Posts

If You Cannot Fall Asleep

Image
Most people know the feeling. You are exhausted. The day has been long and heavy. You lie down, close your eyes — and nothing happens. The mind keeps running. The minutes stretch. You check the time, which makes it worse. Half an hour passes, then an hour, and somewhere in the background a familiar thought begins to form: I am not going to sleep again tonight. For people living through war — in cities under missile threat, in temporary housing, in shelters, near the front — this experience is not occasional. It is the texture of every night. The body is tired but the nervous system refuses to stand down. Sirens , sounds, the habit of listening even while lying still, the weight of everything that happened and everything that might happen — all of it crowds into the hours that were supposed to belong to rest. This article is for anyone in that situation. It does not promise a cure. It offers a few concrete steps that can make the night slightly less of a battle. The twenty-minute rule...

"We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us"

Image
In 1970, the cartoonist Walt Kelly borrowed a phrase from an American naval commander and put it in the mouth of Pogo , a philosophical possum living in the Okefokee Swamp . The original line had celebrated victory over an external enemy. Kelly reversed it. The enemy, Pogo observed, was not out there. It was u Fifty years later, the phrase has found a new home. The dominant conversation about artificial intelligence is organized around fear of an external threat — a system that may outcompete, manipulate, displace, or ultimately endanger the species that created it. Nick Bostrom gave this fear rigorous philosophical form. Yuval Harari gave it cultural currency. Millions of thoughtful people now carry some version of it: that we have built something powerful and may not be able to control what it does to us. That fear is not irrational. The risks are real. But the frame is incomplete. It asks only one direction of question — what will AI do to us — and in doing so, it misses the dee...

Chronomedicine and the Primacy of Timing: Why When We Treat May Matter More Than How Much

Image
  Chronomedicine reframes a fundamental assumption in healthcare: that dose and drug selection alone determine therapeutic success. Instead, it suggests that timing—when an intervention enters the biological system—may be equally, and sometimes more, decisive. This perspective arises from recognizing that both human physiology and disease processes operate according to dynamic internal clocks . These clocks actively regulate metabolism, immunity, cardiovascular function, and behavior. When disease-specific rhythms interact with the host’s circadian cycles , clinical interventions are introduced into a constantly shifting system. In this moving landscape, timing determines whether treatment aligns with endogenous repair mechanisms or disrupts them. This principle can be understood through the analogy of a Health Economy . Just as the yield of an investment depends not only on the amount invested but also on the state of the market at the moment of transaction, the effectiveness of ...

Masks for the Medical Encounter: How Doctors, Patients, and Leaders Can Meet Without Wounding One Another

Image
  This book asks a simple, hard question: how can doctors, patients, and organizers meet one another in medicine without wounding one another and without letting the work of medicine lose? Starting from the story of one good but exhausted doctor, the book argues that the core problem is not only bad people or bad systems, but bad forms : the unexamined “ masks ” and roles that shape every encounter. It shows how consultations often hurt everyone involved, how victim–predator dynamics silently take over, and how the same people, on the same day, can live the same pressures very differently when they have more conscious forms of presence available. Masks here are not lies or theatrical tricks. They are deliberately chosen ways of being in the room — calm listener , firm guide, honest reporter, respectful questioner, frame‑holder, protector of dignity, inner archivist, and others — that protect both people and work. The book walks through three positions (doctor, patient, organizer)...

Continuous Collective Traumatic Stress Disorder: A New Concept from Ukraine for a World of Long Wars

Image
Current psychiatric classifications use the term   post‑traumatic stress disorder   ( PTSD ) to describe reactions to traumatic events. It is a useful, but historically “peaceful” concept: the event happened, it ended, and now we are dealing with the after‑effects. For countries living through prolonged war, this assumption does not hold. The traumatic event does not end. It continues, changes, returns in new forms, and affects not only individuals but entire societies. To describe this reality, we introduce the concept of   Continuous Collective Traumatic Stress Disorder . Today’s Ukraine is a real‑time example of such a state. Shelling, losses, displacement, economic instability, constant anxiety for loved ones, chronic fatigue, information overload, political and social tensions — this is not “one trauma,” but a persistent background. A person does not return from “the event” to a safe environment. They live in an environment where threat and uncertainty have become n...