The exploitation of suffering...

In Greece we are a nation I think that panic easily over health issues and often exaggerate. In psychological studies Greek s often demonstrate high levels of health anxiety and general worries over their health. There are also people that live through TV and they adopt as an established truth what they generally listen through this little box.

What occurred lately was a parade of doctors and people who have been cured from cancer on TV shows. They were suggesting that drinking the juice that the leaves of an olive tree produce could combat potentially cancer. The doctors were unsure as this assumption is not scientifically tested however they were on the shows along with ex-cancer patients and this for a simple person translates as a possibility for a cure!

When you bring people on a show that claim that they have been cured they are going to direct their hopes on this new cure and ignore that this is just an assumption of some TV doctors and is not something that is embraced by the medical community. Television has a great influence on people and can lead to the manipulation of the masses quite easily. People started drinking this juice and some were admitted to hospital with intestinal pains. There were also people who sold leaves and prepared this recipe for people and not without a price.

I was talking to an older friend about this incident and he told me that when he was young there was a similar incidence of mass hysteria. Someone from Kamatero was claiming that he had access to water that could cure cancer. In the end of course he was imprisoned for fraud but on the court many people appeared that believed that they were cured from cancer and supported him wholehearted.

There are people who suffer from serious and chronic illness like cancer and desperately seek for cure. Encouraging people to drink daily the juice of olive leaves is giving false hope to the patients. Maybe the leaves are beneficial but there has not been any research that proves that. Maybe the leaves are beneficial but can they be beneficial alone? The cure of the disease relies on interplay of different factors. It depends on the biology of the individual, on the psychological state, on his/her quality of life and the medical treatment that this person receives. Therefore, my impression is that there can‘t be an only cure. There can only be a ground for a further manipulation and degradation of the sufferers. People who want to benefit are aware that when a person suffers is ready to believe in absolutely anything.

Stormrider has written a beautiful article on his opinion over the olives leaves incident and particularly on the responsibility of the doctors link)

(image by wrenda)

The invation of privacy and the internet

Lately there was a lot of debate in Greece concerning the installation of surveillance cameras in Greece. Many newspapers have expressed the view that the installation of cameras will enable the authorities to be able to invade our personal lives and harm civil liberties. One of this newspapers is Free Press (Ελευθεροτυπία).At the same day that I was reading the pompous headlines of the newspaper against surveillance cameras I was reading inside an article that was referred to the department that combat internet crime an article in favor with the title “www internet salvation for 4 children”.

It was arguing that 4 children were saved from having committed suicide by the internet police department as the police notified their parents and told them that their children are thinking of committing suicide. In one instance a person that was playing an online game (line age or wow) was saying in the chat room that he was thinking of ending his life. Another girl was saying this to her friends via e-mail and another was saying this through his blog.

It’s bizarre for a newspaper that is against surveillance cameras to be for internet censorship even if this is supposed to be for an allegedly good reason. The fact that the teenagers were saying to friends that they were thinking of committing suicide is surely something that requires attention but this is not the role of the internet crime police. Moreover, it poses questions on the liberty of expression via internet.

The question is that if the department of internet crime can invade our personal privacy even for the threat of suicide this means that it can repeat it in other instances. It also indicates that what happens in a chat room, what you may say in an e-mail or in your blog might lead the police to knock on your door. But people believe that if this serves a good reason then it is correct. However, who defines what is a good reason for invading our privacy and what are the implications for freedom of speech via the internet? This is of particular interest to people that communicate their views inside blogs and provokes further thoughts on censorship, liberty and the penalization of free speech.

(art by krecha)

When work defines who we are…

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important"

Bertrand Russell

One of my beliefs is that we should not live only to work and that employment should not define our personality. Even though I love my profession I was never a person that was characterized by her profession. To be honest I find most people that have studied psychology boring and pretense. Furthermore, I am not antagonistic so I want to relate with people that are open-mined and have various interests. Even though it is nice sharing ideas with people from your profession I prefer talking with people that do different things and interchange ideas. Besides I never met a psychologist that likes comics or goes to rock and indie concerts but I met people that do something else and are interested in what I do and this is far more interesting.

Even though I read a lot and I like to share what I know I leave work at work. I talk about my work when I am asked or someone shows a genuine interest but I would never start a conversation. Rather I usually talk about my hobbies, my dreams, things that happen in daily life,politics, manga, films and music. I like it when someone is interested in what I do but what I do is a part of me and not my whole self. My whole self has so many things that want to share and so many things that want to learn. I can never get enough of learning and this is why I did not have time to read your blogs this week and I missed that. I try to keep a balance between work and hobbies. For me my hobbies are my personal time and space where I can do things for myself and are vital as without them I would feel a slave to work.

