Sunday Blog 46 – 24th July 2022

My latest podcast rabbit hole is Jon Ronson’s BBC Sounds Podcast Things Fell Apart. It looks at sliding door moments in the recent history of our culture wars. Each episode is compelling, but I got particularly stuck on Episode 5, A Scottish Jewish Joke, set in 1988 when the internet was first emerging.

This episode documents the very first identifiable social media shaming of Brad Templeton, whose Waterloo University hosted page published a joke everyday, including the very questionable Scottish Jewish joke of the episode’s title. It was randomly published using algorithms on November 9, 1988 via a program. This happened to be the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a coordinated wave of anti-Semitic violence by Germany’s Nazi party.

In the furore that followed, we humans had a chance, a sliding door moment to set some standards on what is published on the internet. At first it looked hopeful. The page was banned from Waterloo University, and Stanford University banned it too. Stanford’s decision was documented in an essay that noted the “love of freedom of expression mattered less that its collective search for a better way in which every person is acknowledged as an individual not a caricature.”

What an amazing online world that would be.

But it was not to be a lasting victory for kindness and inclusion. John McCarthy, tenured Stanford University professor, and one of the biggest names in computer science in the 1980s, was horrified by the thought of any constraints placed on the wild west world of the emerging internet. He rebutted this decision, and concluded “we’re really exploring the leading edge of computing here. Let’s keep exploring it. Don’t try and cut it off. We discover the boundaries of free speech by literally running into them, or crossing them.” 24.49

And that’s the internet we’ve all lived in for the decades that have followed. A Libertarian engineer’s utopia where free speech thrived unencumbered, with no regard for the dangers it might cause society. And by dangers I mean not only offensive speech but fake news too. And because unencumbered, free speech leads to conflict, which keeps people online longer than harmony does, it’s a profitable ideology for tech companies

Jon Ronson, 25 minute mark of Episode 5, Things Fell Apart.

What is so fascinating about this story is that the journalist who first shamed Brad Templeman in the 1980s is still a journalist to this day, still at the Waterloo Region Record newspaper. Recently she found herself on the wrong side of the culture wars when she wrote a piece downplaying the dangers of White Lives Matter leaflets that had been distributed in her town of Baden. Her investigations had revealed that such leaflets didn’t usually result in a march but were scattered around as a strategy to see if people would turn up.

In the roasting that followed her article, she experienced what Brad Templeman had experienced forty years previously. The fact that she was right and there was no riot did not eventuate in an apology or review of her public roasting as a racist. She reflected;

A true Free Speech advocate doesn’t differentiate between junky speech like insensitive jokes, and thoughtful arguments that are meant to help us understand the world that we live in.

Luisa D’Amato, journalist from Waterloo Region’s The Record,

Jon Ronson finishes the episode; “And from that day on, the internet would, in its peculiarly terrible way, influence the ferocity with which every culture war would subsequently be fought.”

A thought-provoking listen. Highly recommended.

Sunday Blog 43 – 3rd July 2022

When I first started my Sunday Blog 43 weeks ago – back in the dim distant land of August 2021 before I had taken the radical decision to leave the Health Consumers’ Council – I had on top of my list of “blog topics to write” about the myth of the patient-centred health care system. The blog post idea was number 1 on the list and has languished somewhat in the months that have followed. It was supposed be like an opening volley for my next planned book – a non-fiction book about the health system.

Back in August, the working title for the book was “The West Australian Body Owners Guide to the Health System.” Over the months it has shifted and morphed (many people’s responses to the working title certainly encouraged a re-think) into The Patient Centred Myth.

The quote from today’s blog comes from Episode 8 of The Impatient Podcast, an excellent podcast by cancer patient Nicole Cooper and her brother Sean Crank. They interview Zoologist, Cancer Patient and Doctor (in that order) Ben Bravery. It’s an excellent interview and worth the time to listen – there’s so much in it that I had to keep stopping and transcribing bits.

