Rule 31 Example Progress Note And Treatment Plan Review: Fill & Download for Free

“Did you know that I never paid taxes before I came here? The Edema don’t own property, as a rule.” He gestured at the inn. “I never understood how galling it was. Some smug bastard with a ledger comes into town, makes you pay for the privilege of owning something.”Kvothe gestured for Chronicler to pick up his pen. “Now, of course, I understand the truth of things. I know what sort of dark desires lead a group of men to wait beside the road, killing tax collectors in open defiance of the king.Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s FearThis is actually a pretty great question, Dave. I apologize in advance, this answer might get a little on the lengthy side for today’s TL;DR culture, but I know you’re personally likely to read the whole thing and would most likely appreciate the depth.Why are people so averse to tax increases, when those increases would lead to a much higher quality of life for themselves and others?This depends on where you live, what station in life you occupy, and what your perceptions of the quality of government and politics are.And it really depends on whether or not tax increases do lead to a perceptibly higher standard of living for yourself.I was just having this very conversation with two relatives about two weeks ago.We were discussing the economy and the relative fragility of it if some bubble were to burst right now (which I think will be either student debt or another dotcom bubble in FAANG stocks,) the government is currently not taking in enough revenue to adequately fund the kind of spending it will need to prevent it from being a deep recession, possibly even depression. That led to discussions of taxes, which quickly led to Ocasio-Cortez and the marginal tax rate.For context, I grew up in a rural, heavily Republican area that broke about 62–32 for Trump. My family was in leadership in the Grange when that still existed. I was probably in college before I met a Democrat. And while my family tends to think Trump is a terrible human being and pray that someone confiscates his phone, they’re generally supportive of conservative policies.I’m a slightly center-right person and a never-Trumper, myself. In certain parts of my family, that has put their perception of me somewhere on the left roughly between Marx and Chavez as of late.The first question I was asked in this conversation after I suggested that we are not taxing the wealthiest enough was why I want to punish rich people for being successful.It is important for me to give a brief primer on the three basic types of taxes: regressive, flat, and progressive taxes, for those who are not already familiar with them.Regressive taxes are where the lower your income, the higher a percentage of your income the tax takes. Flat fees are regressive taxes. The policy here is equality: everyone pays the same amount.Example:A poor person making $1000 a month who has to pay a $100 fee pays 10% of their income. They have $900 remaining to budget for the month.A middle-class person making $10,000 a month who has to pay a $100 fee pays just one percent of their income. This person has $9,900 remaining to budget for the month.A wealthy person making $100,000 per months who has to pay a $100 fee pays just one tenth of a percent of their income. They have $99,900 left to budget for the month.Note that this tends to be hard on poor people and almost meaningless to a wealthy person. Each order of magnitude up in income doesn’t increase income by 10x after the tax, it’s greater than 10x.Flat taxes are a flat rate. The percent remains unchanged as the income increases or decreases. The policy here is fairness; everyone pays the same percentage.Example:Our poor person making $1,000 a month paying a 10% tax pays $100. They have $900 a month to live off of.Our middle-class person pays $1,000. They still have $9,000 left to budget for the month. They’re paying in taxes what our poor person makes in a month.Our wealthy person pays $10,000 in taxes, ten times the total income of the poor person and ten times the taxes of the middle class person. They still have $90,000 remaining to budget for the month.Note that our wealthy person has seven and a half times as much remaining for the month as our poor person would make in income in a year if we didn’t tax our poor person at all. Our person in poverty is still in poverty.But, from the perspective of our wealthy person, he’s shouldering the same tax burden as half a dozen other less well-off individuals.Progressive taxes are where the higher your income, the higher your percentage of your income it takes. The policy here is ability to pay; everyone pays what they can afford.Example:Our poor person pays 0% taxes. They have $1,000 for the month to budget.Our middle class person pays 10% in taxes. They still have $9,000 remaining for the month to budget, 9x more than the person in poverty.Our wealthy person pays 40% in taxes, because the math is easy and it’s a nice big number. They still have $60,000 remaining for the month to budget.Our wealthy person is footing a massive tax bill, but still has five times more per month than our person in poverty has in a year. They have as much left over after taxes in three months what the person in the middle class has left over after taxes in twenty.Now, in reality, these are usually taxed in brackets. Our wealthy person isn’t really paying the full 40% in taxes. Assuming our brackets are just between our hypothetical people, they would pay 0% on the first $1,000 per month, 10% on the amount between $1,000 and $10,000 per month, and 40% on the amount over $10,000 per month. The math gets slightly tricky, but the effective overall rate would be somewhere closer to 30% here.Certain flat taxes function more regressively, particularly “consumption taxes” such as sales taxes, value-added taxes, etc. While the wealthy pay the same sales tax on a product, that product and associated tax are a comparatively smaller proportion of their income than for the poor, simply because it’s just not possible for them to consume a proportionately greater share of products than the corresponding increase in their income.The gasoline tax, for example, is a flat tax that functions regressively, particularly on populations that need to drive more as a function of living such as rural populations.These can be hybridized to an extent. For example, one way to make flat taxes more progressive and less impactful on poor people is to exempt a certain amount; say 25% on everything over $50,000. A person making less than $50,000 pays no tax at all. A person making over $50,000 pays 25% only on what they make over $50,000; i.e. if they make $100,000, they pay tax only on $50,000, or $12,500 in tax rather than $25,000.It sadly needs to be explained that this is how marginal tax rates work, which is what progressives are suggesting be raised. Nobody is seriously suggesting that we tax the wealthy at a full 70% total; the first ten million dollars annually would be exempted.First person that starts bitching about Ocasio-Cortez and socialism in the comments because they read that last bit, skipped the rest of the answer, and jumped straight to the comments to argue gets put out the airlock.Higher taxes generally provide very little increased standards of living to the rural poor.Americans, particularly rural Americans, have a few things working against them.First, they’re often less educated in particular when it comes to civics.Not a single member of my family knew the difference between the basic types of taxes. They have vaguely heard of the idea of a flat tax replacing all the various sales taxes and stuff, and they like that idea, but that is the extent of their knowledge regarding tax policy. The argument with my relatives started because they were trying to figure out whether certain retirement account dollars are taxed when they are taken out and how the economy will affect their retirement.Very few people from my home area have any trust or love of government and see it at best as keeping the roads plowed and salted.And they have reasons.[1]Many of them have bought into the idea that gubbmint takes their money and sends it all down to Madison and Milwaukee to the lazy people who don’t work and live fat off the public trough.Whether this is true or not, it feels true to them. Why?You have to understand, where I grew up, most people live hand to mouth and struggle for that. It’s mostly manufacturing and small dairy, both industries that have been especially hard hit in the last thirty years. Milk prices are lower than they were when I was a child, and when you figure in inflation and the increasing cost of overhead (diesel fuel, electricity, etc.) it’s impossible to keep a small dairy running these days. One of the largest manufacturers in my hometown folded and took probably a quarter of the local economy with it.These people are utterly convinced and have been since Reagan that government, particularly regulation, is the problem.The farmers constantly complain about how those idjits in Madison who wouldn’t know one end of a cow from another come out and tell ’em how to do things when any person with common sense coulda toldja that was stupid and costly for no actual benefit.The schools are largely funded by property taxes. In rural areas, who are the biggest landowners? And who are the ones whose land values keep going up? Farmers.My grandfather used to talk about being land-rich, money-poor. And he’s right.Land is a valuable asset, but not a liquid one. So, every year the assessor comes out and tell you that your land is worth 2% more, so your taxes are going up 2%. And you’re sitting there knowing that milk prices haven’t budged, soybeans and corn are down, seed is going up, and you’re out of notches on the tight end of the belt.And then the school says they’re broke and needs a referendum for a new auditorium. It’ll raise your taxes another 1% this year. Another couple of thousand bucks. That could be an acre’s worth of soybean seed.Do those taxes feel enough like a punishment yet?Even if you’ve got kids in school and you know that auditorium is in disrepair or hasn’t been updated since it was built in 1965, how are you going to pay for that tax increase? Sell some land? Sell some cows? Sell some equipment?Most folks where I grew up ain’t got it to spare.So, when that “smug bastard with a ledger comes into town, makes you pay for the privilege of owning something,” yeah, it sure feels like a punishment for having anything of value.Now, add to that the perception that these people feel at least like they’re not getting a fair shake at life and government isn’t doing much to help it.What are they getting? Their roads are crumbling.