In Our Malady, historian Timothy Snyder shares his personal experience of struggling to navigate America’s healthcare system during a serious illness, providing shocking insights into racial and income inequality that continue to plague Americans. Below are extensive exerpts from the interview, I don't expect we'll be able to discuss all of them, but hopefully most!
Congressional Inquiry into Health Insurance
Rep. Katie Porter: What I'd like to do now, Mr. Bradway, is I'd like for you to please explain to the American public why you and four other executives deserve to pay yourselves tens of million dollars each year. I've got an empty whiteboard ready to take down your justifications.
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: I recognize that that's a considerable sum of money. I would, of course, point out that I don't have any direct input to my compensation: that's derived by the board, and it’s the board to a vote of the shareholders who overwhelmingly supported the compensation package for me and the other main executive officers–
Rep. Katie Porter: Reclaiming my time, sir. Do you not know why you're getting hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars a year? What is the justification? I'd like to show the American people.
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: Our compensation is consistent with competitive positions at other companies-
Rep. Katie Porter: Mr. Bradway, reclaiming my time. “The other guy gets paid too much too” isn't a justification. I'd like to hear what you do to deserve $124 million in salary–you and your top five executives–over a three year period?
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: Well, more than 90%-
Speaker: Gentlelady’s time has expired. The gentleman may respond to her question.
Amgen CEO Robert Bradway: More than 90% of my compensation is based on performance measures that include how our shares perform relative to the market, and our compensation program is aligned with that of our owners, our share owners. So, a large part of my compensation reflects the fact that we've been creating value for our share owners by advancing innovative medicines like those that we have on the marketplace today.
Rep. Katie Porter: I wish you would focus on creating value for sick patients, Mr. Bradway, not just your shareholders. I yield back.
Pain
Tim Snyder: The bit of book that you're talking about, I'm starting from my own problems with pain, basically. By a problem with pain, I don't mean that I have a lot of physical pain. That's true. But, what I meant is my inability to talk about it.
In the story of my illness, a lot of things go wrong and a lot of them weren’t the fault of individual doctors or nurses. I think generally, they were the fault of a system which makes it impossible for doctors and nurses to work, and maybe we'll go into some of those details and some of that structure. But some of the problem was that repeatedly, I was unable to tell people that I hurt a lot.
2020/10/20
2020/09/20
Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom
I want to talk about these two images, and what they might mean to you:
2020/07/28
AOC
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of the U.S. House of Representatives, experienced sexist microagression from one of her colleagues (described in the article below). She was originally going to blow it off, because, like all women, she's experienced this so often that it hardly seems worth the effort to deal with it. However, when the man who attacked her decided to do a half-assed non-apology on the floor of the House, she decided to address it. This video captures her entire speech.
Because her name is really long, everyone abbreviates it to AOC, and this is how she's most often referred to on social media.
2020/06/01
Following the Rules
Rules and Rule Breaking
We're going to look at how nations and individuals think about rules both in moments of crisis and in everyday interactions. Cultural attitudes about rule following and rule breaking shape our lives in all kinds of ways, from the tidiness of our homes to our political preferences to our approach to stopping the spread of a pandemic.
Rules for:
Crossing the street
Dress codes
Littering/chewing gum
Wearing Shoes in Banks/Stores/Public places
Being on time for a meeting (In Brazil, when they want people to show up at the actual listed time, they say it's on 'British Time'.)
Cleaning up the stadium after a sports match
Two Types of people?
VEDANTAM: We are so familiar with these differences between groups that we have movies and television shows that are built around these themes. These differences also show up in our domestic lives and in workplaces.
GELFAND: You can think about how strict or permissive we are from many different perspectives - from national perspective, from organizations, even our own households. In the book, I talk about how we all have our own preference for the kind of Muppet we want to be. Some people are order Muppets.
...
They really like rules. They manage their impulses. And they really like a lot of order and structure. And then on the flip side, some people are chaos Muppets.
...
They tend to not really notice rules. They are more risk taking and impulsive. And they're more tolerant of ambiguity.
It causes a lot of conflict between people. Think about parents who are trying to raise kids, and they have different ideas in terms of how strict they should be or finances. Or even how you load the dishwasher, I found in my household, can get you a little flak. So I think it's important to really look at this as a aspect of culture that affects us all the time, from our nations to our households.