After Ben Bravery finished his cancer treatment he decided to retrain as a Doctor (he was already a Zoologist) and was planning to become an Oncologist. But his medical training put him off the idea.

I was struck by … the way that Medicine was taught. First of all, it’s archaic, and it’s hostile. And I thought that the focus was on the wrong things … people have this idea that if you focus on the whole person, or the whole patient, and you connect and you understand and you give time to listen and you educate families, and you write down notes that they can understand and you make extra calls when you need to, that you’re going to lose “The Medicine” … That you’re going to lose the anatomy and the chemistry and pharmacology. But you don’t. … It’s not a trade-off. But the bulk of medicine has just focused on the bio medical stuff. … And then they use the excuse that there’s just no time to do the other stuff.

The Impatient Podcast Episode 8 – We’re All People – about the 42 minute mark

Archaic. Hostile. Like our humanity is the enemy in medicine.

Interestingly he has decided to become a Psychiatrist, and I love what he says;

 I don’t have a lived experience in mental illness, I have a lived experience in cancer. But I’ve got lived experience as someone who’s very sick and I see very little difference between the mind and the body. And I’m all about breaking down that stigma, because they are illnesses and they can be treated and they can be understood.

The Impatient Podcast Episode 8 – We’re All People – about the 45 minute mark

So while I am no longer running our state’s patient advocacy non-profit, I am still a consumer representative. Because, as previously noted, it is a vocation, not a job. I am still encountering hostility from time to time in meetings when trying to correct the course of culture and clinical service models back towards being people centred.

I’ve got a lot more to say on this topic. Like a lot. But today’s Sunday blog felt like the right one to strike the first blow on this topic, make a tentative new start on this writing project as I almost near the end of the my shitty millionth draft of my novella.

Sunday Blog 42 – 26th June 2022

Inside, I feel 27. No matter that I am that plus 30 years. There was something about being 27 – I felt like I knew who I was, and starting to kick some ass in life. Perhaps because my birthday is on the 27th I resonate with that number. I I decided this week that I would pick the 27th of the month to send my new monthly e-news out. Having made that pronouncement and felt that internal “click” of committing to a decision that I have made before but not honoured, I randomly googled the number 27. This is what leapt out at me:

This number is about non-judgement, compassion and tolerance of other and their beliefs. People with 27 in their numerology charts should use their idealistic viewpoints, humanitarian nature, people skills, and wide array of knowledge to help humanity.

https://thesecretofthetarot.com/numerology-number-27/

A sign.

Then this weekend I met with my Emerging Writers Mentor Nathan Hobby to discuss the latest round of edits. I got to the cafe early to make sure I had read through all his comments before he arrived. When I went up to order coffee, the waitress gave me table number 27. Another sign!

So tomorrow I will be launching this to my subscribers. I plan to pull together a digest of Sunday blogs and share other titbits that I prefer not to share publicly. If you would like to subscribe, just click on the image below.

Happy Sunday.

Sunday Blog 41 – 19th June 2022

In 1979 when I was just 14, life became a little interesting in my staunchly Catholic, very suburban household when my eldest (kind, thoughtful, smart, gentle and idealistic) sister joined the Orange People. At the time they wore orange clothes (hence the name) and followed Bhagwhan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho. It prompted a groundswell of all the things within my family as can be imagined. But for me, it caused an unpicking of my childhood Catholic strait jacket, seam by seam. There were so many of the same problems in both organisations it seemed to me, even though outwardly they appeared so different.

Fast forward many decades, and two months ago I was recommended the podcast A Little Bit Culty. I started with the episode featuring Erin Roberts talking about her time in the Orange people, and raged and wept as I listened. The abuse of women and children is so devastating. Also the fact it took Erin most of her life to recognise that what she experienced was abuse got me in all the feels.

I then went back to find out more about the hosts, Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Ames and their flight from the NLP infused self-development cult NXIVM. They escaped from NXIVM and were part of dismantling it and ensuring the leader will never get out of jail (very satisfying). I have been dipping in and out of this important podcast, every now and then needing breaks, because this stuff is hard.