My point is that its important when people love their work because I love my work too. However, it troubles me when people only talk about their work and all their relationships come from work. It troubles me when people do not have time to even read a book because they are absorbed with their work. Our profession can not characterize as and define our whole existence no matter how much we love what we do. Otherwise we will become slaves to work, we will become work.

(art by annie julie)

Everyone wants to be found...

Everyone wants to be found and everyone deserves to be found. When we become as lucky as to find them; after sometime we are not happy and we want to change aspects of who they are. It’s not fair to want to change someone. We should accept people for who they are and if we don’t we should let them move on as we end up hurting them. However, knowingly we sometimes indulge into this urge to say to a person we love that we aren’t happy when they are in a certain way. What is it with people? Maybe our life is an endless struggle to find something and when we find it we deconstruct the myth that we have created and try to bring about changes. We fight to change the person that we have found, the person that once was perfect for us. I am not sure what wanting to change someone means. Does it mean that we don’t love them anymore? Does it mean that our needs and wants have changed? Or does it mean that we are species that struggle endlessly to find something ideal or new? I haven’t got a clue! However I can’t help feeling that it’s so unfair not to let someone be the person that they want to be.

(art by krecha)

Misleading Hope...

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion".

Steven Weinberg

There is a new profitable enterprise that can ensure financial success to the investors. You can invent a new religion, this is what seems to happen in modern societies lately as for some reason there is always people that will trust that you know the road to salvation.

It amazes me that in this decade people are ready to believe self-claimed prophets that claim that know how people can achieve the salvation of their soul. I never cared for the salvation of my soul especially from people that I think that are more corrupt than the general population. However there are people that believe because those preaching are directed to fragile people that have lost hope .Their preaching exploits individuals that need to escape modern alienation and want to become self-actualised individuals.

This is what new religions like Scientology do. Scientology religion was developed by American author Ron Hubbard and there are now more than 4,200 Scientology groups around the globe. They believe that salvation of the soul is achieved through the practices and techniques of Scientology and the ultimate goal is to become a thetan. A thetan is a spirit that can control matter, energy, time, thought and ultimately life. The way to achieve that is through a process that is called auditing. Auditing is achieved by the use of a specially designed meter (E-Meter) which helps locate areas of spiritual distress by measuring the mental state of the person being audited.

It really amazes me that there are people that believe in a religion that is using a meter that supposedly helps people uncover their distress. People know where their distress lies, it is located inside their daily life that is worsening by the day. It is located in the poverty that is spreading, it is tangled with feelings of loneliness and despair and it is in the daily obstacles of life. Hope can not be located within an enterprise that claims that knows how people can find salvation. Besides people need help in this life, let us worry about after life after we actually die!

(art by krecha)

The Αcceptance of Time

"Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others, go flowing on. Time is a child, moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child's."

Heracletus

Time is a concept that we are all aware of and each one of us experiences the passage of time differently. We can not perceive time rather we are experiencing it through the sequence of events that occur in our lives. There is a time of past that we are still aware when we are in the present. We carry past time in our present when we remember things that occurred through our memories and recollections. Then there is the present time where the events are actually happening. As the events follow one another then primary events become immediately our past. Then there is a future time that is not yet lived that we know that it will be coming or rather we hope that it will be coming.

Time is really an abstract concept that is so much embedded in our daily lives and has become an important part of our existence. It was important for ancient civilizations like the Sumerian that introduced our current measure of time. For some theorists the existence of time was a necessity for the civilization that wanted to regulate human behaviour. Time is important in all aspects of society and really only children can experience the notion of what it feels to be free of time.

We can not perceive time but we accept it as a fundamental part of living and we all have a different sense of the duration of time. There is a time that the present is agonizing long and there is a time that it flies. I feel that time is really embedded in our lives in such a sense that it is actually verifying our existence.

(inspired by 10 minutes older,art by antihero)

Holidays can deceive...

The holidays have left me feeling a bit exhausted and ill. This Christmas holidays I planned to do many things for myself. I wanted to go out and take photographs for my photography assignments.I wanted to revise my Spanish, I wanted to finish my research and I wanted to read my book. Instead, I was all the time out with people, spend a lot of time finding presents and lately I stayed in bed feeling ill; having no motivation to do anything. I am not complaining I enjoyed the time that I spend with my friends but I feel that sometimes holidays deceive us. We are entangled in many shoulds, musts and obligations and in the end we feel empty.We act like superman as we try to manage everything by ourselves.Our holidays are not only about others but also about spending sometime with ourselves and doing things that we enjoy.The less our obligations the happier our holidays.

(art by radar love)