We're going to look at how nations and individuals think about rules both in moments of crisis and in everyday interactions. Cultural attitudes about rule following and rule breaking shape our lives in all kinds of ways, from the tidiness of our homes to our political preferences to our approach to stopping the spread of a pandemic.
Rules for:
Crossing the street
Dress codes
Littering/chewing gum
Wearing Shoes in Banks/Stores/Public places
Being on time for a meeting (In Brazil, when they want people to show up at the actual listed time, they say it's on 'British Time'.)
Cleaning up the stadium after a sports match
Two Types of people?
VEDANTAM: We are so familiar with these differences between groups that we have movies and television shows that are built around these themes. These differences also show up in our domestic lives and in workplaces.
GELFAND: You can think about how strict or permissive we are from many different perspectives - from national perspective, from organizations, even our own households. In the book, I talk about how we all have our own preference for the kind of Muppet we want to be. Some people are order Muppets.
...
They really like rules. They manage their impulses. And they really like a lot of order and structure. And then on the flip side, some people are chaos Muppets.
...
They tend to not really notice rules. They are more risk taking and impulsive. And they're more tolerant of ambiguity.
It causes a lot of conflict between people. Think about parents who are trying to raise kids, and they have different ideas in terms of how strict they should be or finances. Or even how you load the dishwasher, I found in my household, can get you a little flak. So I think it's important to really look at this as a aspect of culture that affects us all the time, from our nations to our households.
2020/05/10
The Labor Theory of Property, or, What Exactly is Intellectual Property?
The excerpts below are all from this article: Terra Nullius
The Labor Theory of Property
In 1660, John Locke published his Two Treatises of Government, where he set out to resolve the seeming conflict between individual property rights (which he valorized) and the Bible (ditto), which set out the principle that God had created the Earth and its bounty for all of humanity. How could a Christian claim to own something personally when God had intended for everyone to share in His creation?
Locke’s answer was the “labor theory of property”: private property is the result of a human taking an unclaimed piece of the common property of humanity and mixing it with their labor (each human owns their body and thus the labor of that body), creating a property cocktail: one part unimproved nature, one part human sweat of the brow, mix well and serve in perpetuity.
'Aloha Poke'
More than a thousand years before John Locke was born, the people of the island of Kahiki coined the term “Aloha,” which is present in all the languages of the region today: it’s an untranslatable word that conveys a beautiful, complex blend of emotions and sentiments, so iconic that adherence to the “Aloha Spirit” has been Hawaiian state law since 1986.
In the 1970s (300 years after the publication of Two Treatises of Government) Hawaiian chefs expressed their aloha spirit in a dish called “poke,” a delicious mix of raw fish, served with seaweed, rice or greens, roasted and ground kukui nut meat, and other variations. In 2012, this dish spread to the mainland and mutated further, acquiring many new and delicious variants.
In 2016 (centuries after “aloha” and Locke, decades after “poke”) Zach Friedlander founded a restaurant called “Aloha Poke” in Chicago, and in the summer of 2018 Friedlander’s successor, Chris Birkinshaw, retained the law firm of Olson and Cepuritis Ltd to threaten Hawaiian chefs operating poke restaurants, insisting that they remove “aloha” from their business names. Eventually, the furor prompted Aloha Poke to issue a half-assed, self-pitying apology and to back off a little from its threats.
Friedlander defended the company’s actions and dismissed criticism as a “witch hunt” and “fake news”. [In their response] you can see the specter of John Locke haunting every word. Friedlander, his staff, and his investors put real work into making a midwestern chain of poke restaurants identified with the name “Aloha Poke.” These unimproved words had been around forever and no one else was building a national empire with them: by getting to the idea first and mixing their labor with it, they had transformed the bounty of nature into private property. This odious specter haunts much of the world today, and it has plenty of company, for this conception of property rights has sent millions to their graves.
The Labor Theory of Property
In 1660, John Locke published his Two Treatises of Government, where he set out to resolve the seeming conflict between individual property rights (which he valorized) and the Bible (ditto), which set out the principle that God had created the Earth and its bounty for all of humanity. How could a Christian claim to own something personally when God had intended for everyone to share in His creation?
