Month: August 2016

Top oncologist says gratitude pays off

In an interview for the Oldie magazine, oncologist Prof. Karol Sikora has recommended being as nice as possible to those that treat your health conditions. “If someone is particularly helpful be appreciative – everybody likes positive feedback,” he told John Sutherland. Sikora is promoting his new book The Street-wise Patient’s Guide to Surviving Cancer in which he advises patients to charm their doctors if they hope to persuade them that they are worth ruinously expensive cancer drugs. NHS staff are “dedicated and remarkably caring”, he said, “and they naturally respond well to pleasant patients.” His advice,though to “tell someone they have a lovely smile,” might come across as a bit obsequious though, not to mention downright creepy in some situations.

Beginning to map key theorists

Happiness is an A3 page and a sharpie. I have made a start on mapping various theorists I’m reading against disciplinary areas. Two distinct camps are emerging: those that look at gratitude as a form of capital (the Maussian ‘gift’ literature, Bourdieu) and those that see moral generosity as a refusal of reciprocity (Levinas, and to some extent Bakhtin). The first camp sees gratitude as a form of accrual and the second a form of sacrifice. The ‘accrual’ camp as being quite cynical about gratitude: it is characterised as self-interested (although not always consciously). In contrast, those that view generosity as a form of moral perfectionism for which the recipient need not enact gratitude are very idealistic.