I'm kind of down this morning. Must be the attack on my immune system this week. Just feeling blah.

Last night, I went to the bookstore and bought an introductory book to philosophy of mind that John Searle published a couple of years ago. From what I can tell the premise of the book is that every theory of mind is wrong (or at least fundamentally flawed, which may or may not mean the same thing). I also picked up a copy of Ken Wilber's Integral Psychology. I ought to be quite well occupied, at least intellectually, for the next few weeks with these. I read quite a few Searle articles in grad school; mostly mind stuff, and an article about bridging the naturalistic gap (deriving "ought" from "is"). Searle is an amazing thinker, and his analyses are brilliant. I highly recommend him if you are interested in such things as the mind/body problem. Warning to non-philosophy people though: this is very dry and very dense. Make sure your patience levels are high before attempting to read.

And thanks to Tipheret (again!) for finally getting me to read Ken Wilber. This stuff is cool. The mainstream approach to psychology has become so devoid of compassion, or any other decent human feeling, in so many ways, and it's really good to read someone who is more interested in figuring out how people work and helping them develop than in just getting them out of everyone's way. And it's definitely a welcome alternative to the Oprah-style, magical thinking pop psych garbage that passes for intelligent insight that everyone seems to merrily push on one another. Seriously people, you'd be better off doing astrology charts or casting chicken bones. If I hear one more chirpy little Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus cliche...

OK, that is actually a bigger discussion than I'm up for right now. But I love picking on John Gray. For entertainment, I highly recommend you read "A Rebuttal From Uranus". John Gray is a flim-flam artist from an unaccredited university at which he studied astrology. If you want to learn the best methods for avoiding any actual intimacy or trust with a partner, look no further. Treating another person as a "type" ("yeah, I know your KIND!!" he said sneeringly) is the best way to do that without having to resort to anything bloody. Criminy, that man pisses me off. I think it'd be fun to put him and Melody Beattie in a plane crash to see who eats the other first.

Hmph.

On a related note, I got a catch-up email from a close friend telling me about all the things he's got going on in her life, and repeatedly emphasizing how glad she is she's stocked up on meds so she can deal with all of it.

This made me really sad. See, I remember meeting this woman in college. She was a badass ROTC chick who could run 10 miles in full gear, was determined to become an Army chaplain, and didn't need any kind of drug to deal with anything. She got married right after college, ditched the chaplain idea, and all of a sudden it was meds, meds, meds all the time. And now, it seems like anything that happens might push her to the edge of a breakdown.

And there's not a damned thing I can do to help her.