It usually starts with a claim, something that will cure what ails you. Reaching you through the same channels as everything else in your life, from a screen. The new miracle breakthrough that will finally defeat whatever sickens and destroys you, whatever is killing you. And for only a few of the very few dollars you have left in this world you hand over the money and expect to get better and then nothing happens, nothing good at least.
The way our modern medicine approaches problems is more like how an advertising firm approaches problems. The placebo effect is real but we were promised more. We were told that if we follow the doctor's regimen that the nasty thing keeping you from happiness will cease to be. A couple pills, a couple shots, maybe even a surgery or two and when you wake up from the anesthesia the problem is gone, but not really.
Life has a funny way of teaching you lessons from your mistakes. I for one have benefited greatly from that coincidence seeing that I have a tendency to make some self destructive decisions. I don't always know why I do the things that I do, or why even though I understand the consequences I take the action anyway. It's a hard thing to tell people with confidence that you know how to control anything when you can't control yourself and in my past the only control I had was knowing I wasn't in control.
Some people can't handle that as well. I for one, having grown up a fairly bad kid, had plenty of experience working my way out of the holes I dug myself. The people I've hurt being stupid, friends I've lost, and family relationships strained because of my selfish actions have changed my life in such dramatic ways that I can't even remember where I thought I was supposed to be in this stage in my life.
When I was a younger man you couldn't rely on me to do the right thing. My listening skills were and still can be selective. My ability to concentrate on the other things I'm not obsessing with is shit and I would definitely be a liability to myself and others in certain professions. My concept and use of time would, and has, driven someone as disciplined as John Henry crazy. And maybe I'm a little crazy, maybe that's why I behave the way I do, but what's the answer when I look to my screens for help?
It's probably going to be pills.
I grew up in the Ritalin generation and I missed the boat to productivity town because my Mother and Father refused to put me on it. Being a terrible little asshole in First Grade was enough to pitch the idea to my parents. This is after my friend Dave and I disrupting the classroom so much that my assigned desk was in the hallway outside of class and I was still disrupting things. It's hard to imagine what kind of life I'd be living now if the medicine had entered my brain.
I don't know if I'd be a doctor right now myself, maybe one of those fancy lawyers!? But if whatever is wired wrong in the birds nest in my skull gave me the ability to recognize the patterns of the grift of modern medicine kept me away from psych drugs, covid shots, and who knows what else.
It was the experiences that taught me the harsh lessons I needed to learn and today's way of solving problems is to not experience them. If you have bad feelings you can take a pill. If you don't like your looks you can pay a doctor to cut, add, and remove whatever you want. You can bathe in sound waves or you can bathe in radiation but you can't cure what's wrong with you...without you.
I think that we've reached a point in our over commercialized corporatist culture that whenever we need something we are trained to look to industry. It doesn't matter if its for bad behavior or if its for something deeper, like your identity. All you have to do is ask the screen in front of you and you'll find people willing to sell you something, and maybe some of those things actually “work” but what really defines that term should be decided by your own personal outcome.
Ritalin may have made me the student I was supposed to be, the person people expected to encounter, and ultimately servant to the corporatist state. Maybe certain things aren't supposed to be cured?
Where else would we have gotten such amazing guests and listeners? I don't think any one of us got here by accident. We got here because when left to it's own devices, nature will build something new for us. A new bone, a new brain cell even, and who knows what new strengths and abilities that can give you?
I find it a strong possibility that through our understanding of nature and time we can find better ways to heal people than through patented drugs and other medical procedures. This includes for issues like gender dysphoria. I strongly believe that our understanding of how to address issues with behavior and people's traits is largely influenced by our grooming into corporatism. If you can break from that hypnotizing comfort of commercials and degrees and find your own way to help yourself, you'll probably be a stronger and better person for it. Not everyone is capable of doing that though, and what we do and should do for those folks is a tough question to answer at times, but if we were allowed to question things in this world like we should, we would be allowed to ask “What harm might this do?”
The concept of “Do no harm” is a damn good one. Oaths and signed documents aside, the concept only applies when people make the right moral choices. Would it have been easier on my folks to dose me up with Ritalin every day so they no longer had to get calls from the school?
Easier yes, but would that have been the correct or moral choice? My folks didn't think so and I'm really glad they did. Maybe that's why industry spends so much money trying to influence today's parents?
Six, I just wanted to let you know that I am out here. I don't miss a show. Live or replayed, I watch anything posted to the TNP Rumble. I'm just a Gen X male that has no platform or social media membership or account but I wanted to at least offer my words of appreciation for what you are doing and what you hint at doing in the future. This is the only place that I can reach you and I want you to know that I can relate, learn from and feel like I am not alone by following you and the others involved with TNP. So my words of gratitude and thanks will have to suffice for now and if shit ever gets back on track for me, I will gladly contribute to the Angry Tiger New Microphone Fund !!!
Till then, please accept my thanks for being out there brother. Stay Metal !!!
This is a great piece of writing, man 👍🐿🎅🏿