#in how the traditions have been distorted through generations of people practicing traditionally less and less

[gateway-to-glimmer]

A Guide to Dream Work

Dream States

Sleep states are fun to consciously control  for various reasons. They can be used to view and analyze our memory  and sense of self in an indirect way. The feelings and ideas produced by  sleep feel profound and vivid, and can be used for creative  inspiration.

The characters and places we encounter in our dreams  are reflective of the things we have experienced and imagined. We have  dedicated systems of memory for things like our stereotypes of people  and places, as well as our relationship to our environment and to  ourselves. When we are in a dream state, we see the boundaries between  ideas contained within our memory distort and change, leading to the  experience of a world created entirely from the contents of our  knowledge and memory.

Sleep is essential for functioning. Contrary  to what one would expect, the brain is active even during sleep. When  we sleep, the brain goes through a process of regulating physical and  mental functions. Sleep is essential for memory consolidation. It is  difficult to retain and recall information that hasn’t yet been  consolidated during sleep.

There are several distinct stages of  sleep. Older psychological texts used to break these up into five stages  of sleep. Today, most researchers divide the stages of sleep into four  stages: NREM 1, NREM 2, NREM 3, and REM sleep. REM stands for rapid-eye  movement. During REM sleep, the eyes move back and forth quickly, hence  the name. NREM stands for non-rapid eye movement. In these stages of  sleep, the eyes are still, unlike in REM sleep.

Staying lucid  during the different stages of sleep is an interesting experience that  many enjoy and find thought provoking. Each stage of sleep is   experienced by the dreamer in a different way. Studies have been   conducted on participants who were woken up during the different stages of sleep and asked what their dreams were like. People who were woken up  during light sleep felt as though they had entered an immersive   daydream but hadn’t quite fallen asleep. People woken up during deep   sleep (NREM 3) reported feeling fully immersed in their mind, but that   the dream felt more thought-like and involved mundane subjects,   activities, and places. People who were woken up during REM sleep   reported vivid, surreal, and fantastical dreams.

Different  mystical traditions delineate between three distinct types of dream-work  which map onto lucid dreaming during the three stages of sleep.  Hedgecrossing occurs during NREM 1 and NREM 2 sleep. During this stage  of sleep, if the dreamer is lucid, their thoughts become random, vivid,  immersive, and contain spontaneous events that feel profound. Their  thoughts feel out of their control. Spiritual traditions use this stage  of sleep for the purpose of contacting spirits or interpreting some  aspect of their lives.

Lucid dreaming during deep sleep is  experienced as astral projection. Astral projection stereotypically  involves the perception of leaving the body and walking into the world  just outside of the self. Traditionally, the world becomes more random  and mystical as the person moves further from their body, which maps  onto the idea that the change in sleep states causes a subjectively  perceived change in experience while lucid dreaming.

Lucid  dreaming during REM sleep is what people traditionally think of when  they think of lucid dreaming. REM sleep dreams depart from the normal  laws of reality the most severely of all of the stages of sleep. Because  of this, lucid dreaming can easily be used to generate creative ideas  or to explore themes from one’s life through the vivid feelings produced  by the dream. In addition, it is possible to attain some degree of   psychological healing through dreams because of their connection to our memory, and because dream experiences feel vivid and thus their content  and our reaction to them can significantly impact us even when we are awake.

I will describe how to attain each dream state in the next  section. In a subsequent section, I will explain how spiritual  practitioners approach dream work. I will then explain how to use dream  experiences in a constructive way (such as through dream analysis,  creative inspiration, and overcoming traumas and internal conflicts  through dream role play) as an alternative psychological technique.

Hedgecrossing

Hedgecrossing refers to the state of mind  that occurs when one is lucid during light sleep. This state of mind is  useful for spiritual and psychological work. People who subscribe to a  mystical belief system may use this state of mind to contact spirits or  perform a ritual or detect something about the world. People who see  these states of mind as psychological tools may use this state of mind  to access parts of their memory - similar to using hypnotherapy  techniques.

Procedure

The general procedure for  hedgecrossing is to meditate in a comfortable position until the mind  begins to enter a sleeping state. There are certain tells that the mind  has entered such a state - the thoughts that automatically come to us  become random, nonsensical. As with all dream-based work, it is  important to try many times to attain and work with these states. It is  very easy to fall asleep or to fail to enter into a dream state at all  and this can be discouraging for many people. Hedgecrossing is the  easiest lucid dream state to attain because it takes place in the first  stage of sleep, so it is the first dream state entered. People don’t  feel as though they have left their body but they do feel like their  imagination has taken on a mind of its own and it can surprise them with  moments of insight and inspiration.

We will be creating a  specific mental place inside for each of the three lucid dream states.  Eventually, our brains come to associate this internal mental space with  the state of mind provoked by each type of dream state. Over time, as  the association becomes stronger, this helps us enter into a particular  dream state more easily.

Lay down in a comfortable place that you  ordinarily sleep in. Practicing good sleep hygiene, especially the step  where you only sleep in the room/area you sleep in so that your mind can  associate that area with sleeping, can help. Beginning at a time where  you are naturally tired and normally go to bed helps. This state is  prompted by entering the first stages of sleep, light sleep.

Clear  your mind as though you are meditating. Enter your mind’s eye and focus  solely on the experience of being inside of your imagination. Ignore  external thoughts and sensations as they come up, letting go of them and  turning back inside. You are free to develop your own set of   visualizations. The general framework for developing your own system of visualizations to distract you until you enter light sleep is, more or less, this: enter the first of your visualizations and ground yourself in your 5 senses; leave the area to a second room associated with   hedgecrossing; leave to a third room where you engage in a repetitive   (hypnotic) motion; then leave to a final room where you can walk   endlessly until you enter a hedgecrossing state/light sleep state. I   will give an example below.

Enter your mind’s eye at the foot of a  blue cliff with the opening to a black cave. Feel the blue grass  beneath your feet. Drink from a nearby pool of clear water above pastel  blue sand. Look at the deep blue sky above and listen to the wind blow  through the blue leaves coming off the black trees behind you, smelling  the cool, chilly, evening air. Enter the cave.

