Johann Hari's Lost Connections: The Good, the Mixed Bag, and the Truly Pathetic

After viewing Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Johann Hari, I was ready to read his book, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions.  Everything in the interview touched on what I firmly believe are commonsense principles that have been neglected and even derided by the leftist intelligentsia, a group in which, I discovered to my dismay, Hari is ensconced.  Certainly nothing warned me that his book, a New York Times bestseller, has cover endorsements by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Elton John, in which case I may not have obtained the book I purchased for two bucks on Kindle.

Part One of this work establishes the primary point made in the Carlson interview: that chemical treatments of depression, including the depression Hari suffered from and still fights, have a small impact overall.  Added to this finding is the distressing observation that Big Pharma essentially controls a largely bogus process by which its products are determined to be effective by the FDA.  Making this portrait even gloomier is the revelation that most psychiatrists, despite longstanding evidence that depression has obvious social and mental causes, have totally ignored these factors and promoted the quick and easy explanation that depression is exclusively the result of a chemical malfunction in the brain, best treated with drugs.

I wasn't surprised by these revelations, especially the information-warping connection among scientific research, government approval, and pharmacological funding – an illicit pay-to-play arrangement often noted by dissenting climatologists whose work will never be funded by government agencies intent on promoting the power-enhancing theory of "climate change."  It was surprising, however, to encounter a study that shows that the benefit of a good night's sleep is three times more effective on average than the relief secured via antidepressants.  Also of interest is the "grief exception" that psychiatrists carved out but later removed from the DSM diagnosis of depression – an exception that pointed, embarrassingly, to the fact that depression can, and often does, have causes rooted in one's life experience.

So far, so good.  Hari is showing what most conservative, traditional folks have believed all along: that the medical profession has reduced a vast number of human problems to diseases or biological imbalances to be treated with chemicals.The next section of Hari's work discusses the various "lost connections" that cause or contribute to depression and anxiety.  It is a mixed bag.  Thoughtful folks wouldn't argue with any of the primary prescriptions – that humans need to be connected to each other in significant ways, that meaningful work is important, that humans require real (not junk) values that include a picture of a better future, that nature is elevating, and that the current cultural focus on the "ego" is essentially isolating and self-destructive.

The intellectual rub comes as Hari begins to interject into his analysis his own scarcely analyzed biases.  The term "conservative," for example, is consistently placed in a negative context.  Moreover, Hari's selective reliance on evolution to bolster his case for "connection" is off-putting.  A section on baboon behavior is designed to show, needlessly, that stress accompanies being at the bottom of the primate's hierarchy.  Elsewhere, the need for human connection is touted as a function of our evolutionary past.  If, however, "evolution" is prescriptive for our needs, why not include the bestial brawls that work out the baboon hierarchy – or the savage winner-take-all struggles that were necessary for survival before the emergence of civilized society only a few thousand years ago?  Hari apparently wants to link all of the "values" that are "internal" to humans to this theoretical and, for many biologists, non-directive process, whose movement is predicated, Hari fails to note, on a species' failure to survive.  By contrast, Hari's references to actual human philosophers (or, God forbid, theologians) who long ago labeled humans social and rational creatures are so fleeting that they wouldn't constitute a whole paragraph in this lengthy oeuvre.

The irritations of Part Two become unbearable as Hari provides his tentative "solutions" to our problem of "lost connections."  A group of social misfits living in a rundown apartment near the old Berlin Wall band together politically to demand a rent freeze and in the process develop a genuine appreciation for and connection with the diverse groups in the tenement – Muslim Turks, gays, and outcasts of various tattooed and mini-skirted varieties.  A co-op bicycle shop where decisions are "democratized" provides a pattern for fulfilling work, alongside reinvigorated labor unions.  Professionally supervised administration of a psychedelic drug (psilocybin) unlocks the vastness of the universe, shrinks the ego, and can reveal paths to personal healing.  The banning of advertising that promotes junk values (like the promotion of "individualism") will help immensely.  Finally, giving everyone a basic monetary grant (almost $20K in a Canadian project) will provide a degree of security that makes life more fulfilling and decreases depression – a whole 9% over the three-year Canadian experiment in a largely conservative, farm-based community.  Then there are the benefits of gardening, nature walks, and a Junk Values Anonymous program.

At least Hari admits that giving everyone $20K would require a huge government expense, though he doesn't consider the effects of inflation or the anxiety induced by the increase in taxes this Obama-endorsed policy for the future might incur.  Furthermore, Hari ignores the fact that many folks in deeply depressed circumstances already receive as much as or more than $20K in benefits – dismissing such analysis with the words "piecemeal" and "safety net."  Most distressingly, Hari, the unmarried atheist, ignores the fact that the leftist policies he obviously endorses have functioned to destroy and disparage the most fulfilling connection most individuals enjoy, the much-derided "nuclear" family – a topic he assiduously avoids, since his own childhood was so traumatic that he began receiving anti-depressants at the age of eighteen.  The second most connective institutions in the U.S. are its religious communities.  (Revealingly, Hari often prefers the political term "collective" to "community," apparently disregarding the linguistic distinction between a non-connected collection of individuals and a commonwealth whose members share in each other's joys and pains.)  Beyond bringing people together into a community, religious institutions have been the primary conveyers of "values" (i.e., virtues) that involve caring for others and not focusing obsessively on oneself or material possessions.

