Posted on 10/26/2009 4:44:30 PM PDT by ventanax5
As a doctor and psychiatrist, I spent an awful lot of my professional life trying to change individuals in a direction that I thought appropriate and beneficial for them. I am not under any illusions about how far I succeeded. I think I succeeded very little. At the best, I implanted the seeds of change rather than caused change itself. It was often the case that my patients had adopted grossly self-destructive paths in life, that viewed dispassionately and with a minimum of common sense could lead to nothing but misery, despair and chaos. Indeed, my patients often acknowledged this themselves, at least intellectually. ‘Yes, yes,’ they would say, ‘of course you are right.’ And they would promise to change, and to take all the very obvious steps to amend and improve their lives.
When I was young and inexperienced, I believed them. I felt very pleased with myself. It then came as a shock to me that, despite all their protestations of desire to change, they persisted in their folly. My words had not produced their salutary effect after all. I might as well have said nothing at all. When I was young, I thought my pearls had been cast before swine; later, I realised the profound truth contained in La Rochefoucauld’s maxim, that it is easier to give good advice than to take it. When I considered my own life, I saw that this was so; most of the wrong decisions I had made, especially the worst and most important of them, I had made knowingly, in full knowledge of the ill consequences to which they would lead. If I have been saved from disaster, it is by native cunning rather than by superior wisdom.
(Excerpt) Read more at newenglishreview.org ...
That guy is a lyin’ steaming pile of dung!
To the contrary. He’s right both about Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and about the assumption that we can somehow miraculously bring about “enlightenment” in other cultures ...
Wrong thread; I was commenting on Harry Reid's claims of "opt-out provision" in the coming Socialized Medicine mandate.....
Man, that's weak. You need to knowledge up on alibis....
:^)
I posted on the wrong thread (not into the twilight zone issues)
Those “grossly self-inflicted bahaviours” have been honed to a fine edge, allowing them to spend their entire adult lives on SSI......
This taxpayer wants to thanks you for enabling them...NOT!!
Well in that case I agree with you 100%!
I’m one of the many Nevadans who would LOVE to say “adios” to Harry!
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