Preamble 11: “A Temporary Medicine”

The following chapter is part of the Introduction to Pedagogy Left in Peace (Jardine, 2012). In it, I attempted to crystallize what can be called an iatrogenic loop. Glance back to Preamble and Chapter 10 where Friedrich Nietzsche’s “will to power” is discussed, because this describes, in a way, the great delusion of iatrogenesis, that the grasping for permanence causes the feeling of resistance (and subsequent hardening and reification) and the feeling of resistance causes us to grip more and feel more resistance to that grasping. This provides a great analogue to Buddhist thoughts on grasping for permanence, the resultant reifications that occur, the attachments that then come, and the regimes of hostility and war-footing that ensue.