Cortisol, the stress hormone. I’m not a doctor, and I’m not one of those nitwits that has “done my own research” on the internet. There must be a reason to believe something, some science behind it. Luckily there is a lot of good evidence that how you feel psychologically will contribute chemically to how you feel physiologically. It is true that laughter is the best medicine because if you are elated then you will be flooding your body with the sort of chemicals that form a response to pain that is somewhat a painkiller. We are stronger when we are fearful, that’s a proven, the body gets ready to fight or flight by releasing what it needs to. We are more likely to suffer from an illness when we are not in a good mental place, that’s not something I can assert from a position of knowledge but I think it can be asserted anyways, it’s not pseudoscience.

A good laugh, a good fuck, or a good feeling about tomorrow, these make you feel good and act like you feel good. I have maintained throughout my blogging it is my firm belief that a lot of our mental turmoil comes from our perception of what just happened, or what the future may hold, immediate or long term. Book a holiday and you have something to look forward to, something to focus your energies and your mind on, and suddenly you are not in a bogged down mindspace of considering the daily drudge of your workplace is an inescapable prison. I maintain a bright hopeful outlook, not because experience has taught me to, quite the opposite in fact, but since I need it to survive the problems of modernity where every day looks somewhat the same as the one that preceded it. You know what I am saying, I didn’t need to tell you that we each age at one day per day toward a goal of not existing, and in the fleeting space between non existence and non existence we try to find reasons that justify us as worthy of being at all. It is some philosophers position, and mine, that we wish to be happy.

I listened to radio 4 this week, I heard the most alarming description of a body of people I have ever. A woman, representing the fight against a potential Muslim Mayor of New York, a guy who looks set to win, put into terms what she thought of any person who disagreed with her position in speaking for the opposite position our would-be mayor has taken. She said, indicated, insinuated if not these exact words. that…. anyone who was opposed to the right of Jews to establish a state, the state of Israel, was by implication and anti Zionist and therefore by definition an anti Semite. That these positions are linked, support Israel or you are just a bad person and a bigot.

Well that’s as fucking ridiculous as it is unreasonable. The woman just labelled half the planet using what is in modernity to be understood and accepted as a derogatory term, she attempted to shut down any nuance to their position, and to put a full stop on the conversation as if she had the right to. Now how is it that in 2025 a person can label me such and I just have to accept the opprobrium that goes along? I am a reasonable man I think, I do not arrive at what I consider without thought, I am swayed by facts and I admit my biases and try to work against them. In fact, reasonableness on my own part is something I’m actually proud of in self reflection. I like that I can change my mind when more information comes along, that is the essence of reasoned argument. The how of how she could make such a statement is in the power she has gained from being a representative of a state of belief that has been protected in law, and this is reason enough why belief should never be protected in law and we should not form our structures using it.

Theocracy is the formation of a power structure that adheres not to reason but to scripture. Pakistan is a theocracy, Israel is too, they’re just pretending to be of the people (democracy), and they not very convincing at doing so. A woman representing a theocracy, one rooted in a bronze age mythology that remains unproven, on the side of a state who feel no guilt in killing other people’s babies to protect a way of life derived from a book of countless theological persecutions of all sorts of disparate peoples, wrongs handed out on behalf of and by a capricious jealous insecure deity, supported by a people who have held close to them that since they have suffered for their faith they are justified in making others suffer for it too, just insulted everyone that thinks democracy and diversity go hand in hand. And she got away with it (nobody argued) because they’re scared of seeming cruel. What a fucking world!

I watched the West Wing recently, there is one episode where one of the White House staff explains to a shit journalist that there are matters where two sides are not equal fair and balanced, it is insensible to try, and the role of a good journalism was not to just platform it was to critique and examine. I heard this same argument recently from US Illinois Governor JB Pritzker in an interview, and he’s right, some arguments are not equal, and to allow them to seem so is power being injected for purpose. We should set the academics free to criticise, remove the idea that some positions are set in stone and unalterable, and stop accepting that the wrongs that emanate from the mouths of some people cannot be argued with because they happen to be arguing from a position of power. It is extremely disappointing to realise that after twenty five centuries since the early Greek thinkers that this is where we are now. I assumed when I started out as a philosophy fan a couple of decades ago that the trajectory of thought was ever forward moving toward a better world, events in the US seem to be proving otherwise. Maybe I was naive, or maybe it’s my hopeful perspective getting in the way?

Paul S Wilson