Kjarninn - 22.08.2013, Side 112

“Not only are we averse to stressors, and don´t
understand them, but we are committing crimes
against life, the living, science, and wisdom, for the
sake of eliminating volatility and variation.
I feel anger and frustration when I thingk that one
in ten Americans beyond the age of high school is on
some kind of antidepressant, such as Prozac. Indeed,
when you go through mood swings, you now have to
justify why you are not on some medication. There may
be a few good reasons to be on medications, in severely
pathological cases, but my mood, my sadness, my bouts
of anxiety, are a second source of intelligence­perhaps
even the first source. I get mellow and lose physical
energy when it rains, become more meditative, and tend
to write more and more slowly then, with the raindrops
hitting the window, what Verlaine called autumnal
“sobs” Some days I enter poetic melancholic states, what
the Portuguese call saudade or the Turks hüzün (from
the Arabic word for sadness). Other days I am more
aggressive, have more energy­and will write less, walk
more, do other things, argue with researchers, answer
emails, draw graphs on blackboards. Should I have
turned into vegetable or a happy impecile?
Had Prozac been available last century, Baudelaire's
“spleen,” Edgar Allan Poe´s moods, the poetry of
Sylvia Plath, the lamentations of so many other poets,
everything wit a soul would have been silenced... If
large pharmaceutical companies were able to eliminate
the seasons, they would probably do so – for profit, of
course.
There is another danger: in additions to harming
children, we are harming society and our future.
Measures that aim at reducing variability and swings
in the lives of children are also reducing variability
and differences within our said to be Great Culturally
Globalized Society.
(Úr kaflanum Crimes against children, bls 61.)
brot úr bóKinni
Taleb hefur miklar áhyggjur
af því að samfélagið vinni
statt og stöðugt gegn óvissu
og óreiðu og bæli niður
eðlilegar skapsveiflur í boði
lyfjafyrirtækjanna.
5/05 kjarninn ExIT