Enter a black room  with blue steps leading down. Blue stars line the walls of the cave,   approximating the complexity of the universe. Look at them as you   continue downwards. At the bottom of the stairs is a glowing blue number  one on the walls instead of stars. This mental state, hedgecrossing, is  associated with the star symbol as well as the color blue and the   number 1. Giving specific symbols meaning like this helps make entering this state from this mental location easier in the future. There is a   door with a large blue A glowing on it. Walk through the door, feeling   the texture of the doorknob in your hand.

Enter a room with blue  crystals and a pool of water with a waterfall. Watch the waterfall flow  endlessly into the pool of water, feeling the cool water wash over your  hands. Listen to the sound of the water flowing into the pool. Dive into  the water.

After entering the water, enter a room without water.  This area is a maze. Ankle deep water and blue crystals and stars line  the walls. Walk through the cave, taking random turns, until the area  begins to randomize and things begin to change outside of your control.  You will have entered the state informally called hedgecrossing (lucid  dreaming during light sleep) when the area and things inside of it are  partially outside of your control.

Some people find it helpful to  take a small amount of caffeine; others find this does not help at all.  Stimulants can make it easier to maintain lucidity, but also harder to  fall asleep. I have narcolepsy and I’m prescribed Ritalin and I  accidentally lucid dream on it all of the time because of this.

Uses

Soul retrieval and hypnotherapy  both force the practitioner into a trance that is similar to light   sleep or near light sleep in order to enter into and manipulate the mind  in a deeper way than is normally possible in a waking state. This   allows us to cross mental barriers, such as the barriers that keep   memories repressed, and view normally forbidden materials in our mind.   This also means that, since our emotions are more vivid, the things that  we think and the way we interact in our mind leaves a stronger   impression than is normally possible during a waking state where our   emotions are more repressed. The increased emotional vividness serves as  a flag to our mind that what we are thinking is more important than   normal.

The following techniques can be practiced in other sleep  states, although the form they take may differ between stages of sleep.  Because it is difficult to remember information between a waking and  sleeping state, it is essential to keep a journal nearby in order  to write down important thoughts. Get into a habit of writing about the  contents of every lucid dream, regardless of which stage of sleep it  occurred in, as soon as you wake up. Write down every regular dream, as  well.

Symbols are important elements of our mind. Symbols  serve as associative cues to different places in our memory. When we  hedgecross, we enter into a state of mind where we are closer to our  memory, almost living in it as we do when we are deeply sleeping. We can  use symbols to interact with our mind. When we are hedgecrossing, we  can call up a symbol. Say, the color red. We visualize this color, and  because our thoughts have become more random, they will warp and respond  to the introduction of this cue. We could randomly remember a memory  connected to the color red. Or we could spontaneously imagine a  character or the beginning of a story prompted by thinking about the  color red.

We think about the world in certain ways that are  connected to our different types of memories. We have special  neurological processes dedicated to processing things like narratives,  relationships, time, other people, cultural stereotypes, and places.  These elements become easy to notice when we engage in dream work. We  become immersed in the components of our memory, and the types of  components we can think in become obvious quickly. Elements that  frequently recur in dreams often have some significance, and it is worth  it to interact with these symbols - doing so can reveal old memories  and can allow us to interact with these ideas to inspire or change the  self. This is the process of dream analysis. By interacting with  these symbols, characters, and other ideas, we can see their meaning.  Dream analysis books offer interpretations based on cultural symbolism.  This is helpful to some extent, but personal symbolism is what matters  the most, and it can be quite contextual and idiosyncratic. It is  possible to interact with an idea or symbol in a dream and to talk to  it, touch it, see what is inspired by interacting with it. The ideas  that spring up from interacting with this element can be used to analyze  its meaning.

Interacting with symbols in the mind can be used as a  hypnotherapy tool. If someone has a troubling thought loop or memory,  they can interact with it in a dream state to learn more about it and to  gain mastery over the memory. However, it is possible to trigger  nightmares in doing so. That is the risk of good dream work - there is  some element of difficulty to it, and one must be willing to face and  master difficult thoughts to proceed. This can be used to identify core  thoughts and traumas and integrate with them in the course of dealing  with difficult personal experiences and thoughts.

Astral Projection

Astral projection is the act of lucid  dreaming during deep sleep. Qualitatively, this state feels more mundane  than a traditional lucid dream, and it feels more thought-like. As we  enter deep sleep, we finally feel ourselves leave our body.  Paradoxically, we are actually entering our memory, completely cut off  from the external world. For a moment, we haven’t yet forgotten the  rules of external reality or the context we fell asleep in. Our short  term memory takes a short amount of time to clear, and in that time when  we first enter an astral state we experience ourselves as leaving our  body where we left off before we forget where we were when we fell  asleep as our previous circumstance is cleared from our short term  memory. Some people feel vibrations; other people feel nothing at all as  they transition from light sleep to deep sleep.

The general   framework for astral projecting is as follows: lay down in a comfortable  location; focus on staying awake as you slowly fall asleep. Eventually,  you will become overwhelmingly tired that it is almost beyond your  capability to hang on to your conscious awareness. Continue to stay  focused and eventually, your body will feel strange in some way.  Different people experience this change differently. It can be difficult  to get up and to exit the body; no longer being able to move the body  means you are in an astral state. Eventually, if you stay awake and keep  trying to interact with the world, you will leave your body.

This  is a good framework, although to properly associate this state of mind  for your deliberate use later, I recommend a slight permutation to the  classic technique. Before laying down to astral project, enter into your  mind’s eye. See a green glowing 2 in the middle of a field of green  roses. The sky above is filled with green petals. Turn around and see a  door with the letter B glowing green. Reflect on your intention and  enter the door; it should be dark. This signals to your mind that you  are beginning to focus with the intention of astral projecting. Some  people might want to stay immersed in the mind’s eye and imagine a green  landscape beyond the door; a green hedge maze with infinite twists and  turns, and green marble fountains and benches. You will completely enter  your internal landscape when you fall into a deep sleep. This is  similar to hedgecrossing, and it is easy to get stuck in a hedgecrossing  state and it can be hard to transition to an astral state, although  some do it this way. It is important to fall asleep in astral  projection, whereas in hedgecrossing it is important to stay aware as  you are near sleep. In an astral state, you completely lose touch with  the external world and your internal world becomes your entire reality.

Uses

Astral  projection is fun. The vivid emotions provoked by this state of mind   can be entertaining. It is interesting to watch the changes in cognition  that accompany the different stages of sleep. It is possible to use   lucid dreaming states in order to solve or work on personal problems. As  in hedgecrossing, analyzing and interacting with the content of dreams  can be highly meaningful and symbolic.

