Touchy Subjects

The Consequences of Zombification // Our Health Suffers

It should be surprising that the way we understand reality itself can be disputed. I happen to think that there is a universally accepted account of reality, one articulated and promoted by Socrates and adopted by intellectual and practical leaders since.  My argument is with this generally accepted account. I think it has overwhelming problems both theoretically and for practical purposes. There are, of course, reasons why deep thinkers have adopted the view pushed by Socrates. Those reasons have to do with the advantages to the powerful that Socrates account of our ends and means, as well as his Mission Statement’s enabling clause, the account of reason as a matter of logical argument.

There are several attacks on the Socratic position. One of them is the argument that if we follow Socrates we will be taking the side of the Antichrist against God. I find this argument the most surprising and interesting argument made by the Teacher, who we should understand as the great antagonist to Socratic philosophy. Another argument made by the Teacher has to do with the consequences of any general adoption of the Socratic view. According to the Teacher, adoption of the Socratic view would inevitably lead to the self destruction of anyone so committed and the destruction of everyone and everything loved by them. The Teacher used the word “apocalypse” and the “apocalyptic” to make this argument.

My argument has been that another way to understand the Socratic view is to see that it makes us understand ourselves as zombies. I call the adoption of Socratic principles “zombification.”  That is, adopting Socratic principles makes us zombies, will-less creatures driven by our insatiable hungers or the commands of our voodoo masters. The problem with zombies and people who think of themselves as zombies is that they cannot take care of their health. They cannot understand how to protect themselves because of the confusions created by our perverted understanding of our lives and what, on Socrates’ view, is important in our lives.

Whereas Socrates claims our goal must be to survive, he promotes a strategy involving the use of force and its cognates which makes looking after our health impossible.

One example of this has to do with the problems people have with diabetes mellitus. There is the question whether a diabetic’s diet causes their problems and if so, whether a change in diet might cure it. In the following article the writers claim that a vegetarian diet can cure many diabetics problem. There are others who dispute this claim saying that meat and dairy products need not be avoided in a diabetic diet.

The question I have is about why there has not been definitive research done on this question which would answer this question.  The influence of the meat and dairy producers may have put pressure on  the government to not fund research which could help us understand this issue.One can remember that the tobacco industry put pressure on government to never fund research on the health concerns of  smoking tobacco.

So, what is the argument here about diabetics and their diets? Can the dispute about what to do about this disease be resolved by some simple scientific study?  Or,  will people continue to suffer from this disease, even if there is a n adequate understanding of what causes and cures it, because powerful interests make money doing things that, unfortunately, lead to the endangerment and sickening of millions of people?

So, what do they say?

There Is a Way to Help Avoid Heart Disease and Diabetes: You Are What You Eat!

By Kathy Freston, AlterNet. Posted October 31, 2009.

A plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health.

 

"If the truth be known coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never, ever exist and if it does exist it need never, ever progress."

So says Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who was a researcher and clinician at the Cleveland Clinic for over 35 years. In 1991, Dr. Esselstyn served as the president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, and organized the 1st National Conference on the Elimination and Prevention of Heart Disease. In 2005, he became the 1st recipient of the Benjamin Spock Award for Compassion in Medicine. Dr. Esselstyn is also an Olympic gold medalist in rowing, and he was awarded the Bronze Star as an army surgeon in Vietnam.

In this series of interviews I've conducted with extraordinary nutritional researchers and medical doctors, I've sought to understand the link between diet and the most common and dreaded diseases that are prevalent in our culture. What I'm hearing over and over is that a plant-based diet is both preventative and healing, whereas a diet high in animal protein is destructive to our health - this is the case with cancer, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

The great news is that there is very real hope in shifting the course of our health. What is becoming very apparent through various peer reviewed studies is that by changing our diet - eliminating that which causes havoc in the body (animal protein) and adding in plant based proteins and eating lots of vegetables, legumes, beans, and whole grains, we can not only prevent disease, but also heal from it once it is already in motion. Following is a fascinating conversation I had on diet and heart health.

Obama and his Critics // If No Justice, then No Peace

There is something about the visuals and the audios that make an impact that the written words sometimes cannot reproduce. So, in trying to make the point that justice is very important, the  videos here show us what people are concerned about. It shows the pictures of what is happening to the troops. It shows what we are doing to the Iraqis, to the Afghans, and as importantly, to ourselves.

