“God That Was Awesome” is an essay written by Jon Ronson, is about public shaming, the different ways it comes about, and should public shaming be stopped. The essay starts with Ronson talking us through the day of one Justine Sacco. Ms. Sacco had made some bad jokes on twitter. These jokes were meant to mock stupid white privilege ideas, but ended up being miss interrupted as racist. Unfortunately for Ms. Sacco her tweets  ended up becoming famous in a bad way. Long story short Ms. Sacco had he life ruined, thanks to thousands and thousands of people posting on her twitters. She lost her job and she was turned into this racist monster online. At this point Ronson filled us in on how his interview went with her. While it was obvious that she was not ok at the moment, there was some hope that she would bounce back. At this point public shaming looks like it is the worst thing imaginable. Then Ronson went to talk with Ted Poe. A judge known for using public shaming as a legal punishment in court. Ronson is ready to meet the devil when he goes to see him. Though as he talks with him he finds out that while public shaming sounds cruel, it can have some benefits. Ronson finds that this shaming can be what it takes to set people on the right path, and can even be healing. This is were he gets to talk to a man sentenced by Mr. Poe, Mike Hubacek. Mr. Hubacek killed two people while drunk driving. His punishment was to stand outside a school with a sign that said “I killed two people while driving drunk”. Ronson was expecting to hear the worst, but got something else entirely. Mr. Hubacek what happy that he was punished as he was. He said that be for the punishment he was losing himself and that after he had a purpose again. People even encouraged him that things would be ok while he was holding the sign. Now Ronson had a dilemma, he was supposed to find public shaming as a horrible thing but now he had prof of the opposite, though he also still had his original evidence that it was bad.  It is here that his essay goes from just being a popular writing piece and starts asking the scholarly questions, or at least allowing you to grasp them yourself.

Ronson’s essay is good but it by no means is a scholarly research paper. Though that does not mean we can’t take the message and make it into one. As I said in the beginning Ronson’s essay is about public shaming, the different ways it comes about, and should public shaming be stopped. With this knowledge we can look up things revolving around these things. Find so actual facts and make real arguments about something instead of this point of view written paper.

In the NPR podcast “The Problem with the Solution” the story of Jackie Goldstein’s journey to Geel and what she discovered there is depicted. This podcast points out how the stigma of mental illness is part of the problem. The speakers use the example of Geel to provide evidence that the best treatment for mental illness may be to treat the patients as though they are not mentally ill. In Geel, the mentally ill are treated like normal people, they are given to volunteers who don’t know their mental illness and don’t care. They find through observation that this treatment is far better than common treatment  modalities in the United States, where patients are dehumanized and treated pharmacologically and with little human interaction. This raises the question:  Do humans construct false ideas of what is normal? Since possible solution to the treatment of mental illness, is to treat the “mentally ill” as though they are perfectly normal, it leads us to believe that they may not actually have a problem to begin with, only that they deviate from human perception of normalcy.

This question is important because of many conflicting and polarizing issues. It is very clear historically, that humans find problems with others for self promotion or benefit. These issues are often believed blindly as they are integrated into our culture. One example of this is: Whether homosexuality is a mere deviation from the norm or whether it is caused by some developmental problem. Another type of ‘false idea” is based on an illogical conclusion. For example, the reason why African –American males represent the largest racial group in American prisons, is because they did not have a “normal” upbringing.  Although quite different, both these examples have one factor in common, they are perpetuated by the need of a large segment of the American population to justify core beliefs.  These “core beliefs” have a primary benefit of excluding those who do not fit a perceived norm from financial, educational or societal benefits. For instance in States which do not recognize gay marriage, gay couples cannot claim tax relief. African American families are often shunned and made to feel uncomfortable in many neighborhoods because of the belief that members of broken black families are criminals destined for prison. The list could go on, but it is obvious that many issues in America and around the world, derive from a false belief in what is normal and how people should be treated based on that belief.

Work Cited:

Hanna Rosen, Aliz Spiegel. “The Problem with the Solution.” NPR Invisibilia, 2016

Morgellons disease is a self-diagnosed condition that involves the emergence of substances or objects from the skin. Victims of the disease experience threads, flecks, fuzz, larvae and more seeping from their skin or moving just beneath it. However, the primary struggle of these victims is not finding a cure, it is getting their doctors and families to believe them. The disease was coined in 2001 when a mother, Mary Leitao, sought a diagnosis for her child who felt as though bugs were crawling under his skin. When several doctors failed to find an issue with her son, they began to diagnose Mary with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. So, Mary created a diagnosis herself, thus Morgellons was born.

This excerpt by Leslie Jamison follows the author on her journey to Austin, Texas to be a part of the annual conference led by an advocacy organization called the Charles E. Holman Foundation. The conference welcomed victims, researchers, and healthcare providers to meet and discuss the many aspects and developments of the disease. During the visit, the author met many unique victims suffering from their own variation of Morgellons, all the while she questions the legitimacy of their ailments. A woman named Sandra suffers from wriggling larva seeping from her skin while she bathes (Jamison 50). Dawn, a nurse from Pittsburgh, was covered in the white patches that results from excessive scratching of lesions (Jamison 31). One person that the author interacted with on a deeper level was a woman named Kendra. She suspects that the fibers that she finds coming from her skin are due to Morgellons, and she hopes to get a microscope session at the conference to “see more” and finally understand what’s going on inside of her, why the “things” she tries to get out seem to be moving away from her (Jamison 36).