Some people use dreams to  help deal with psychological issues. Profound visions, such as religious  experiences and positive dreams, can be used to help improve mood even  if one isn’t spiritual. It is possible re-enact difficult memories or  scary situations and to master them in dreams, which leads to one  feeling more comfortable with that memory or situation in waking life.

Because  of the way we think, we often encounter certain types of forms when we  astral project. These forms reflect the way our brain encodes and   interacts with the world around us in our memory. We have specific types  of memory rather than just one unified type of memory; we have memories  for knowledge, behaviors, habits, associations between ideas, and  events. We also have further subdivisions in our memory for our   perception of ourselves, others, places, cultural stereotypes, objects -  and our relationships (which can take the form of opinions, a   perception of personality, narrative plots, and themes) to these things.  We can interact with these elements of our mind in a literal way in   dream states and understand how our memory itself is structured.

People  often encounter elements of our memory- and its ability to create novel  versions of things it has introjected- in specific forms in our dreams.  Some people refer to these constructs as deities or spirits, others see  them as thoughtforms depending on if they subscribe to a spiritual  belief system or not. We can perceive other people or ideals as  characters that feel emotionally profound; we can perceive otherworldly  places that feel as though they are beyond us. We can perceive the  elements of our memory in a vivid way that is highly creative because of  the memory shuffling that is occurring during memory consolidation  which happens during sleep. I am convinced that dreaming is people  watching the process of (some part of) memory consolidation in a literal  way.

Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming takes place during REM  sleep. In a normal person who isn’t sleep deprived, REM sleep sets in  after about 90 minutes. This makes entering a lucid dream through the  traditional way of meditating through the previous sleep states  difficult, although it is possible. Some people attempt to enter REM  sleep directly by waking themselves up and then going back to bed again;  because their mind is interrupted mid-sleep cycle, they may enter REM  again quickly.

The best way to attain lucidity during REM sleep,  in my opinion, is to engage in reality checks. Reality checks train us  to check during dreams automatically to see if we are sleeping or not.  We pick some detail about dreams that sets them apart from reality, and  during the day we check several times to see whether or not we are  sleeping. Eventually, this habit carries over into dreams and we  naturally question whether or not we are dreaming - which prompts us to  enter a lucid dream if we ask this question while we are dreaming.

Here  are some examples of reality checks: dreams constantly change and   shift, so if you look at something, look away, and then look back - if   you are dreaming, it should have changed. If you aren’t dreaming, it   will stay constant. In dreams, you can manipulate things with your mind;  try changing some element of the scenery as you would in a dream, or   try to fly. Trying to do these mental exercises from a waking state   feels silly and doesn’t work, but in a dream it can trigger you to   realize you are dreaming if you check to see if you can do these things and you can. Regularly check to see if you are dreaming during the day,  and check for these properties found only in dreams. Eventually, you   will ask the question during a dream and will become lucid.

Intentions  are helpful for the attainment of lucid dreaming. Before bed, enter   into your mind’s eye and find yourself on a red beach with a large red   3. A door with a glowing red C awaits you. Enter it, holding your   intention to lucid dream that night as you allow yourself to fall   asleep. When you attain lucidity, think back on the red C and the red 3.  This will associate these concepts with sleep. You can think on these red concepts in order to help with dream recall. These is called an anchor.  Anchors can be used to help keep you present during the dream and   remind you that you are lucid. Regularly think back on the red room with  the C; create a glowing C or 3 in your hand. The action of doing this grounds you in your dream and prevents you from losing your lucidity or  from waking up.

Additionally, you can check your dream journal for  patterns you are encountering during your natural dreams. These should  be your REM sleep dreams as these are the easiest to recall if you  weren’t lucid during them. Recognizing common types of dreams and dream  locations can help you recognize that you are dreaming.

Uses

Lucid  dreaming is fun. REM sleep dreams are vivid and highly creative. Lucid  dream states can be used to flesh out story ideas or to obtain inspiration.  The emotional vividness and the surreal ideas encountered in this state  of mind are ideal for creative inspiration, like to get inspiration for  an otherworldly landscape to draw or for a fictional place or character  for a story.

If you are going to use a lucid dream state for some  purpose, set your intention ahead of time. It can be fun to explore  dreams without an intention, but for goal directed purposes it is  important to set your intention or else you will forget while you are  maintaining your hold on your lucidity. Do you want to work on a story  idea? Okay. Do you want to focus on the plot, the setting, the theme, or  the characters?

You can focus on one element of your story that  you want to flesh out, or several. You can focus on them one at a time,  or all at once. It is difficult to hold many ideas in mind at once.  Reminding yourself of your story world, or the characters, or a scene  will cause it to manifest in your dream. Because dreams constantly shift  and evolve, it will immediately come to life and go in a direction you  barely control. This can be used for creative inspiration. That is how  one uses dreams - anything that manifests in the dreams suddenly comes  to life and takes on a mind of its own during a dream state. Interacting  with it intensifies this effect, leading to interesting ideas and  feelings.

#magick #witchcraft #witch #animism #shaman #shamanism #animist #occult #new age #dreams #dream #dream interpretation #carl jung #dream analysis #meditation #lucid #luciddream #lucid dreaming #lucid dream #astral #astral projection #astralprojection #oneiromancy #oneironaut #psychonautics #altered states #rem sleep #hedgewitch #hedgecraft #green witch

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 5: “Decoy For a Dognapper”

(”Scooby-Doo, Where Are You”, Season 1 Episode 5)

AKA “That Old-Fashioned Racism”

I’m trying out a format change, starting with this post, because the errors that I was seeing with Read Mores only seem to affect Text Posts and not Image Posts, even if the only difference is whether there’s a text header or a main image. If y’all prefer this style or the text posts, let me know!

The episode opens on a crisp Autumn day, and unlike the norm the four prior episodes established, nothing immediately spooky happens. Instead, we’re reminded that yes, Scooby is a dog, as his sniffing about in the leaves of an affluent-looking neighborhood leads to him catching sight of a well-groomed poodle being walked by an old lady. Scooby pulls up some flowers and tries his best to look charming.