Stop the War in Vietnam…because if you don’t, we said back then,  we will keep invading  other places, with equal violence and injustice.

Stop the wars in Asia because we are not building a better world there. We are just ruining things.

America on Race, Class, and Gender // How is racism a consequence of the fact we live on a playground run by a bully?

My claim is that the central conflict in our civilization has to do with our acceptance of a destructive account of our mission in life and the ways we enable that understanding of our ends and means by adopting a certain  account of  reason,  ourselves, and  the world around us. That is, bad philosophy begets bad civilization.

The issues of race, class, and gender come up as issues in this conflict which for us can be no less important than knowledge, morality, justice, and the question of life’s worth.

Obama and his Critics // An American Civil War in the 21st Century

I doubt that many people foresaw the American Civil War in the 19th century. People who were close to the political issues of the day may have thought that there were antagonisms brewing that, if left unresolved, could have lead to violence of some kind and to some degree. But, I doubt that the war between the states would have been anticipated on the scale that eventually erupted.

The reason I bring this up is that there are some on the right who, after Obama’s election, are now anticipating a second civil war, something that might break out soon. The basis for this speculation is not, apparently, because people think there is some animosity about race that people are ignoring. Granted, there do exist  great issues about race in the United States that are unacknowledged and left to fester. But, that is not why these people are speculating about warfare breaking out within our borders pitting Americans against each other.

From listening to them, the problem is represented by President Obama, but, it is not his race that is the problem.  For the right-wingers who worry about this, the President represents a vast and powerful left-wing effort to ruin the country for it’s own nefarious purposes.  Given the power that Obama and his leftish allies now wield, for these right-wingers, the only way to save the country is open violent revolt.

One might point out that the population at large is in no position to come to the aid of the country. The population itself is divided. The population would be no match, according to the right-wingers, for the military might that the left-wing could throw in against it.

The only saviors that stand ready to wrest the levers of power away from these left-wing  usurpers is the American military. The scenario, I suspect, would proceed much as recently occurred in Honduras where the elected President and his administration was escorted out of the country in order, so the coup leaders said, that the Honduran democracy would be preserved. Apparently, there were many powerful but frightened individuals in Honduras who thought that their freedoms were being endangered by their own left-wing conspiracy.

A Defense of Mike Whitney’s metaphors, and my own.

I have been talking about several metaphors as similar ways of  explaining reality. Socrates argued that our lives were like the lives of the cave people in his Allegory of the Cave. I want to say, in pursuing the same argument, that our lives are like the lives of kids who live on a playground run by a bully.

I first thought about the aptness of this metaphor in thinking about how to talk about the influence of corporations in these United States on our lives. I thought we could be thought of as the kids, and the corporations would be the bully, or bullies. The metaphor stated the idea that it seems we are forced to do things by these corporations, forced to give up our valuables when we don’t want to, just like bullies force us to give up our lunch money when we don’t want to.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-490250/Coping-bullies-growing-says-child-expert.html

The point of the metaphor is to highlight the fact that our lives are not what we would want. We want to have our choices laid out for us, where we have a chance to understand what making each choice meant for us, and then could choose freely, and not by being coerced, amongst the many options. The metaphor tells us that reality is not like that. We don’t get to choose what to do with our lunch money, as we would like. Instead, the bully tells us that we must give him our lunch money or he will  hurt us.

I want to talk about a recent article by Mike Whitney, who wrote “How Bad Will it Get?” which appears in Counterpunch. I want to talk about Whitney’s piece because he points out several issues which support my contention that we do think that our lives are like the kids in my metaphor. These issues support the truth of my contention.

Isn’t legal reasoning, as well as moral, merely trying to constrain the bullies in our Playground?

What is Glenn Greenwald doing?

He’s wanting everyone to abide by the ‘rule of law.’  When someone robs a bank, that person is apprehended,  prosecuted, and punished by what the law allows. When GG argues that Bush or Obama have to abide by the ‘rule of law,’ because they haven’t been, he is pointing out that whereas the common person will be treated harshly by the criminal justice system, the powerful people in our country are not. The powerful  figure they are above the law.

In a recent post on his blog, GG made a case that Chris Todd, a political reporter for NBC news, was not only giving an account of what the Obama administration was doing about “torture” and whether they wanted to prosecute Bush administration officials for “torture,” but, he also seemed to be giving arguments justifying their viewpoint in his own voice. That is, Todd seemed to have been won over by the Obama position so that he was one of “them,” rather than being a critical outsider.