Locke’s answer was the “labor theory of property”: private property is the result of a human taking an unclaimed piece of the common property of humanity and mixing it with their labor (each human owns their body and thus the labor of that body), creating a property cocktail: one part unimproved nature, one part human sweat of the brow, mix well and serve in perpetuity.
'Aloha Poke'
More than a thousand years before John Locke was born, the people of the island of Kahiki coined the term “Aloha,” which is present in all the languages of the region today: it’s an untranslatable word that conveys a beautiful, complex blend of emotions and sentiments, so iconic that adherence to the “Aloha Spirit” has been Hawaiian state law since 1986.
In the 1970s (300 years after the publication of Two Treatises of Government) Hawaiian chefs expressed their aloha spirit in a dish called “poke,” a delicious mix of raw fish, served with seaweed, rice or greens, roasted and ground kukui nut meat, and other variations. In 2012, this dish spread to the mainland and mutated further, acquiring many new and delicious variants.
In 2016 (centuries after “aloha” and Locke, decades after “poke”) Zach Friedlander founded a restaurant called “Aloha Poke” in Chicago, and in the summer of 2018 Friedlander’s successor, Chris Birkinshaw, retained the law firm of Olson and Cepuritis Ltd to threaten Hawaiian chefs operating poke restaurants, insisting that they remove “aloha” from their business names. Eventually, the furor prompted Aloha Poke to issue a half-assed, self-pitying apology and to back off a little from its threats.
Friedlander defended the company’s actions and dismissed criticism as a “witch hunt” and “fake news”. [In their response] you can see the specter of John Locke haunting every word. Friedlander, his staff, and his investors put real work into making a midwestern chain of poke restaurants identified with the name “Aloha Poke.” These unimproved words had been around forever and no one else was building a national empire with them: by getting to the idea first and mixing their labor with it, they had transformed the bounty of nature into private property. This odious specter haunts much of the world today, and it has plenty of company, for this conception of property rights has sent millions to their graves.
2020/02/04
The Eight Stages of Development
8 Stages of Development by Erik Erikson
Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development
Erikson maintained that personality develops in a predetermined order through eight stages of psychosocial development, from infancy to adulthood. During each stage, the person experiences a psychosocial crisis which could have a positive or negative outcome for personality development. These crises are of a psychosocial nature because they involve psychological needs of the individual (i.e., psycho) confronting society (i.e., social). According to the theory, successful completion of each stage results in a healthy personality and the acquisition of basic virtues. Basic virtues are characteristic strengths which the ego can use to resolve subsequent crises. Failure to successfully complete a stage can result in a reduced ability to complete further stages and therefore a more unhealthy personality and sense of self. The good neews is, these stages can still be resolved successfully at a later time.
Stage Psychosocial Crisis Basic Virtue Age
1. Trust vs. Mistrust Hope 0 - 1½
2. Autonomy vs. Shame Will 1½ - 3
3. Initiative vs. Guilt Purpose 3 - 5
4. Industry vs. Inferiourity Competency 5 - 12
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion Fidelity 12 - 18
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation Love 18 - 40
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation Care 40 - 65
8. Ego Integrity vs. Despair Wisdom 65+
2020/01/25
Extending Maslow's Hierarchy
This article is a review of a book called The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity by Eugene McCarraher. There’s some interesting concepts brought forward on this piece we could reflect on in terms of our current globally imposed economic and social structure.
First, here are some excerpts from the article.
A stable material and social infrastructure gives us the time and space to thrive as individuals
In 1943 the psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed his famous hierarchy of needs. The banal premise is that some needs are prior to others. We need food and shelter, for instance, before we can seek friendship and love. And only once we’ve attained those can we attain the summit of the pyramid: the Shangri-La of “self-actualization,” defined as doing what one “is fitted for” and becoming “more and more what one is.” This vision of human flourishing has become ubiquitous in the decades since Maslow’s paper. A regular feature of school curricula and self-help guides, it has filtered into our everyday understanding of the meaningful life: one in which a stable material and social infrastructure gives us the time and space to thrive as individuals.
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