LEARN THE ISSUES
"Advocating Economic & Personal Change" |
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Introduction BOMA Guide to Health To try and remain healthy, do you, your family, or your friends, do any of the following things?
If you answered "Yes" to four or more questions, above, I'd say you've lost some trust in the ability of your government and society to protect you--you feel compelled (read: forced) to protect yourself. Further, the more "Yes" responses you've given, above, the greater your apparent lack of faith in your government and society to protect you. If the majority of your answers, above, are "Yes," you are apparently experiencing an almost complete loss of trust. The self-denial above--observe how many things we "Refrain" from--suggests that we all feel compelled to become the ecological and existential equivalent of "the boy in the bubble." No wonder we feel depressed (itself, a huge social health problem). In fact, most of us suffer from a profound lack of trust in the system. We don't believe, intellectually, or feel, viscerally, that the system is out to protect us--which, in any final or comprehensive sense, it's not. In fact, not only does the system not protect us, many quarters of the system have a definite vested economic interest in harming us. That's reality. We act as if we can all live safely in a toxic world if we as individual consumers just give up enough stuff. Or we may attempt to "shop" our way out of the hazards we find ourselves exposed to, in relation to our physical and social environments. If we have to take so many precautions and contort our lives so comprehensively in the simple attempt to be healthy, however, what kind of society are we actually living in? In point of fact, few of these lifestyle sacrifices actually offer much real protection for our individual health, safety, or welfare; it goes without saying that they are not much of an assist or guard for the public health, either. The hard fact is that we cannot opt out of the water cycle or the food chain! Moreover, note that numbers 1, 2, 10, 11, and 12 above all require the purchase of a product. Which itself illustrates part of the pernicious and counterproductive character of capitalism--instead of addressing and solving problems at their root, capitalism simply chugs merrily along earning even further profits by selling us short-term, band-aid solutions to our problems, the ones, ironically, that capitalism caused in the first place. In fact, it's like the mad doctor trying to sell you a potion to cure the disease that he caused you! In sum, capitalism is the problem, and by definition, then, has no real answers to offer. When will we be able to stop trying to turn our bodies and homes into fortresses against toxic invasion? We have to realize what the actual answer is to the problem of human health: we simply have no choice but to begin to rationally and peacefully change the focus of our society, from profit and money to such innate human needs as health--perhaps the supreme human need. Then, and only then, will we put an end to the overwhelming, systematic, and interminable profit-motivated attack on our health. From here, please see our analysis of: |
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