Tag: healthcare

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Why Chris­tians Oppose Euthana­sia (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Unlike many top­ics in the­ol­o­gy and ethics, this is not an issue on which the church has ever been ambigu­ous. There were no ear­ly church coun­cils to debate the tak­ing of inno­cent life. It didn’t take cen­turies of con­flict to adju­di­cate. On the con­trary, Chris­tians were known from the start for their adamant rejec­tion of pagan dis­re­spect for those unwant­ed by their fam­i­lies or deemed social­ly useless—the unborn and new­born, dis­abled and elder­ly.”
2. When Was Jesus Born? Ital­ian Researcher Puts Christ’s Birth in Decem­ber, 1 BC (Edward Pentin, Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter): “[Herod was alive when Jesus was born, and we know Herod died after a lunar eclipse.] Ulti­mate­ly, based on the most accu­rate analy­sis pos­si­ble today of the vis­i­bil­i­ty to the naked eye of the lunar eclipses, the search for one of it real­ly vis­i­ble in Judea 2,000 years ago, placed in rela­tion to oth­er chrono­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal ele­ments deduced from the writ­ings of Jose­phus Flav­ius and Roman his­to­ry, leads to a sin­gle pos­si­ble solu­tion — name­ly, a dat­ing of the death of Herod the Great occur­ring in AD 2–3, com­pat­i­ble with the con­ven­tion­al begin­ning of the Chris­t­ian era — i.e., the Nativ­i­ty occurred at the end of the year 1 BC.”
3. Sci­ence and Reli­gious Dog­ma­tism (Matías Cabel­lo, SSRN): “But why were non­be­liev­ers and oth­er free­thinkers par­tic­u­lar­ly cre­ative? Not because of lack of mys­ti­cism. Deists, with their mys­ti­cal belief in some sort of deity, have been as pro­duc­tive in sci­ence as out­right athe­ists (if not more). One pos­si­ble expla­na­tion for their joint abnor­mal­ly high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is that free­think­ing and athe­ism opened up a whole path of ideas dis­con­nect­ed from the pre­vail­ing thought sys­tem.… By the same token, how­ev­er, it fol­lows that, in a world over­whelm­ing­ly pop­u­lat­ed by athe­ists, the most inge­nious ideas should instead come from the few reli­gious­ly mind­ed (as long as their the­ol­o­gy offers a suf­fi­cient­ly stim­u­lat­ing thought sys­tem to dis­cov­er the secrets of nature). A result con­sis­tent with this inter­pre­ta­tion is the decline of the athe­ism coef­fi­cient among 20th-cen­tu­ry born sci­en­tists of table 1. By then, athe­ism had gone from being a dan­ger­ous and uncon­ven­tion­al world­view to become wide­spread among the sci­en­tif­ic elite.”
   • An inter­est­ing paper. I don’t buy all its con­clu­sions, but I enjoyed read­ing it. The excerpt is from at the end and is an impor­tant point: non­con­for­mi­ty brings some ben­e­fits, but non­con­for­mi­ty changes over time. It looks like heresy when ortho­doxy reigns, but non­con­for­mi­ty often looks like ortho­doxy when heresy has dom­i­nance. And we live in an era of heresy. As Tyler Cowen often com­ments: the impor­tant thinkers of the future will be reli­gious.
   • The author is, fun­ni­ly enough, an econ­o­mist teach­ing at a uni­ver­si­ty named after Mar­tin Luther.
4. Two arti­cles mak­ing sim­i­lar points: our cur­rent aver­sion to invol­un­tary com­mit­ment is cru­el to some peo­ple who would great­ly ben­e­fit from the help that their men­tal ill­ness caus­es them to resist.