He’s ignored, the poor hump-backed bow-legged mole-chinned fella. Takamoto's intent for Scooby to be a less than ideal specimen really shines through in moments like this, though I suppose his iconic status has dulled that idea over the decades. That said, i am reminded that one of the few times a dog reciprocates Scooby’s romantic intent, she turned out to be a space alien in disguise.

Just after Scooby is rejected, karma strikes: “Princess” is snatched up by a masked dognapper just as she and her owner walk behind some bushes that conveniently save on the animation budget by not showing the complex motion of grabbing the dog i mean, hide the details of the dognapping.

By the time Scooby rejoins the gang at yet another beach party (consisting of Fred and Daphne dancing while Velma and Shaggy roast weenies), the sky has darkened. Instead of explaining why he’s upset using his words, Scooby utilizes his eldritch powers once more and turns on the radio just in time to tune into a flash bulletin announcing the third theft of a prize-winning dog in as many days.

Scooby is very serious about this, pushing the gang to investigate. But his determination has its limits when it turns out that the next dog in line to win an upcoming competition is a Great Dane, well, you can see where this is going.

Fred has a “tiny” transmitter to plant on Scooby, which must have seemed impressive by the standards of 1969. It’s as big as a bath bomb.

Daphne tosses him a Scooby Snack for courage, though Shaggy catches and eats the first one she pitches, rationalizing that he’s going to have to be the one walking the decoy dog, and then it’s time to wash and groom Scooby. Cleaned up and given a shiny new collar, Scooby strikes his best possible posture while out on the town, and even manages to attract some attention.

When this random pink pooch tries and fails to get Scooby’s attention, she kicks a whole bin’s worth of garbage at the duo in a fit of rage. It’s an extended sequence that doesn’t seem to add anything to the plot except suggesting that Scooby is, however briefly, convincing as a show dog. But it’s really weird, because, well... look at this dog. She has a collar, so she’s not just a stray. She's pink, at odds with the vaguely naturalistic color schemes of, well... any other animal in the entire show.

The entire scene could be cut for time without losing anything in the episode, so the best i can figure is that it’s literal filler.

Soon after, the dognappers snatch Scooby amidst a smokescreen, and Shaggy gives chase on a borrowed motor-scooter. While the Mystery Machine reroutes to follow Scooby’s signal, Shaggy sees something unexpected just as he’s catching up to the dognappers:

Yes, this is bound to be a thematically consistent episode. The whooping, shrieking image of a stereotypical Native of the Great Plains appears, causing Shaggy to crash. Shaggy identifies this figure as “Geronimo” for no reason except that he’s a stupid white kid in the sixties.

Meanwhile, Scooby winds up in the villains’ hideout, where he’s quickly identified as a fake by the costumed mastermind, who is similarly clad in a bad caricature of indigenous American garb, looking like some white animator’s idea of what a traditional dance costume might resemble.

In an especially bizarre moment, Scooby resists being tossed out by extending his previously unseen claws to hold tight onto the wooden floor. Scooby has retractable claws. WHAT IS THIS DOG?

The gang finds no sign of the native who spooked Shaggy, but Velma does find a stone tomahawk just laying in the dirt by some train tracks. She identifies this as “an authentic Indian relic, at least 1000 years old”.

Without any testing or reference materials.

Without questioning why it was just sitting around in the open.

A thousand years old, she says.

Guay de mi. Shaggy concludes that this means ghosts, but the gang pick up on Scooby’s signal again and follow it, while Scooby once again demonstrates his retractable claws by extending an especially long one to cut a hole in the wooden crate he’s trapped in.

SCOOBY-DOO, WHAT ARE YOU?

After Scooby’s rescue, the gang backtracks, and are shot at with arrows—that Fred identifies as factory-made and inauthentic, because I guess he thinks no self-respecting native would use anything other than home-made traditionally-crafted arrows. Shaggy and Scooby cry out in terror over the prospect of being scalped.

Interesting fact about the practice of scalp-taking: there’s evidence to suggest that it was introduced to the Americas by white people, and that it was much more widely practiced by settlers—colonial authorities offered bounties on native scalps, and both Confederate and Union soldiers are documented to have engaged in the gruesome practice on people of all ethnicities.

But Shaggy’s a white dude in the Sixties, so we just get to see him being a racist making jokes about his hair being scared.

The gang look to where the arrows came from, and catch sight of the remains of a cliffside city in the general Southwestern style, looking like it may have been referenced directly from “Montezuma’s Castle”. As they make their way up to it, they catch sigh of the lead villain, who is shaking some maracas and affecting a stereotypical accent completely unlike the way he was speaking in front of Scooby earlier.

As he disappears, Velma comments that he speaks excellent English “considering he’s supposed to be 1000 years old.” Again, how is she drawing this conclusion? There’s nothing in the episode to suggest it, and Velma just comes off as spouting the typical attitudes of white American culture that indigenous peoples are long dead and gone.

As the gang continue onward in spite of their ignorance, they rouse a colony of adorable bats, that start chattering and flying around.

Shaggy and Velma start to flail madly in spite of the bats not being animated as actually flying at them, just around... until one snatches Velma’s glasses right off her face, and then drops them on Scooby. There’s a great shot from Scooby’s perspective through the lenses of a bat zooming right at him, and he flees.

But even better is the one moment when Shaggy follows Scooby into shelter. “Ri, Raggy,” says Scooby in his usual distorted doggy speech. Without missing a beat or any sense of it being unusual Shaggy responds in kind:

“Ri, Rooby.”

It’s a weird little moment of Shaggy’s guard being down so much that he picks up on Scooby’s vocal tics, and to be honest, it’s adorable.

The “thousand years” bit continues as the gang explores and "Geronimo” (again, they have no reason to call him that) continues to warn them away with fakey accents and flashy displays.

The weirdest moment of the episode comes during their explorations, while Shaggy is distracted with raiding the dognapper’s food supplies to make an overwhelmingly meaty sandwich with every kind of cold cut i’ve ever heard of. Scooby investigates a cabinet, and then, behind him, a stone in the wall opens up to reveal a secret hole...

...and a hand reaches out to shove Scooby into the cabinet, sending him through another passage and down a chute that leads right to the room where the stolen dogs are kept, along with Daphne after she got caught in another secret passage trap herself. But nothing’s holding Scooby, and he’s able to easily untie Daphne and set the dogs free.

So... what was the point of pushing him? Whose hand was that?

