Now that the AP is reporting the contamination of our drinking water by pharmaceuticals we are ever more aware of the blurring boundaries between individual biology and the ecosystem. The presence of antibiotics, hormones, sedatives and other medications is an easy way to track the merging of what is in the environment with what is in our bodies. Consider our psychological health for a moment. If we can accept the mind-body link, then our minds and bodies are interdependent. It stands to reason, then, that our minds and our environment are also mutually affecting each other. I see too many people in my practice who complain of psychological problems that don't stem exclusively from difficult relationships to parents. Some of these problems like depression, social acting out (symbolized by Britney Spears), anxiety and attentionality issues seem to be caused in part by the same cultural forces that have brought us global warming and other features of climate change.
On Peoples' Minds: A discussion at my kitchen table began with some talk about the pharmaceuticals in the drinking water. An elder member of the family said, "Well, the amounts are considered to be insignificant." Where have I heard that before? The reassuring thought that the amounts are insignificant is a defense mechanism. The truth is that we don't know enough about chronic exposure to insiginificant amounts of toxins to feel relaxed about this. Also, we do know that some peoples' metabolisms are more sensitive than others. A younger person said, "That is too overwhelming to even think about . . . " I find most people are scared to think about this stuff . . . but we have to. Its easier if we grasp that climate change is already happening to us.
In the News: This is why we need to think about climate change as already arriving.
Ecological Tip of the Day: Don't throw unused pharmaceuticals down the drain or toilet. Find out the proper method of dispoal for the drug in hand. And, read a good book about how we might be treating our psychological symptoms without really recognizing the root cause.
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I am not a very young person— I’ve been worrying about the degradation of the environment for close to four decades. In the 70s we were warned not to eat the larger (tuna, swordfish) and especially the oilier (mackerel) fish of the oceans because of the mercury that tainted their flesh. A few years later, nothing more was said about the danger of mercury, and everyone resumed eating the fish again. But I didn’t. Why, I reasoned, should the fish be any safer? After all, the mercury is particularly pernicious because its effect is cumulative— it’s not eliminated. The industrial wastes that had contaminated the water to begin with had certainly not ceased to flow into the oceans.
And now the fish are not only poisoned. The Chinook salmon of our Pacific coast have completely disappeared. The glaciers that water our valleys are shrinking faster than ever before. The president pressures the EPA to allow us to breathe more smog than the agency thinks prudent. And on and on. How can one not be overwhelmed? At a time when people are finally waking up, when the media is belatedly championing the cause of our struggling environment, our president and his administration are still oilmen above all, short-sighted businessmen for whom corporate profits are the only measure worth considering.
And the earth is dying.
I'm going somewhat off-topic. But I do see a connection between the problems of our society and climate change. Both can seem overwhelming in their complexity, but both need to be confronted honestly if there is to be any hope for solutions.
Demographically, I belong to Hillary’s constituency. I would love to see a competent woman in the White House. But Barack Obama proved once again on Tuesday that he is so different, so right for our troubled time, that he’s won my vote.
His speech made me weep. I came of age in the 60s, and I have been waiting since then for a politician gifted with the wisdom and courage (let alone the eloquence!) to address the problems of our society honestly.
I’m mystified when I hear so many whites complaining that they can’t understand how Barack Obama can repudiate Rev. Wright’s remarks but not the person, wondering how Obama could possibly feel close to someone capable of “spouting such hate.” That Obama refuses to abandon or ostracize a close friend of 20 years, the politically expedient thing to do (for white voters, if not for blacks) is precisely what makes him so attractive to me. He has the maturity to understand that people, like him, are neither all black nor all white, all good or all bad. People are complicated, as are the issues confronting us. We can’t, for example, abandon the Iraqis after ripping open the fissures in their society, nor can we stay there indefinitely. Obama has the integrity to stand firmly for what he knows is right and the courage to reveal to the (white) American public what African-Americans say among themselves. He is truly positioned with one foot on each side of the racial divide. He explained with great clarity the anger and resentment harbored by both. Even more important, he acknowledged the truth that “the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Given the historical context of the Tuskegee Experiment, in which poor black men were deceived by the U.S. Public Health Service into volunteering for a 40-year program whose purpose was to study, but not treat, the effects of syphilis as the men suffered and died, not even when penicillin was found to be a cure, Wright’s claim that the same U.S. Government invented HIV/AIDS as a means of genocide becomes somewhat less outrageous.
Jeremiah Wright is not the only American intellectual who saw the WTC attacks in a nuanced light. Susan Sontag was vilified for writing,
Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?
Both Sontag and Wright voiced the uncomfortable truth that the U.S. is not universally beloved, that by maintaining a military presence in so many places across the globe we are viewed as an imperial power, resented and even hated. We Americans have to confront Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Hiroshima, Columbine, slavery, native Americans— we have to acknowledge the complexities of our national character, not dismiss them, if we are “to form a more perfect union.”
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