[2] [3] Their schools are failing if not just plain closing, and teachers are fleeing in droves from rural districts to better paying urban ones.[4] [5] Health insurance premiums and deductibles have continued to go up.[6] Their kids are dying of suicides and overdoses.[7] [8]My people don’t feel like their quality of life is improving with higher taxes.And then some guy from Milwaukee wants to take tax dollars and build a choo-choo that’ll never go anywhere near their farm.[9]That’s what these folks see.Now, it is also true that the rural poor benefit a great deal in ways they don’t consider from the higher taxes. The New Deal built the vast majority of the infrastructure where I grew up. My grandfather remembers when their farm got hooked up to electricity and telephone thanks to the rural electrification efforts. Rural roads all over the state were paved to keep dust out of the milk; there are more miles of gravel roads in one non-dairy county in the western part of the state than the rest of the state combined. The CCC planted millions of red pine hedgerows to slow down the dust storms and erosion in the Central Sands region and practically built the town of Stevens Point. Kids still go to school in buildings constructed through WPA grants.A large tax push in the 1960’s also built a substantial piece of educational infrastructure; the University of Wisconsin System constructed the vast majority of the classroom and dorm buildings for both four-year universities and two-year community colleges in the late 1960’s, and many communities around the state built new elementary and secondary school buildings, particularly in rural areas, at the same time. Many of those rural schools now sit vacant, sold off to private businesses, or converted into local government centers as districts consolidated buildings. (When I was in first grade, I started at a rural school south of town and our class moved to a renovated school in town over Christmas break; the building was eventually sold to a local construction company that still uses it.)Tack on the Farm Bill and agriculture subsidies, the fact that many of those people are in school districts that are well over 50% on free and reduced lunch, many qualifying for the earned income tax credit, and more, and it adds up quickly to rural poor getting far more back in benefits than they pay in.The three major urban centers in the state (Milwaukee, Madison, and the Fox Valley area) generate a significant majority of the state’s revenue, and receive less back than they generate, even after taking into account major road projects such as several recent interstate overhauls.Not only that, but Wisconsin made a deal in 1911 with the municipalities of the state: in exchange for a state law prohibiting cities and municipalities from instituting local income taxes, they would get more state aid. Since the 1990’s, the state legislature has reneged on that deal, and state aid to counties and municipalities has continued to decrease. In 1995, 53% of Milwaukee’s budget consisted of state aid. For fiscal year 2017, it was 36%. Urban areas are losing a greater share of state aid every fiscal year, while paying in more.But rural counties have also been heavily hit.This reduction in local aid was drastically heightened under the Scott Walker administration, who reduced county aid so significantly that many rural counties had to cut mowing county road ditches down to perhaps once in the summer. One county where I have a friend on the county board has had to start asking for farmers to volunteer to mow their areas. The school aid formula hasn’t been updated in nearly 30 years and doesn’t account for transportation costs, which have been hammering rural districts with rising fuel prices to bus kids in from long distances.And that’s with taxes continuing to stay flat or only rise a little bit.Rural health care options have been declining for a long period of time, in part because they aren’t profitable, and in part because some complex procedures just aren’t performed often enough that health care providers are able to keep the staff trained; even birth services are being dropped because of the risk of complications or c-sections.[10] [11] [12] [13] There just isn’t a lot of trust in government to keep things like this from happening.Essentially, these folks might see the cost of their health insurance decrease with a switch to universal health care, since the rural areas are largely already poor enough that they’re heavily subsidized through the current ACA system[14][15], (though they still generally have higher premiums anyway,)[16] but likely wouldn’t see any increase in quality of care.Most of the tax benefit they see just doesn’t seem terribly visible to them, while any increase in taxes is quite visible. Thus, these folks have no reason to believe that their quality of life will increase if they pay higher taxes, even if they could afford it.And ultimately, the tax increase necessary to fund the kind of infrastructure, public utilities and services, and programs such as universal health care for rural populations would be massive if the burden fell on them alone, simply because of population density.Higher taxes don’t improve the standard of living for the already-wealthy.The vast majority of the economic recovery in the United States after the 2008 recession went to a) the largest urban areas of the country, and b) to the already wealthy.[17]For the wealthy, higher taxes are not only highly unlikely to result in a higher standard of living, they’d be prone to decreasing the standard of living that a wealthy person already enjoys.For the most wealthy, what they would receive from social programs such as Social Security is less than a rounding error in their annual income just from carried interest on their assets. The benefit from a buy-in option for Medicare is meaningless when a person can pay for platinum-level insurance plans with the change in their couch cushions, if not simply outright own the hospital.For them, universal health care is probably a step down. They’d likely have to maintain supplemental insurance to cover what they currently have. They’d basically get the same care they get now at more or less the same price, except now it wouldn’t be optional for them to pay in.They benefit somewhat from public investments into infrastructure; after all, what’s the use in driving a Bentley or Beamer around if the roads are terrible? Private jets don’t work as well without GPS and traffic control towers at the airports, even if you have a private hangar.Edit: Kagan Hudayar brought up a couple of very good points about ways that I had not listed that the wealthy benefit from higher taxes put back into national investment. Better infrastructure reduces the friction costs for business - this is why we have an interstate system. (Contrary to popular myth, Eisenhower didn’t come up with it as a way to move military forces quickly; he saw how it improved German industry with its ability to quickly move resources.)Public infrastructure such as transit also reduces employment costs. Employees that can get to work efficiently are more productive for the wage costs, and allows employers to get labor from a wider geographical region, which improves their ability to recruit better workers.Poverty is more heavily correlated with crime than anything else. People in poverty are more desperate, more likely to be willing to turn to illicit means to make things happen. There’s little good in having a million dollar mansion on a hill when you’re afraid to leave it or get robbed. And if things are bad enough, all the security forces in the world are not going to protect you when the mob with torches and pitchforks decides they’ve had enough with the plutocrats.[18]Kagan also worded this better than I think I could paraphrase it:And additionally, the ONLY way the wealthy can keep their wealth and grow it from generation to generation is by ensuring a well educated, well fed, and economically advantaged middle class. It doesn’t matter how I make my money. If the masses can’t buy more and more widgets, my business will shrink, my stocks in companies who sell widgets will diminish in value, and ultimately, we will enter a recession that is impossible to get out of. It seems to me, what the wealthy conservatives actually want is a system more in line with banana republics and under-developed nations. What they fail to realize is that the end-result will also be the same as it has been for these impoverished nations.He’s exactly right. If you want to grow the economy, give money to poor people. They will buy things. When people can’t buy things, the whole system falls apart. The wealthy can only stay wealthy, and continue to grow that wealth, if there is sufficient distribution of it to the rest of the world to support it.That perspective, however, is tempered with the idea that they shoulder the vast majority of the tax burden - as much as 70% of it.[19] [20] [21] [22]That feels heavily unfair to them. As a percentage, they’re basically subsidizing the rest of us poor schmucks.On the other hand, the richest 10% of Americans control more than 90% of the overall wealth.[23]Depending on what side you look at it from, it can either seem totally unfair to place the tax burden on the wealthy, or that they are not shouldering their fair share.One way to look at it is that fewer than 10,000 people control 90% of the nation’s wealth - shouldn’t they pay 90% of the nation’s tax burden? Or, alternatively, fewer than 10,000 people are effectively paying for all of the rest of us to have Social Security and Medicare and don’t benefit hardly at all from those programs.If you’re already wealthy, what perspective would you be prone to taking?This is why they fight tooth and nail to keep the carried interest loophole[24], repeal or raise the exemption amounts for the estate tax[25], use offshore accounts to disguise their assets[26] [27] [28], and to raise the amount of pass-through income for LLPs and LLCs.[29]These people see no standard of living increase from higher taxes, and for the ultra-wealthy, would probably mean having only the smaller yacht to get to their villa in Tuscany for the winter. The shame. What will the Carlisles say?The main people who visibly see a rise in the standard of living from higher taxes are the urban poor and the suburban middle class.The urban poor generally see small percent increases in taxes, but because of the overall concentration of people in one area, tend to get the most benefit from reinvestment back in the community.For example, urban areas are more likely to have public transit systems which make it possible for the urban poor to move about without the costs of owning a vehicle and insuring it. The rural poor do not have this advantage; no car = walking, biking, or getting a ride.To keep public transit systems affordable for riders, they are generally subsidized with tax dollars and are not self-sustaining. So, the urban poor get a comparatively higher benefit from that tax investment.The urban poor are much less likely to be landowners[30][31], and if they are, the value of the properties owned by the urban poor is significantly less than rural landowners simply by virtue of location and size.