The Myth of the Natural
If you want people to buy your product just label it natural. If you want to disapprove of something just label it unnatural. Yet, to embrace the idea that everything…
Posts by tag
Medicine
5 posts
Reproductive Rights in the Transhuman Future
I was recently asked to film a talk by David Pearce, philosopher and co-founder of international transhumanist organization Humanity+. The presentation, entitled “Towards the Abolition of Suffering,” outlined a future…
Aesthetic Norms, Germs and the Medicalization of Ugliness
Medicalization is the process of bringing social, legal or political problems under medical authority: this is how human problems become medical problems. The concept is typically used to refer to…
No, You Don’t Have a Disorder. You Have Feelings
The London Times recently carried a story about an avalanche of self-harm among British school children. According to the article, “school nurses are dealing with panic attacks, self-cutting, overdoses and…
“Nothing Human Is Foreign to Me”: On the Nobility of Science and the Humanistic Instinct
Only recently did I realize there was a word for the desire to understand and prevent disease, and, more generally, to help people flourish: humanism.
