I was listening to a programme on the radio at lunch time yesterday when there was a discussion on social evils. This was prompted by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation who are conducting a survey on social evils in order to direct their work over the next 10 years.

The first caller to the programme made a very good case for inequality in society being one of the major social evils.

The amount of inequality from it’s richest members to the poorest in society is correlated to many severe problem. In health, heart disease and cancer are both higher in countries with greater levels of inequality, along with other medical problems. Also related are increased levels of crime and drug abuse.

So, even though we are much better off in absolute terms than we were a century ago when Joseph Rowntree set up his trusts, our societies in the UK and the US have problems.

We are less healthy and have more crime and other issues than countries with less inequality. And this may well be getting worse: inequality has shown a striking increase in recent years.

Are there real benefits from buying organic food? At this point, I’m sceptical of the idea.

The first claim made is that organic food tastes better. However the few tests of this that I’ve seen reported  cast doubt on it. Is it actually true? The problem with answering this sort of question is the same as that posed by testing the efficacy of drugs in treating illnesses. If the person doing the tasting knows that the food is organic, it will influence their judgement when reporting the taste. So the only valid test is a blind one, and preferably a double blind one. This is where neither the person taking the test nor the person administering it knows which food being tasted is organic and which is not. Maybe such tests have been done, but I haven’t seen them reported.

The other main claim for organic food is that it is healthier. But even more so than the claims about taste,  this needs to be rigorously tested, and for the same reasons. We can’t rely on common sense to provide accurate answers.

So at the moment, I prefer not to pay the extra cost that the supermarkets add on for organic food. Especially as most of the charge goes onto their profits and very little to the farmers.

Of course, we all know that he is, so the question is this: Are Freud’s theories of psychology dead? Probably not, at least not yet. But they do seem to be becoming less influential. More scientifically based explanations for human behaviour are taking centre stage.

Looking back, I find it a liitle strange how large an influence Freud had, and how quickly he achieved it. I say this because I can’t see how he could have done the same in another area of study. Not without having real, repeatable proofs.

Perhaps it was because we are so intrigued by stories and his case studies were full of stories. But the theories he developed had no connection to testable reality. Essentially they too were stories, very good stories.

My health regime is very, very limited and really needs to be better. I exercise only sporadically. Sometimes I go for a few days or even a week at a time when I exercise every day, or nearly so. Then I stop and a little later I’ll start again. So each time I’m starting back at the lowest level.

On the good side, at least I’m still doing some workouts, however limited, and I haven’t given up altogether.

What I need to do is apply some behaviour modification techniques to the situation, just as I’ve done with my writing project. Which, by the way, is now up to seven weeks in duration of writing on an almost daily basis. None of my previous efforts have lasted so long.