Where’s my habitat?
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In each weekly issue, Sports Illustrated runs a clip called “This week’s sign of the apocalypse.” It’s usually some outrageous gem of stupidity or incompetence, a sporting equivalent of the Darwin Awards. Of course, there’s plenty of material to choose from in today’s world, particularly in the world of “health and fitness.” For this week’s sign of the apocalypse, I nominate Newsweek’s July 28 issue, “The Science of Healthy Living.”
You’ll recognize the issue straight away on the news stand: plastic see-through bodies, entirely without background, context or life support. The cover imagery is ickky enough as it is, but it’s the content, or lack of content I should say, that really tells the story. The main feature, “Keys to a Healthy Life,” is pure boilerplate, a photocopied version of the techno-pharmaceutical model that permeates the world of modern medical “care.” According to Newsweek, the “keys to health” turn out to be tests and screening. It’s all about uncovering incipient disease and channeling people into the care of an expert class for control and treatment. Aside from recommendations that children brush and floss their teeth, there’s almost nothing on lifestyle, behavior or relationship on any level. If people would just submit to full-body scans on a regular basis, they would be “healthy.”
The exercise recommendation is spectacularly uninspiring: A pathetically bored doctor from Harvard Medical School writes of his treadmill-and-TV workout, as if this were some sort of solution to our physical malaise. Apparently, this is as much as he expects from his mind-body and its encounter with the world; just grind out the mileage and hope that the TV will distract you from the unpleasantness of a body in motion.
But the real story in this feature was complete and total absence of reference to earth, land and habitat. Not one word about the living world. Not one word about exposure to the elements. Not one word about forming a relationship with the land that gives life to the body. Not one word about community, tribe or human contact. These things, apparently, are too far removed from the anatomy chart to be taken seriously. According to Newsweek, the body can and should remain in a laboratory where it can be measured, tweaked and manipulated. Then, if we can repair its malfunctions, we can declare it “healthy.”
Newsweek’s take on health and the body is clearly pathological, even insane. No body can live in isolation. No animal can thrive without a life support system. Remove an organism from its grounding habitat–even symbolically, metaphorically and intellectually–and it will begin to feel unease, anxiety and ultimately, disease. The proof is only a few pages away from Newsweek’s feature story itself: on page 36 we read about “Death on Our Shores,” the continuing creepy saga about the black hole at the bottom of the ocean.
So the question we must put to ourselves and the editors at Newsweek: How does your body feel when you hear about the devastation in the Gulf and other threats to the biosphere? If you’ve got a pulse and even a modest sense of context, you just might feel it deep down in your gut, in your mind and in your tissue. You can bet that you’ll experience changes in your biochemistry, your neuroendocrine profile and your serotonin system. Your plastic brain will change the way it manages your body. Your disposition and attitude will change too, with ripple effects that cascade to the most remote outposts of your body.
This is not some sort of mystical, hippie-quantum physiology. This is a real cause-and-effect process that is backed up by hard-ass, evidence-based research. Mind, body, land and health are intimately connected. You can pretend that mind is separate from body or that body is separate from habitat, but if you do, you’ll perpetuate a dangerous falsehood that is profoundly health-negative.
Newsweek has perpetrated a work of spectacular ignorance. The time has come to acknowledge the earth-body connection. The time has come to integrate ourselves back into the fabric of the land. We are of the land. This is where our health begins.
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{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Right on Frank! It’s time to refute the “isolate, dissect & conquer” mentality that has alienated us so from our natural bodies and exuberance. More joyful celebration, dancing & drumming around the campfire!
bravo frank, well written.!!!! thank you for speaking truth although it feels like trying to wake the dead. still, after spending time with Mike Dodge truely getting back in touch with our Mother Earth and my own body i am happy to report there is nothing dead about me or unhealthy. whewhoo!!!!
Yoish! Well said Professor! The time is now to step out and come to our senses. Follow the naked soles, cultivate a practice in the animal movement arts. Step away from the pathetic habit of denial and get a grip on the moment, feel your way out of the self imposed denial and start dancing the land, or do nothing but sit in your pathetic greed and whimper away your life in arrogance.
Any one who reads what Frank has written here, i ask you to pass it around and to take off your shoes and touch a earth spot, grip into the ground with your naked soles, get a grip on the moment and move your ass and remember the gift of our primal heritage.
