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-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2011 4:11 PM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Something I didn't know about Ayn Rand Mike Gurstein wrote (quoting Wikipedia): [Ayn] Rand wanted the hero of her novel to be "A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me." Rand scholars Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Jennifer Burns both interpret Rand's interest in Hickman as a sign of her early admiration of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rand also wrote, "The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal..." I think there's the seeds of a piece for The Onion here. The next (fifth) edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), commonly called DSM-5 (previously DSM-V), is currently in consultation, planning and preparation. It is due for publication in May 2013 and will supersede the DSM-IV which was last revised in 2000. Heated debate among leading authorities, fueled in no small part by the significant contributions to cognitive science of such intellectual luminaries as Ayn Rand, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, has led to proposals for some signal changes. Antisocial Personality Disorder (also known as psychopathy or sociopathy) will be defined as the new normal. Empathetic Personality Disorder will be added to the canon and recognized as the leading and most debilitating mental health problem encountered in contemporary clinical practice. Happily, despite non-disclosure agreements mandated by the APA, word has leaked that the pharmaceutical industry's representatives on the DSM-5 task force are strongly in support of the criteria for the new Empathetic Personality Disorder and report that there are already products in trial that promise to relieve (or at least suppress) the most egregious symptoms of this difficult and refractory abnormality. Debate continues on recognizing diagnostic criteria for Compulsive Charitable Disorder. [Yada yada etc. etc....] (The real poop is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5, from which I stole the first paragraph, supra, ver batim.) _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
