Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and the rest of life.
Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012) p.7 (hardcover)
Author: Milan
In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford.
Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.
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People go too far when they say there’s no such thing as mental illness. Some people are mentally ill in a very real sense of “illness,” in the same sense we would describe somebody as physically ill if they were to have cancer. This illness damages their functioning. They cannot function well. They do not tend to be more creative or more productive or more vivacious. Rather, for – with very few exceptions; possibly some exceptions revolving around mania as Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema discussed – with very few exceptions being mentally ill is just very bad for you in every possible way. Moreover, when people are treated, when people get better, they become more competent, happier, better able to participate in the world, and they do not choose to go back to their mental illness, suggesting that it really is illness in the serious sense. And so the modern treatment of psychological disorders treats them as disorders like medical disorders. Schizophrenia is as much a disease as is cancer and should be thought of in the same way.