Look, it's really a big slab!
I happened to be in Manhattan during the August 2003 blackout. Of the different things I saw and took pictures of, the most striking to me are those of Times Square dark. The massive moving billboards now appearing suddenly just as they are, big black slabs of plastic, metal and glass. We always know this is what they are, but we see this slab as a portal, when the lights flicker across the surface, dazzling us with their resemblance to scenes of our own life.
Every once in a while, there is that dose of humility, that dose of reality. The world we think we understand shows itself to be more complex, more challenging, more indifferent to the whims of one species or other.
A humanizer is one who seeks to make others and themselves more human. More completely human, more involved in what the potential of the human body is, more aware and in touch with what the human mind and human spirit are capable of.
Civilization can no longer be trusted to find the best solution to any problems.
Civilization has become a single, self-sustaining organism. We are its protoplasm. Our institutions are its organelles. It propagates like a mold, with spores and viruses that communicate back to the mother colony. Some great amoebic blob.
It’s where we are. Every word we see is understood against the backdrop of 21st Century Man. We have stepped into the shadow of our own imagination, and from the looks of what we usually see, we have made it. The number of shiny things is absolutely stunning here in the future.
But Earth to Humans, Earth to Humans, there are some problems. There’s a species that has created this new thing, this thing we may as well call “civilization”.
There are a lot of implications, there may be solutions, but first look at yourself, look at your health. You cannot simply trust that modern medicine will fix you when you are broken. Even if you can afford it, what makes you trust it?
When I was in college I began questioning my diet and started becoming aware of what is natural and what is synthetic in food. I learned to cook in a variety of vegetarian and vegan styles, and eliminated dairy from my diet. Over the years, I have tried many different ways of eating and other health regemins. And, they have not fixed all of my body’s challenges. But I’ve learned a great deal both about claims, and about how they can pan out in the end.
Robert Heinlein, the science fiction writer, had a saying, “Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.” Indeed, that sums up what I hope to cover in this Humanizer blog. When I read my first book on diet and health, I couldn’t believe how concise and insightful it was. I believed it all. Then when I read my second book, it agreed with 80% of that first book, but it contradicted other parts. So, now I wasn’t so sure what to believe. Then I read another book, and it also agreed in many ways, but disagreed in different ways than either of the other books.
I realized I was on my own. It IS important to read a variety of books, check a variety of schools of thought, but ultimately decisions about your time, your health, and your life are up to you. When you take responsibility for that, and make decisions for yourself, then you are humanizing yourself. You are reaching for your potential. Power or no power, flashing lights or the stark powerless slab. When we can open our minds to notice what our eyes are really seeing rather than what we’ve been told to expect, that’s when we will know more than any other person can tell us. Taking responsibility for health at that level and seeing your body directly rather than through the mediation of another expert is healing.