. In other words, they are the ones playing on the greatest teams. This is somewhat confusing because the whole idea of a team is to be a single unit, greater than the sum of its parts. It is difficult to even conceive of greatest in a manner that doesn’t mean beating everyone else? Read the rest of this entry »
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
From the dawn of history, religion and anxiety have been intertwined. Read the rest of this entry »
Mind, Soul, and Body 
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