Peter Slattery

Jonathan Haidt suggests that humans have a Moral Foundation…set within us from birth, and that there are five areas of this foundation:

1. Harm/Care
2. Fairness/Reciprocity
3. Ingroup/Loyalty
4. Authority/Respect
5. Purity/Sanctity
Interesting stuff!

The video below gives you more info.

There is much talk these days about happiness and just what it is that makes us happy. And there is much talk about positive psychology and through this the promotion and teaching of happiness, optimism, positive thinking. And interestingly the thinking goes kind of like this…imagine two people: one wins a million dollars on the lottery and the other gets flattened by a truck and ends up in in wheelchair. After a couple of years how happy is each of them?

Measure it on a scale:
1……………………………………to……………………………….100

Who is miserable at 1? Who is super happy at 100?

Yes there is the obvious answer, and yet maybe when we think about it the less likely one perhaps makes sense. And it’s that after a while these two peopole are equally happy. Interesting eh?

There are a few fellas talking about this stuff across the planet. One of them is Daniel Gilbert. I thought I would whack this video up here for your consideration. Here tis…oh…and just as a precaution I still suggest you avoid trucks though.

Ahh yes…well there you have it. ‘Used well’ it is of course fantastic. Used ‘not so well’ then it ain’t so good at all. And the thing about ‘using something well’ is that it seems to be quite hard to do.

It’s late at night, I’m tired and having a coffee (yes I know, this may seem odd but it works for me) and I relax and channel surf for what I hope is going to be 10 minutes. Just to get my head out of ‘complex thinking mode.’ It’s a good idea right? And usually that’s what I do, but occasionally I find a half hour passes before I say to myself: ‘this is rubbish and I’m going to bed.’ Bingo. For me, wasted time. And as a bonus I find myself strangely compelled to buy a knife that will cut through a shoe. (Why did I never realize before just how essential that item is to my life!)

And only slightly less extreme…I might want to have a conversation with someone about something important and there is a TV in the background…or I might want to go to a restaurant for a meal and just be with friends, chatting naturally. Yet if a screen is there it’s siren call seems irresistible. I find that a moving picture draws my eye, and before I know it…and it doesn’t seem to matter how crap the show is…I’m watching television.

With all this in mind here are some comments (or research depending on how you want to take it) on the vices of the screen:

So from Limit TV there is this.
- Academic achievement drops sharply for children who watch more than 10 hours a week of TV, according to the report “Strong Families, Strong Schools,” from the U.S. Department of Education, December 1994.
- The same report stated that three factors student absenteeism, a variety of reading material in the home, and excessive TV watching account for nearly 90% of the difference in the average performance of 8th graders’ mathematics scores.
- American children spend more time watching TV than they do in school, according to Drs. Sege and Dietz in Pediatrics, October 1994.
- Sixth and 12th grade California students who were heavy viewers of TV scored lower on reading, written expression and math achievement tests than students who viewed little or no television. (Judith Van Evra, p. 53.)
- North Carolina fourth graders watch an average of four hours of TV per day, and 25% of the children watch six hours or more. (1992 Study.)

So…there ya go. And from whitedot there is this:
Every time your turn it on, your television is giving you these messages:

TV is bad for democracy!
A study by Roger Putnam at Harvard University revealed that generations of people after 1950 have stopped participating. They know less and join in less. From bowling clubs to national politics, people are staying home and doing nothing. The study isolated a single cause for this erosion of social capital: television.
You’ll also get a chance to rediscover your own life: you are interesting. Your friends are worth knowing, and the things you do are more important than the things you watch others do on television.

And then there is this from How TV affects your child:
- Research has shown that kids who consistently spend more than 4 hours per day watching TV are more likely to be overweight.
- Kids who view violent events, such as a kidnapping or murder, are also more likely to believe that the world is scary and that something bad will happen to them.
- Research also indicates that TV consistently reinforces gender-role and racial stereotypes.

Of course I’m an adult, so none of this thankfully applies to me.

The following article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald August 11, 2008, and I thought it had something to say and was worth reproducing here so I contacted the author Raymond Seidler Addiction medicine specialist, Potts Point and asked him if if that was alright. He said ‘yes’ and so here it is. One of his titles on his website is ‘Street GP’. I knid of like that. Thanks for the borrow of the article Raymond.

