Systemic organization of diseases and eases?

Correlating a Requisite Diversity of Metaphorical Patterns (Part #2)

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It is remarkable that so much is made of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as a categorization of individual diseases -- whether in appreciation or criticism thereof. There is little comparable effort to distinguish the characteristics of "eases" as might be implied by such detailed recognition of "dis-eases". A case has even been made that any use of "dis-ease" is an indicator of quackery (Disease, "dis-ease", what's the difference? ScienceBlogs, 19 March 2013). Curiously the implication is that "health" is not to be interpreted in terms of "healths", which could presumably be usefully understood as multiple -- whatever the degree of (dis)harmony between them. This recalls the adage: the operation was a success but the patient died.

Similar examples are evident in the case of intelligence for which only minimal distinction is made in terms of multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: the theory of multiple intelligences, 1983). Ignorance offers a more striking example in that little explicit distinction is made of "ignorances" -- presumably remedied by the implications of specific knowledge qualifications ("knowledges"?), ignoring the ignorances thereby left unidentified. Are there indeed different "healths" -- like different intelligences -- calling for a "theory of multiple healths"? Could an equivalent to the DSM be derived in terms of memetic diseases (Memetic and Information Diseases in a Knowledge Society: speculations towards the development of cures and preventive measures, 2008)?

These points frame the issue of the significance of "ease", given the current widespread emphasis on the tangibles of quantitative easing. Nothing is said of "qualitative easing". The latter might however be considered appropriate, given the abuses associated with the quantitative variant and the disastrous conditions that many face, as argued separately (From Quantitative Easing (QE) to Moral Easing (ME): a stimulus package to avert moral bankruptcy? 2010). It is especially significant that quantitative easing is enabled by fiat -- as fiat money -- raising the question as to whether the qualitative variant could be similarly enabled. The role of exemplars in this respect contrasts usefully with that of various forms of moral directive and fatwa.

The argument can be taken further in the light of the widespread preoccupation with "healing", accompanied by relatively little matching concern for "illing" -- except in terms of side-effects. Whilst "ease" is adapted to "easing" in quantitative terms, there is a lack of concern with "diseasing". The reverse is evident in recognition of "easement" (with respect to tangibles), in that there is a lack of focus on widespread forms of "diseasement" (especially in the case of intangibles). The period is witness to an easing of pain through medication and psychotropic drugs -- to alleviate the unease leading to ever greater incidence of suicide..

There is a desperate quest for wholeness, wellness and wellbeing as an undifferentiated condition of integration -- but one that is undermined by processes enabling illness and being-ill (Juliet Michaelson, In Defence of Wellbeing, Open Democracy, 21 May 2015). In terms of intangibles this may be challenged as the quest for happiness for commercial purposes (William Davies, The Happiness Industry: how the government and big business sold us well-being, 2015). There is however little recognition of the "sadness industry", represented by emotional blackmail in funding appeals and disaster tourism. The point is well-made by James Hillman and Michael Ventura (We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy -- And the World's Getting Worse, 1992).

Missing is any systemic framework through which the variety of eases and diseases can be fruitfully interrelated, notably in terms of the transitions between them. A relevant metaphor is the traditional board game of snakes and ladders, through which transition from forms of empowerment to those of disempowerment (or vice versa) can be understood in dynamic terms. It has evoked mathematical analysis as an absorbing Markov chain.

As noted by Wikipedia, that game is a central metaphor of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981). The narrator describes the game as follows:

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you hope to climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother.

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