Cultures are something that people often talk about in reference to someone else's. Your own tends to be this invisible field of normalcy, reality, that you don't differentiate from those other people. An anthropological perspective can not only help you to understand the cultures of other people objectively, and relatively, it can help you examine your own. By doing this, the invisible hand that molds your thoughts, your values, your habits, becomes visible. You can then analyze them as to whether they serve their purpose, and hopefully that purpose is some type of benefit to you, your family, your group, country, humanity, etc. If not its time to blow the whistle and make changes. Here are a list of concepts, ideas and norms you may have taken at face value without any actual analysis. In doing so you've probably fallen victim to culturally ingrained misconceptions. Even some of my own professors have done this.
Health
Birth: It is often subconsciously, if not directly, thought of and treated as an emergency, something the body can't do, wasn't designed to do, and will probably mess up, thus we need professionals to come in, and birth for us. Where does this misconception come from? Well there are tons of books written about the very subject. Here are the main ideas from all of those books. In the past women had social trends among the elite, like corseting & crash dieting. This led to pelvic deformity, and malnutrition manifesting in rickets and other diseases, even among rich people. Among impoverished there was also a number of malnourishment related complications. The women began to dread and fear birth, with real reason, but due to the abuse they had done to their own bodies, not because the body isn't capable by default. So they abandoned midwives over physicians who could drug them up, knock them out, and basically rip the babies out of them. Terrible things happen, parts of the body were removed by accident, babies died, doctors spread disease from person to person. But the women didn't revert to midwives, nor did they abandon the circumstances that created the complications in the first place. They held on to some type of hope, if you can call it that, about having a pain free, birth. As physician attended births became more popular there was a shift in the economics of birthing that put the power in the hands of the medical establishment. In turn women lost most of their power to control their birth experience. They no longer had the options of family attended birth, midwifery, are self attended birth. The cultural shift blocked out all other forms of birth, and made hospital birth the only acceptable form. If you eat properly and don't deform your body you can most likely have a successful, non-emergency birth, even with variations like a breach (read more).
Medical Knowledge: The medical establishment created a shroud or a myth of having authoritative knowledge, by belittling all other forms of knowledge, and this method is still used today, ever tell your doctor you read something or did your own research and they get upset? People tend to look at doctors as some type of omniscient gods, in fact thats what many of them were taught to make you think. Most people have no idea what goes on in medical school, unless they've been themselves. Much of it deals with years of socialization and hazing before any reals study can take place. Why? because just like the masses of patients and public, the future doctors must become clean slates, and taught not to question the medical model they are learning. They don't learn nutrition, they don't learn homeopathy, naturopathy, or any natural types of health care. The medical establishment is purely allopathic which means drugs and surgery as solutions, and being further corrupted by drug & product companies. I've heard more than 10 accounts from doctors themselves who wished they could back out when they discovered what the medical field really was, other felt faced with guilt and even dedicated the latter part of their careers to informing the public about how to maintain their actual health, etc. My question is who is this supposed to benefit? If you think the answer is you then think again.
Drug & Product Companies: We hear the phrase, "#1 recommended by doctors" or "the one doctors recommend most" very often on television advertisements for drugs and other products like infant formula etc. Have you ever stopped to think about what that really means? Ok lets take the same frame and but it in a more familiar context. I know a lot of you blog and everyone watches tv from time to time. When someone wants their ad on your site, they either are paying you or have done something to advance your blog financially. When you are watching tv and see the same commercials over and over, do you think its because the people at the network found these products useful? No, its because the owners of the commercial paid for that air time. Doctors are no different. Formula, vaccines, drug companies all are competing for your service through doctors. Anyone had a baby recently? Do you recall nurse like formula peddlers in your room? You might have thought, great I get free formula, but if you look a little deeper you will see that different hospitals promote different formulas because those companies provide those things for free to hospitals and doctors offices in hopes that you will continue using their product when you leave. Its about marketing, its not about your health.