No one needs to wake up. We are all a wake. It is time to make things right!!
Profound message, beautifully expressed. Humanity’s fundamental disconnection from the living planet of which we are a part is at the root of virtually all the crises that we’re facing–including environmental, social, interpersonal, and personal.
My husband Dave, who was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer two years ago and had a massive tumor removed at that time, was told by his oncologist that with massive chemotherapy treatment he had about a 75% chance of the cancer returning in two years. Dave eschewed the treatment and instead changed lifestyle habits (including diet–less meat, more fresh organic fruits and veggies, almost no prepared foods, huge reduction in sugar, switching from lots of coffee to lots of green tea, adding a range of supplements–and adding regular outdoor exercise into his busy schedule). Yesterday his oncologist told him after his yearly screening that there is no sign of cancer–yet the doctor did not ask one question about what Dave has been doing that may have been a factor in his healing. Mind-boggling to me! But a recent personal illustration of the insanity of our disease-care system that you describe so well.
Thank you again for a fantastic post. I’ll be sharing it with others.
“The main feature, “Keys to a Healthy Life,” is pure boilerplate …”
Well, there you go. “Boilerplate” is easy to do, specially for journalists who may well lack any real expertise in the area.
Actually, I wonder about “The Science of Healthy Living”. There’s science involved, but living “healthily” may be an art. Maintaining good relations with those around you is important from a health point of view if you don’t want an ulcer or depression (not that that’s why we do it) — and that’s certainly an art. No one could give you a set of rules for getting on with people; and if they did you’d be stuck wondering which rule to apply when. And disciplines like Tai Chi are certainly arts.
I think being a “hippie” was mostly about hedonism — and the post-war wealth and security that facilitated that. I don’t know about “mystical”, but I think the kind of attitude you’re pointing to may be incipiently “religious” at some level and in some meaning of that difficult word. It’s certainly interesting that, as this year’s Gifford lecturer points out, our (largely post-religious) modern societies have few qualms about defiling either the “natural” landscape or the built environment. One could argue that earlier societies simply lacked the technological power to do much damage to their surroundings, but add in the strange phenomenon of spectacularly ugly (and arrogant) buildings and there would seem to more than that going on. Lecture 5 “The Face of The Earth” has some interesting interpretations:
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/gifford/2010/listen/
Of course, the most famous Gifford lecturer was William James. Now there’s an extraordinary genius, but also a somewhat unfashionable and forgotten figure. The centenary of James’s death is passing with barely a notice. I hear even his own university seems not to have noticed.
Thanks… totally agree… when connected with the earth the body self heals and restores its most natural healthy state… and it is free… unfortunantly, we now live in a consumer based economy in which ill health and related symptomatic and palative care have become essential to maintain our current artificial economy… a doctor once told me that everytime a new patient walks through his door its worth about $10k… to him… ther is no money in my telling them to take off thier shoes and get well for free… take a look at the advertisers that support Newsweek… need say no more… except “connect to the earth and heal” and share results with your friends…
Wonderful post.
Nice piece of writing. Mind, Body, Earth, all connected…. I love it.
Great rebuttal Frank!
Did you send this to Newseek? You should. I could forward it too… load up their email boxes… or send it to their rival Time.
Bravo Frank – a great reminder of what health really is (and isn’t).
It’s interesting how Newsweek has chosen to use the word “Science.” Like so many, they seem to equate science with high-technology.
Science is a process, not an outcome. True, science works to isolate variables in order to understand them – but ultimately it seeks to understand how the whole puzzle fits together. Because “health” is a system, not an end-state, we would benefit from looking at it from a systems perspective. Where are the reinforcing loops? the balancing loops? What are the stocks and flows?
We don’t need to understand every variable to know that when people engage with their environment, they become healthier and happier, which in turn helps protect and preserve the environment, which makes more people healthier, etc… It’s the same with food – we can go nuts over the latest “nutrient-de-jour” and waste billions on ineffective pills, or follow the age-old advice of “eat your vegetables” and thrive.
Yes, good idea. I sent it along.
If others want to send it as well, here’s the email: Letters@newsweek.com
Yes!! Frank, you are so right! I can’t wait to share this.
Thank you for articulating so beautifully the message we are all striving to spread and so unforgivingly pointing out the problems with the status quo. This week I am launching a new business venture (title inspired by a conversation you and I had at the EA Jam in Baltimore!) and this article was a GREAT reminder of how important the work we all do is and how excited I am to get out and make a difference.