People are willing to put themselves through copious amounts of pain in order to relieve themselves from the psychological suffering of their contagion.Through Kendra, the author is able to deeply analyze the psychological intricacies that are involved with the disease.   Kendra is walking on the edge of diagnosis. She is sick of trying to figure out her symptoms herself, being at the conference helps her feel like she’s not the only one. Otherwise she would start to think that she’s crazy again, like the doctors have been telling her. Victims like Kendra soon become trapped in a life that revolves around keeping “them” at bay, “them” being the foreign objects or creatures that reside within them. The conference gives the victims the empathy that doctors and onlookers have denied them, but it does not offer a cure. If anything, the conference provides a satisfactory disappointment in the fact that their suspicions of a lack of cure are confirmed. In addition, it offers a safe place for the disease-consumed victims to share their stories and finally be themselves.

This raises the question, does expressing empathy to victims validate the existence of Morgellons? And if so, does this validity provide freedom from the grasp of the disease or secure the victim’s’ life-long suffering? These are important questions to ask because they challenge not only the attitude with which one should approach a situation such as this, but it also brings the light a reason that doctors may be denying the disease’s existence. Perhaps rejecting the disease will in turn allow victims to move on, rather than accept their fate and continue harming themselves in an effort to find internal peace.

Works Cited

Jamison, Leslie. The Empathy Exams: Essays. Graywolf Press, 2014.

“The Problem with the Solution” is a podcast that introduces the differences in methods for treating mentally ill patients in the United States versus that abroad. Interestingly, the narrator, Ellen Baxter’s mother also suffered from a mental illness, which was treated in the States. However, the narrator points out the detrimental effects of taking medications, for it snatched away her mother’s liveliness, personality and attitude. Baxter’s realization of the inefficacy of this approach initiated her to seek for a way that will properly treat those diagnosed with mental illnesses while keeping them from losing a sense of his/her identity.

In her journey to find other methods, she came upon a town name Geel in Belgium. The town’s collective and revolutionary approach towards mentally ill people was to consider them as a part of the family – sort of like adopting a child. The solution here for treating these people was to have no solution. In this case, the best way to deal with this conflict was to learn how to accept and embrace these people. They were not considered patients, but rather family members. The intimacy of these bonds is what keeps people diagnosed as mentally ill true to his/her individuality. Mentally ill people are not considered outcasts and placed at the outskirts of society. They are still under the branch of ordinary people. However when Baxter showed the desire to build such a foundation in the US, this system was blatantly rejected due to its incompatibility.

It is in our human nature to constantly improve society by finding solutions to events that do not fit the definition of “normality.” This instinct is the same reason to why there is a constant drive to finding solutions than simply accepting a situation, for solution is commonly linked with improvement. Hence, this podcast serves to complicate the general notion of the benefits of solutions by demonstrating the positive impacts of not having a solution. The role of emotion is significant when determining the efficacy of treating mentally ill patients. Thus, this raises the question of to what extent does our limited ability to empathize with others inhibit the treatment of mentally ill patients? Furthermore, how does this podcast change your views on how the values of American society influence the treatment of mentally ill patients? Both these questions are concerned with the role of emotion and perception along with factors that shape this perception. Ultimately, one’s value system and emotion are key to establishing a proper solution for treating mentally ill patients, or accepting the lack of resolution.

Works Cited

Rosin, Hannah. “The Problem with the Solution.” Invisibilia, NPR, 2016.

In the podcast, “The Problem with the Solution,” men’s ways to have tried to solve mental illnesses or any types of problems- were discussed. It is in the human nature to want to give a solution to a certain “problem” that arises. However, concerning the mental illnesses of human beings, it is not possible to create the most healthy solution for each other, for those that have a mental illness. There, a woman who saw the problem in a common solution to treat mental illness, Ellen Baxter, researched to find the solution to the solution of the original problem. She learned that in Geel, Belgium, villagers had a foster care system for mental patients, which the “cure” was to help the patients embrace their mental illnesses and habits that most people wanted to “fix.” This only seemed to have worked for non-family members because the foster families did not care to “fix” their boarders (those who were getting foster care) as much as they would have for their family members. The level of “care” and being able to accept each other’s differences was what helped the patients in Geel find a more stable mental state.
The miracle from Baxter’s experiences, the “cure” of having no solution to one’s mental illness brought a solution and a wonder to why human beings need to feel satisfied only when there is a solution to everything. When Baxter worked out a false diagnosis to live in a mental hospital, there was order, but not a solution or an answer to solve the problems of the patients. In Geel, boarders were welcome “as they were” and they felt much more balanced since they did not drown their systems with medication. This was a better “solution”- not having a solution.
As seen through the podcast and Baxter’s research and her effort to put people together in New York City despite their mental states, providing affordable housing for those who desperately need it, it is clear that mental illnesses should not be a bother to each other if the reasons are selfish to those that were not diagnosed a certain mental illness. The solution should be about making the “diagnosed” better, not to satisfy those that live around them. The “want” to satisfy those that were medically “sane” made the problem bigger and did not give the “insane” the chance to take time for themselves or for their brains and bodies to rest.
The solution to mental illnesses is to stop being “nosy” and to accept and love each other’s differences rather than judging that something is wrong. That is why the bigger issue becomes the fact that there are no solutions to anything because everything can be considered a problem in the human society.

Works Cited:

“The Problem with the Solution.” Audio blog post. Invisibilia. NPR, 1 July 2016.