‘ECSTASY JUST ANOTHER IN LONG LINE OF NATIONAL PASTIMES

World record hauls of ecstasy have occurred in Australia since 2004 but nothing approaches the 4.4 tonnes detected in tomato cans in June in Melbourne with a street value of $440 million. It seems that despite extensive education and interdiction, Australia’s youth have embraced this drug like no other. The market remains buoyant.
As a GP in Kings Cross, I have seen hundreds of ecstasy users over the past decade, and despite horror stories in the press most take this drug with impunity. The phenomenon of “Eckie Monday” (the weekend “come-down” from a binge requiring a medical certificate for work absence) is common. So, too, is the weight loss and lack of vitality in habitual users who dance themselves into exhaustion and grind their teeth in clubs all over Sydney.
Early mornings in the Cross provide a cavalcade of burnt-out E users heading home after an all-nighter. But for the most part they do not suffer serious medical problems. A few may develop overheating or hyperthermia and require a short admission for hydration with a litre of fluid or two intravenously in an emergency department. Seizures and drug-induced psychosis do happen, but at a very low rate. Even this outcome does little to dissuade users to quit their drug of choice.
Sure there are horror stories of PMA (para methoxy amphetamine), a cheaper, dangerous substitute for ecstasy causing sudden death, but this is so rare as to not affect demand. Ecstasy testing kits are now available over the internet. These testing kits are common in Europe outside clubs and should be encouraged here.
Young people are educated on the risks and dangers of all illicit drugs. Most schools now have excellent drug education programs covering all illicit drugs in Australia. Children use the internet to plug holes in their knowledge and successive government programs portraying ecstasy as a danger have done little to reduce ecstasy use in Australia.
Most young users have observed their friends taking the drug without adverse effects. Combine this with the boundless optimism of youth and an unshakeable belief that they are bulletproof and you have a recipe for an explosion in demand.
Drug use follows fashion cycles, and in many ways governments’ demonisation, with their horrific video footage, entrenches the inevitable generational warfare between the young and their parent’s generation. It is unusual in my experience for a young person to request treatment for ecstasy abuse unless they are dragged kicking and screaming by a concerned parent. They do not want treatment if their recreational use is limited to weekend recreation, and will show a therapist bored disinterest
Price is a keen indicator of availability and none of my patients ever complain of difficulty obtaining ecstasy. So we can conclude that despite these huge hauls by federal police and the national crime authority, significant stockpiling must occur around the country.
Drug trafficking will go on as long as there is demand. Australia has always been at the forefront of illicit drug use worldwide. In 1936 we had the highest use per capita in the Western world of cocaine and heroin. And now we appear to have won a gold medal for ecstasy. Very little has changed.

Raymond Seidler Addiction medicine specialist, Potts Point’

This is where it gets tricky. I love excellence. It’s wonderful to see human beings excelling, at whatever they do. Striving, achieving, moving, developing…and I mean both the personal…like…‘wow…that guy is loving and kind…how fabulous!’ As well as the …‘I can run really fast!’…type of achieving. Doing stuff is good. And doing it well is wonderful. I have been running since I was a teenager. I have run marathons, been in triathlons, walked in the Himalayas. I think I have some understanding of the joy of doing physical things, and of pushing yourself.

And yet,..and here of course is the ‘rub’…when it comes to the Olympics for every winner there are many, many losers, and for every gold medal there is a long list of ‘never heard of them.’

And then, and THEN there is how we spend our dollars. The Olympics is costing how much? And China has just had a major disaster and the best thing to do, naturally!…is to have a GREAT BIG opening ceremony. (The pic below is from the Sydney Morning Herald 9-10th August 2008)

Of course, this is not particularly about China. Most countries would do the same. And the next Olympics I am sure, will be ‘the best ever.’ And right now there are the most horrific and moving photos coming out of Georgia. And the one I have included here from the Sydney Morning Herald (August 11th 2008) is not by any means the most disturbing.

I actually scanned in a number of pictures that I might use in this post but some are just too distressing to reproduce here. The one above is tough enough in telling us what is happening in that part of the world.

So with all this, I feel I have to ask: what matters? What do we care about? How do we spend our dollars? Where do we put our energy?