So in the tradition of “Too Long Didn’t Listen” I have extracted some nuggest from my hours of listening:

-Much like people trapped in domestic violence situations, people outside a cult can look in and be very judge-y, imagining they are completely immune from this ever happening to them, and puzzled why they “don’t just leave.”

-People don’t join cults – they follow a dream or an ideal – usually a better world, a new way of doing things, a great leap forward for human kind. There can a lot of shame for people leaving cults, who can berate themselves for getting into them in the first place. It’s important to remember the positive things they were pursuing, and the wonderful experiences that can be had in a cult, even if it turns to ash after a while.

-Once they are seduced into a cult, the leader will usually perform a predictable range of manipulative behaviours. These have been painstakingly researched and put into a model called the BITE model by Dr Steven Hassan, himself an escapee from the Monee cult (see image above). You can look up for yourself here to find his short document which lists the features of a cult in terms of control of Behaviour, Information, Thoughts and Emotions. Working through that list and seeing how many ticks an organisation gets can help you begin to identify if you are in a cult, can open up that little gap to allow some critical thinking to creep in.

-It’s very hard for people in cults to have any time to have that little gap for critical thinking as they are kept very, very busy. This might mean a punishing schedule of talks, tasks, daily routine. Or it might mean distracting people with new ideas.

-Another key feature is disconnecting people from their gut instincts, their warning signals for when things are moving into the realms of abuse. Usually this is achieved by telling followers they don’t have enough faith, or they don’t have the grit it takes to keep on working on their issues etc.

-Dr Steven Hassan provided a super helpful approach when you think a loved one may be in a cult. He talks about this in the second episode of A Little Bit Culty.

Be open, curious, acknowledge the ideal that your loved one is seeking through the cult. Assure them that you too want a better world and ask them to explain to you how this cult is the only way to achieve that. This open conversation can encourage an ongoing dialogue which may help them think their way into freedom.

It just felt important to share this here. A little bit culty might be OK, but a lot culty is not OK…

Sunday Blog 40 – 12th June 2022

“I don’t believe things happen for a reason, I just believe life is actually the randomness we see around us.”

Maya Shankar, Episode 17. Riz Ahmed Plays Himself, at the 17:25 minute mark

It’s been a week of rich listening on various podcasts, including a favourite, A Little Bit Culty which I am saving for next week’s blog.

This week belongs to the excellent A Slight Change of Plans. Not one but two Slight Change of Plan episodes I randomly listened to, tackled the popular idea that “everything happens for a reason.” These were episode 17 – Riz Ahmed Plays Himself, and Episode 32 – A Test of Faith featuring Kate Bowler whose life is upended by a Stage IV cancer diagnosis at age 35 with a 1-year-old son.

These two thoughtful episodes dig into the idea that the belief “everything happens for a reason” means that when bad things happen, it lets loose the dogs of victim blaming. There must be something you did or didn’t do that caused this bad thing to happen to you. Life is not random, but completely ordered. It strips away our empathy and fellow-feeling.

Kate Bowler describes how her terminal diagnosis made her aware of the precariousness of life, and this realisation “opened up in me a capacity to love other people and their precarity.” (23 minute mark)

In short, if we give up the certainty that life is ordered, and that when things happen “there is a reason,” we are able to embrace the complexity and randomness of life, and see each other as we all really are – not special, not immune, all just as likely or unlikely to have bad things happen.

In a New York Times article Kate Bowler wrote in 2016, just months after her diagnosis, she recounts the neighbour who came to drop off a meal and tell Kate’s husband that “everything happens for a reason.” She was very startled by him asking what that reason might be.

“She wanted some kind of order behind this chaos. Because the opposite of #blessed is leaving a husband and a toddler behind, and people can’t quite let themselves say it: “Wow. That’s awful.” There has to be a reason, because without one we are left as helpless and possibly as unlucky as everyone else.”

Certainty or love. Not really a choice, is it? Love wins!