My friend Robby said something I like quite a lot:

It’s hard damn work to be a brain. Not only are there THINGS to be sad about aplenty, but there are like a bajillion frillion chemicals you got to juggle just to keep things in working order at the best of times, to say nothing of the not-best of times when you have stress lasers firing all the time.

I am impressed with brain for being so awesome almost all of the time. We didn’t evolve to be happiness factories, yet somehow we manage to have lots of happiness a lot of the time. That is pretty sweet.

I was rereading Chana’s archives and particularly liked this piece, A Personal Journey to Rationalism.

Healer Syndrome

We start believing our own marketing messages. We start believing that we can treat practically anyone, that every patient does need us, that we do offer a unique and therapeutically potent service. We start thinking of ourselves as healers, whether the word ever crosses our minds or not. Any excessive self-promotional behaviours are fully justified by our self-confidence: it’s not wrong when you really can help almost everyone … right?

This is the most dangerous form of healer syndrome — subtle and insidious.

Ed is taking a step back and changing how he uses mental illness in conversation and blogging.

James Croft on why he comes back to this movement.

But, however dispirited and burnt out I sometimes feel, something keeps me coming back to Humanism, and it is simply this: Humanism represents the highest human values in a way unmatched by any other social movement or lifestance. No other movement can claim so proudly that they put the highest human values right at the center of their worldview, unadulterated. In Humanism there is nothing valued above the dignity of persons, the primacy of reason, and the necessity of hope for the future. Humanism represents the single best hope for the future of our species: given the potential threat of climate change it may be that if our species has a future at all could be dependent on how Humanistic a world we create.

I hope so very much that the future looks a lot more like you. To Katie and Arin.

The upside of denial.

 What have you written recently?