I am intrigued by Dr. Katz. I read him mostly because of his insight on health and the variety of misconceptions he debunks about current fads and remedies, especially as it relates to diet and obesity. He obviously is talented and a thoughtful thinker even outside his familiar domain of medicine, as is displayed in his article referenced below:
Our literature -- even our greatest literature -- seems to sanctify the insoluble problem. It suggests to us that we live in a world of either / or, good and evil, us and them. In such a world, our heroes must fight, all too often to the death, with those whose allegiances or ideologies oppose our own. The adversaries of our heroes are, in turn, the heroes of those whose allegiances, ideologies, and aspirations they represent. And so it is that a cultural fixation on the pertinacious impasse, immune to reconciliations, blind to common ground, vulnerable only to arguments punctuated with the points of projectiles and edges of a blade has given us the predictable: “more heroes dead than heroic ways to die.”*
The origins of this dualistic view of reality likely extend to scripture, which in most of its prevailing variations gives us a world of good in eternal conflict with evil. But of course any human being with the vaguest insights about being human knows that for the most part none of us is purely evil, and certainly none of us is purely good. The best of us have bad days, bad impulses, and “evil” inclinations. The worst of us may be capable of love and loyalty. Much is made about the color of our epidermis, which says nothing about who we are. Our character, which says everything about who we are, inevitably comes in shades of gray.
And yet, we propagate the simple expediency of good versus evil, us versus them.
-- David L. Katz, MD, MPH
Seems both sad and true...continue reading.
