der mann ohne eigenschaften

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.

 “Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”

George Orwell. 

I have lived my whole life not knowing there's a different between nationalism and patriotism. Nor did I know that George Orwell hated nationalism and loved patriotism.