NSCC eLearning Faculty Zone - NSCC eLearning Faculty Zone

In support of Teachers....
NSCC eLearning Faculty Zone - NSCC eLearning Faculty Zone

Pandemic

Quoting a news headline for Friday October 23, 2009

"Obama declares swine flu a national emergency"

I recently learned that the Searle is the drug company that produces the H1N1 vaccine. Donald Rumsfeld is the CEO of Searle.

I believe we are confused. We're being encouraged to believe that this flu business is the problem that is leading to a pandemic. And it's certainly possible that it's just coincidence that the CEO of the company that produces the H1N1 flu vaccine is Donald Rumsfeld. I don't think it is a coincidence; however, and this is about more than a flu virus. It's probably about several things and this writing is about one of them.

I grew up hearing Mom say, "keep your hands away from your face! They're dirty!" and "Take your fingers out of your mouth!" Etc. Somehow in the last 40 years we've all forgotten what our mothers taught us! Watch carefully and you will find nary one person who doesn't touch their face during a conversation with you. Scratch their nose, hold their cheek in their hand, wipe their mouth, dangle a finger coyly from their lips, rub their eyes, etc. Try to do it yourself. Try to keep your hands away from your face for the duration of one full hour. I don't think you will succeed.

So what's happened? I believe it happens because it is more accepted. It is more accepted because more people are doing it. And I think that more people are doing it because they are itching more. And I think they are itchy more often (continuously?) because they are having allergic reactions to various environmental toxins ranging from the chemical fragrances found in colognes and dryer sheets to the clumps of chemicals spewing from the smoke stacks in the form of particulate matter.

The pandemic is not the flu. The actual pandemic is the mass of people who are suffering from allergic reactions to environmental toxins that they are being subjected to both knowingly and unknowingly.

Things to ponder:
-"What is that you're wearing? Your perfume, darling,, it's inTOXICating. What a heady scent!" Scratch, scratch. Tickle tickle.
-The large number of medicines that drug companies are marketing to sufferers of 'flu-like symptoms'. If it's not the flu, then what is it? 'Flu-like symptoms' makes as much sense to me as 'non-dairy creamer.'

Evolving Degrees of Normalcy or American Lung Association

I'm seeing so many drug commercials for Asthma. They all seem so innocuous and unaffected as if asthma was just another run of the mill aspect of an ordinary day. I find these commercials with their insinuations to be stunning and frightening.

I remember in the 60's as a child that my Mother donated to American Lung Association, a charity organization working to aid treatment for lung disorders. The consequence of which was that I would go door to door in the neighborhood seeking monetary donations for the charity. I remember growing up on Lake Erie and watching the plumes of smoke from Bethlehem Steel plants pour into the sky. On the 20 mile car ride to the city of Buffalo, we'd pass through the city of Lackawanna, home to Bethlehem steel, where every house, no matter the color of paint was tinged with gray from the smoke filled the air. And it stank to high heaven! As kids we'd plug our noses, scrunch up our faces and groan about the smell - wondering why anyone would choose to live in that town! What we weren't doing was making any connections between that smoke we saw, the air we breathe and the lung disorders that I was trying to help. And it never occurred to me that the same air in Lackawanna blew the 7 miles to my house very quickly.

In the late 70's and 80's I was meeting more people with breathing issues like asthma and allergies and I listened to increasing talk about sinus problems including infections. In the meantime, I started to see more commercials for over the counter treatments of allergies and even cold symptoms were now being lumped into the same category. I note that "cold symptoms" is carefully not saying that you have a cold and is only to say the medication treats symptoms that resemble a cold.
The ads also talked about grass, hay fever and pollen. Pollen was a good one, allowing for some really imaginative propaganda. The pollen was characterized to look like a barbed ball and personified by being described as "attacking" the body. We were then instructed that our livers responded to the attack of the barbed intruder by producing histamines to ward off the invader. Sounds like a fantasy story doesn't it? Or maybe a plot on World of War craft. We are being fed some info leading us to believe we're actually learning something. And then we're told what the "medicine" will relieve the attack.
With the late 80's and 90's there began an onslaught of commercials for prescription drugs due to a change in FDA regulations. What I've observed is that medications that were once prescription are now available as an over the counter purchase making it much easier access and available to everyone.

Now in 2007, it's asthma that they are hawking drugs to treat. Asthma! It's an incurable, breathing disorder that they are talking about as if it is trivial and inconsequential and doesn't deserve a second thought or a moment of consideration or contemplation. Hasn't it occurred to folks that we are being persistently poisoned with the foul air that's been and continues to be produced by major corporations? I most certainly do think this deserves more than a moment of reflection. And it requires action!

