Quotes about the world, because every qoute is about the world

Quote one. I was reading a little in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002) by Francis Fukuyama, and I found this:

“There is a disconcerting symmetry between Prozac and Ritalin. The former is prescribed heavily for depressed women lacking self-esteem; it gives them more of the alpha-male feeling that comes with high serotonin levels. Ritalin, on the other hand, is prescribed largely to young boys who do do not want to sit still in class because nature never designed them to behave that way. Toghether, the two sexes are gently nudged toward the androgynous median personality.”



Yep, that was published 20 years ago. I wonder if someone today would claim Prozac makes you feel like an alpha-male? Or even think the feeling of being an alpha-male is because of high serotonin? One is so used to bad publicity about SSRI’s. That it doesn’t live up to what’s promised.

Speeking of that. Here’s an article in Unherd arguming that psychadelics used in psyciatry woun’t live up to the hype. It’s even dismissed as Prozac 2.0.

Quote 2. Anne Applebaum on the death of Gorbachev

“But in truth, all of Gorbachev’s most significant decisions, his most radical actions, were the ones he did not make. He did not order the East Germans to shoot at people crossing the Wall. He did not offer the Polish communists a bailout as their economy crashed. He did not launch a full-scale war to prevent the secession of the Baltic states, or to stop the Ukrainians from declaring independence, or to prevent Russia from electing its own leadership too.”

Yep Gorbachev got the Nobel peace prize in 1990, because he didn’t send in tanks to East Germany. Good for him. Not entritly unlike, but quite unlike, that Obama got the peace prize in 2009 for not being George Bush.