As a health writer for thirty years, it seems pretty clear to me that health really isn’t in the interest of the contemporary medical system. It thrives on disease! No curing it, mind you. But managing it. That’s where the money is. Not in prevention. I wrote some time ago about the pharmaceutical industry drooling over the prospects of selling blood sugar control medication for decades to growing numbers of kids diagnosed with diabetes type 2, a virtually totally preventable disease. Today, a fifth of the American GNP is represented by what is comically called “healthcare.” That speaks volumes for the health of our nation and economy. Frank Forencich is right on the mark with his remarks. Getting healthy and staying healthy is really simple. Eat food that you can recognize as food. Drink plenty of good water. Get adequate physical activity. Get sunlight. Find ways to stay happy. And, as I learned from Clint Ober, who has commented above, connect to the Earth and heal. The Earth has amazing natural healing electric energy on the surface. Go barefoot! Experience it. Or sleep, work, or relax indoors while connected to conductive devices that bring the Earth’s energy into your office and home. Connect to the Earth and heal. It is all so simple, so natural. Our lifestyle has taken us away from nature and health. We need to get back to Nature instead of screening and tests.
I feel the current messages from the staus quo are the outcroppings of an unhealthy immature EGO, which is pervassive in the BIG Government/BUSINNESSES/$$$ world of today. The underdeveloped EGO and the mind viruses that it perpetuates is ALL consuming and will never be satisfied. It prefers to focus on things away from itself, this way it can continue to exsist as is. Rather than looking deeply within, examining, and mastering oneself; fulfilling our own unmet needs with a living philosophy of self-responsiblity, stewardship, and contribution. Instead in many cases we are offered with THINGS to fill the void and to FIX the symptoms. This is like throwing a new toy at a toddler, just in order to pacify it. After awhile of this, next thing you know, you have a room filled with discarded toys on the floor, which the toddler is bored with. In the meantime we are strip mining the earth of its materials to make more stuff, so as to make more $$$, and to maintain the veil of illusion and amusement. Much of humanity is trapped within the emotional development of an adolescent. The question is, when will we awake to the drunkeness of ourselves and begin to have healthy realtionships with self, others, and the things that provide the ground substance of LIFE including ours? Perhaps then we will find the balance, the middle way to the wisdom of our past, the elemental ground substances of LIFE and the current age of modern CIVILization. If not like the tail consuming snake, we will eventually consume ourselves with our WANTS at odds with our NEEDS, and perhaps ALL of LIFE beyond the ALL-Consuming SELF.
I will close with a letter from Rachel Carson the author of, “Silent Spring.”
“I believe that natural beauty has a necessary place in the development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we destroy beauty, whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of this Earth, we’ve retarded some part of man’s spiritual growth. In contemplating the exceeding beauty of this Earth, I have found calmness and courage. For there is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, in the ebb and flow of tides, in the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature. The assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself in his cities of steel and concrete, away from the realities of earth, water, the growing seed. And intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into experiments toward the destruction of himself and his world. There is certainly no single remedy for this condition. And I can offer no panacea. But it seems reasonable to believe, and I do believe, that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and the realities of this universe about us, the less taste we shall have for its destruction.”
- Rachel Carson author of, “Silent Spring.”
Greetings, Frank,
Thanks for stepping out of the root-bound flower pots whose plants passively wait on somebody else to fertilize and water them. Those whose habits keep them in shoes and indoors will forever depend on science and some middle man to interpret and treat their sadly insular lifestyles. We, each of us, is at the center of our own health and healing. Life does not let go of us; we let go life. As a consequence, we pay a heavy toll in doctor bills, prescription drugs and a way of life circumscribed by limiting debility and pain.
You know, first hand, the exuberance of the body as it explores movement and form, the touch of bare soles to the land, the exquisite flavor of fresh strawberries shared the morning after a solstice fire that brings body, mind, spirit, ancestral roots and tribe all together in life-giving and life-sustaining remembrance of what in all the world truly “makes sense.”