[32] An urban poor to lower-middle-class person might own a home, but it is unlikely to be larger than half an acre of property or valued at higher than $250,000. A rural poor farmer with almost any acreage very likely has an asset valued at at least as much; a rural poor farmer with 360 acres of total land may have a net worth on paper of several million dollars, but often with very little net income.This significantly impacts property taxes, which are the most common way that local municipalities are funded.The urban poor combined pay a lot in property taxes, in smaller individual amounts, and receive back infrastructure that simply due to density and availability is more tangibly and visibly raising their standard of living.The rural poor, on the other hand, pay larger individual amounts of property taxes that simply due to density issues don’t amount to as much, and end up supporting comparatively less immediately visible infrastructure.Both urban and rural poor would probably benefit significantly from social programs such as universal health care. But, as discussed above, the rural poor are more likely to be significantly distrustful of whether they will actually benefit from that program.The urban poor, on the other hand, are unlikely to be working jobs that have health benefits at all. Universal health care would be an enormous benefit to them, and because of the population density, they are more likely to have access to excellent medical options in metro-area hospitals.The suburban middle class is who really sees a lot of benefit for their tax dollars.Their density is slightly less than the urban poor, but the value of their properties is likely to be double. (This is highly dependent on geography; it is far more true in the Midwest than on the East Coast, for example. But, the overall trend is this direction.) Overall, the combined tax revenue from the suburbs compared to its population density means that almost everything in the municipality is likely to be better funded and require less infrastructure in some ways.For example, suburbs generally do not require a public transit system - most people there are in the lower-middle-class and likely have a car and a garage to park it in. So, that’s one big urban government expense municipalities don’t have to worry about.Smaller population densities means fewer police, fire, and EMS are required to service the same area. Schools can service a greater area without being overcrowded, but without having to extend themselves into such a great area as to require substantial student transportation in order to have enough students to justify having a school at all. Suburbs are dense enough to justify public works infrastructure such as centralized water and sewage treatment, but not so dense as to make such works difficult to construct, maintain, and run.That all means more money per capita that can go into schools, police, fire, and public works and services.Universal health care would be an enormous benefit to the suburban middle. These people are more likely to be working full-time with benefits including health insurance, but are also very likely to have seen drastically rising costs associated with that insurance.[33] [34] [35] This group of people is most likely going to see a significant decrease in overall personal costs if the nation were to move into universal health care. They would gladly pay more in taxes because it would likely mean a greater increase in compensation from full-time employment and less than the projected tax in current payment of deductibles and premium co-pays.Additionally, they’re likely to be close to major metro area hospitals that provide full-service care, much unlike the rural areas that are seeing care options decline significantly, which means that universal health care would provide them with advanced care at a cheaper price than they’re paying right now.All of this combined means a significantly more visibly higher standard of living for a comparatively small tax increase than urban or rural areas.Overall, higher taxes generally tangibly increase the standard of living for the suburban middle class and urban poor, but not for the rural populations or the wealthy.Now, there are lots of ways we can take this into account and tax intelligently to spread the burdens out based on ability to pay, but there simply will be wealth redistribution, particularly to the rural population, for any kind of efforts. It’s just absolutely unavoidable if you want to give them the same or comparable standard of living as suburban populations with a lower population density.But as it stands, just raising taxes would not provide enough revenue to significantly improve the rural standard of living (if placed only on rural populations, at least), raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for improved standards of living for any other population will justifiably feel to the wealthy like they’re subsidizing the standard of living increase for the rest of the population, and raising taxes just in general will most tangibly benefit the suburban middle class and urban poor.I’ll give you three guesses as to which of those two populations are most represented in Congress as Republicans and which two are represented as Democrats, and the first two guesses don’t count.You’ve read a long answer with no pictures. Here, enjoy a picture of a fuzzy kitten as a reward.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment, goddammit.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, telling me to go push my commie values in Venezuela, et cetera and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Additionally, as aforementioned and because it bears repeating, first person that starts bitching about Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren and socialism and taxation is theft! gets the airlock. Walk down the road to Galt’s Gulch and you’re out the door. These are bad faith arguments that have been repeatedly debunked, and I am ornery enough not to put up with it today.If you want to discuss, rationally and with reliable, credible sources, what kinds of tax policy would actually have a meaningful impact on the standard of living, fine. I will even let you argue supply-side economics if you think you’ve got a line of reasoning that hasn’t already been proven wrong by the annals of history, so long as you’re making good faith arguments about it.Also, getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Again, ornery enough today to not put up with it. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.I’m done with warnings. If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.Footnotes[1] Amazon.com: The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics) eBook: Katherine J. Cramer: Kindle Store[2] Audit: Wisconsin DOT significantly underestimated highway project costs[3] Infrastructure spending: Which state is falling apart the worst?[4] School’s Closed. Forever.[5] Western Wisconsin Schools Grapple With Falling Status Of Teachers[6] Health Costs A Burden For Wisconsin's Middle-Income Families[7] Wisconsin suicide rate has increased 25 percent since '99, mirroring national problem[8] ER Visits For Opioid Overdose Double In Wisconsin[9] Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com[10] Rural hospitals retreat from delivering babies; small towns pay the price[11] Only 42% of Texas' rural hospitals will still deliver babies: A majority of rural hospitals in Texas are opting to discontinue delivery services as the number of births fall and the cost of providing the service rises, reports the Texas Tribune.[12] Another Thing Disappearing From Rural America: Maternal Care — ProPublica[13] Rural Hospitals Are Dying and Pregnant Women Are Paying the Price[14] Health Insurance Coverage in Small Towns and Rural America: The Role of Medicaid Expansion[15] The Role of Medicaid in Rural America[16] ACA Premiums Costlier in Rural America[17] Poorest Areas Have Missed Out on Boons of Recovery, Study Finds[18] The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats[19] Diving into the rich pool[20] http://www.aei.org/publication/cbo-study-shows-that-the-rich-dont-just-pay-a-fair-share-of-federal-taxes-they-pay-almost-everybodys-share/[21] High-income Americans pay most income taxes, but enough to be 'fair'?[22] Tax burden on the wealthy has trebled since the 1970s, Telegraph analysis shows[23] Wealth Inequality - Inequality.org[24] What is carried interest, and should it be taxed as capital gain?[25] The GOP wants to repeal the estate tax—here's how to know if that affects you[26] How rich people avoid taxes by parking money offshore (legally)[27] Opinion | How Corporations and the Wealthy Avoid Taxes (and How to Stop Them)[28] Paradise Papers Expose Rich And Famous Using Tax Havens  [29] What you need to know about the Senate's pass-through tax debate[30] The Definitive Guide to Who Rents and Who Buys in America[31] The Incredible Rise of Renting in the U.S.[32] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1017275?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents[33] Cost of Employer Insurance Growing Burden Middle-Income Families[34] Middle-Income Americans Take The Biggest Hit With Obamacare[35] Steep Premiums Challenge People Who Buy Health Insurance Without Subsidies

