Christroher Hitchens has a must read post at Slate that nails what the rally in Washington DC was really about titled “White Fright; Glenn Beck’s rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected—the Waterworld of white self-pity.” Here is an excerpt:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It’s not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention.

Salon has an interview with Thomas Geoghegan, author of the book Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life. Here is an excerpt from it:

People in the U.S. often pride themselves for working more than our European counterparts. Why do we work so much in the first place?

There aren’t any historical or cultural reasons for it. Americans famously had more leisure time than the Japanese back in the 1960s. I would say if you did a survey of most people who are in their late 50s or 60s, they will tell you that they take fewer vacations than their parents did. Now why did that change? It wasn’t because of the Pilgrims. People work hard in America, but there was a period where leisure time was increasing. I quoted Linda Bell and Richard Freeman in an article they wrote about what happened during the ‘90s. There was nobody to stop you from working longer. There was no government check, there was no union check as there is on excessive work as there is in Germany or elsewhere in Europe. These institutional checks are gone. So people feel like lab rats: “If I work an extra 10 minutes over the person in the cubicle next to me, then I’m less likely to get laid off.” It’s a very rational response.

(The Edge of Dreaming.)

(“Obsessed.”)

We are overwhelmed by the amount of choices we are told we have in our culture. The belief, the great American Myth, is that we can have anything, anyone, or be anything we want. But, the hard work and disappointment part of of being, having, choosing, and wanting, that comes with this myth of entitlement seems lost to us. Our choices eventually run up against our limitations.

Choices can become traps that keep us from making decisions and coming to conclusions about who we are. The identity we are creating for ourselves hinges on the number of choices we believe we have, especially when it comes to who and what we want to possess. So in affect, the belief/perception that we have so many choices places decisions we must make now somewhere in the future. At some point we have to act decisively and eliminate both real and perceived choices in order to commit and move forward with our lives.

On this note, the Atlantic has a post by Lane Wallace titled “Toothpaste, Dating, and Data: The Hazards of Too Much Choice.” Here is an excerpt:

So apparently, having too many choices leaves us unable to commit to any given one—in toothpaste, romantic partners, or even 401k investment plans. (Consequently, many brokers, like optometrists, have learned to organize client choices into descending layers of preferences: Which of these three? Which of these next three? And finally, which of these next three?)

But even more disconcerting are the implications of this phenomenon for the information industry. I’ve already noticed it in myself, and in friends who note that they can’t process all the Web sites and bloggers and cable news and opinions out there anymore. Faced with too many choices, they just stop reading, or revert to the sports page. At first, it’s delightful to have all that variety. But too much information from too many sources can be like too many kinds of jam. Or, for that matter, too many threads of music. One musical voice is nice. Four allow for an even more interesting quartet. But at some point, too many voices become noise.

(As noted in the referenced post read Sheena Iyengar‘s book The Art of Choosing and an article by Barry Schwartz titled “Can There Ever Be Too Many Flowers Blooming?“)

Steven Johnson has a noteworthy article at the NYT titled “Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social,” which responds to Nicholas Carr‘s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Here is an excerpt from it:

Quiet contemplation has led to its fair share of important thoughts. But it cannot be denied that good ideas also emerge in networks.

Yes, we are a little less focused, thanks to the electric stimulus of the screen. Yes, we are reading slightly fewer long-form narratives and arguments than we did 50 years ago, though the Kindle and the iPad may well change that. Those are costs, to be sure. But what of the other side of the ledger? We are reading more text, writing far more often, than we were in the heyday of television.

And the speed with which we can follow the trail of an idea, or discover new perspectives on a problem, has increased by several orders of magnitude. We are marginally less focused, and exponentially more connected. That’s a bargain all of us should be happy to make.

Addiction Inbox has another great post, this one titled “A High Old Time in Rhode Island” about the government’s annual state-by-state survey of drug use in America put out by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Here is an excerpt:

The most meaningful change compared to the 2002-2003 period was a 2.5 per cent decrease in the use of cocaine among people 12 or older. Nationwide, the percentage of alcohol use remained almost identical (51.4 per cent).

Alain de Botton has a short noteworthy post at City titled “On Distraction: Our minds need to go on a diet.” Here is an excerpt:

The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

(Find the image above here.)

(Read the Time article about this series titled “Better TV Through Chemistry.”) Here is an excerpt from it:

If the Coen brothers were to make a TV show, it might look something like this. Like Fargo, Breaking Bad is the story of a mild-mannered man who, first through need and then through greed, spirals into criminality. Like No Country for Old Men, it levels an unblinking gaze at human cruelty. And like many of the Coens’ films, it leavens these dark themes with a mordant sense of humor.

SUFFERERS ALL Clockwise from top left, William James, Isaac Newton, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gene Tierney are among the well-known people said to have had a nervous breakdown, or something like it, during their lives.

We often comment on and I center my career around tracking the questions of how sick and/or disturbed are we and when do we in fact cross a diagnostic threshold into having a true psychiatric disorder? There are degrees of mental disturbance from mild forms of depression and anxiety due to life circumstances to more severe neurological conditions that defy explanations and treatment. As a culture, we tend to lump so many of us into these severe categories rather then making better distinctions about who is this disturbed.

The point for us, if we more effectively define and treat people who in reality have a mental illness while also guiding others who exhibit milder forms of depression and anxiety through how to manage their symptoms and lives, our precious time, resources, and energy can be saved and focused on where the greater needs lie. On this note the NYT has an article worth checking out titled “On the Verge of ‘Vital Exhaustion’?” by Benedict Carey. Here is an excerpt:

Through the ages, every generation has attributed its own catchall diagnosis to larger cultural changes. Industrialization. Modernization. The digital age. The 19th-century philosopher William James reportedly called neurasthenia, from which he claimed to suffer himself, “Americanitis,” in part the result of the accelerating pace of American life. So it was with breakdowns. The causes were largely external — and recovery a matter of better managing life’s demands.

“People accepted the notion of nervous breakdown often because it was construed as a category that could handled without professional help,” concluded a 2000 analysis by Dr. Stearns, Megan Barke and Rebecca Fribush. The popularity of the phrase, they wrote, revealed “a longstanding need to keep some distance from purely professional diagnoses and treatments.”