“Movement & habit are formed in habitat,” a useful mantra to recall as I step out of my shoes and sedentary ways to engage the elemental earth, water, fire, wind, sound, vision and full-bodied neuro-muscular membrane to strengthen and tone my body for the gypsy wagon journey I’m making for SingPeace! Earth Pilgrimage for Peace & Global Harmony. Old age is a myth perpetuated by an industry that makes its millions from our blind belief in it. This 70-year-old grandmother continues to thrive with the Exuberant Animal play and Earth Gym practices offered by Barefoot Sensei, Mick Dodge.
This weekend, we come together on shorelines around the world to take “Hands Across the Sand,” a movement for clean, renewable energy that has gained momentum since the BP oil spill in the Gulf. How easy it was to deny the signs of our collective alienation and greed until the Earth started spewing her own life blood. This hemorrhage will take more than a band-aid. It will alter all life, for all time, everywhere.
Dr. Masaru Emoto, who has studied the positive and negative effects of words in water, offers this healing prayer: “I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, plankton, coral, algae, and all living creatures…I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. ”
It’s given to each of us to become a source of renewable energy by cultivating a rapport with habitat – the surrounding land and water. This rapport is as near as the breath, as near as touching our bare feet to the sand. For the ocean, the Earth and all living creatures, I carry a version of Dr. Emoto’s prayer in my soles as I foot the land and join hands across the sand.
Yes! It’s a choice we all make — to open our soles and touch in to the land, water, wind, sun — and let ourselves be touched. Each of us contributes to re-shaping the culture, our choices matter. We make an impression — starting with the soft footprints on the land.
We develop a personal practice with the land day by night by day.
One way we can contribute to shifting the culture is to shift from “mind-body” etc. to “Body-mind-land-etc.
There is no doctor in our DNA – however we do have an amazing capacity for self- healing. As homo sapiens we have evolved little but as a species we have an amazing ability to adapt to an enormous variety of environments. This worked well until just a couple hundred years ago – with the invention and proliferation of the light bulb we began an ernest and very “successful” effort to adapt the environment to US. This has offered many conveniences but comes with a substantial and hidden cost to our selfness. We are now much like zoo animals in our own “optimized environments”. Children and teens want nothing more than to shut themselves in their rooms at “command modules”. We have an extraordinary ability to read nuance and expression within our social environment. – I feel like a face to face person stuck in a facebook to facebook world.
LET’S ALL GO BAREFOOT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. ITS VERY HEALTHY.
AN ARCH SUPPORT IN A SHOE IS LIKE REMOVING ALL THE SPRINGS AND SHOCKS FROM YOUR CAR AND DRIVING ON THE STEEL RIMS. NATURE GAVE US THAT ARCH FOR A GOOD REASON. MICK IS THE BEST TEACHER I KNOW OF. PAY ATTENTION PLEASE. BE OUTDOORS AND BREATH FRESH CLEAN AIR.
Wow! Direct and too the point. Take your shoes off and walk about. Get in touch with your earth. Thank you so much, you can write for me anytime!
For NEWSWEEK, a sign of the Apocalypse occurred early last month when the Washington Post Co. announced that the magazine was being put on the auction block.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/05/washington-post-co-to-sell-newsweek.html
It’s been over forty years since I last looked at a copy of NEWSWEEK so I can’t comment on the decline, if any, in the quality of its reportage. It seemed like glossy rubbish printed on slick paper then, and apparently that hasn’t changed.
What may have changed, however, is the quality of the magazine’s potential readership. Perhaps as a society we’ve become more discerning in choosing our sources of information, and the fall-off in subscription rates merely reflects a general and growing ability to recognize propaganda for what it is.
The very design of the cover for the June 28 issue says it all.
Frank aptly commented on the vacuity of the pictorial image – two plastic humanoids floating in empty space. Adam and Eve in the World of Tomorrow?
As ridiculous as this graphic is, my attention was drawn to the typography – both the choice of words and the way they were presented.
THE SCIENCE OF HEALTY LIVING.
Overall color scheme: red, white and blue; “SCIENCE” in red, matching the magazine’s logo.
Typeface: “SCIENCE” in smaller type, drawing attention by contrast.
Content: raises the concept of “science” to a theological level while using patriotic colors to promote unquestioning acceptance of the philosophical premise that “science” and “health” are intrinsically linked.
The relationship between healing and belief has long been established. The
witchdoctor’s success rate always depends on the credulity of the patient. Panaceas work precisely to the extent that we are able to suspend our disbelief.