It’s worse than a scam.It’s a profiteering, brutal pseudo-science, ruining millions of lives every day. With that said, you should NEVER stop taking any psychiatric medication, without proper clinical oversight.That’s the hardest part, trying to find one who will taper you safely and humanely, when they financially incentivized to keep you hooked. If you think you need a shrink, I hope you will think twice. When you schedule that $250 intake session, prepare to park your civil rights at the door.How to Drive Someone InsaneThe Shrunken Heads’ How-To Guide for ShrinksIn The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, the uncle demon Screwtape counsels his junior demon, Wormwood, how to tempt his ‘patient,’ converting him from a new believer into a mindless foot soldier in their evil revolution.“I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful.”[1]– The Demon ScrewtapeIntroductionThough comprehensive, most shrinks need one or two methods outlined below to drive their patients insane. Before he determines the best approach, the shrink must evaluate each patient’s worst hopes and fears, and how the patient best serves the shrink’s needs, before he defines his unique goals for each target.The vast majority of shrinks spend an average 10-15 minutes with the patient.[2] Therefore, most shrinks need to employ “The Comorbid Stranglehold” (See Step One) to enslave their patients, cripple their nervous systems, and empty their bank accounts.Please remember the absence of evidence is your best defense.Shrinks that pay attention to corruption in the FDA should take notes from their playbook. Prozac went to market after less than six weeks of FDA testing [3]. The trials were not double-blinded and it barely out-performed a placebo.The antidepressant Cymbalta went to market in three months, despite a higher than average rate of suicides.How many suicides?No one knows for certain. Reporters who file Freedom of Information Act requests receive rejection letters on the basis the number of suicides represents “proprietary information.”“I received a database that included 41 deaths and 13 suicides among patients taking Cymbalta. Missing from the database was any record of Johnson, or at least four other volunteers known to have committed suicide while taking Cymbalta for depression.”- “What The FDA Isn’t Telling,” Jeanne Linzer, Slate Magazine, 09/2005The FDA slapped all modern antidepressants with a black-box warning for the suicidal effects of these purported miracle medications. Strangely, the agency allowed doctors to double the recommended average maximum dose for a broader range of disorders,before the patent expired.The manufacturer, Ely Lily, hit major pay dirt in 2008, when the FDA approved Cymbalta for the long-term management of Major Depressive Disorder. This escalating pattern continued through 2011.The patent expired in 2013.In addition, all ADHD drugs received approval after less than four weeks after trials on children’s brains. [4] Yet, the FDA claims the standard trial length for any medication lasts an average ten months, with six months for “fast-tracked” drugs. The FDA implemented these PDUFA regulations in 1992, shortening the average required trial length to address the AIDS epidemic.[5] So we can conclude FDA-approved medications prior to 1992 were subjected to more stringent protocols at the time.Profits drive the rush to market, but we must also consider plausible denial.What are PDUFA regulations?The Prescription Drug User Fee Act allows the FDA to charge pharmaceutical companies huge fees to evaluate new medications. These fees have become the FDA’s bread and butter, constituting between 58% - 68% of their drug review process.Pharmaceutical companies pay the FDA $2.3 million to approve a new medication. The FDA has collected $7.67 billion in these fees over the years. It begs the bigger question: Are the FDA’s incentives and interests aligned with the tax-payer or the corporations?When the FDA adheres to the 10-month average trial period, there is no prescription medication on the market, with any knowledge of its long-term effects. After the first year, the public becomes the clinical trial.This claims holds especially true for psychiatric medications, which rely on subjective assessment scales, with effects reported from paid clinical research candidates. In later Cymbalta trials, email exchanges between company executives confirmed no scales were used to measure discontinuation effects, concealing the harrowing and sometimes lethal withdrawal from this “non-narcotic” drug.Dr. Detke stated that “We didn’t use any elicited scales. The data that exist are nicely summarized in a Perahia paper.” Dr. Detke then explained “[i]f you use an elicited scale, you’ll see higher rates. This WILL end up in the label.”But shrinks? Please don’t concern yourselves with FDA Guidelines.Government regulations, warnings, professional standards and medical ethics – these are not enforceable laws. You cannot violate a standard of care that does not exist in court. So have some fun!Whatever happens, it’s never your fault.If you cannot blame the patient, you can always blame the system!BackgroundPsychiatry is so subjective from a medical perspective, but so well insulated in the judicial system shrinks and their diagnoses enjoy special exemptions under HIPAA laws,[6] the Americans with Disabilities Act[7] and the kangaroo court of public opinion. In popular culture, Carrie’s Fisher interred her ashes in a huge Prozac-shaped urn.According to her brother, as quoted in Rolling Stone magazine:“It was her favorite possession, bought a long time ago…a big pill. She loved it. It was her favorite thing, and so that’s how you do it.” [8]What is the strange irony here?Fisher served as advocate for mental illness and publicly discussed her bipolar diagnosis. If you are rich and famous enough to receive decent healthcare, perhaps she enjoyed a much difference experience than 99% of patients. It does not change this fact: The FDA rejects the treatment of bipolar disorder with SSRIs and other modern antidepressants.[9]As a popular advocate for the psychiatric state, her last wishes elevated these medications to the sacred.It served as a powerful symbol that psychiatry has evolved into the new American religion, sanctioned by a complicit state, with psychiatrists as its new priests.[10]With rare exception, shrinks are the only medical professionals not required to share their clinical or progress notes with the patient. I cannot find a legal or political rationale beyond the notion this special exemption somehow protects the patient’s sensitive healthcare information, and the paternal noblesse oblige that psychiatric patients do not possess the psychological stamina to review their shrinks’ private insights.[11]We find another sardonic irony here.My former psychiatric provider shared my personal contact and diagnostic information with a research institute for mass-marketing, direct-mail purposes. After I filed a HIPAA privacy violation complaint, the DHHS Office of Civil Rights rejected this grievance outright.In other words, I cannot access my shrink’s private clinical notes, but my psychiatric provider can sell or share my contact and diagnostic information for mass marketing purposes, subjecting the patient to humiliating images, and reinforcing stereotypes.Because the shrink’s clinical notes only serve as a front-line defense strategy in malpractice suits, this exemption provides him with the incentive to record the worst notes possible about the patient.Rates and plans vary from state to state, so I cannot reach a definitive consensus, but I can make the fair argument that these exemptions explain why shrinks remain the most frequently disciplined medical professionals by their peers but are the least often successfully sued doctors, and thus pay the lowest malpractice insurance rates by a wide margin. [12].This study indicates shrinks are most often responsible for abusing their patients, but rarely held accountable. If you were an unethical medical school student, prone to fraud, and seeking to specialize where you had the most latitude over your patients with the least accountability?Which medical specialty would you chose?The table below demonstrates the average malpractice claim ranked by specialty. Do you believe shrinks are the least often sued because they make the fewest mistakes? For you sake, I hope you are not that naive.1) Engaging the Comorbid Stranglehold.“An increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.”[13]– The Demon ScrewtapeAddiction is the greatest marketing strategy ever!These tactics serve as parts of an orchestrated strategy to enslave the patient’s mind and drive him insane. Its overall goal entraps the patient by perpetuating a cycle of compounded psychological and chemical dependency. This strategy holds for most psychiatric medications, even the “non-narcotic” antidepressants, especially the SNRIs. Though a so-called non-narcotic, Cymbalta produces withdrawal so notorious for causing suicides Ely Lily has quietly settled more than 5,000 Cymbalta Suicide lawsuits since 2014.If you cannot ensnare the patient in chemical dependency, you can entrap the patient on the back end, rendering his escape attempts miserably impractical and even lethal.“Although antidepressants diminish suicidal ideation in many recipients, about as many patients experience worsening suicidal ideation on active medication as they do on placebo.”– Teicher, MH, Drug Safety, March 8, 1993.The commonly prescribed psychiatric medications backfire over time, causing central nervous system and brain damage, leading to higher dosages and more medications. The shrink never attributes worsening or elusive symptoms to the drugs or protracted withdrawal.You must remember this evil axiom:The cure is never worse than the disease.In his coup de gras, the shrink attributes these symptoms to a worsening “underlying condition,” prescribing more medications, creating a greater need for his services. This compounded cycle of medication-induced mental illness continues until the patient overdoses or opens his eyes.“You’re a tough case. It takes this many medications to find the right cocktail for you.”[14]“I have treated you for two years. Whatever I prescribe, your symptoms become worse, or new symptoms emerge, so I have struggled to diagnose you. I don’t know where to put you, but you might be Bipolar II. In the past 15-20 years, we’ve come to realize that bipolar is more of a spectrum than a single disorder.”