Our Toxic Lifestyles

          We see the rates of diseases going up and up, but somehow, in this age of information and with the ability to communicate information at record speed, this kind of news does not make the rounds as much as perhaps it should.

            The question is why, then. Why are the cancer rates shooting up? Some time ago, cancer (which has always been a problem that human beings are susceptible) affected a lot of people, but the numbers these days are just staggering. At a time when people are growing more health conscious and increasingly aware and careful, it seems especially important that we not only acknowledge this, but try to understand it on some deeper level, because it means that something is terribly wrong.

            We are aware of the dangers, of course. This is a society that is built around fear. It's how it works, how things sell and are advertised. We fear everything, and so we disinfect everything.

Don't believe me?

When was the last time you ate a piece of fruit without first washing it? The last time you got a cut or something without cleansing it with some chemicals or other? When was the last time you got really sick and visited a doctor and did not take some sort of medication that was prescribed for it?

Yes, we do these things, and I am certainly not saying that this is necessarily wrong, mind you. In fact, I do these things as well, personally. Of course, because we know the risks. We wash those apples before we eat them, because of the pesticides. It's not big secret, everyone knows that. When you get a cut, you wipe it with something, especially alcohol, in order to disinfect it, of course. The doctor prescribes certain medicines for you, and you take them, because they are the experts, and this medicine offers the best that our modern science has to offer to fight what ails you.

All that is very true. However, perhaps that is also only one side of the story, and perhaps, just maybe, there is something that we are not seeing in all of this.

Lately, I have noticed that a lot of people are starting to grow increasingly skeptical in regards to vaccines, particularly those that the youngest among us are basically required to have in order to get into school, and be regular members of society. But do we really know what is in those vaccines, and what quantity our children are taking them in. There is really no room for doubt, right? After all, taking these shots is mandatory, which means everyone, without exception, has to get them. So, we just go ahead, and trust the doctors and experts with this one size fits all vaccine, this medicine. How do we know that some people do not have some allergic reactions to it, that perhaps, in fact, this stuff might just be bad for you.

I am not saying that the conspiracy theorists are right. All I am saying is that there concerns may have some validity to them.

Of course, there are so many things that we do which seems potentially damaging, that it truly is mind-boggling. About the only thing more mind-boggling, in fact, is that we do not give these things more serious thought. We have such a collective level of skepticism towards so many things, these days, that when we see it absent, it kind of makes you wonder (like the absence of scrutiny towards some politicians, who seem to get away with murder, sometimes quite literally).

We surround ourselves with unknowns, and we just kind of come to accept it. Many of our homes are in plain sight of some horrific looking power plants and such, and sometimes perhaps a nuclear facility that is nearby (like Indian Point, to illustrate a specific example). We traverse highways every day, and breathe in those fumes. Perhaps every now and then, we see construction crews doing roadwork, and we smell the tar from a road being paved. It is unpleasant to breathe and, in fact, it si recommended that we do not breathe that stuff in. But what about those guys who work on that stuff, day in and day out? For that matter, what about those people that work in such power plants, or perhaps laboratories with experimental things that are detrimental to people's health. I'm not just talking about well-paid scientists in here. I used to work at a place in New York State that had bright yellow caution signs that warned anyone of childbearing years to stay out of certain rooms. Should I admit to trying to veer as far away from those rooms as possible, although I was required to pass by some in certain hallways? Should I admit that I would kind of cover my mid-section with my hands, and pass through as quickly as possible?

Why do we put ourselves through this? Why accept this as part of our reality?

In advertising campaigns, everyone is always beautiful and perfect, and their homes are perfectly spotless, always clean. So we try and buy things and do things that will help make our lives a bit more like that. People starve themselves to lose weight, many women apply all sorts of cleansers and formulas to fight wrinkles and signs of aging, to keep their skin looking perfectly soft and smooth, to look pretty. Maybe they try some new weight loss pills, and perhaps they will not have any side effects. Or, maybe they have.

This whole issue with side effects is the point, I think. We tend to ignore them, by and large, so long as the results we are looking for seem to be achieved. Doctors prescribe something to someone, and maybe it will take care of whatever it was that ailed them. But if there are side effects? Well, there are more pills to offset the side effects, and perhaps even some pills to offset the side effects of these new pills. So on and so forth, and it can be a vicious cycle. Much like the lives we have set up for ourselves. We find temporary solutions, often amounting to little more than distractions, than pleasant diversions, or escapism, to offset some much deeper ills, never wondering if the medicine we are taking might be the problem itself, rather than the solution. We just keep drinking the Kool Aid, in our unexamined lives.

So, we have built a world that affords us all sorts of comforts and privileges, and we can live an illusion. But we never stop to think if some of it might actually be quite toxic to us. I've mentioned the fumes from the cars, and the fumes that we breathe from factories and power plants. But what about the stuff that some of those factories make, and end up on the shelves of stores, until we purchase them with our hard earned money, and they end up on our shelves at homes. Those polishes, to wipe the furniture, or the chemicals we use to clean the toilets and bathtubs, the stuff we use to keep the carpet clean and smelling fresh. Perhaps you use various air-freshners in order to make you home smell nice and piney fresh. The fertilizers that we apply, sometimes too richly, to get that lush, green lawn. Do we really know what chemicals these things consist of, and the effects on the human body that they have, over the short and long term?

Hell, these days, even our financial practices are toxic to us. Yet, hardly anyone seems to give pause, and think about it.

I am including myself in this, all too often. I am only beginning to really wake up to all of this myself, the last few years.

So, am I saying I have unlocked the secrets to why cancer rates seem to shoot up all of the time? I remember hearing that 1 in 3 Americans will get cancer at some point in their lives (varying degrees of it, surely, and not all as serious as the most toxic cases). More recently, I heard that this raised up to 2 out of 3. Which figure is more accurate? I don't know. Again, I'm not an expert.

However, it just seems to me that we can do worse than to actually tear ourselves away from Facebook or YouTube clips, or from watching reality shows where people are competing against one another in singing or in trying to pick up the eligible bachelor, and simply take a look at these lives that we have resigned ourselves to. It is puzzling that we have not, collectively, given this toxic lifestyle of our ours more serious thought and scrutiny, and at least as much attention and concern as too many of us give when we pick up that phone and place a vote for our favorite contestant on the latest big thing reality show.