From: "Martinus Luther" <martinusl@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 08:57:13 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: importance of  motivation
Message-ID: <19981005135608.2064.qmail@hotmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>From Tim May:

> Any trendy new diagnosis always gets some recruits...dyslexia, ADD 
>(*), the abuse excuse, etc. (* Like any trendy thing, it gets renamed 
> to keep its panache. ADD has been  renamed to something with four 
> letters, which I now forget (must be ADD).)

And it is worse than that, they're scum, Tim. They claim (in last months 
SciAm) that  5% of kids have ADHD  (some sources have it at 15%).  This 
isn't a disease, this is one end of the normal variation in behaviour. 
It is as if you diagnosed an adult male height of less than 5 foot 4 
inches as "dwarf" and prescribed growth hormone. Or as if you  operated 
on any woman over 5 foot 10 to shorten her legs. 

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.htm says 3 to 4 times as many boys 
as girls have it.  So they are saying that ADHD affects 15 to 60 percent 
of all boys! This isn't one end of the normal range of behaviour, this 
is just plain normal.

The psycho-babble establishment is proposing drugging 5 to 15 percent of 
the population to alter their behaviour.   If this "diagnosis" had been 
around when I was a kid they would have drugged me.  I found a 14 point 
checklist for ADHD on the web at:  
http://www.docnet.org.uk/autopage/messages/23.html   In the last 48 
hours my daughter has shown 11 of these. And I've shown 14.  This is 
just normal life they are talking about.

This is the misuse of psychiatric  medicine for political control, as 
much as anything that went on in Stalin's Russia.  (the personal is 
political - if one young man behaves in a way unacceptable to their 
elders that is personal - if  5 million do it is political). I object, 
strongly, to some guy in a white coat saying the problem with my life is 
my brain and he wants me to take this little pill and then it will be 
alright.

Which is not to say that some people don't have real problems for which 
Ritalin is a workaround. But 15%, 10% or even 5% isn't psychiatry it is 
politics.   Large parts of our daily life is tedious, boring, of no 
direct relevance to anything we are interested in.  Most kids in school 
are made to sit through boring lessons. Bloody hell! They made us do 
sport. Is anything more shitlike?

Most adults at work make themselves do things they have no interest in 
other than for the money they might get out of it (which is where we cam 
in with all that discussion about research that shows  that people 
perform less well on  tasks done primarily for reward  -  Marx was right 
about alienation, you know) A  healthy person  *ought* to have trouble 
paying attention to some of the things they are asked to do. Maybe we 
will have better lives if we drug ourselves (Ritalin, Prozak, E, daytime 
television) to get through the shit of the day but let it be a decision 
adults make for themselves, not one imposed on children by parents or 
the psychatric eastablishment.

I could do with a cup of tea...

> We've had some nutballs and losers (luser spelling: loosers) on this 
> list.  People who claim the reason they can't make a coherent 
> argument or hold a  steady job is because of something some 
> psychobabbler told them was their  excuse.

It's weird how people do that. If a doctor gives something a long name 
is suddenly becomes alright.  Some parents are ashamed that their kids 
can't read well. Put it in Greek and call it "Dyslexia" and all of a 
sudden it isn't something you do, or are, or don't do or aren't capable 
of - it becomes something you *have*,  not really part of you, baggage, 
a burden that could one day be dropped, something that has been done to 
you, imposed on you, soemthing that is not your fault.  
Reality  hasn't changed, just the words used to describe it, yet it is 
now less threatening.

The germ theory of disease is stretched to the limit. Pasteur showed 
that some diseases are caused by microorganisms. Simple cause and 
effect. One baterial disease is caused by pone organism, another by 
another.  That is deeply embedded in our thoughts. So now all disease, 
all misfortune, has to be given a name, put in a box and traced back to 
a simple cause.  I'm not fat, I have an eating disorder. I'm not stupid, 
I have a learning disability.  I'm not sad, or worried, or bored, or 
scared - I have depression or an anxiety disorder or an attention 
deficit disorder.  Some societies attribute all misfortune to witchcraft 
- if your cow dies then someone, somewhere must have cursed you.  We now 
attribute all misfortune to something outside ourselves, not part of us.  
It wasn't me, it was my syndrome.   

And its all part of the pressure put on familys by business. Conform, 
consume, keep quiet. Don't rock the boat.  Turn up on time, wear our 
clothes, work our hours.  No alcohol on the premises. Or at lunchtime. 
Take this here drugs test - we don't want dope fiends and hippies in our 
office.  

Stressed out? Bored? Overworked? Tense, anxious, nervous soul-ache? 
Nothing acts faster than Ritalin. Especially when cut with Prozac to 
prolong that cool, mellow feeling.

Time off to look after the children? Not if you want the job to be open 
when you come back. Just give them a bite of our magic apple and they 
will be alright.

What's that you say about drugs? No, these are  Good Drugs. The men in 
the white coats say so. And what's more they are patentable and we own 
shares in Ciba Geigy, Lilly, Fison's  and Hoffman La Roche. Good Drugs 
keep you working until we want to let you go. Good Drugs keep you 
consuming until you have no more money to pay us with. Good drugs keep 
you working for our profit.  Good Drugs keep you from complaining, 
striking,  joining a union, praying, helping, loving, singing, fighting 
back in any way whatsoever. Good Drugs keep you from realising that half 
your work goes into  our pockets. Good Drugs keep you scared, scared of 
poverty, scared of being different, scared of standing out, scared of 
using your head to think any thoughts we don't want thank. Good Drugs 
keep you addicted to your job, your country, your government, your boss. 
The Best Drug is the mortgage.


John the Ranter/

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