Good reports!

I really enjoyed yesterday's reports, and look forward to the rest of them on Tuesday.

I love days like yesterday: wall-to-wall final report presentations, every one of them thoughtful and enlightening, preceded by quality time with Younger Daughter (home on a sick day, asking for a story) and capped with an excellent James tutorial.

In SOL, Bonnie reported on grumpy Eric Wilson’s contrarian stand “against happiness.” Melancholy has its place, he says, especially other people’s melancholy. It’s “the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation,” a “wellspring of creativity.” I was reminded of Peter (Listening to Prozac) Kramer and his counter-contrarian screed “against depression.” And of Lou Marinoff’s Plato, Not Prozac. Can philosophers ever replace drugs, at (say) $75 an hour? I don’t have my philosophical counselinglicense yet but I’m still willing to give it a shot, if anybody wants to give me a hire.

And you might, if you heard Erik’s catalog of Celexa side-effects:

Abdominal pain, agitation, anxiety, diarrhea, drowsiness, mouth, ejaculation disorders, fatigue, impotence, indigestion, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, painful menstruation, respitory tract infection, sinus or nasal inflammation, sweating, tremor, and vomiting, Amnesia, attempted suicide, confusion, coughing, decreased sexual drive, depression, excessive urination, fever, gas, impaired concentration, increased appetite, increased salivation, itching, joint pain, lack of emotion, loss of menstruation, low blood pressure, migraine, muscle pain, rapid heartbeat, rash, skin tingling, taste disturbances, visual disturbances, weight gain, weight loss, and yawning.

Ah, the miracle of modern medicine. But I think I can get most of those on my own for free, without a prescription.

Rebekah talked about self-help, to which she confesses an addiction even though she knows it doesn’t really “help.” Specifically, Scott Berkun’sMindfire challenges us to “learn from your mistakes.” I’ve learned a lot. Seriously, as James says in “Will to Believe,”

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher.

Connor reported on Andrew Newberg‘s neurotheology. Are some people simply born to believe? And some of us not? And does the putative existence of a “G(od)-spot” in the brain discredit or strengthen religion’s credibility? What if peyote activates it? (“If you really want to see God, try some of this.”) We may need to talk some more about that on Tuesday. (Post continues...)