Over the past year or so I’ve read for the first time a bunch of research into the economics of mental health, along with a little on the early history of psychotherapy.
Mental health is, undeniably, a big problem in modern societies. (It may have been just as bad in earlier societies too, but the data is much worse.) If we could fix it, people would be happier, more capable and generally use more of their potential.
What’s struck me most?
(Not to mention Overton’s Elephant and Overton’s Mouse)
Amid Australia’s justified concern over male violence against women, it seems worth keeping in mind our achievements. Femicide, in particular, has more than halved in the past three decades.
Just a decade ago, Aus
William Hague has caught the bug for democratic lottery. And he writes about it well. This simple sentence is a nice little microcosm.
Michael Polanyi was highly suspicious of the hyper-reductionism of neo-Darwinism. It’s reduction of the evolution of a thing so vast as life into a single causal mechanism. And it was a good call.
The biggest winner from the referendum on the weekend is John Stuart Mill.
There’s a strand of left-wing orthodoxy these days that deprecates free speech and brands opposing viewpoints as dangerous wrongthink. This firebrand mode of thinking is excellent at producing an engaged cabal of supporters, but its fruits will often face oblivion in the privacy of one’s own voting booth.
