" Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown—and that is also not good. "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
" It is seriously not good to have your kidneys fail. Dialysis is no picnic.
Transplantation surgery occurs after long waiting, at high risk and great expense.
To lose all that because you don’t take your medication? How could people do that to themselves? How could this possibly be?
It’s complicated, to be fair. Many people who receive a transplanted organ are isolated, or beset by multiple physical health problems (to say nothing of problems associated with unemployment or family crisis).
They may be cognitively impaired or depressed. They may not entirely trust their doctor, or understand the necessity of the medication. Maybe they can barely afford the drugs, and ration them, desperately and unproductively.
But—and this is the amazing thing—imagine that it isn’t you who feels sick. It’s your dog.
So, you take him to the vet. The vet gives you a prescription. What happens then? You have just as many reasons to distrust a vet as a doctor.
Furthermore, if you cared so little for your pet that you weren’t concerned with what improper, substandard or error-ridden prescription he might be given, you wouldn’t have taken him to the vet in the first place.
Thus, you care. Your actions prove it.
In fact, on average, you care more. People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves. That’s not good. Even from your pet’s perspective, it’s not good.
Your pet (probably) loves you, and would be happier if you took your medication. "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
" If we weren’t circling around town and countryside we were at a party. Some relatively young adult (or some relatively creepy older adult) would open his house to friends. It would then become temporary home to all manner of party crashers, many of whom started out seriously undesirable or quickly become that way when drinking. A party might also happen accidentally, when some teenager’s unwitting parents had left town.
In that case, the occupants of the cars or trucks always cruising around would notice house lights on, but household car absent. This was not good. Things could get seriously out of hand.
Chris had a psychotic break in his thirties, after flirting with insanity for many years. Not long afterward, he committed suicide.
Did his heavy marijuana use play a magnifying role, or was it understandable self-medication? Use of physician-prescribed drugs for pain has, after all, decreased in marijuana-legal states such as Colorado. Maybe the pot made things better for Chris, not worse.
Maybe it eased his suffering, instead of exacerbating his instability. Was it the nihilistic philosophy he nurtured that paved the way to his eventual breakdown? Was that nihilism, in turn, a consequence of genuine ill health, or just an intellectual rationalization of his unwillingness to dive responsibly into life?
Why did he—like his cousin, like my other friends—continually choose people who, and places that, were not good for him? "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
" We might start by considering the all-too-black-and-white words themselves: “success” or “failure.”
You are either a success, a comprehensive, singular, overall good thing, or its opposite, a failure, a comprehensive, singular, irredeemably bad thing.
The words imply no alternative and no middle ground. However, in a World as complex as urs, such generalizations (really, such failure to differentiate) are a sign of naive, unsophisticated or even malevolent analysis.
There are vital degrees and gradations of value obliterated by this binary system, and the consequences are not good. "
= 57 = 57 = 57 =
" The neglect and mistreatment that is part and parcel of poorly structured or even entirely absent disciplinary approaches can be deliberate—motivated by explicit, conscious (if misguided) parental motives.
But more often than not, modern parents are simply paralyzed by the fear that they will no longer be liked or even loved by their children if they chastise them for any reason.
They want their children’s friendship above all, and are willing to sacrifice respect to get it. This is not good.
A child will have many friends, but only two parents—if that—and parents are more, not less, than friends.
Negative emotions, like their positive counterparts, help us learn. We need to learn, because we’re stupid and easily damaged.
We can die. That’s not good, and we don’t feel good about it.
If we did, we would seek death, and then we would die. "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
Thus, the friendless child too often becomes the lonely, antisocial or depressed teenager and adult. This is not good.
Much more of our sanity than we commonly realize is a consequence of our fortunate immersion in a social community. We must be continually reminded to think and act properly. When we drift, people that care for and love us nudge us in small ways. "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
" Each human being has an immense capacity for evil. Each human being understands, a priori, perhaps not what is good, but certainly what is not. And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. If the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced—then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. The Good is whatever stops such things from happening. "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
" If existence is good, then the clearest and cleanest and most correct relationship with it is also good. If existence is not good, by contrast, you’re lost. Nothing will save you—certainly not the petty rebellions, murky thinking and obscurantist blindness that constitute deceit.
Is existence good? You have to take a terrible risk to find out. Live in Truth, or live in deceit, face the consequences, and draw your conclusions. "
= 57 = 57 = 57=
" In my clinical practice, I talk and I listen. I talk more to some people, and listen more to others. Many of the people I listen to have no one else to talk to. Some of them are truly alone in the world. There are far more people like that than you think. You don’t meet them, because they are alone. Others are surrounded by tyrants or narcissists or drunks or traumatized people or professional victims. Some are not good at articulating themselves. They go off on tangents. They repeat themselves. They say vague and contradictory things. They’re hard to listen to. Others have terrible things happening around them. They have parents with Alzheimer’s or sick children. There’s not much time left over for their personal concerns. "
= 57 = 57 = 57 =
" At this rate, there will be very few men in most university disciplines in fifteen years. This is not good news for men. It might even be catastrophic news for men.
But it’s also not good news for women. "
= 57 = 57 = 57 =
" They’re normal. But you could think about taking her to see a physiotherapist.” So, we did. The physiotherapist tried to rotate Mikhaila’s heel. It didn’t move. That was not good. The physio told us, “Your daughter has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.” This was not what we wanted to hear. We did not like that physiotherapist. We went back to the medical clinic. Another physician there told us to take Mikhaila to the Hospital for Sick Children. The doctor said, “Take her to the emergency room. That way, you will be able to see a rheumatologist quickly.” Mikhaila had arthritis, all right. The physio, bearer of unwelcome news, was correct. Thirty-seven affected joints. Severe polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Cause? Unknown. Prognosis? Multiple early joint replacements. "
= 57 = 57 = 57 =
" We talked to a new doctor. He listened carefully. Then he helped Mikhaila. First, he prescribed T3s, the same medication her grandfather had briefly shared. This was brave. Physicians face a lot of pressure to avoid the prescription of opiates—not least to children. But opiates work. Soon, however, the Tylenol was insufficient. She started taking oxycontin, an opioid known pejoratively as hillbilly heroin. This controlled her pain, but produced other problems. Tammy took Mikhaila out for lunch a week after the prescription started. She could have been drunk. Her speech was slurred. Her head nodded. This was not good. "
= 57 = 57 = 57 =
" The next set of questions—and answers—had to do with the development of character.
Q: What shall I say to a faithless brother?
A: The King of the Damned is a poor judge of Being.
It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world—a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one—is to fix yourself, as we discussed in Rule 6.
Anything else is presumptuous. Anything else risks harm, stemming from your ignorance and lack of skill.
But that’s OK. There’s plenty to do, right where you are.
After all, your specific personal faults detrimentally affect the world. Your conscious, voluntary sins (because no other word really works) makes things worse than they have to be.
Your inaction, inertia and cynicism removes from The World that part of you that could learn to quell suffering and make peace.
That’s not good.
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