Things are never the way they used to be. Change is inevitable, and change should be embraced. I go along with that, whole-heartedly. But the "stuff" that is out there in society and the news today seems almost foreign in some respects...
Setting: Clubview Elementary School, Columbus, Georgia...the latter half of the 60s...we ALL ate Ritz crackers with peanut butter in the middle. Nobody died. Nobody I knew had an allergy to it. Where did this widespread crisis come from? Oh, it's a serious issue today, I know that...but how has it evolved? In today's elementary classrooms a kid can't have ANYthing with peanut butter in it in the room, period. Forbidden. Banned. That includes the cafeteria. Can't touch campus with it.
(Gee, at least we do a better job at keeping peanut butter out of schools than we do guns and other weapons...)
Many of our environmental sensitivities seem to be at an all-time high...and it leaves us wondering just what all the air and water pollutants...all the pesticides and herbicides...all the chemical additives in foods and drinks...all the modified molecules we have and continue to ingest in our bodies...what REALLY is the impact of it all?....
Way more than we know? Nothing at all? Hard to accept the latter. It's as if we as a society have to wait for a catastrophe to develop and happen before we can "see" anything and take action. It's an uphill battle for us as a whole to become a proactive society and get away from our tendency/history to be a reactive one. There just has to be a better way, and the only thing I know to do is to take personal responsibility for gaining as much knowledge as we can about issues.
Ignorance isn't bliss - it's stupidity.
People that even to this day put a cigarette in their mouths and light up, you are making a choice to potentially kill yourself...no one else is putting it to your lips for you. Not that we know or will ever know the dark side of tobacco economics and business...I imagine the truth is overwhelmingly ugly how they've infused additives and such...and, what, wasn't it just recently there was news of the new "Camel #9"
that is emblazoned with pink letters/graphics to entice more women to buy it and smoke? (link is to a NY Times article worth reading...)
ARE WE SIMPLY INSANE???? Do you know how many women die from lung cancer each year in the U.S.? A 150% increase in two decades...lung cancer is THE leading source of cancer death among U.S. women, not breast or ovarian cancers. One organization says that this year alone 68,510 women in the US will die from lung cancer...that number is more than breast AND ovarian cancers combined. Lung cancer deaths in women exceeded breast cancer deaths back in 1987. Good idea, tobacco companies...let's keep giving 'em newly packaged bullets with which to shoot themselves...
The flip side is as I said earlier: it IS a personal choice to smoke or not, though I hear it can be a terrible addiction to break. Thankfully, I never smoked, so I don't know. But I know it's a choice, however impossible it seems to avoid for some.
When I write, I'm not sure what will come forth. I write for my own Truth, and whether someone disagrees or not is immaterial to me. I do sense a widespread "dumbing of America" and it is of no one's doing but our own. We've got to make the daily personal choice to be informed, to understand health and nutrition, to understand sticky political issues, to realize that we are ALL related and not separate from any issue 'out there'. Homelessness. Domestic violence. Desensitization of youth through media. You name it. We are all owners of the problems...but...more importantly...we are all owners of the solutions, as well.
Peace, y'all.
Setting: Clubview Elementary School, Columbus, Georgia...the latter half of the 60s...we ALL ate Ritz crackers with peanut butter in the middle. Nobody died. Nobody I knew had an allergy to it. Where did this widespread crisis come from? Oh, it's a serious issue today, I know that...but how has it evolved? In today's elementary classrooms a kid can't have ANYthing with peanut butter in it in the room, period. Forbidden. Banned. That includes the cafeteria. Can't touch campus with it.(Gee, at least we do a better job at keeping peanut butter out of schools than we do guns and other weapons...)
Many of our environmental sensitivities seem to be at an all-time high...and it leaves us wondering just what all the air and water pollutants...all the pesticides and herbicides...all the chemical additives in foods and drinks...all the modified molecules we have and continue to ingest in our bodies...what REALLY is the impact of it all?....
Way more than we know? Nothing at all? Hard to accept the latter. It's as if we as a society have to wait for a catastrophe to develop and happen before we can "see" anything and take action. It's an uphill battle for us as a whole to become a proactive society and get away from our tendency/history to be a reactive one. There just has to be a better way, and the only thing I know to do is to take personal responsibility for gaining as much knowledge as we can about issues.
Ignorance isn't bliss - it's stupidity.
People that even to this day put a cigarette in their mouths and light up, you are making a choice to potentially kill yourself...no one else is putting it to your lips for you. Not that we know or will ever know the dark side of tobacco economics and business...I imagine the truth is overwhelmingly ugly how they've infused additives and such...and, what, wasn't it just recently there was news of the new "Camel #9" that is emblazoned with pink letters/graphics to entice more women to buy it and smoke? (link is to a NY Times article worth reading...)
ARE WE SIMPLY INSANE???? Do you know how many women die from lung cancer each year in the U.S.? A 150% increase in two decades...lung cancer is THE leading source of cancer death among U.S. women, not breast or ovarian cancers. One organization says that this year alone 68,510 women in the US will die from lung cancer...that number is more than breast AND ovarian cancers combined. Lung cancer deaths in women exceeded breast cancer deaths back in 1987. Good idea, tobacco companies...let's keep giving 'em newly packaged bullets with which to shoot themselves...The flip side is as I said earlier: it IS a personal choice to smoke or not, though I hear it can be a terrible addiction to break. Thankfully, I never smoked, so I don't know. But I know it's a choice, however impossible it seems to avoid for some.
When I write, I'm not sure what will come forth. I write for my own Truth, and whether someone disagrees or not is immaterial to me. I do sense a widespread "dumbing of America" and it is of no one's doing but our own. We've got to make the daily personal choice to be informed, to understand health and nutrition, to understand sticky political issues, to realize that we are ALL related and not separate from any issue 'out there'. Homelessness. Domestic violence. Desensitization of youth through media. You name it. We are all owners of the problems...but...more importantly...we are all owners of the solutions, as well.
Peace, y'all.
2 comments:
Well said, Bob --- on all accounts --- we DO have not only the choice to inform ourselves daily, but it's also our responsibility to do so --- and to inform others.
I have never smoked either --- was never tempted nor even cared to try, no desire to. But your lung cancer facts are "dead-on" (no pun intended). What scares me is how much second-hand smoke I've been exposed to over the years, and how much I continue to be exposed to (in restaurants, workplace, the "cloud" outside of public buildings, etc), because my state legislators waffle on the dangers of second-hand smoke, and only so-called "local" smoking bans are even in-place or enforced. Despite communications to local and state legislators, I often feel so "helpless" --- it's like beating a dead horse. Therefore I CHOOSE nutrition and health, and can only hope that my immune system will continue to fight-off the "free radicals" and toxins that I'm bombarded with.
Suzy
Congratulations, Suzy! What you're doing is what it's all about...here in North Carolina we have more and more "no smoking" zones, which helps the overall health issue, but when I was in South Dakota, it was just the opposite. Don't wanna 'check out' anytime sooner than I have to!
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