– Former shrink assigning a Bipolar II diagnosis by default circa 2008, declared misdiagnosed by the state’s leading researcher in 2013.In this respect, the allopathic blinders acquired in medical school serve the shrink’s purposes well here. After the shrink addicts the patient, he applies the comorbid stranglehold: 1) branding the patient a hardcore junkie and 2) an erratic lunatic. Two or more psychiatric diagnoses humbles sensitive but otherwise lucid minds. Please remember that your prescription pad is your best friend.Most shrinks serve one purpose: to prescribe medications. Drugs are the one and only reason your patients need you. It provides you with an endless number of aces up your sleeve, rarely failing to produce repeat business. In this pursuit, the tightened noose of chemical dependence always provides the best departure. It turns your prescription pad into a short leash.2) Creating the Illusion of Choice“We become what we fear.”My first talk therapist shared this precious gem.In college, an anxiety disorder overwhelmed my mind with intrusive fears, and what I call “fatal sensations” – NOT suicidal feelings, but a haunting sense of impending doom. I came of age at the advent of the AIDS epidemic, raised in a conservative religion. These two clashing themes spiraled into hideous panic attacks, ruining my 4.0 grade-point average and estranging me from my parents.At this tender age, I could not control my fears about AIDS – and the public hysteria, the televangelists foaming rapid at the mouth, already had damned me to hell. But the shrink made it so much worse. Her pseudo-therapeutic prophecy double doomed me. Without a supportive family at the time, and my relationship with God severed, it elevated the anxiety to such extremes I clung to shrinks. With Prozac on the cover of Newsweek magazine, they became my priests and psychiatry became my cult religion.At the end of George Orwell’s 1984, our protagonist must choose between a starving rat eating his face or returning to Big Brother’s flock. He not only returns to the fold, but he embraces his tormentor as his savior.His worst nemesis becomes his messiah.He becomes the grateful slave, laboring under the delusion of choice.Based on my experience, many psychiatric patients are grateful slaves.I could choose between crashing off two-four dangerous medications, or I could sing in the psychiatric choir. I approached it the right way, embracing he chance to go inpatient, to taper from these medications.A godless team of shrinks pulled me off all medications in five days.I was on both Cymbalta and Klonopin for around 10 years.In the end, combined sudden cessation from both medications nearly killed me. If you do not believe me, Stevie Nicks posted a great interview with Oprah Winfrey, where she compares her withdrawal from Clonazepam as worse than her decade-long cocaine addiction. I cannot draw a personal comparison to cocaine use, but I endured a mental anguish I would not wish on anyone, even the shrinks who tortured me.3) Establishing a therapeutic bond based on false trust.I posed this question to a trained psychoanalyst, regarding the absence of any regulations that require objective screening before he assigns a psychiatric diagnosis. I used the example of a patient assigned a Manic Depressive diagnosis when his symptoms stemmed from cocaine use.In psychiatric terms, he suffers from an “addictive disorder” not “manic depression,” but the shrink shoulders no burden to assign an accurate diagnosis. Despite the S.C.I.D. (DSM Structured Clinical Interview), there are no qualitative or quantitative screenings to confirm a psychiatric diagnosis. In twenty years, I have seen the S.C.I.D. used once to screen research candidates.(That’s how I learned I was misdiagnosed, not because any shrink cared enough to prove or disprove a suspect diagnosis, but because one happened to need candidates for a research study. This irony made me realize that my “treatment,” through all those years, was always about their needs, not mine).Back to the absence of diagnostic standards:Shrunken Head: “A simple urine test would reveal the real problem. Instead, this patient’s doctors prescribed benzodiazepines and other drugs. Where is the responsibility to identify the real issue, rather than reinforce his addiction, and further endanger the patient’s life?”Shrink: “If we force that patient to take a blood or urine test, then we undermine the premise of mutual trust the underscores the successful, therapeutic bond.”It sounds like a good reason and not an excuse, but the patient violates this premise of “trust” that fosters this alleged therapeutic bond.”The shrunken head celebrates how shrinks have created a logical edifice that resonates as psychological gospel, but does not produce results.The patient concedes to this logical fallacy: If it makes sense, then it must be true. Trust does not take priority over honesty because trust cannot exist independent of the truth, but we keep this evil secret to ourselves.If psychiatric diagnoses are credible, the truth must take precedence.This claim holds should we dare to assume the shrink desires to improve the patient’s mental health. Otherwise, the shrink and patient embrace the mutual delusion of trust, malingering for medications that further entrench the patient in addiction.I know one woman misdiagnosed bipolar, when she had Graves Syndrome, an inflammatory disorder. I know another woman with Lyme disease, misdiagnosed with major depression, ending up with a lifetime of arthritis. I have interacted with people with cancer, misdiagnosed with depression.This point is a crucial one:There are nutritional deficits, inflammatory issues, bacterial infections and, of course, substance abuse problems that cause “mental health” problems, but no psychiatrist is required to rule out other possibilities before subjectively assigning a diagnosis. That GROTESQUE level of malpractice kills.And how that ethical medicine?How is that scientific?4) Estranging the patient from friends and family.The shrink declares the patient suffered from sexual abused by a parent in the first few sessions. If she claims no abuse history, the shrink insists she suppressed those memories, emerging in her symptoms.“You buried them out of sight, but not out of mind, and now they have taken on a mind of their own.”So you don’t need evidence.You only need to plants the seeds of doubt. The tumorous roots amass until it consumes the mind of the host. In the Paul Lazano case, a Harvard campus shrink lured a medical school student into a sadomasochistic sex scandal, ending with the patient’s suicide in 1991.What was her first move?She declared that he suffered from repressed sexual abuse by his mother and physical abuse by his father. After she estranged him from his family – especially his mother – the shrink became his maternal replacement, regressing the patient to his “wounded infantile state.”[15]In the absence of evidence, she wielded doubt to isolate and seduce her patient.5) Forcing the Patient to Question Her Core Identity.Most psychiatric diagnoses serve this purpose. The worst psychiatric diagnosis that you can assign to the patient, despite their fictional and politically driven criteria, can act as the most effective weapon in your clinical arsenal.The “unspecified” diagnosis is also quite useful.It sucker punches the unsuspecting patient, and it bewilders her when she cannot grasp its vague criteria and circular definition. Recently, I tried to locate a less expensive shrink who would help me with my tapering goals. In retrospect, the shrink wanted me to participate in a clinical call-and-response at my intake session, completing a questionnaire on his computer.As a well “seasoned” patient, and an honest one, I learned that the truth, often taken out of context, does not set you free. He wanted simple answers but dismissed my questions and concerns. I needed to share my story, and he did not care. So he played the symptomatic version of the shame the patient game.It triggered a heightened anxious response. In twenty minutes, he declared me “bipolar,” accusing me of “pressured speech” and “flights of fancy.”This terse exchange ended our session:Shrunken Head: “You have known me five minutes, and I am already bipolar?”Shrink: “Well, I have known you twenty minutes.”The shrink can assign the patient a “Personality Disorder, Unspecified” diagnosis, because he “cannot control his emotions.” It does shut him up long enough, forcing the patient to interpret each fluctuation in mood, quirks in character, and character traits through your warped diagnostic filter.It compares to an oncologist sharing this diagnosis with a patient:“You have cancer, unspecified. We don’t know what organ it affects. We cannot isolate real symptoms, determine a course of treatment, and there’s no prognosis. But guess what? We don’t need to justify our diagnosis.Only in psychiatry does an opinion equal evidence.6) Twisting the Patient’s Values into Symptoms.For example, you can seduce a patient who does not believe in sex before marriage. After you have engaged the comorbid stronghold, forcing her to interpret her values as symptoms, you claim she suffers from “anhedonia” or the inability to feel pleasure.When she resists on religious or moral grounds, claim her “hyper-religiosity” springs from erotic conflicts, and repressed abuse memories (See Step Four).The shrink must remember to shame her “clinical treatment resistance.” Because she cannot discuss the topic like an adult, you might suggest that “perhaps we should explore this issue using non-verbal techniques?”Then explain erotic transference, stressing this sexual tension is “normal and expected” when it enters the therapeutic relationship. The next step takes some gumption. It assumes the patient holds some attraction for you.It best serves the evil shrink to prime the target with Prozac and tranquilizers, striking right after the drugs take effect. The drug-induced “normal euphoria” endears the patient to the shrink. Grateful patients are the most compliant.Then you ask this question:“Why do you fear your erotic transference for me?”7) Escaping Blame for Apathetic Inertia.“I hear you.”This common refrain enables the cornered shrink to ignore the patient’s needs while perpetuating the mirage of trust and the empathetic bond. This smokescreen justifies your inaction, and your failure to solve the patient’s problems. It appears to validate the patient’s pain but exempts you from curing anything – whatsoever – in history, while it does allows you to perpetuate crimes against humanity for more than a century.The patient pays the shrink for nothing of clinical value.What’s the best part? It never ends!——————————————————————————[1] The Screwtape Letters, Lewis, C.S. Page 31. HarperCollins, 1942.[2] Psychology Today. “Psychiatry’s Med Check: Is Fifteen Minutes Enough?” November 10, 2015[3] Toxic Psychiatry, Breggin, Peter Dr. Page 168. St. Martin’s Press, 1991.[4] “Premarket Safety and Efficacy Studies for ADHD Medications in Children,” PLOS ONE, Volume 9. Issue 7, July 2014.[5] History of Prescription Drug User Fee Act.[6] Patient Access to Psychiatric Medical Records - LawRefs.[7] The ADA Does Not Protect Persons with Bipolar Disorder in the Fourth Circuit[8] Rolling Stone Magazine. “Carrie Fisher’s Ashes Placed in Giant Prozac Pill Urn”[9] U.S. Food & Drug Administration: The Fact on Bipolar Disorder and FDA Recommended Treatment.[10] Szasz, Thomas Dr. “In the Church of America, Psychiatrists Are Priests.” Hospital Physician (October), 44-46.[11] South Carolina Physician’s Patient Act, Section 44-115-60.[12] New England Journal of Medicine: “Malpractice Risk According to Specialty” August 18, 2011.[13] The Screwtape Letters, Lewis, C.S. Page 44. HarperCollins, 1942.[14] One shrink’s response, during a two-week period (October 31, 2013 – November 13, 2013) when I was prescribed eight psychiatric medications for a “bipolar, unspecified” diagnosis. After two referrals, I volunteered to enter the hospital on November 24, 2013.[15] McNamara, Eileen. BREAKDOWN: Sex, Suicide & The Harvard Psychiatrist, NY Pocket Books, April 1994.

