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October 09, 2009
Age of Anxiety
We live in times best described as paradoxical: never before has our species been more numerous or knowledgeable about its extended environment, yet never before has its future seemed more bleak. We remain at each others’ throats in the same murderous ways as our first powerful civilizations thousands of years ago, yet we are armed with high tech weaponry of unimagined destructive capacity. Even so, our scientists are discovering a cascade of new, uncontrollable forces that have been lurking within our home planet and its solar environment for millions of years, any one of which could render the most powerful weapons in modern arsenals puny by comparison.Although we are historically loathe to blame ourselves for our predicaments, any search for a culprit in our present problems must ultimately lead directly to the age-old question of “free will.” To what extent are we humans responsible for our own problems? The corollary is, of course, what can be done about them? Underlying those questions are two more: are those claiming to have answers sincere? Do they even know what they're talking about?
For the past several years I've been privileged to study a population characterized by their use of a complex herbal remedy in an often unwitting attempt to deal with the same existential uncertainties. That it provides them with benefits far superior to those claimed for their products by our Pharmaceutical Industry, and that the official formulations of US policy on the same issues are nonsense, should be as apparent to most knowledgeable observers as their own craven reluctance to say so.
My apparent temerity is inspired by the degree to which those tacitly supporting US drug policy are unwilling to acknowledge reality. A good example can be found in the recent publication that I hope to tackle in the next entry.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at October 9, 2009 02:43 PM