Things That Don’t Get Better
Things That Don’t Get Better
When I woke up this morning I was thinking of things that don’t make sense or more specifically things that get worse not better. Take the pot plant on my balcony.
When my son brought it home from where it had been abandoned at our recycling station it was limp, yellowish, dying, almost dead. All the leaves fell off the following day and it became a tall, gaunt, reminder that all things shall pass. But we gave it a bigger pot, gave it more soil, some water, exhorted it to get with the program, and a week later it started sprouting little green buds that became new leaves.
Today it is five foot high and bushy enough to toss about energetically in the wind. Maybe it isn’t a redwood but the point is it got better – it didn’t get worse. It was expected to get better. Things are supposed to get better.
That’s what life is all about isn’t it? You’re born a weak, helpless baby and you get stronger, faster, more successful in your efforts to survive with or without cooperation from our mothers.
Look at computers. They get better with irritating frequency. No sooner have you bought the most modern killer-diller machine and booted it up than a better model is on the shelf at the same shop. TV screens, cameras, cars, rice cookers, freezers, washing machines, cell phones, headsets – all these things get better due to improvements in technology or refinements in manufacturing techniques, which is basically the same thing.
New or latest should equate with better. The effort is to improve not worsen. Right? Then how come some very important things get worse?
1. The Economy. Despite hordes of experts and micromanagers, despite government intervention, despite hundred of thousands of accountants, consultants and corporate executives who all talk and act as if they know exactly what they’re doing, America is going/has gone broke.
Since 1985 it has owed more money that is owed to it. It is consistently spending more than it is making. It is solving the problem by printing money it doesn’t have and paying the bills of the most inefficient companies so they can continue to be utterly inefficient.
If my family’s finances were in this situation and I was solving it by maxing out my credit cards my relatives would lynch me. They definitely wouldn’t pay my bills and then encourage me to get another credit card.
There are many theories about why this is so, why the US and hence the world economy is in this situation and about to worsen but how about someone explaining why it is getting worse as opposed to better.
2. Our Mental Health. More specifically the mental and emotional condition of the population. Every year the psychiatric and drug industry publish the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and every year there are more disorders listed than the year before.
What does that tell you? That the average mental condition is getting worse, not better. Odd when there are more psych drugs in use now than ever before in history.
Perhaps here is a clue to this strange phenomena (from Wikipedia entry on the DSM):
“Starting with the fact there is no single objective diagnostic test for mental illness in the field of psychiatry, the DSM-IV has come under various criticisms over the years. It has been argued the design of the DSM and the expansion of the criteria represents an increasing medicalization of human nature, or ‘disease mongering’.”
No way! Yes way! But that is surely an error – there is no test for any mental illness?
But what about the chemical imbalance that makes children have bad concentration, be bored, or restless in school (I was never restless or had bad concentration)? Well, yes there must be an imbalance because Eli Lilly says so but no one can test for it. (Figure that out!)
Anyway drugs are good for you until they’re bad for you so just shut up and consume. But with all these drugs and experts should mental health be improving?
3. Our Education System. More smoke and mirrors? The current criteria for “diagnosing” ADHD is another classic.
Your child is not concentrating at school or easily distracted = ADHD…apparently.
When I was 16 and at school, seemingly overnight, my good friend Lisa grew the most spectacular pair of breasts. I would be the first to admit I was certainly not concentrating on school and easily distracted from school.
However I found concentrating on Lisa’s newly acquired breasts to be effortless and there was little that could distract me from them. ADHD? I think not!
Right now if a child is suspected of this condition, for which there is no test, the sequence generally goes something like this:
We think your child has ADHD. We cannot be certain. The only way we can be certain is for us to give him Ritalin or similar. If, after taking the drugs he is quieter or more well behaved then we can be sure that he had ADHD because the drugs have worked…WTF?
Following that dubious logic we could take an alternate route.
We think your child has ADHD. We cannot be certain. The only way we can be certain is if we repeatedly hit him over the head with a baseball bat. If, after repeatedly hitting him over the head with a baseball bat he is quieter or more well behaved then we can be sure he had ADHD because the baseball bat therapy has worked.
Drugging children make them worse, not better. That is a pretty simple concept. Finding out what went wrong in the ’60 with the education system to cause children to behave badly at school and in life would also be an interesting endeavour.
