Today's Wisdom - Mental Illusions, Modern Power and Ancient Courage

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Most people have heard of the placebo effect and the idea that believing a treatment will help you can actually make you feel better. The nocebo effect is its darker twin. It happens when negative expectations cause real, measurable harm, even when nothing physically dangerous has been administered. In controlled trials, patients who are warned about side effects routinely experience them at far higher rates, even when they’re given inert sugar pills. It was discovered in 1784 when Franz Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician in a lilac taffeta robe, convinced much of Paris that he could cure disease by manipulating "animal magnetism," an invisible fluid pervading the universe. In low-lit rooms thick with incense, his patients convulsed, fainted, and reported miraculous cures. King Louis XVI appointed a Royal Commission led by Benjamin Franklin (yes the Founding Father himself) to investigate. The commission concluded that the effects were purely psychosomatic and caused by the patients' imaginations, excitement, and suggestion. It provided the first scientific basis for what we now call the placebo and nocebo effects.

The nocebo effect works because the brain is not a passive observer of the body; it is an active predictor. When we expect pain, nausea, or fatigue, the brain releases stress hormones like cortisol and cholecystokinin, heightening pain perception and triggering real physiological changes. This is why people who believe they’re allergic to Wi-Fi develop headaches near routers, or why patients warned about “statin muscle pain” often experience it before the drug has even reached therapeutic levels. In depression trials, nearly one in twenty patients receiving placebo dropped out due to adverse events. Brain imaging shows nocebo-induced pain activates the same neural pathways as pain from physical injury. The symptoms aren’t imagined as expectation literally rewires sensation.

The implications are unsettling. Medical consent forms, sensational health headlines, and even doomscrolling can quietly make us sicker. During clinical trials, nocebo effects account for up to 60% of reported side effects, leading many participants to drop out of life-saving treatments. Doctors now face a paradox: ethically, they must inform patients of risks, but psychologically, doing so can create those risks. The nocebo effect is a reminder that the mind is not just along for the ride — it is gripping the steering wheel. What we expect doesn’t just shape how we feel; it can determine what our bodies become.

In November 1975, French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt invited the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and Italy to a 14th-century French castle. The context was bleak: oil prices had quadrupled from $3 to over $12 per barrel after the 1973 OPEC embargo and unemployment was climbing toward 9% in the United States. At Rambouillet, the six leaders met in what they hoped would be an informal fireside chat, deliberately avoiding the rigid formality of NATO or UN gatherings. They had no official agenda, no expectation of annual repetition, and produced a 15-point Declaration of Rambouillet that committed them to promoting free trade and currency stability. Canada joined shortly after, and the European Union later gained a permanent seat. What began as a crisis-management dinner became one of the world’s most influential coordination mechanisms.

What makes the G7 effective is not its structure but its iterative persistence. Each member country takes the rotating presidency for one year, sets the agenda, and hosts the summit. The G7 rarely solves problems in one meeting. Instead, it plants seeds and returns to them year after year until they bear fruit. The most striking example took eight iterations over 17 years to resolve. The 1988 "Toronto terms" secured by Canada's Brian Mulroney were aimed at stabilizing poor countries' economies by freeing up capital previously used for debt service to be invested in crucial domestic development. It offered one-third debt relief to the developing countries, which the UK pushed to 50% with the "Trinidad terms" in 1991. France raised it to 80% at Lyon in 1996, and Germany finally endorsed 100% cancellation of government debt at Cologne in 1999. Even then, institutional debt to the IMF and World Bank remained. At the 2005 Gleneagles Summit, Tony Blair secured full cancellation of $40 billion in debt owed by 18 countries to all three institutions. By 2013, the initiative had delivered over $22 billion in total relief and increased annual aid to Africa by $7 billion.