   • Jor­dan Neely Need­ed to Be Insti­tu­tion­al­ized (Josh Bar­ro, Sub­stack): “One through-line in the sto­ry is the immense amount of gov­ern­ment resources that were thrown at try­ing to keep Neely out of trou­ble. Through police, courts, jails, home­less out­reach, and treat­ment facil­i­ties, New York’s tax­pay­ers spent lav­ish­ly on an effort to keep Neely alive, in men­tal health care, and not pos­ing a dan­ger to the pub­lic or him­self. But it didn’t work because he was insane and he was not forced to accept the care he need­ed — except dur­ing a stint he spent in jail on Rik­ers Island, when he was suc­cess­ful­ly med­icat­ed.… it would behoove pro­gres­sives with pat takes about how what Neely real­ly need­ed was hous­ing and care to know that he was offered these things over and over again by an extreme­ly well-fund­ed social ser­vices appa­ra­tus. If you want­ed him to have hous­ing and care, you need­ed to be pre­pared to force them upon him; and if you weren’t, then you don’t have a solu­tion to the prob­lems of peo­ple like him.”
   • The Tragedy of Jor­dan Neely and Daniel Pen­ny (Bren­dan Ruber­ry, Per­sua­sion): “[End­ing invol­un­tary com­mit­ment had a per­verse effect, because] as it hap­pens, many patients are, in fact, unwill­ing to sub­mit to treat­ment, because noth­ing does more to harm one’s pow­ers of self-aware­ness, and one’s abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize the neces­si­ty of often lengthy pro­to­cols, than debil­i­tat­ing men­tal ill­ness.”
5. Make Vil­lains Wicked Again (Ger­mán Sauce­do, First Things): “The clear images of true evil present in the best fairy tales, bal­lads, myths, and leg­ends offer both a vision of what is to be avoid­ed at all costs, as well as a vision of virtue. As such, the ‘sym­pa­thet­ic vil­lain’ genre is a symp­tom of a soci­ety that dis­agrees on what is good and what is evil, or that tries to explain evil away as trau­ma, psy­chopa­thy, or pathol­o­gy. But to iden­ti­fy and avoid evil, we must first learn to rec­og­nize the good. The insis­tence on sub­vert­ing vil­lains is a sign we have lost con­fi­dence in our belief that we can know what hero­ism looks like, a hero­ism that dis­plays the good that would oppose their unright­eous­ness.”
6. Insur­ance com­pa­nies aren’t the main vil­lain of the U.S. health sys­tem (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “It’s not hard to under­stand why peo­ple hate health insur­ers. When you inter­act with the U.S. health care sys­tem, the providers — the hos­pi­tal staff, the doc­tor, the nurs­es, the tech­ni­cians — all just take care of you. The only time they ask you for mon­ey dur­ing your doc­tor vis­it is when you pay your copay at the front desk, and that’s usu­al­ly not that big — if the bill is big, they’ll send it to you lat­er. So for the most part, your inter­ac­tion with the providers is just you walk­ing up and ask­ing to be tak­en care of, and them tak­ing care of you. Your inter­ac­tion with the health insur­er, on the oth­er hand, feels like a strug­gle against an ene­my who wants to destroy you.”
7. ‘Huge set­back’: SF’s mas­sive psy­che­del­ic church is leav­ing the city (Lester Black, SF Gate): “Hodges found­ed his church in 2019 around the belief that cannabis, mag­ic mush­rooms and oth­er psy­che­del­ic sub­stances are reli­gious sacra­ments that give humans spir­i­tu­al insights. Any adult can join by sign­ing up and pay­ing a $5 mem­ber­ship fee, which gives them access to pur­chase a wide range of psy­che­del­ic prod­ucts. Last year, the church expand­ed from its orig­i­nal loca­tion in Oak­land to a vacant build­ing on Howard Street in San Fran­cis­co. The church now counts over 115,000 mem­bers.”
   • Please note that the author is the “Cannabis edi­tor” at SF Gate. Some­times San Fran­cis­co becomes a par­o­dy of itself.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Things Rich Peo­ple and Poor Peo­ple Have In Com­mon (Adam Car­ol­la, YouTube): five min­utes, a lil’ on the edge but over­all quite good
• Advent Cal­en­dar Advent Cal­en­dar (xkcd)
• God Announces He Believes In Jor­dan Peter­son But Only As A Metaphor­i­cal Idea (Baby­lon Bee)
• The Mar­itime Approx­i­ma­tion (xkcd)
• After 3rd Resched­ule, Chris­t­ian Friends Agree To Just Have Din­ner Togeth­er In Heav­en Some­time (Baby­lon Bee)

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In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.