My roommate’s dogs, Olive and Bambi are very cute. They are miniature pincers and generally fairly well behaved. However, when left to their own devices they are a terror force to be reckoned with. I think terrorists should start recruiting them.
I arrived home to find that the child-lock I installed on the kitchen cabinet didn’t hold and garbage was strewn from one end of the apartment to the other. It’s really hard to scold an animal when it’s very cute and even harder when it skulks off and your cat trills and gives it a comforting lick.
I guess I’ll have to take a closer look at my installation and figure out how they popped it off.
I am fascinated by Carl Jung’s temperament theories. It seems to me that all animals have an inborn temperament which is like their instinct – it’s a built in guide for dealing with their environment.
Jung’s theories became unpopular due to accusations of anti-semitism and Nazi support leading up to the Second World War, but he actually did help the Allies fight the Nazi’s during the war. However, it’s his theories of temperaments that I have interest in, not it’s potential abuse for racial profiling – anything can be made evil with the right mindset. As always, I digress.
What I’ve been pondering as of late, is this: If we have an underlying temperament that affects our internal subconscious – then is having a temperament that is unlike the ‘norm’ or majority of society more likely to lead to depression?
For example, personally I have a rare temperament type (1% to 3% of the Western population is estimated to share it) on the MBTI scale. If my internal guide to life is different from most – isn’t this more likely to cause a greater level of mental difficulty dealing with and fitting in to the world around me?
Couple this with the theory of kindling in depression – being that the brains chemistry is changed by repeated stressors. If your internal guide throws you in a different direction from the society you’re attempting to function in – that would certainly seem to me to be a repeated stressor.
There seems to be much discussion in the news about Canada’s role in Afghanistan lately, but why does it consist mostly of explosions and public opinion polls?
Granted, it’s good to know what’s going on over there, and what dangers our troops and civilian workers are facing. However, they’re not giving us the full picture and their surveys are thus skewed in the direction the sensationalism media would like.
Canada is in Afghanistan by request from the Afghan government. Our troops are helping to rebuild their country which the US helped cannibalize during the Cold War. We’re helping their government restore order and educate their people.
But, you say, isn’t that what the US claims to be doing in Iraq? Yes, but there’s a key difference: Our presence was requested, they invaded Iraq. Assuming the Afghan government represents the will of their people, then the majority of Afghans appreciate and welcome Canadian troops in their country.
Regardless of misled public opinion surveys here, we’re needed there and to pull back now would be internationally damaging to Canada. Chalk a mark up on the plus side for Stephen Harper for promising to stay the course on this one. It may not be the “popular” choice, but it’s the right decision.
The Government of Canada has a website full of information that doesn’t seem to be overly concerning the media as of late – such as facts.
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