I certainly agree that modern advertising is a destructive force, but not simply as a means for inculcating the junk value that "getting stuff" will make one happy.  In tandem with the powerful entertainment industry, advertising overwhelmingly promotes the "junk values" of "doing your own thing" and "being a rebel" and "ignoring what others think about you" – in other words, a menu of slogans and images designed to separate children from their fuddy-duddy parents, to revile traditional wisdom, and to ridicule religious institutions as havens for hypocritical pedophiles.  Since Hari obviously thinks all wisdom is derived from recent social and psychological studies, he would be well advised to peruse Arthur Brooks's book Who Really Cares, which shows that conservatives are more likely to give blood and to donate time and money to charitable causes than their "liberal" counterparts.  He might consider why that should be the case.

You won't see Hari criticizing any of the elite political allies of upper-crust New Yorkers – Hollywood hedonists, rap musicians, or the countless depraved television and film productions that revolve around the stupidity of parents, the hypocrisy of clergy, the idiocy of tradition, indulging one's sexual impulses, reveling in blood and guts (à la the Roman Coliseum), or the political wisdom du jour that springs naturally from enlightened six-year-olds.  What you will see is an author who, after initially bristling at the notion that his depression wasn't simply a brain aneurism of sorts, but also a function of the way his life had unfolded, swiftly moved from a theory that placed all the blame on a biological or genetic fluke to a theory that transfers responsibility for his depression to a hellish (and for him, conservative) society.

I agree with Hari that our society is messed up.  I am confident, however, that his "collective" solutions will make things much worse and that he has missed the primary causes of and solutions for our current Lost Connections "hell."

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?" is also available on Kindle.

Female Genital Mutilation and the Commerce Clause

Last month U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman declared that the twenty-two-year-old federal law banning female genital mutilation was unconstitutional.  This ruling took Dr. Jumana Nagarwala and seven others off the legal hook for allegedly “circumcising” the genitals of nine girls from Michigan and two adjacent states, girls who were around seven years old when Dr. Nagarwala, an immigrant from India, performed an operation that most American doctors just won’t do.  Though only nine girls were included in the charges, it is likely that dozens more underwent a genital cutting ritual observed by a Muslim sect based in India and apparently practiced by several worshipers attending a Farmington Hills, Michigan mosque.   

The judge’s legal analysis, curiously enough, was based on a constitutional principle that most jurists have ignored since FDR’s New Deal-pliant Supreme Court ruled in 1942 (Wickard v. Filburn) that an Ohio farmer whose wheat grown solely to feed his own animals was nevertheless subject to federal limits mandated by the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 -- an act based on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause that was originally designed to regulate commerce between largely sovereign states.

In the words of FDR’s Court: “[E]ven if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'" In other words, even if Filburn’s “excess” wheat was consumed only by his own cows and had no impact on interstate commerce, the prospect that thousands of other farmers might follow his example and thus create such an impact  on wheat prices made it lawful for Congress to legislate under the Commerce Clause with respect to Filburn’s bovine-bound crop. 

After this ruling in 1942 it was Katy-bar-the-door on what Congress could legislate under the Commerce Clause, at least until 1995 when the Court nixed use of that clause to ban gun possession near schools (U.S. vs Lopez).  In this case, however, a specific Second Amendment right was at stake.  A more germane decision was handed down in 2000 (U.S. vs Morrison) when the Court struck down a federal law concerning sexual assault victims that was also predicated, remarkably, on the Commerce Clause and was based on the notion that “Congress may regulate non-economic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.”  At least in this case the Court was refusing to enshrine the idea that the Commerce Clause could be expanded indefinitely to abolish any distinction between national and state power.  In the genital mutilation case Judge Bernard likewise declared that only state governments had the authority to regulate or ban that “procedure.”  And while a slight majority of states had prohibitions against female genital mutilation at the time Dr. Nagarwala performed the “cutting ritual,” Michigan did not then have a law that banned FGM.

While I am sympathetic to almost any attempt to limit federal authority, it is strange that one of the few attempts to actually enforce reasonable limits on the national government’s legislative power should take place in a "multicultural" context.  I would feel much better about Judge Bernard’s ruling if limits on federal authority had been a judicial priority when it came to topics like same-sex marriage, federal incursions into collegiate sports under Title 9 to assure "equal" male-female access to athletic programs, and the unjust federal pressure exerted against pliant university administrators to create kangaroo rape courts that are totally prejudiced against accused males.  I say nothing about EPA incursions of power over every patch of puddle-worthy soil that could possibly be designated "wetlands."