After a few more secret passage antics, the dogs are freed, and—hey, wait a minute, how’d all these secret passages get into these ancient ruins? There’s more of a story here than just the dognappers, but the episode never goes into it.

The dogs chase down the main villain (his henchman is never seen again, and there’s no evidence he’s ever caught), who is revealed as Buck Masters, a dog owner himself who had pretended his own dog was stolen and put on a pretense of offering a reward for the crooks. Buck had extensively interacted with the gang earlier in the episode, so it’s not too surprising he immediately recognized Scooby, but one has to wonder why he didn’t warn his own henchman of the gang’s involvement. 

In any case, his incompetent racist deception is revealed, and the gang have foiled his plan! Oh zoinks, are we going to finally hear it, that immortal line?

Hey, that’s not how you pronounce “meddling”!

In a heartwarming moment, Fred explains that they had to get involved, because they had a dog of their own, and “we love him very much.”

The episode ends on one last little stereotypical gag, as Scooby makes a feathered headdress shadow on the wall by posing with a duster and toy tomahawk.

Oy.

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

#scooby doo #KRAOSD

[glittergummicandypeach]

The Left Behind: Why Are White American Christians So Racist? | Religion Dispatches

Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, has been doing the op-ed thing recently to publicize his new book: White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Jones articulates a thesis that’s sure to make many a member of the pew-ballast class squirm:

You can bet that Jones—one of the best pollsters of American religion at work today—has the data to back his argument up. White Christians, as he notes, are much more likely than the average citizen to buy the “heritage not hate” shtick about Confederate monuments, and much less likely to agree that the repercussions of slavery and institutionalized racism make it difficult for Blacks to find economic success in the U.S. Importantly, Jones didn’t just ask straightforward questions about race, but found indirect ways to test for perceptions about structural racism. This is what you would want in a sensitive exploration of a complex topic. And other researchers see corresponding trends in their own datasets.

It’s unlikely that anyone who has studied the subject for more than the time it takes to read a few Wikipedia articles will be shocked to hear that American Christianity is part and parcel of a white supremacist social order. American society is racist, the church is part of the society, ergo, the church has problems with race. (White Christians are the trespassers, of course, but their sin distorts the entire body of Christ.)

What will be more difficult for a lot of folks to hear is that racism isn’t a bug in the system, it’s a feature. Or to put things more theologically, if racism is America’s original sin, guess who Adam and Eve are? As Jones puts it:

When confronted with unsettling results such as these, many of my fellow white Christians tend to explain them away with two objections. First, they assert that it is not white Christian identity itself but other intervening variables that account for such correlations. Second, they argue that even if white Christian identity is implicated, the results are muddied by the inclusion of people who have no real connection to actual churches, folks who are “Christian in name only.“

But as Jones drily notes, “even when controls are introduced in a statistical model for a range of demographic characteristics, such as partisanship, education levels and region, the connection between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity remains stubbornly robust.” So it’s not accidental, nor is it incidental, that white Christians are more racist than their non-religious peers. In fact, the more often white Christians attend church, the more likely they are to hold strong white supremacist views. And again, it’s not just evangelicals: Catholics and mainline Protestants show the same pattern.

I’m not quite ready to embrace the idea that there’s something inherent in white American Christianity that produces and reproduces a white supremacist perspective, but that’s sure what it looks like from Jones’ data. He’s quite right to point out the long entanglement of the white church with racist social norms, and right that that entanglement has never been fully reckoned with, even in the most progressive denominations. In that sense, his book may serve as a welcome call to repentance to Christians who think their church is doing better on racial issues than it really is.

But will White Too Long be able to provoke change on a broader, more systemic level? I’m less sure of that.

Obviously, there aren’t too many white churches where people sit around on Sunday morning talking about ways to do a racism in the coming week. There are explicitly white supremacist leaders and communities, but they are blessedly few and far between. What’s more of a problem are the “partially self-transcendent” Christians, in Niebuhr’s terms. Those are the people who can see beyond their own limitations—a bit. They can understand that they’re not perfect on racial issues, and may even have a good handle on where to start in addressing them.

But whites cannot see for themselves all the ways they’ve bought into or benefit from systemic injustice, nor can they see on their own all their own failings and sins. Some are more ignorant than others, of course, but everyone has a least a few blind spots. In other words, perhaps what causes white Christians in America to hold racist views is their limited capacity for self-critique. If they understood how they were a part of the problem, they could repent their sins and work to extricate themselves from them. Hence the need for a book like Jones’: the truth can’t set you free until you know what the truth is, and the truth is that white American Christians suck at racial equality.

It’s a decent hypothesis and response, but simply knowing better rarely solves issues as complex as white supremacy. Social problems are, well, social, and require us to take into account broader patterns and movements. In this instance, it’s worth looking at another trend Robert Jones has chronicled: the decline of American Christianity. Religious adherence and worship attendance in postwar America peaked in the mid-1960s, just at the same time that contemporary racial views began to coalesce. It’s possible, then, that white Christians are more accepting of white supremacist views than the religiously affiliated because the people who don’t accept those views have steadily left the church, as have those who are more open to the queer community, or to science, or really, just liberalism on many scores. To put it another way, today’s “Nones” might have been the loosely-affiliated white Christians of fifty years ago, balancing at least nominally those more invested in the social order.

I can say as a matter of practical experience that as white American Christianity contracts, the people left behind in the pews are indeed those most committed to preserving the social order. Keeping tradition alive is exactly why they’re there Sunday after Sunday. If you’d served in some of the places I have, such as a small town in northeast Pennsylvania coal country that’s less than half the size it was in 1960, as the young move away for employment and some kind of future, you’d understand why that’s not entirely a bad thing. Keeping the church alive might be the only thing between some people and the bottom falling out of their society. But if you know the politics of that same area, you know how dark the shadow side of that same instinct can be. When “the way things used to be” involves poisonous racial resentment, the desire to preserve tradition becomes corrupted. Traditionalism isn’t in itself bad, but it can promote social rigidity just by bringing together people like-minded in their stubbornness; at worst, it can lead to radicalization.