Vaccines: I read another article recently that talked about a need to get boys vaccinated for HPV in order to keep girls from getting it. Of course if you've heard of Gardasil you know that this vaccines is marketed to tweens, teens and women as a means of preventing cervical cancer which is said to cause 70% of cervical cancer cases. I am not quite sure how they come to this conclusion if HPV is not the only cause of cervical cancer how do they determine if HPV is the actual cause in people who have it and cervical cancer? In any event, the fine print says "GARDASIL may not fully protect everyone and does not prevent all types of cervical cancer, so it is important to continue regular cervical cancer screenings." Vaccines hardly protect anyone would be more acturate, but even their modest admittance of vaccine unreliability is ignored or misunderstood by the masses. There are still people out there that consider this a vaccine against cancer itself. My question is if girls are already being vaccinated, why do boys need to be vaccinated too? If vaccines actually work then girls will be protected against HPV whether boys get the vaccine or not, right? This is all so laughable, and simultaneously sad when you finally get it--The vaccines don't work. In, fact they probably cause cancer themselves, you ever find out what the ingredients of vaccines are before you went shooting up or letting them turn your children into pin cushions? It's nothing short of poison. Do you ever wonder why foods have to have the ingredients listed on them but things the doctor gives you typically do not? If it goes in or on your body don't you want to know what it is? A website subjectively detailing Gardasil says "The main ingredients of the vaccine are purified, inactive proteins that come from the HPV types mentioned above". I want to inform you that the "purification" process involves carcinogenic agents like formaldehyde. How pure is that? Need more info, really people I'm not yanking your chain here; this is from the fine print in the Gardasil pamphlet: "GARDASIL has not been evaluated for the potential to cause carcinogenicity or genotoxicity." Click here to read more from people other than me if you need more assurance.
Well Baby Visits: It is important to monitor your new born baby, to make sure that everything turned out in proper working order. This is something that most parents can do themselves, better than any doctor might. After all you are with your baby 24-7 and the doctor isn't. Although there is nothing wrong with taking your baby to be examined by a doctor in itself, the setting of such visits poses a bigger threat to your child than not going and keeping a close eye on development at home might. A good amount of people have gone to the hospital for one thing, only to come home or remain in the hospital for something else that they caught there. Therefor the problem with well baby visits is that most clinics do not efficiently separate sick patients from healthy ones, though doing this will still expose your sick child to other diseases. Essentially we are exposing our healthy babies to sick children and other patients, in an effort to maintain their health. A catch-22 and an oxymoron, I suppose.
Fear Response: Something that most of the themes listed so far have in common are the presence of fear mongering by the social tyranny in order to illicit a planned public response. Let me explain--Believe it or not there are people in this world who find it profitable and beneficial to them and their own families alone to control a large amount of people in a way that is far beyond necessary as well as out of bounds of their natural human rights. If you allow that concept to sink in the rest of the world will start to make a lot more sense. In short, there are people who have a plan to remove certain natural rights from the public at large, in a slow, gradual, and hardly detectable by the oblivious way, through the use of fear mongering. A chaotic, dangerous situation is created, yes created, or the perception of a chaotic or dangerous situation is created when no true danger is actually there. The public response has generally been a willing relinquishment of personal human freedoms. Here are some examples. Terrorism, whether true or perceived danger yields a willingness of citizens to be more thoroughly I.D.ed, finger printed, searched, have stipulations placed on their freedom to travel, willingness to hastily attack a blamed enemy. Fear of disease or illness yields willingness to accept unproven and poorly tested treatments over proven and simple health care measures. This also comes with a willingness to risk further danger on the shear empty promise that good health will result. Citizens have also given up their right to refuse medical treatment for themselves and their children in the form of mandated vaccinations, yes it boils down to your right to decide what you do and do not allow into your body and the body of your children. When the government gets to decide that you must consume a certain product or partake in a certain procedure or prevented from utilizing services that you, yourself paid for with your tax dollars, you are witnessed governing that is not in your best interest. Do you remember the end of IRobot when Vicki said she must take total control of humanity because we have proven unable to maintain our own existence? Not all of that movie was make believe.
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Sorry this Article is incomplete and perhaps it will never be complete. Lets consider it a running list which I will periodically add to.