If we are willing to believe that science can cure us of our ills, then maybe to some degree it will. But at what cost to our health, and, just as importantly, our wealth?
If science is to be the new religion with technologists as its priesthood , we might as well go back to rattles and feathers and magical incantations. It probably would be just as effective, and certainly a whole lot cheaper.
I so whole-heartedly agree, Frank! You do an excellent job of pointing out the absurdities of what many consider ‘normal,’ factual science and protocol — that this (meaning this view of a mind/body split and protocol of getting ‘screenings’ to let us know if we’re healthy and as a way of defining how to stay healthy) is just the way it is — it’s part of the trance/spell Mick speaks of. Being in relationship, play, and exploration through movement, our senses, our habitat, land and tribe is the web of our life and feeds our life and creates and maintains our health. Thanks for saying this so well! And thank you for tying in how the disaster in the gulf is intimately related to our interconnected health on a cellular level.
I’ve recently been reminding people of your motto – “Play as if your life depends on it…because it does!”
Well said, Frank! How do we do this, though?
The oil spill in the Gulf is at least in part a result of our society’s (societies’) addictive use of oil…we can’t separate the drillers from the people for whom they are drilling.
People are so distracted from anything real (habitat)…what will bring them back to awareness? How does one engender awareness?
Science is a process of thought that relies on separating things. It takes dynamic systems and “analyzes” them – breaks them down into “constituent parts” – which is a fallacy. Once you’ve killed and dissected a dog, where is the dog? It isn’t there anymore…a bunch of “parts” are.
We extend this tendency (or habit, whatever it is) into philosophical, religious, economic, and political thinking…
That is, it always comes down to – “This piece is wrong/bad, we must fix it.”
Thus, from the get-go, we’re off on the wrong foot. If we interfered, and that’s what “broke” it, how can we “fix” it by interfering again?
Better to stop doing.
But who’s going to accept that?
Yoish!
Well Josh, to answer your question. How do we do this? But who’s going to accept that? I will. I do it by maki.ng the effort to step out of separation, the insulation, aleination and follow my soles in order to figure out how to “make sense”. I pay attention, and learn the true meaning of self-acceptance. In short i focus on on being self-centered. It is part of the path in reconnecting to the senses. For i have found while grounding my soles into last of the wild places i am able to connect to center, not the modern cities view of being self-centered. But a center that reminds me i am part of this earth. And i have screwed it up, participated and walked with denial about my actions. I accept this addiction, face it with both my soles. I also face i have a natural guide in me that leads me to health. I join with others in crafting and cultivating the artful life, the mindful life. We have all felt the lost. We have been sad and mad. We are all awake. We know what is right and we know what is wrong. It is now time to do the walk, step out and take the talk with you, feel your habitat, and change habits.
To stand outside the drama shadow, bear witness to it, and then ignite your soles into the land and bring in the force of exuberance to release our creativity as a animal of this planet, born here, moving here, feeding, drinking, sounding, seeing and acceptance of the touch, allow it to teach.
I will do this Josh, for one driving reason. It feels good and requires my full attention.
mick
Thanks for telling it like it is Frank! Mick Dodge and the barefooted earth connected Naked Sole practices he outfits & transmits are profound and just the medicine we all need NOW to remedy our deadly disconnect with ourselves, the land and all beings. Hope YOU can join the movement out of shoes and onto the land with us. I have been dancing on, with, through the landscape every day for 17 months now (www.dailydance.net); and it has been an amazing practice to bare and share the soul with all beings…However, many of those days I was still separated from full sole interconnection by the sheath of shoe….Thanks to Mick’s guidance, I stopped wearing shoes cold turkey just before this summer solstice’s foot camp and am loving every minute of it (even in the city and on gravel driveways :-( ouch!). Awareness and openness, concentration and truth in action have increased many fold ….not to mention the joy and FUN of it! So simple.
Profound news, beautiful performance. The basic human disconnect the life of the planet, we have a part in almost all of the root of crisis, we facing – to environmental, social, interpersonal relationships, and personal.
thank you for you share
Frank:
I think this disconnect between environment and health is a pervasive theme, especially in the medical field and in government. Typically, when people find a problem insurmountable, it gets ignored. There is also, due to fear of uncertainty, an obsession with numbers and direct measurement. We take the one factor that seems the easiest to measure and program around it.