The positive cultural influence of the Christian Church is too vast to enumerate in detail in less than a series of books. Its influence is not limited to the West, as it spread beyond the Western Empire in the days of Rome, in its first centuries, and has continued to spread around the world in the centuries since. For the most part, its influence has been more good than not wherever it has gone, and attempting to even list it all would be a very long list indeed.However, in answer to this question, I have chosen to limit a sampling of examples to the West, and to the limited time period of Early Christianity up to the Middle Ages. I have picked a few examples of influence I see as the paradigm altering, watershed, kind.The Christian church has continued, to this day, to be a cultural influence for good all around the world, but the history from the 1400s on is even more extensive—and complex—than what preceded it, so please accept—these limitations I have imposed are my limitations—and not the limitations of the church.Christianity altered the paradigm concerning:SexWomenCharityPreservation of literacyMonks and NunsBenedict’s RuleSkills and EducationSocial StructureCharles Martel Stopped IslamScienceArts and HumanitiesPainting, sculpture and architectureMusicLawHuman ValueHuman RightsSlaveryDemocracyFirst to Fourth Century (30–500)Sex — Let’s talk about sex—not just because it’s fun—but because changes here are among the most powerful, yet most overlooked, of all the many positive changes Christianity brought.“The gradual transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian marks one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center of it all was sex.”[1]Historian Kyle Harper says:"...the triumph of Christianity not only drove profound cultural change, it created a new relationship between sexual morality and society...The legacy of Christianity lies in the dissolution of an ancient system where social and political status, power, and social reproduction (passing on social inequality to the next generation) scripted the terms of sexual morality."That ancient system was built on status and used shame to enforce itself. Shame was not personal guilt so much as a social concept: breaking the rules had profound and far-reaching social consequences. Aristocratic men had status; women had little, and slaves had no status at all, therefore, as far as the Romans were concerned, slaves had no internal ethical life and were incapable of shame. This permitted Roman society to find both a husband's control of a wife's sexual behavior as a matter of intense importance, and at the same time, see his live-in mistress and sex with young slave boys as of little concern.Paul wrote that the body was a consecrated space, a point of mediation between the individual and the divine. His over-riding sense that gender—rather than status or power or wealth or position—was the prime determinant in the propriety of the sex act was momentous. It was a transformation in the deep logic of sexual morality.The Greeks and Romans said our morality depends upon our social position which is given to us by fate; that there is inequity in that is not a moral issue that concerned them. Christianity "preached a liberating message of freedom.” It was a revolution in the very image of the human being as a sexual being, free to choose, and personally responsible for that choice to God alone. It created a revolution between society and the individual, limiting society’s rights and claims on the individual as a moral agent.Whether or not Paul’s particular teaching on gender is still agreed with or not, the historical facts show that the Christian view that the powerful should be held to the same standards of sexual accountability as those without power has since become the norm of a just society.Appearance of Jesus Christ to Maria Magdalena (1835) by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov.Women [2]Early Christianity — Some historians hold that the Church played a considerable part in fostering the inferior status of women by providing a "moral justification" for male superiority. However, the Church has also made enough positive contributions toward women that, on balance, I am going to say the overall impact has been more positive than negative.Understanding that involves understanding context—what was there before, and without, Christianity.In antiquity, there were no Near Eastern societies that were not patriarchal, so patriarchalism and male superiority were not unique to the Old Testament. All around the Mediterranean, patriarchy was established as the norm in all of the multiple different societies before 3000 BC and they did not change for millennia—until Christianity.[3]Women were seen as intellectually and physically inferior to men and as "naturally dependent" by Sumerians, and Babylonians, by the Hittites, the Greeks and the Romans—all of them. Some philosophers speculated that women were a different race not fully human like men. Athenian women were legally classified as children regardless of age and were the "legal property of a man at all stages in her life." Women everywhere, including the Roman Empire, had limited legal rights and could not enter professions.It was common in the Greco-Roman world to expose female infants because of the low status of women in society. Many exposed children died, but many were taken by speculators who raised them to be slaves or prostitutes. Female infanticide and abortion were practiced by all classes. The church forbade these practices to its members.Christians did not believe in cohabitation, so if a Christian man wanted to live with a woman, the church required marriage; the pagan double standard of allowing married men to have extramarital sex and mistresses was forbidden. This gave women far greater security.It was not rare for pagan women to be married before the age of puberty and then forced to consummate the marriage with her often much older husband. Christianity established a minimum age for marriage.Husbands could divorce their wives at any time simply by telling the wife to leave; wives could not. In the code of Hammurabi, a woman could sue for divorce, but if she couldn’t prove she had been an exemplary wife, she was drowned for making the request.Roman law required a widow to remarry; 1 Timothy says a woman is better off if she remains unmarried. Widows in Greco-Roman society could not inherit their husband's estate and could find themselves in desperate circumstances, but almost from the beginning the church offered widows support.Women were an important part of Jesus’ inner circle, and there is no record of him ever treating a woman with less than respect. He spoke to women in public, assumed they had responsibility for their own choices, taught Mary of Bethany, admired, forgave, accepted and approved them. Christianity never fully lost sight of this as a fulfillment of God creating humans in His image as both “male and female.” Along with Paul declaring a Christian is a Christian, male or female, in Galatians 3:28, this produced a kind of “metaphysical” equality found only in Christianity at this point in history. [4]The church started out trying to practice this at first. The extra-biblical evidence is strong that women played vital roles in Christianity’s beginnings. Many women began choosing to stay single and celibate, and they spread the word, but this “female initiative” stirred up vehement opposition from the Romans.According to Margaret MacDonald, accusations that Christianity undermined the Roman family, which was built upon male authority, were used to stir up hatred of Christianity. Along with many other rumors and accusations, this led to the persecution of the early church.[5]Some of the later New Testament texts reasserting traditional roles for women are seen by many scholars as an accommodation to the danger involved with this Roman response.Within the church of the second and third century, tensions between the existing fact of women's leadership in Christian communities, and traditional Greco-Roman and patriarchal biblical views about gender roles, combined with persecution, produced controversy and challenges to women’s roles within the new church. Several apocryphal and gnostic texts provide evidence of such a controversy.Middle Ages — Once the early days of Christianity were past, the status of women declined. Women were routinely excluded from scholastic, political and mercantile life in society, however, women were not fully excluded from service in the church. [6]Medieval abbesses and female superiors of female monastic houses were powerful figures whose influence could rival that of male bishops and abbots: “They treated with kings, bishops, and the greatest lords on terms of perfect equality;... they were present at all great religious and national solemnities, at the dedication of churches, and even, like the queens, took part in the deliberation of the national assemblies...” Such powers had never been, as a rule, available to ordinary women in previous Roman or Germanic societies.[7]There was a rite for the ordination of women deacons in the Roman Pontifical, (a liturgical book), up through the 12th century. (But by the 13th-century Roman Pontifical, the prayer for ordaining women was removed, and ordination was redefined as applicable only to male Priests.) [8]The popularity of the Virgin Mary secured maternal virtue as a central cultural theme of Europe in the middle ages and helped form the concept of chivalry. Kenneth Clarke wrote that the 'Cult of the Virgin' in the early 12th century "taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion".Woman-as-witch became a stereotype in the 1400s until it was codified in 1487 by Pope Innocent VIII who declared "most witches are female."The European witch stereotype embodies two apparent paradoxes: first, it was not produced by the "barbaric Dark Ages," but during the progressive Renaissance and the early modern period; secondly, Western Christianity did not recognize the reality of witches for centuries, or criminalize them until around 1400. Sociologist Don Swenson says the explanation for this may lay in the nature of Medieval society as heirocratic which led to violence and the use of coercion to force conformity."There has been much debate ...as to how many women were executed...