Personal Responsibility

I will continue to apply critical thinking to the technologies that I'm learning. I am being careful not to blindly go where the masses, ease of use, and convenience may take me. For every new technology that I learn about, I must apply a rubric that enables me to analyze and determine for myself if this is a direction that I wish to pursue. And with that analysis comes the need to make sure that this course of action falls within my personal values.

It is not wise or prudent to do something simply because everyone else is doing it. This is not a case of safety being found in numbers. It is wrong to think that what is popular belief is right for everyone.

I will continue to ask questions of myself and my teachers and my peers whenever I'm blithely being told to do something. I will remind them that I believe it is my personal and ethical responsibility to question what is happening with all of my personal data that's being stored and monitored by Google. I am to consider what the differences are if any between Enron as the violating corporation and Google as the largest, wealthiest company. Just because Google uses colorful display with cartoon images does not mean they are friendly or harmless. But this is digressing into an article of a different subject and for another time...

Over Poplulation

So, as noted in a previous post, Over Population is I believe, the true issue of our time that is being highlighted by our awareness of dwindling resources. It's not that there are too many immigrants in the U.S. The problem is that there are too many people in the world! We are running out of healthy land for growing nourishing food, and the clean water that's needed to support them.

And yet we keep on making babies! Even when there are so many orphaned children who are in need of love, children dying from starvation and of AIDS, still, we keep introducing new people into this terribly over-burdened ecosystem.

The Catholic church certainly will not support the cry to stop birthing new babies. The Patriarchy will certainly not support the idea that women take control over their reproductive systems. Abortion rights being an issue that is currently under attack in our Supreme Court system. The Media is not supporting the idea to slow population growth as they currently broadcast the TV commercials that state with great gushing emotion, "...A baby changes everything." Thus encouraging the viewer to change his/her life by giving birth to a another.

Maybe Women will begin to consider the personal power that comes with taking control of our reproductive systems. Maybe we will come to understand the need for, the beauty of and the wonder that comes from loving a child that has been abandoned. Maybe we can hold our cards closer to our breast.

Birthing a child is but one of the wonders that we can achieve with our reproductive systems. We can birth lots of other things, too! Things like ideas, and dreams, creations and works of art, energy and love, character and wisdom. These things come from within us as well. Let's start to consider these as potential identifiers of who we are and what we are capable of. It doesn't always have to be a human being in the form of a child that gives us our identity and defines for us our greatness.

Immigration

Immigration has become this hugely hot topic. Farnkly, I think it's a terrible diversion to distract attention from inappropriate self-serving behaviors of our government that are even more unjust than the bigotry that's been generated with this topic. (Is it possible to be more unjust?!)

I don't believe that immigration is even the true issue or concern. Over population is the issue that's being exacerbated by the dwindling resources of oil and water. Oil and water- mix them and all you get is slime. And that's what we have in leadership position right now. A whole bunch of slime and scum who are working to stain the fabric of our diversity. How can they be so selfish?

Specialists Unite

We all have our specialties... things that we know a whole lot about. Some of us are professors and scientists with brains that are absolutely overflowing with information about a specific area. To them and to myself I say, don't forget to learn about the things that are not your specialty. Take time to learn a little bit about someone else's specialty. Read their works on a different topic, listen to their songs of a different genre. Realize that it's lonely business outstanding in your field. Worse, consider that in not being aware of how you are connected to them, you may be hindering the consciousness of a subject that is connected to you!

For example, I was reading today the words of someone who is interested in Universal consciousness. And to symbolize their understanding of the relationship of micro to macro they used an analogy of a single bubble within a bubble bath. On the surface, this seems like an innocuous and appropriate analogy. Yet, for me, it was glaringly obvious that this fellow hasn't really given much thought to excessively soapy water at all, particularly in the context of environmental and sustainability concerns. If he had, he might have realized that imagining bubble baths is counterproductive to the goal of both topics.

Now, I don't believe he intended to show his lack of wholistic thinking. But I do believe that this is what has happened. He has spent so very much of his time immersed in his studies and has maybe not considered how his studies are connected to other areas.

As we move with increasing momentum toward enlightenment, we are further challenged and with greater urgency to see how we are connected to one another, how our special interests relate to her interests and how I can increase my understanding of my own specialty by learning about an others.