In 1985, the G7 demonstrated its raw power through the Plaza Accord, one of the most consequential acts of economic coordination in modern history. At the time, the U.S. dollar had surged to unsustainable levels, strangling American exporters and ballooning the trade deficit. In response, finance ministers from the G7 met quietly at New York’s Plaza Hotel and agreed on something extraordinary: they would jointly sell dollars on global markets to force its value down. The intervention worked almost too well. Within two years, the dollar had fallen by roughly 40%, relieving pressure on U.S. industry. But the shockwaves were global. Japan’s yen soared, crushing its export-driven economy. To soften the blow, Japanese policymakers unleashed aggressive monetary stimulus, inflating a colossal asset bubble that burst in 1989 and dragged the country into decades of stagnation. The irony is sharp: an action once hailed as masterful cooperation is now condemned by the same countries as “currency manipulation,” officially off-limits under today’s G7 norms. That tension captures the group’s essence. The G7 is not a world government, nor a permanent solution to global crises. It is a crisis committee of the powerful, capable of reshaping markets when aligned, but also of unleashing unintended consequences that last a generation.

At nine years old, Baldwin played with his friends on the grounds of the Archbishop of Tyre's church. After roughhousing one afternoon in 1170, his tutor William noticed something disturbing: the prince felt no pain when pinched or bitten on his right arm. The diagnosis came slowly because the implications were catastrophic. Leprosy was not merely a death sentence but a social one, condemning sufferers to isolation in leper colonies, shunned as unclean and excluded from religious life. Yet Baldwin was first in line to rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a city larger than any in Europe and the symbolic and literal center of the Christian world. When his father King Amalric died in 1174, the thirteen-year-old Baldwin was crowned anyway on July 15, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the First Crusade's capture of Jerusalem. Many assumed Baldwin’s reign would be short and ceremonial, a placeholder until stronger men took control. Instead, the sickly boy became one of the most formidable leaders of the Crusader era, ruling a fragile kingdom surrounded by enemies who expected him to fail.

By sixteen, Baldwin's leprosy was advancing visibly. His face and hands developed nodules, his right arm remained numb, and he had learned to fight left-handed from an Arab riding master. Yet on November 25, 1177, he achieved what would become his defining moment. Saladin had invaded from Egypt with an army estimated at 26,000 men, exploiting the fact that most Crusader forces were occupied in northern Syria. The logical move would have been to stay behind city walls and pray for reinforcements. But Baldwin refused to be a spectator to his kingdom’s fate. He gathered what troops he could and set out to meet Saladin head-on. A teenage king, his hands wrapped in bandages because he could no longer feel the reins of his horse. His face partly covered to hide the marks of his disease. Yet his eyes locked forward, his voice steady as he rallied his men. Baldwin rode south from Jerusalem with only 375 knights and issued an arrière-ban, a desperate royal decree summoning every able-bodied man in the kingdom. By the time he intercepted Saladin near Montgisard, he commanded roughly 500 knights and perhaps 2,500 to 4,000 infantry. Saladin, overconfident and believing the leper king would not pursue him, had allowed his army to spread across the countryside to forage. Outnumbered more than five to one and physically unable to fight for long due to numbness in his hands, the young boy ordered a surprise charge that shattered Saladin’s overconfident troops. The Christian attack pierced the center of their formation, and the Muslim army collapsed. Saladin barely escaped on a racing camel, returning to Egypt with only a tenth of his forces.

What made Baldwin remarkable was not the victory alone but his refusal to surrender to his disease. As his leprosy progressed, he went blind and lost the ability to walk or ride. By 1183, he was carried into battle on a litter. When his brother-in-law Guy of Lusignan refused to engage Saladin during the Siege of Kerak, Baldwin had himself carried to the castle on a stretcher to personally lift the siege, then stripped Guy of his regency and disinherited him. Baldwin IV died at twenty-three years old, and in 1187, two years after Baldwin's death, Saladin crushed the Crusader army at the Battle of Hattin and recaptured Jerusalem. The kingdom Baldwin had defended with his life collapsed almost immediately without him. What endures is the image of a boy who ruled a kingdom while his body disintegrated, who led armies from a litter, and who held back an empire until the moment he could no longer lift his head from the pillow.

Video below - Baldwin IV defies Saladin - Battle of Montgisard, 1177

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