[and estimates vary wildly, but numbers] small and large do little to portray the horror and dishonor inflicted upon these women. This treatment provides [dramatic] contrast to the respect given to women during the early era of Christianity..."Women under the Law —Church teaching heavily influenced the legal concept of marriage. In a departure from societal norms, Church law required the consent of both parties before a marriage could be performed. No more kidnapping and forced marriages.The elevation of marriage to a sacrament made the union a binding contract. The Church abandoned established tradition by allowing women the same rights as men to dissolve a marriage. (However, in practice, men have been granted dissolutions more frequently than women.)Women, in Conclusion[9]The church’s behavior toward women has been both positive and negative, but all in all, Christianity’s contribution has been more positive than negative.If nothing else could ever be said, Christianity’s treatment of women was a big improvement over what existed before it, and its belief in the spiritual equality of both genders before God, altered the paradigm for women forever.Historian of hospitals Guenter Risse says the Church spearheaded the development of a hospital system geared towards the marginalized.Charity/Hospitals — Prior to Christianity, there is little to no trace of any organized charitable effort anywhere in the ancient world. After centuries of Christian influence, charity has become a universal practice.[10]Albert Jonsen, historian of medicine, says:“the second great sweep of medical history begins at the end of the fourth century, with the founding of the first hospital at Caesarea in Cappadocia, and concludes at the end of the fourteenth century, with medicine well ensconced in the universities and in the public life of the emerging nations of Europe.” [11]That hospital was founded by Basil, Bishop of Caesarea. He established the first formal soup kitchen, hospital, homeless shelter, hospice, poorhouse, orphanage, reform center for thieves, women’s center for those leaving prostitution, and many other ministries. He was personally involved in the projects and process, and gave all his personal wealth to fund the ministries.Basil himself would put on an apron and work in the soup kitchen. These ministries were given freely regardless of religious affiliation. Basil refused to make any discrimination when it came to people who needed help saying that “the digestive systems of the Jew and the Christian are indistinguishable.”His example spread throughout Christianity continuing to the modern day.In the modern day, across the world, various Christian denominations are still the ones largely responsible for the establishment of medical clinics, hospitals, orphanages, soup kitchens, and schools of all kinds.The Catholic Church maintains a massive network of health care providers. In 2009, Catholic hospitals in the USA received approximately one of every six patients. Catholic Health Australia is the largest non-government provider of group-health, community care, and aged-care services, representing about 10% of the health sector.Women have played a vital role in running and staffing these Christian care institutions. In Methodist hospitals, deaconnesses who trained as nurses staffed the hospitals, and in Catholic hospitals, religious like the Sisters of Mercy, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Sisters of St.Mary kept their hospitals focused on serving the needy. The New York Times noted that nuns were trained to "see Jesus in the face of every patient."In the West, these institutions are increasingly run by lay-people after centuries of being run by priests, nuns and brothers, and while the profit motive has stepped in, it does mean more people are taking responsibility for caring for the poor than ever before. In Western nations, governments have increasingly taken up funding and organization of health services for the poor. In 1968, nuns or priests were the chief executives of 770 of America's 796 Catholic hospitals. By 2011, they presided over 8 of 636 hospitals.[12]All over the West, charity is now a societal standard that simply didn’t exist prior to Christianity’s existence.[13]"After the Battle of Gravelotte. The French Sisters of Mercy of St. Borromeo arriving on the battle field to succor the wounded." Unsigned lithograph, 1870 or 1871.Dark Ages and the Early Middle Ages (500–800) [14]Preservation of Literacy — After the Fall of Rome, culture in the west returned to a subsistence agrarian form of life. Church scholars preserved literacy in Western Europe at this time, saving and copying Greek and Roman texts in their scriptoriums. For centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, small monastic communities were practically the only outposts of literacy in all of Western Europe.…all through Europe, matted, unwashed, barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, when the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all western literature – everything they could lay their hands on. These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization they had overwhelmed. Without this Service of the Scribes, everything that happened subsequently would be unthinkable.[15]Monks and Nuns [16]Benedict’s Rule — The period between 500 and 700, often referred to as the "Dark Ages," could also be designated the "Age of the Monk." Christian aesthetes, like St.Benedict (480–543) vowed a life of chastity, obedience, and poverty, and after rigorous intellectual training and self-denial, lived by the principles ‘work and pray’ following the “Rule of Benedict.” This “Rule” became the foundation of thousands of monasteries that spread across what is modern day Europe; "...certainly there will be no demur in recognizing that St.Benedict's Rule has been one of the great facts in the history of western Europe, and that its influence and effects are with us to this day."[17]Spread Skills and Provided Education— Monasteries were self-supporting models of productivity and economic resourcefulness teaching their local communities animal husbandry, cheese making, wine making and various other skills. They were havens for the poor, hospitals, hospices for the dying, and schools. Medical practice was highly important in medieval monasteries, and they are best known for their contributions to medical tradition, but they also made some advances in other sciences such as astronomy. These monks had impact on every level of society both directly and indirectly since all leaders of this period were educated by monks.[18]Changed Social Structure — The monastic movement also changed our social structure in ways that continue to affect us today. The formation of these organized bodies of believers, free from the political authority and familial authority that normally had the power to control an individual’s choices, gradually carved out a series of social spaces with some amount of independence and autonomy, thereby revolutionizing social history.Charles Martel Stopped Islam — (c. 457-751 CE) and his family played a crucial role in Western Europe’s transition from “ancient” to “medieval.”[19]By 727, Charles — “the Hammer”—has become King of what will one day become the nation of France. Charles wages long campaigns against the pagan Germanic tribes who constantly raid his northern and eastern borders - Frisians, Saxons and Bavarians. He also lends strong support to the missionary activities of St. Boniface hoping that conversion to Christianity will tame the heathens enough to stop this raiding. It is not fully effective, but it sets the stage for his grandson’s actions that do change the landscape of Europe.The Hammer’s main positive role involves the Arabs who, since their arrival in 711, have gained a toehold on the European continent in the Spanish peninsula. The Arabs advanced rapidly northwards in their planned takeover of the continent and were soon beyond the Pyrenees. Narbonne was taken in 720 and an extended raid in 725 brought the Arabs briefly into Burgundy. There was a lull until 732 when a Muslim army took Bordeaux, destroyed a church near Poitiers and rode on towards Tours. Here the Arabs were confronted by an army of Franks led by Charles Martel and were stopped.It was a turning point in the attempted Muslim takeover of Europe.The Middle AgesSet of pictures of notable Scientists who self-identified as Christians: Isaac Newton (top left), Robert Boyle (top right), Francis Bacon (bottom left) and Johannes Kepler (bottom right).Science [20]Early in the eleventh century, the full writings of Aristotle were reclaimed in the West by intrepid monks who traveled to Spain to work with the Jews there translating Aristotle’s writings into Latin. (These writings had been mostly lost in the West but not in the East, and when the Muslims came to Europe, they brought their books.) The church’s study of these texts laid the foundation for the beginnings of modern science as well as our modern university system.Historians of science, including J.L.Heilbron, A.C.Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein, and Ted Davis, have argued that the church promoted learning and science during the Middle Ages. Critics will raise the Church's condemnations of Copernicus, Galileo, and Johannes Kepler as evidence to the contrary— which is a valid criticism—but it should also be considered that these same men all considered themselves Christian, were influenced by their faith in their work, and were originally sponsored by their respective churches.The sheer number of scientists and the amount of scientific work and discovery done by Christians, (many of them funded and supported by the church), supports the assertion that, taking its failures into consideration, the church’s overall impact on science has still been positive.Saint Thomas Aquinas was one of the great scholars of the Medieval period.Thomas Aquinas—the friar—opened the door for the church’s promotion of scientific and intellectual development by arguing that reason is in harmony with faith, and that reason can contribute to a deeper understanding of revelation.[21] The church put that into practice. Churchmen such as the Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel (pioneer in the study of genetics), the monk William of Ockham who developed Ockham’s Razor, Roger Bacon, (a Franciscan friar who was one of the early advocates of the scientific method), and the modern Belgian priest George Lemaître who was the first to propose the Big Bang theory, and others, have been among the leaders in astronomy, genetics, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, and solar physics, with many becoming the "fathers" of these sciences.Christians who influenced Western science include such notables as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Steno, Francesco Grimaldi, Giambattista Riccioli, Roger Boscovich and Athanasius Kircher.