Is government only as good as the forces that make it work?

Some people argue that Americans should never let government get control of their health care. You shouldn’t let a government bureaucrat get between you and your doctor. You wouldn’t want a government civil service worker to tell your doctor how to take care of your cancer, would you? This rhetorical attack on government depends on the idea that government is, in fact, only as good or as bad as the forces that make it run. People have been made to believe that government workers, no matter what they do, are wasteful, lazy, uncaring, etc., etc. They are convinced of this, in part, because there are, in fact government workers you don’t want to deal with.

How ”Subjectivism” in American Life fulfills Prophecy

Yes, there is “subjectivism” in American life, and I want to point out two examples of it. Based on those examples, I believe we will be able to recognize innumerable others. And, Yes, there has been prophecy about this.

But first, the “subjectivism” part.

Bill Moyers recently interviewed an official from Cigna, a big health insurance company, who came to “see the light,” so to speak. He found his way after travelling to see a health fair in a nearby town,

…And I didn't know what to expect. I just assumed that it would be, you know, like a health-- booths set up and people just getting their blood pressure checked and things like that.

But what I saw were doctors who were set up to provide care in animal stalls. Or they'd erected tents, to care for people. I mean, there was no privacy. In some cases-- and I've got some pictures of people being treated on gurneys, on rain-soaked pavement.

And I saw people lined up, standing in line or sitting in these long, long lines, waiting to get care. People drove from South Carolina and Georgia and Kentucky, Tennessee-- all over the region, because they knew that this was being done. A lot of them heard about it from word of mouth.

There could have been people and probably were people that I had grown up with. They could have been people who grew up at the house down the road, in the house down the road from me. And that made it real to me.

BILL MOYERS: What did you think?

WENDELL POTTER: It was absolutely stunning. It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States. It was like a lightning bolt had hit me.

Graceffo’s observed fact that work is distinct from sales is the basis of much that’s evil in this country

Do American workers believe the work they do has intrinsic value? That is, if no one bought the products their company made, that their work made, would American workers still expect to be paid? Should they be surprised or shocked that their company would want to cut their wages or their jobs if the company was no longer competitive or making any money selling their products?

Let’s just say that Joe Shmoe does believe that his work has intrinsic value. Say, the guy has a job, and, based on having that job, he gets married, has kids, buys a house, and a car, and proceeds to go into quite a bit of debt.  Is Joe being reasonable?

According to Antonio Graceffo there is a distinction between manufacturing or producing a product and selling that product. A company does not make money producing that product. It only makes money if and when it sells that product. So, Graceffo tells us,

…An employee believes that his work, his labor, somehow generates an income. This has been his working experience his whole life. Somehow, punching that clock twice each day caused a check to appear at the end of the week. An owner realizes that work, labor, and manufacturing all cost money. Only sales bring money into the company.

Does our political debate about Honduras reflect an underlying philosophical conflict about how we should understand ourselves?

My question is, first, what is going on in Honduras? It’s one of those small central American countries that one would expect the United States to control in some significant way. I’d imagine they would give the military there all their funding, send the officers to ‘torture’ school, and subvert elections. As an American, and one who’s grown up here, I have a good idea what we’re about. But, I could be mistaken, maybe I have a few details wrong. I have to depend on journalists, in a a big way, to look into what the facts are and give me an explanation.

There’s a problem, though, with the journalists. They have the idea that they can’t tell me what’s going on. There are many reasons why they can’t look too closely into Honduras. One reason is that there aren’t that many journalists who know much about Honduras. It’s a poor country. The United States is behind most every political event there, and given how much the U.S. puts into subverting governments, that isn’t going to change. So, in many ways the stories about this country should write themselves.

Another problem is that journalists are vulnerable. They can be killed. They can have their children killed. They can be fired. There are many ways to put pressure on these people to keep them from revealing any ‘secrets’ that might rock the boat down there.

And, third, journalists are saddled with the idea that reasoning about things, things like what’s going on in Honduras, is a matter of logical argument. It has been my contention that this is the idea at the bottom of both Descartes’ idea that his being in his study writing is his own ‘point of view,’ and the journalist’s account of the Honduran President’s story is his ‘point of view.’ Descartes’ problem was that, yes he had reasons for thinking he was in his study writing, but, he has just as many and in many ways the same reasons for thinking he was actually in bed, asleep, dreaming he was in his study writing, he was in no position to decide one way or the other. He could not know what was going on.