In fact, radicalization seems to be the bigger picture of white Christianity, and white America in general, over the last few decades. Those willing to let go of tradition in favor of something more cosmopolitan and egalitarian have by and large done so, though the transition isn’t complete. Then there are a few fools like me who think there’s something worth redeeming in the old ways of life, but mostly, it’s down to the people unable or unwilling to embrace the way American society has changed. Those are increasingly preyed upon by people willing to partisanize religious identity, which is why conservatives love to say things like liberals want to “attack and dethrone God.” Of course, partisanization and racialization are often one and the same these days, which is why you have people all the way from James Dobson to Andrew Sullivan declaring that the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests it’s sparked are “incompatible with Christianity.” (Fact check: wrong.)

This train of thought seems to be taking us into an ever-darker tunnel. Jones’ underlying theory is apparently that if white Christians knew what they were doing was wrong, they would self-correct. I’m suggesting that the people most capable of self-correction may have already left the institution of the white church, that those who remain may not be willing or able to change, and that outright racists may be taking advantage of the situation for their own ends.

So can white Christian America be saved? I’m afraid I have to answer that with a question of my own: it depends. Why do you want to save it?

If the point is that the white church is better than its sins of racism, and is worth saving in itself, the answer is probably “no.” It’s up to God, of course, but careful study and prayer and discernment simply aren’t going to change enough hearts and minds to bring the white church back to the kind of moral authority it used to have. America seems to be at an incredibly difficult intersection in its social life these days. Trump has brought to a boil long-simmering divisions between conservative whites, particularly in exurban and rural areas, and the emerging knowledge economy of the cities and suburbs.

The Christian church, as always, neither completely drives these changes, nor is completely at their mercy. Rather, like any religious institution, it intersects them in difficult and ambiguous ways. As much as Christians would like to proclaim God’s sovereign majesty leading the unchanging gospel through the darkness of a fallen world, the truth is, the church, like any human institution, changes and adapts to present circumstances, sometimes better than others. Given the magnitude of the changes being currently experienced in American society, the best hope for white American Christianity might be to just leave it all behind, and wait to see what new thing God will bring about in its place.

This content was originally published here.

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Straight Up Guide to Types of Therapy

These guides were born out of Noah and Christine’s frustration with overly complicated and jargon-filled articles, newsletters, books, and therapy websites. Our mission is to create clear and practical guides in order to learn, grow from challenges, and lead more meaningful and impactful lives.

If you go to a western medical doctor with the flu, chances are you will get antibiotics. However, in the world of psychotherapy, things are more complicated. There are a number of different “orientations,” or styles, that view human beings in different ways, and provide different models of how to treat anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. While there are apparently over 400 different orientations, this article will review a number of the most notable ones, and what their mechanism for change is.

Psychodynamic

This is what therapy is traditionally thought of, deriving from Sigmund Freud, and focusing on the unconscious. The traditional form of this is called psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which involves the patient lying on the couch and free associating. Sessions are two to five times a week for several years. Psychodynamic therapy is the modern adaptation of this form, and occurs roughly once a week. This is a non-directive form of therapy, meaning that there is no predetermined goal or direction within a session. This therapy tends to be focused on the past and how it is showing up in the present. There is a great deal of variety within this orientation with a number of different “schools” such as Object Relations, Ego Psychology, or Self Psychology, but they all come from the same lineage.

Change Mechanism: The unconscious is made conscious, and this insight leads to change. Psychodynamic therapy also relies on “corrective emotional experiences” in which past traumas are healed in session.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This is a therapeutic approach that addresses distorted thinking, dysfunctional emotions, and maladaptive behaviors through goal-oriented interventions. The name refers to the integration of cognitive therapy and behavior therapy that CBT practitioners use with their patients. CBT is a directive form of therapy in which the therapist will collaborate with the patient to establish goals and direction for each session. CBT tends to be present-focused, and spends less time than psychodynamic on the past.

Change Mechanism: Since thoughts and behaviors have been learned, they can also be unlearned and modified in treatment.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

This is a relatively new form of CBT that emphasizes psychological flexibility as the key to mental health. ACT relies on mindfulness and experiential exercises as opposed to the logic and reasoning used often in CBT. Acceptance means not trying to control events, people or internal states. Commitment means taking action toward people or things you value, regardless of how you may feel at the moment. ACT emphasizes behavior change over insight, and learning to live with pain as opposed to trying to control it.

Change Mechanism: By moving towards things you value, and not avoiding difficult feelings, your life becomes more meaningful over time.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

This was developed by Marsha Linehan to treat Borderline personality but has been adopted for more general use. DBT is a skills-based treatment that focuses on four areas: 1) Mindfulness, 2) Distress tolerance, 3) Emotion regulation and 4) Interpersonal effectiveness. Mindfulness refers to the art of observing one’s mind non-judgmentally. Distress tolerance means how to more effectively cope with emotional pain when it arises. Emotion regulation means learning how to identify your feelings and take appropriate actions when they arise. Interpersonal effectiveness means learning how to be assertive, advocate for change, and say “no.” Group and individual session are utilized in DBT, and phone sessions are available when necessary.

Change Mechanism:  If you can develop new skills to employ during your most difficult intense emotional moments, your life inevitably will get better.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

This is a highly specialized form of behavioral therapy in the CBT school that was originally developed to treat phobias and OCD, but is now used across a variety of anxiety disorders. Exposure means gradually moving closer to what you fear or are avoiding – this could be dirt, germs, spiders or heights, or more abstract mistakes, unevenness, or even “bad” thoughts. Response Prevention means that you modify or “prevent” your usual response to these fears, i.e. compulsions or avoidance, and learn to tolerate the discomfort that the exposure brings.

Change Mechanism: If you expose yourself to your greatest fears, and respond in a different way than you are used to, you can overcome them.

Family Systems

This orientation views people primarily through a “systems” lens, meaning as part of a greater system than themselves, usually their family. Systems therapists view individuals as part of a complex series of interlocking parts and relationships that affect each other in various ways. Some Systems therapists prefer to meet with family members individually, while other will meet with the entire family, or some combination. Family systems is often used in conjunction with CBT or more individually-minded orientations.

Change Mechanism: If you change any part of the system, meaning any individual member, then the entire system will have to respond in some way.

These are just a few of the most well-known orientations, but there are many others that are not on this list. It might be helpful to have a discussion with any potential therapist or mental health practitioner and ask what their orientation is, and why they chose that one over the others. It might be helpful to ask how their orientation will show in up treatment.