[22]Henri Becquerel, discovered radioactivity; Galvani, Volta, Ampere, and Marconi, are pioneers in electricity and telecommunications; Lavoisier is the "father of modern chemistry"; Vesalius is the founder of the modern study of human anatomy; and Cauchy, is one of the mathematicians who laid the rigorous foundations of modern calculus.According to 100 Years of Nobel Prize (2005), (which is a review of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000), 65.4% of all Nobel Prize Laureates have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (423 prizes). Overall, Christians have won a total of 78.3% of all the Nobel Prizes in Peace, 72.5% in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, 54% in Economics and 49.5% of all Literature awards.[23]It is not too much to say that modern science may never have begun without the influence and support of the Christian church, and it most certainly would not be what it is today without it.[24]Universities - The church of the middle ages helped found and build the university system, which grew rapidly in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Today, there are more universities in the West than any other part of the world and almost all of them were founded as Christian institutions.[25]Map of mediaeval universities established by Catholic students, faculty, monarchs, or priestsArts and Humanities [26]Painting, Sculpture and Architecture — Artists like Michaelangelo, Da Vinci and Raphael produced some of the most celebrated works of art in history sponsored and supported by the church.[In the West] with a single exception, the great artists of the time were all sincere, conforming Christians. Guercino spent much of his mornings in prayer; Bernini frequently went into retreats and practised the Spiritual Exercizes of St.Ignatius; Rubens attended Mass every morning before beginning work. The exception was Caravaggio, who was like the hero of a modern play, except that he happened to paint very well. This conformism was not based on fear, but on the perfectly simple belief that the faith which had inspired the great saints of the preceding generations was something by which a man should regulate his life.The cathedrals of the Late Middle Ages are among the most iconic feats of architecture ever produced by Western civilization.Music — Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation; there would be no modern music as we know it without this.An enormous body of religious music has been composed for the church, with its support, and this sacred music led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music, and its many derivatives.Ludwig van Beethoven, composed many Masses and religious works, including his Ninth Symphony Ode to Joy.Law and Human Rights [27]Church laws were the single Universal Law common to the different jurisdictions and peoples throughout Europe for much of European history.Human Value[28]If we turn to the roots of our western tradition, we find that in Greek and Roman times not all human life was regarded as inviolable and worthy of protection. Slaves and 'barbarians' did not have a full right to life and human sacrifices and gladiatorial combat were acceptable... Spartan Law required that deformed infants be put to death; for Plato, infanticide is one of the regular institutions of the ideal State; Aristotle regards abortion as a desirable option; and the Stoic philosopher Seneca writes unapologetically: "Unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal.” And whilst there were deviations from these views..., it is probably correct to say that such practices...were less proscribed in ancient times. Most historians of western morals agree that the rise of ...Christianity contributed greatly to the general feeling that human life is valuable and worthy of respect.[29]Human Rights — Christian theology has strongly influenced Western philosophers and political activists in many ways, but nowhere more than in the area of human rights. Howard Tumber says, "human rights is not a universal doctrine, but is the descendent of one particular religion (Christianity).""...one cannot and need not deny that Human Rights are of Western Origin. It cannot be denied, because they are morally based on the Judeo-Christian tradition and Graeco-Roman philosophy; they were codified in the West over many centuries, they have secured an established position in the national declarations of western democracies, and they have been enshrined in the constitutions of those democracies." [30]Saint Peter Claver worked for the alleviation of the suffering of African slaves brought to South America.Slavery — The Church initially accepted slavery as part of the social structure of society, campaigning primarily for humane treatment of slaves but also admonishing slaves to behave appropriately towards their masters.[31] However, historian Glenn Sunshine says,Christians were the first people in history to oppose slavery systematically. Early Christians purchased slaves in the markets simply to set them free.Later, in the seventh century, the Franks..., under the influence of its Christian queen, Bathilde, became the first kingdom in history to begin the process of outlawing slavery....In the 1200's, Thomas Aquinas declared slavery a sin.When the African slave trade began in the 1400's, it was condemned numerous times by the papacy.[32]The British became involved in the slave trade in the late 1500s, and by the 1700s, most people accepted slavery as a fact of life, until gradually, from the mid-1700s onwards, a Christian abolitionist movement began to take shape. It began with American Quakers.Slavery was also coming under attack from Enlightenment philosophers like Montesquieu and Rousseau, but it was Christian activists who initiated and organised an abolitionist movement.By the 1770s, Evangelicals were waking up to the seriousness of the issue – the British Methodist John Wesley and the American Presbyterian Benjamin Rush denounced the slave trade in influential pamphlets. Once the British Abolition Committee was established in 1787, abolitionism quickly became a mass movement. Within twenty years, the slave trade had been abolished throughout the British Empire. [33][34]Christianity was instrumental in stopping slavery. If you don’t think it was Christianity that made the difference, read this: John Dewar Gleissner's answer to What are some mind-blowing facts about slavery?Consistent with Calvin's political ideas, Protestants helped create both the English and the American democracies.Christianity is criticized for many things, some of them justly. David Gushee says Christianity has a "tragically mixed legacy" when it comes to the application of its own ethics, using the examples of three cases of "Christendom divided against itself": the crusades, and Frances of Assissi’s attempt at peacemaking with Muslims; Spanish conquerors and the killing of indigenous peoples, and the Christian protests and fights for Native rights; and the on-again, off-again, persecution and protection of Jews. [85]But we have also gotten a few things right here and there.I have borrowed from the article Role of Christianity in civilization - Wikipedia but I did attempt to limit myself to those sections of the article I wrote myself. Here are some of my references:Footnotes[1] From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Revealing Antiquity): Kyle Harper: 9780674072770: Amazon.com: Books[2] A Short History of Christianity: Geoffrey Blainey: 9781442225893: Amazon.com: Books[3] Amazon.com: Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome (9780521859431): Rebecca Langlands: Books[4] The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism: Timothy Keller: 9780525950493: Amazon.com: Books[5] Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion[6] Amazon.com: Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages) (9780415969444): Margaret C. Schaus: Books[7] CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Abbess[8] Get the facts in order: A history of women's leadership[9] Society, Spirituality, and the Sacred: A Social Scientific Introduction, Second Edition: Donald S. Swenson: 9780802096807: Amazon.com: Books[10] Christian Charity in the Ancient Church - Kindle edition by Gerhard Uhlhorn. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.[11] A Short History of Medical Ethics: 9780195134551: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com[12] Nuns, a ‘Dying Breed,’ Fade From Leadership Roles at Catholic Hospitals[13] Giving: Charity and Philanthropy in History: Robert H. Bremner: 9781560008842: Amazon.com: Books[14] A History of Orthodox, Islamic, and Western Christian Political Values: Dennis J. Dunn: 9783319325668: Amazon.com: Books[15] Amazon.com: How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History Book 1) eBook: Thomas Cahill: Kindle Store[16] Amazon.com: 9783319325668: Books[17] Benedictine Monachism[18] Christian Community in History: Volume 1: Historical Ecclesiology: Roger D. Haight: 9780826416308: Amazon.com: Books[19] Charles Martel : the Military Leader and Frankish Defender: History and Civilization Collection: 9782366593624: Amazon.com: Books[20] 100 Scientists Who Shaped World History[21] St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives: John Goyette, Mark S. Latkovic, Richard S. Myers: 9780813213781: Amazon.com: Books[22] Faithful to Science[23] 100 Years of Nobel Prizes: Baruch Aba Shalev: 9780935047370: Amazon.com: Books[24] 50 Nobel Laureates and Other Great Scientists Who Believe in God[25] Amazon.com: A History of the University in Europe: Volume 1, Universities in the Middle Ages (9780521361057): Hilde de Ridder-Symoens: Books[26] The Western Humanities: The Complete Edition: Roy T. Matthews, F. Dewitt Platt: 9780874847857: Amazon.com: Books[27] Amazon.com: The Routledge Companion to Early Christian Thought (Routledge Religion Companions) (9780415442251): D. Jeffrey Bingham: Books[28] The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World's Future: David P. Gushee: 9780802844200: Amazon.com: Books[29] Text, Cases and Materials on Medical Law and Ethics: Marc Stauch, Kay Wheat: 9781138024021: Amazon.com: Books[30] The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights[31] The Truth About the Catholic Church and Slavery[32] Why You Think the Way You Do[33] The abolition of the slave trade: Christian conscience and political action by John Coffey - Jubilee Centre[34] The Abolitionists