This is no more evident than in how we have treated the poorly named “childhood obesity epidemic”. We take calories burned, number of steps taken, and BMI. Then we call ourselves a success if we change those three parameters. We do this as if the quality of movement, enjoyment of movement, movement on different types of terrain, the variety of movement has no bearing on the development of the nervous system.
We then assume that if you make someone do something out of fear, then they will continue doing it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As soon as the fear stimulus is removed, the initial behavior is resumed, because there is no spriritual connection with the “desired” behavior. Therefore, as I have told groups across this country, the most important thing about “fitness”, which is a side effect, is the connection to movement. There is no surer way to do that than to foster a connection with the variety and beauty of nature, and the variety and beauty of engaging in play with other humans and animals.
We cannot continue to ignore the tons of research supporting the positive effects of nature, play, and social interaction. We can no longer ignore the fact that the three are synergistic in their effect. Newsweek, I am dissapointed. This is lazy, tired journalism. You could have made a difference, and instead you chose to make a sameness.
Great language brother!
“You could have made a difference, and instead you chose to make a sameness.”
I love this!
Frank
EA Community,
Beyond the individual person that provides each cell within the body of humanity, there is the greater body of the bio-sphere that supports all life as we now know it. To the degree we relate to this, and take responsibility for ourselves; beyond the Bread & Circuses influences of modern culture that of governments, corporations, dominionists, and end-time believers who have woven a veil of deception; is to the degree that we will remained imprisoned, with a myth that we have to destroy ourselves in order to be saved from ourselves.
I offer the following food for thought. The below attached link may offer a glimpse of the magnitude we have created and are facing. Things of life follow a bell curve, as you might notice the population of our species is still within he positive side of the curve. How close to the tipping point and collapse of this bell curve, is a big and still unknown answer to most.
We’re past the tipping point, we’ve been on borrowed time since the 1950s with the green revolution that allowed for a sharp increase in population growth. This is not sustainable, eventually there will be consequences more obvious to us then we will like.
http://forum.maripo.com/images/WorldPopulation.jpg
As far as solutions, I believe it will take a paradigm shift. As Einstein said, “We can’t use the same thinking to solve a problem, which was used to create it.” As the human world population continues to grow exponentially, it will become more and more critical that we replace outdated thinking for creative problem oriented solutions. These solutions need to be realized now, for we are running out of time. If not the consequences will be a self-fulling prophecy that will be nothing short of revealing.
A number of possibilities exist within infinity, although the finite human EGO is limited. Perhaps for starters;
1. We could sit still in silence and meditate and take council with our heart and soul rather than the ideas of division from our EGO minds.
2. Develop past our adolescence before having more children in addition to ourselves. Just because someone is 18 y/o a legal adult does not necessarily qualify them as so psychologically speaking. The majority of humanity is arrested within their adolescence still, children are essentially having children. More of the same equals more of the same.
3. Have a dream bigger than ourselves beyond the want of success of careers, titles, positions, income, dominion, and things. Let go of our love for power, and embrace the power of love, which is synonymous with life the absolute.
4. Distinguish between wants and needs and live accordingly.
5. Love and care for yourself, others, and the other things of life that you are interdependent upon.
6. Condition yourself to think deeply beyond the confines of the status quo of culture, government, academia, and corporations.
7. Practice a life of mindfulness, love and compassion.
8. Avoid indifference/apathy, doing something is better than nothing at all.
9. Do the best that you can based on what you currently know, we are imperfect beings within a perfect universe. Love the best you can.
10. Let go of fear and embrace love, including the fear of death. The only certainty is uncertainty. Realize that all things have a lifespan, including species that include us. The end of one thing/journey is a beginning of another. 1 X 0 = 0
Correction: is to the degree that we will free ourselves from the prison of the myth that we have to destroy ourselves in order to be saved from ourselves.
http://foulweather.blogspot.com/2010/05/skunked.html
I liked this blog post Frank and it seems to fit …….Medicine is supposed to run along bio psych social lines but largely the latter gets forgotton about ……….Interacting complex feedforward/feedback loops are how we seem to function but not how medicine and much of society seems to think we work.
Techno medicine is a reflection of the society it serves . Health is a commercial product and so it goes without saying that selling scans to show every ‘defect’ has got to be a good thing (for those selling the product )–this kind of thing also creates an ever expanding pool of worried people –perfect market for more of the same!