[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

Matthias Wasser matthias.wasser at gmail.com
Fri Mar 5 09:44:15 PST 2010


On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Vincent Clarke <pclarkepvincent at gmail.com>wrote:


> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > "Disease" does not mean "thing that makes you feel bad." If everybody had
> > MS, it would not be a disease, anymore than aging is a disease.
> >
> >
>
> Good point... oh, wait, no its not...
>
> This kind of crap is exactly what leads to the "identifying with the
> disease" nonsense. "No, its only a disease because the rest of society says
> it is - its really just you, because you're different...".
>
> Fucking bullshit. I believe Doug Henwood had Barbara Ehrenreich discussing
> this on his radio show a few weeks back. Its the same old bullshit. I'd
> advise people who buy into this sort of thing quite simply: if you care so
> much about people with diseases, if you really want to think about it
> concretely - and this goes for psychiatric disorders as well - don't
> relativise them; don't take the stance of the "beautiful soul" and
> attribute
> all bad things to "society" - recognise their reality, study medicine of
> psychology and make a contribution. Otherwise, to be frank... shut up!
>
> I'm sorry to be so blunt about this, but having to listen to this stuff in
> the humanities departments all the time just vexes me. No wonder those in
> sciences like medicine laugh at those in the humanities - they really come
> across as fools when they start spouting their "theories" about these
> things...

Is aging a disease? If humans naturally stayed immortally in their 20s, and someone started aging like we do, don't you think they'd want to help cure her of her strange malady?



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