Ironically, the Commerce Clause is a perfectly acceptable vehicle for protecting abortion clinics from protesters since that “procedure” is “both national and commercial,” a conclusion Planned Parenthood will eagerly support -- sotto voce.  Moreover, the Sixth Circuit in its wisdom observed that frustrating pregnant women or doctors from having or performing abortions would definitely have “direct economic effects” (Norton v. Ashcroft, 2002).  Thus, so the judicial logic goes, if only FGM were more widespread, Congress could legislate concerning it via the Commerce Clause.  And in fifty or a hundred years (and with enough of the right type of immigrants in the country) who knows what kind of prohibitions or protections it might craft.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle  protestor

Who’s Killing JFK Today?

James Joyce once remarked that Rome reminded him of a man who made his living “by exhibiting to travelers his grandmother’s corpse.”  It strikes me that this observation also applies to the commercial exploitation of President Kennedy’s assassination.  After more than half a century no scrap of evidence is immune from being dislodged, mutilated, and reconstructed so as to fit more securely into the imaginative web of an aspiring conspiracy theorist. Did Oswald act alone?  Was there a gunman on the grassy knoll?  Did the doctors performing the autopsy alter the forensic evidence? Was Kennedy’s body transferred to another coffin?  Was the assassination a right-wing military coup d’état “with Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings”?

This last theory -- concocted by Oliver Stone for the movie JFK -- surpassed all previous efforts in combining ideological rigidity, factual manipulation, and commercial exploitation.  The truthfulness of this assessment is open to any reader willing to peruse the writings of Gerald Posner (Case Closed), Brandeis Professor Jacob Cohen (“Yes, Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy,” June, 1992, Commentary) and finally the massive work of lawyer Vincent Bugliosi (Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy).

The sad fact is that the dead president has entered the marketplace as a salable item.  His death is not a question of historical interest but an exploitable commodity that may be packaged with impunity.  Is it really a desire to get at the truth that motivates the never-ending publication of conspiracy books and the periodic production of television specials commemorating that fateful November day?

Why, if the media are really interested in the truth, are most Americans ignorant of even the rudimentary facts about the case?  When, for example, can you remember any prominent member of the Fourth Estate mentioning these critical facts:  Oswald worked at the Texas book depository; eyewitnesses actually saw someone shoot at the motorcade from the sixth floor of the building; a witness 110 feet from the window provided police a description that fit Oswald quite well; no one else was with Oswald at the time of the shooting; Oswald had arranged book cartons to create a shooting blind by the sixth floor window; most aural witnesses heard three shots; Oswald (who didn’t drive and regularly hitched a ride to work) told his co-worker that he had some “curtain rods” wrapped in the brown paper he carried with him that morning; that brown paper, three cartridge cases, and a recently fired rifle were all found on the sixth floor of the book depository building; the rifle had been mail-ordered by Oswald a few months earlier; Oswald alone left the building after the assassination and later murdered a police officer in front of several eyewitness; Oswald kept an “Historic Diary” that made clear his radical political views and mental instability; a few months earlier Oswald had attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a fervent anti-Communist and former Texas gubernatorial candidate; four years earlier Oswald left the United States for the Soviet Union only to return in 1962; by the time of the Kennedy assassination Oswald, who was separated from his Russian wife, had become a great fan of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

I could go on and on.  I mention only a few highlights from the mountain of evidence that convinced three government committees that Oswald alone killed the president. The sad conclusion to which I must come is that most people involved in the mass dissemination of information are not really interested in these facts. That includes the bogus 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations a majority of whom “concluded” (based solely on ridiculously subjective audio evidence from an open police motorcycle microphone) that there were four, not three, shots fired -- and thus, a second gunman.

Former assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, David Belin, provided a plethora of objections to this committee’s findings, noting that there was only one place where people actually saw a gunman and that was the School Book Depository. Furthermore, though many witnesses thought a shot or shots were fired from the grassy knoll in front of the presidential motorcade, no weapon or gun shells were ever found in that area.  Thus, Belin noted ironically, we have a gunman that no one ever saw who fired a single bullet from only 100 to 125 feet away that not only missed the president but also missed the entire limousine. 

As for the acoustical evidence so valued by the Democrat-led committee, Belin observed that the tape contained the sound of chimes, which aren’t in Dealey Plaza, but failed to include the sound of motorcycles speeding off to Parkland Hospital or the sound of police sirens, both of which should have been there.  Finally, Belin pointed out that every microphone in the presidential motorcade was on Channel 2, while the tape in question was on Channel 1.  All of this evidence supports the contention of the Dallas Police that the open-microphone chopper wasn’t even in Dealey Plaza in the first place -- a conclusion buttressed by several subsequent expert panels that thoroughly debunked this acoustical Rorschach data.  But what does evidence matter when a congressional committee wishes to keep conspiracy dreams alive that years later would be blown to gargantuan proportions by Oliver Stone.  The unpalatable alternative would be that JFK was killed, in Jackie Kennedy’s despondent words, by “some silly little communist.”   

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Information constantly rewrote history to fit the party’s ideological requirements.  Our reality is more crass.  History today has become a victim of both ideology and the marketplace.  Truth and decency are the casualties.  In such a society lusting for conspiracies, some people are obviously slain in perpetuity.

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle