..............."You realize that “science” is not a privileged sphere of inquiry. It is not special.
You see that scientists are not priests and doctors are not demi-gods.
With your new knowledge, often outside the mainstream or even considered heretical, you feel it is important to make your own decisions about how to allocate your time and energy. You want to allocate that precious time and energy (and money) in accord with your values.
It starts to bother you if others appropriate your wealth (your energy) for foreign wars of empire, to prop up a parasitical financial oligarchy that has been sucking the real economy dry for 30 years, or to pay for things you don’t approve of. You realize that both the “left” and the “right” want to control you and use you to expand their own power.
Most of all, you don’t want others to tell you what your priorities should be. Because you realize how hard it is be enlightened yourself, you cannot imagine a central authority that could direct anyone without doing violence to everyone.
You acquire this attitude early in life, or maybe only over decades.
At some point you start to learn about medical science and nutrition. You are amazed at the lack of consensus. You are amazed that expert advice can differ so much. If you went to medical school, maybe you are amazed at how much of what you were taught proves to be useless or dangerous.
It starts to become obvious to you that there are diseases that serve as the substrate for the biological analogue to Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Diseases that, were they to disappear, whole portions of the world’s largest economy would have to be mothballed like the USS Iowa. There are whole systems of modern iron lungs ready to become future curiosities. They exist for today’s dietary polio.....
Read the whole thing here
You see that scientists are not priests and doctors are not demi-gods.
With your new knowledge, often outside the mainstream or even considered heretical, you feel it is important to make your own decisions about how to allocate your time and energy. You want to allocate that precious time and energy (and money) in accord with your values.
It starts to bother you if others appropriate your wealth (your energy) for foreign wars of empire, to prop up a parasitical financial oligarchy that has been sucking the real economy dry for 30 years, or to pay for things you don’t approve of. You realize that both the “left” and the “right” want to control you and use you to expand their own power.
Most of all, you don’t want others to tell you what your priorities should be. Because you realize how hard it is be enlightened yourself, you cannot imagine a central authority that could direct anyone without doing violence to everyone.
You acquire this attitude early in life, or maybe only over decades.
At some point you start to learn about medical science and nutrition. You are amazed at the lack of consensus. You are amazed that expert advice can differ so much. If you went to medical school, maybe you are amazed at how much of what you were taught proves to be useless or dangerous.
It starts to become obvious to you that there are diseases that serve as the substrate for the biological analogue to Dwight Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Diseases that, were they to disappear, whole portions of the world’s largest economy would have to be mothballed like the USS Iowa. There are whole systems of modern iron lungs ready to become future curiosities. They exist for today’s dietary polio.....
Read the whole thing here
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