Wednesday, April 11, 2018

"A Hierarchy of Needs for People With Diabetes"

Earlier today, I posted a tweet in response to an Eli Lilly tweet that mentioned equity and fairness.








Laura Marston suggested an amazing idea for a cool advocacy graphic, based on that tweet.




So...I went ahead and made one, with some input from @iamsqueeisback and others :-)








 This image is adapted from FireflySixtySeven's original .svg creation for Wikipedia, depicting Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. (Thank you, Psychology 101 🤓😎.) That image was shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license, which means that I can share and adapt the image, as long as I give appropriate credit, indicate whether changes have been made, and release the image under the same license as the original. Done, done, and done ;-)

Get in touch with me by Twitter or blog comments (I should get an email notification for those, but I don't think that anyone has left a comment here, yet) if you want the .png file, or my .svg file.


[Update: 6/22/2018]
I was very gratified when Renza informed me that this image was being used at the 78th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association in Orlando. I thought that was so cool!! 🤓

Thanks also to Amy Tenderich for using it with attribution.



[Update: 3/20/2019]

It has come to my attention via Twitter that another hierarchy of needs for diabetes was previously created in 2013 (full paper here).

 

 I truly appreciate the friends (Melinda Wedding in particular) who stood up against possible plagiarism on my behalf. Thank you! 💙
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Monday, April 2, 2018

On pens and power

Everyone knows that "the pen is mightier than the sword." This is, however, not true...or at least not the whole truth.

The difference between the sword and the pen is not quantitative (the amount of power of each); it is qualitative (the type of power). Pens may grant us power, but that is not what they're about. "The pen is mightier than the sword" implies that the only advantage that pens give us is increased strength, when really, the pen (and writing) gives us so much more. I remember childhood discussions about this phrase, in which we concluded that the greater strength of the pen was contained within judicial death sentences (and whatever a "license to kill" might look like), but that is not the strength of the pen. A more sophisticated view of the greater strength of the pen highlights the pen's utility in written arguments; changing minds, crushing opponents. And this, too, is not quite right.

The "strength" of the pen is not its value as a combative weapon -- to kill, or to crush your opponents in a debate. While these qualities certainly lie, latent, within the Bic ballpoint on your desk, these are not the greatest features that it has. The pen, to me, is about expression -- poetry, describing a sunset, emotion. Novels, fiction and non-fic, big ideas. These things are on an entirely different axis than the "might" of arms, and considering only the relative strength or weakness of various tools available to us can blind us, tragically, to the greater number of better uses for the humble pen.

A pencil sketch of a graph with x, y, and z axes. The y-axis stretches from "weak to strong," the x-axis from "less expressive" to "more expressive," and the z-axis is labeled "Other qualities?"

I think that this misconception about pens and power is related to society's approach to strength in general. I think we all, individually and as a society, focus far too much on strength. But this wider discussion is, perhaps, a topic for another day.
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