Christine Izquierdo and Noah Laracy are the co-founders of Straight Up Treatment, an anxiety disorder specialty treatment center. Straight Up Treatment utilizes a variety of cognitive-behavioral approaches to treat anxiety-based conditions such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Social and Performance Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Depression, and Generalized Anxiety.

You can learn more about them here.

You can read more guides here.

#mental health #therapy #psychology #anxiety #depression #self-help

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What the US "Health Care Reform" Debate Did Not Address

It looks like the bizarre process in the US Senate ostensibly to "repeal and replace Obamacare" (aka the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) may be ending, at least for now.  I can only hope that further discussion of health care reform will let sanity prevail, and start to address the major issues that have led to the massive dysfunction of US health care, but were not discussed during the latest kerfuffle (and not even discussed much in the real debate that preceded the introduction of the ACA.) On Health Care Renewal we have discussed some of the issues that have received much less attention than the Senate process and the push by the Trump administration to get rid of Obamacare.  I submit the country needs to revisit these issues (and in some cases face them for the first time). Health Care Dysfunction Despite some protestations to the contrary (e.g., here), the US health care system has been plagued by dysfunction.  According to a recent Commonwealth Fund study, the US was ranked 11 out of 11 in health care quality, but 1 out of 11 in costs.  Traditionally, health care reform has targeted ongoing problems in the cost, accessibility and quality of health care.  The ACA notably seems to have improved access, but hardly addressed cost or quality. Early on we noticed a number of factors that seemed enable increasing dysfunction, but were not much discussed.  These factors notably distorted how medical and health care decisions were made, leading to overuse of excessively expensive tests and treatments that provided minimal or no benefits to outweight their harms. Threats to the Integrity of the Clinical Evidence Base Evidence-based medicine advocates making decisions for individual patients based on critical review of the best evidence from clinical research to make decisions that will provide patients with the most benefits and the least harms.  However, the clinical evidence has been increasingly affected by manipulation of research studies, including aspects of their design, implementation, and analysis.  Such manipulation may benefit research sponsors, now often corporations who seek to sell products like drugs and devices and health care services.  Manipulation may be more likely when research is done by for-profit contract research organizastions (CROs) which may get more busines when they can produce results to fit the sponors' interests. When research manipulation failed to produce results to sponsors' liking, research studies could simply be suppressed or hidden.  The distorted research that was thus selectively produced was further enhanced by biased research dissemination, including ghost-written articles ghost-managed by for-profit medical education and communications companies (MECCs). Furthermore, manipulation and suppression of clinical research may be facilitated by health care professionals and academics conflicted by financial ties to research sponsors.  Clinical decision making based on evidence delibrately biased to favor particular products or services is liable to distortion, and the overuse of products and services that are excessively expensive, useless, and/or harmful. Deceptive Marketing The distorted evidence base was an ingredient that proved useful in deceptive marketing of health care products and services. Stealth marketing campaigns became ultimate examples of decpetive marketing.  Deceptive marketing was further enabled by the use of health care professionals paid as marketers by health care corporations, but disguised as unbiased key opinion leaders, another example of the perils of deliberate generation of  conflicts of interest affecting health care professionals and academics.  These extensive deceptive marketing efforts likely have induced again the overuse of products and services that are excessively expensive, useless, and/or harmful. Distortion of Health Care Regulation Policy Making Similarly, promotion of health policies that allowed overheated selling of overpriced and over-hyped health care products and services included various deceptive public relations practices, including orchestrated stealth health policy advocacy campaigns.  Third party strategies used patient advocacy organizations and medical societies that had institutional conflicts of interest due to their funding from companies selling health care products and services, or to the influence of conflicted leaders and board members.  Some deceptive public relations campaigns were extreme enough to be characterized as propaganda or disinformation.   Furthermore, companies selling health care products and services further enhanced their positions through regulatory capture, that is, through their excessive influence on government regulators and law enforcement.  Their efforts to skew policy were additionally enabled by the revolving door, a species of conflict of interest in which people freely transitioned between health care corporate and government leadership positions. Bad Leadership and Governance A major factor driving various distortions of medical and health care policy making which could have increased costs, decreased access, and threaten quality was bad leadership and governance of the organizations involved. Health care leadership was often ill-informed.  More and more people leading non-profit, for-profit and government have had no training or experience in actually caring for patients, or in biomedical, clinical or public health research. One could view recent legislative efforts to "repeal and replace Obamacare," which largely shut out the input of health care professionals and health policy experts as a giant example of apparently deliberately ill-informed leadership.  Obviously health care and health policy decisions made by ill-informed people are likely to have detrimental effects on patients' and the public's health. Health care leaders often were unfamiliar with, unsympathetic to, or frankly hostile to their organizations' health care mission, and/or health care professionals' values.  The most recent example we have posted was a hospital CEO who allegedly over-ruled medical leadership to hire a surgeon despite reports that his patients died more frequently than expected, gamed reports of clinic utilization, and associated with organized crime (look here). Health care leaders were driven by perverse incentives that prioritized financial goals over patient care.  Executives may received millions of dollars despite reports of poor clinical results or unethical behavior.  We have seen executives get raises after their companies made huge legal settlements of allegations of kickbacks or fraud.  The hospital executive mentioned above was receiving $1.7 million a year, plus perks like a car and driver.  Obviously, providing incentives that disregard patients' and public health outcomes and unethical behavior can induce decisions that lead to excess costs, insufficient access, and poor health care quality. Health care leaders often had their own conflicts of interest.  For example, leaders of academic medicine frequently had financial relationships with corporations that sold health care products or services. In one study, approximately 60% of academic department chairs had such conflicts.  These included being consultants, paid key opinion leaders (as noted above), or even serving as corporate executives or members of boards of directors (e.g., see our first post on this phenomenon in 2006 here, and this article documenting the frequency of such conflicts.)   The latter conflict of interest is particularly concerning because directors of for-profit corporations are supposed to have unyielding loyalty to the interests of the corporation and its stockholders, although they are frequently accused of acting mainly as cronies of the top hired executives (see here and here).  Leaders who have such conflicts might be biased in favor of their corporate benefactors' interests even when they conflicted with their institutions' missions.  Moreover, we have found numerous examples of frank corruption of health care leadership.  