~ Conformity and corporatism: Surgically altering one’s appearance (e.g., designer feet) presumably increases one’s chance of success in a society that commodifies bodies (i.e., in a society where salary, career advancement, social status and marriage prospects are influenced by appearance). Altering one’s personality with psychopharmaceuticals allows one to project the qualities necessary for success in a highly competitive society.

It’s always hard to be sure about these things, but I think the reason I decided to take a ‘sabbatical’ from blogging last July was that I was interested in too many seemingly unrelated topics. Writing about all of them left me feeling like I never got to the ‘meat’ of any one of them. And I couldn’t convince myself to focus on just one or two things, since that would mean abandoning the others, which I was unwilling to do.

Most people experience times when as much as it’s blindingly obvious a problem is not theirs alone, it’s up to them alone to fix it – and a pill is often the quickest or only means.

That’s exactly what Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan wanted us to believe. “There’s no such thing as society.” Unfortunately, many medical distorders do have social, not biological causes. Like poverty.