Some have resulted in legal cases involving charges of bribery, kickbacks, or fraud.  Some have resulted in criminal convictions, albeit usually of corporate entities, not individuals.  One would hardly expect corrupt leadership to put patients' and the public's health ahead of the leaders' ongoing enrichment. Health care leaders in the private sector (non-profit or for-profit) are supposed to operate under the governance of boards of trustees or boards of directors.  However, these boards may be populated by the leaders' cronies, and fellow corporate executives, but often not by people who primarily represent the interests of patients or the public at large.  Such governance has proven to be opaque, fail to be accountable to patients and the public, and sometimes conflicted (e.g., non-profit trustees who are executives of for-profit health care corporations).  Such governance would be unlikely to restrain bad decision making driven by bad leadership.  Over-Arching Trends Finally, bad health care leadership and governance has been enabled by series of over-arching trends. Concentration of Power Health care increasingly dominated by ever larger and more powerful organizations.  Such concentration of power may be facilitated by uninformed regulatory changes, and regulatory capture by private interests.  Concentration of power in industries outside of health care, which may culminate in the formation of oligopolies and even monopolies, historically has led to increased prices and hurt consumers and workers.  Concentration of power may well be a major factor in rising health care costs, and declining access and health care quality. Abandonment of Health Care as a Calling A US Supreme Court decision was interpreted to mean that medical societies could no longer regulate the ethics of their members, leading to the abandonment of traditional prohibitions on the commercial practice of medicine.  Until 1980, the US American Medical Association had  ruled that the practice of medicine should not be "commercialized, nor treated as a commodity in trade."  After then, it ceased trying to maintain this prohibition. Doctors were pushed to be businesspeople, and to give making money the same priority as upholding their oaths.  See posts  here and here. Meanwhile, hospitals and other organizations that provide medical care are increasingly run as for-profit organizations.  The physicians and other health care professionals they hire are thus providing care as corporate employees, resulting in the rise of the corporate physician.  These health care professionals may befurther torn between their oaths, and the dictates of their corporate managers.  When corporate imperatives to increase revenue prevail, no matter what, the outcome is likely to be worse patient care, higher costs, less access, and worse outcomes. Perverse Incentives Put Money Ahead of Patients, Education and Research We have extensively discussed the perverse incentives that seem to rule the leaders of health care. Financial incentives may be large enough to make leaders of health care organizations rich.  Even leaders of non-profit organizations such as academic medical centers and the parent universities of medical schools often make many millions of dollars a year in the US.  Incentives often prioritize financial results over patient care.  Some seem to originate from the shareholder value dogma promoted in business school, which de facto translates into putting current revenue ahead of all other considerations, including patient care, education and research (look here).   Health care leaders may become "value extractors" who put revenue, and the positive incentives they receive from enhancing revenue, ahead of all else (look here).  This may be a leading cause of mission-hostile management. Cult of Leadership Top leaders of health care organizations, be they non-profits or at least publicly held for-profit companies, used to be considered hired managers beholden to the organizations' mission, its board, and its various constituencies.  However, such leaders, particularly CEOs, tend now to be regarded as  exalted beings, blessed with brilliance, if not true "visionaries," deserving of ever increasing pay whatever their organizations' performance.  This pheonomenon has been termed "CEO disease" (see this post).  Afflicted leaders tend to be protected from reality by their sycophantic subordinates, and thus to believe their own propaganda.  Leaders in these bubbles tend to make bad decisions, and put their self-interest ahead of patients' and the public's health.     Managerialism Leadership of health care organizations by managers with no background in actual health care, public health, or biomedical science has been promoted by the doctrine of managerialism which holds that general management training is sufficient for leaders of  all organizations, regardless of their knowledge of the organizations' fundamental mission.  Ill-informed management may result from leaders who have no background or training in actual health care.  Managers lacking understanding of or sympathy towards health care professionals' values may be more likely to practice mission-hostile management. Impunity Enabling Corrupt Leadership Leaders of health care organizations increasingly have conflicts of interest, as noted above. Such conflicts may be risk factors for actual corruption (as defined by Transpaency International, the abuse of entrusted power for private gain).   Also as noted above, we have found numerous examples of frank corruption of health care leadership.  Some have resulted in legal cases involving charges of bribery, kickbacks, or fraud.  Some have resulted in criminal convictions, usually of corporate entities.  Corrupt leadership obviously can distort, if not ruin decision making, and channel large sums of money into private pockets.  In the US, nearly all cases involving corruption in large health care organizations are resolved by legal settlements.  Such settlements may include fines paid by the corporations, but not by any individuals.  Such fines are usually small compared to the revenue generated by the corrupt behavior, and may be regarded as costs of doing business.  Sometimes the organizations have to sign deferred prosecution or corporate integrity agreements.  The former were originally meant to give young, non-violent first offenders a second chance (look here).  However, in most instances in which corruption became public, are no negative consequences ensue for the leaders of the organizations on whose watch corrupt behavior occurred, or who may have enabled, authorized, or directed the behaviors.  Since no individuals suffer negative consequences, the deterrent effect of such settlements on future corrupt behavior is likely to be nil.  Taboos When we started Health Care Renewal, such issues as suppression and manipulation of research, and health care professionals' conflicts of interests rarely appeared in the media or in medical and health care scholarly literature.  While these issues are now more often publicly discussed, most of the other topics listed above still rarely appear in the media or scholarly literature, and certainly seem to appear much less frequently than their importance would warrant.  For example, a survey by Transparency International showed that 43% of US resondents thought that American health care is corrupt.  It was covered by this blog, but not by any major US media outlet or medical or health care journal.  We have termed the failure of such issues to create any echoes of public discussion the anechoic effect. Public discussion of the issues above might discomfit those who personally profit from the status quo in health care.  As we noted above, the people who profit the most, those involved in the leadership and governance of health care organizations and their cronies, also have considerable power to damp down any public discussion that might cause them displeasure. In particular, we have seen how those who attempt to blow the whistle on what really causes health care dysfunction may be persecuted.  But, if we cannot even discuss what is really wrong with health care, how are we going to fix it? Real Health Care Reform After the ACA became law, we noted that while it had some worthwhile provisions, it hardly addressed the concerns we had been raising to that point. Nonetheless, these deficiences were hardly raised by any of those advocating "repeal and replace." Now that perhaps more sober heads a are prevailing, maybe it is time to consider some of the real causes of health care dysfunction that true health care reform needs to address, no matter how much that distresses those who currently most personally profit from the status quo.  Article source:Health Care Renewal