On my walk back from the Post Office this morning(1), I noticed one of those pseudo-health drinks(2) lying in the gutter by the street. Suggestive of someone swigging his “health drink” and then tossing it out the window.
Contradiction!
Now, a fast-food wrapper lying there, that I could understand. Fast-food rots the sensibilities as well as the body. But an ostensible health drink, and you still just toss it out the window?
I’ll take care of the body, but not of the outdoors? The Great Big Common Living Room?
Well, of course, these “health drinks” are not really healthy, though that’s another discussion for another time. What I want to discuss here is this: when you pollute the outdoors you are polluting yourself, as well.
The idea that I am all here, in this body, and the rest of the world is “over there,” is a disastrous illusion.
(The Eastern Mystics in the audience just all nodded their heads.
The western physicists in the audience just all went to sleep.
The System Theorists aren’t decided yet — they’re too used to being made fun of, so are a tad cautious
The Ecologists in the audience — they aren’t in the audience right now)
This isn’t necessarily anything mystical. It’s that the Earth is a system many, many times older than is the Human Race on Earth, and Humans are supported by this system in ways we are still only just coming to understand. For instance, raise a person a totally germ-free, parasite-free environment and his health will be so precarious that he will probably not live very long at all. (Such “studies” have been done; didn’t work out that well.) We need germs and parasites; some are symbiotic some antagonistic, but our biological systems benefit either way. Some we simply can not live without.(3)
I breath air in and out. Even with a mask what I’m breathing in isn’t just air, and, even with a mask, what I’m breathing out is long way from just air. My body uses every exhale as an opportunity to release not only CO2 (“used” oxygen) but also a variety of other compounds and particles that it no long needs, or maybe never did want.(4)
I also carry a cloud around me of particles that drift off my skin, my eyes, my hair… we all do. Some carry larger clouds around them than others. Ever have the experience of smelling a particular person coming close to you before you actually see him? (Probably you haven’t; most folks don’t pay close enough attention to their sense of smell; but trust me — you can.) The conundrum here is how does the smell move ahead of the person when he’s in motion? How does it move “upwind” like that? I’ve never heard a mundane explanation that works.
(Pause while you consider that question…)
What I’m saying is that, even without going mystical, we are all one… the human machine is intricately tied in with its environment. Even without invoking quantum theory and that mysterious / mystical concept of “entanglement” (which is what is being exploited in the creation of so-called quantum computers, by the way), I think I have demonstrated that bits and pieces of your body are constantly being exchanged with the environment you are in right now, where ever you are.
(Some of the physicists in the audience just woke up again, a little…
The system theorists in the audience [two of them — there are more of them around than you might think] just stopped reading each others books for a moment to consider if I might be on the right track after all…
The Biophysicists are telling jokes to each other instead of listening — the “macro-world” just isn’t that interesting to them, even though this isn’t anything even like about the macro-world.
The Eastern Mystics are in Bliss — but then they already were)
Been some place where you really, really wanted to leave? I mean, like your body just wanted to get the Heck out of there? There’s a reason for that. You breathe stuff in, it gets absorbed, becomes part of you, hopefully only temporarily. Your body rebels (hopefully, only temporarily)! This is the problem with car exhaust, of course. No need to blame second-hand cigarette smoke, which statistically is a drop in the bucket compared to all the car exhaust we each have to breathe in every single day. (Yes, even hybrids.) Eliminate car exhaust (carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, half-burned and unburned hydrocarbons, etc, etc… very bad) first, then worry about the far, far lesser matter of cigarette smoke.(5)
Ah well… this is a long way from a poorly discarded drink container, but such are the pathways my mind travels.
Think about it next time you find yourself about to chuck something out the window, or, if not you, then your nephew, friend, acquaintance… anybody you see tossing garbage about in the Big Common Living Room we call “outside.”
Think I’ll go have a power drink now… (not!)
(1) I walk a lot, whenever I can. It’s good for this body, and it gets my mind out in the air for a bit before the day really starts.
(2) “pseudo” because they are more stimulant than actual nutrition, so gives the appearance of alertness and energy while actually depleting your system, restoring or building up nothing.
(3) there have been reports of curing certain “chronic” diseases by transplanting gut bacteria from a healthy person to the affected one. Mainstream medicine is still researching this, so it isn’t available everywhere yet. Hopefully the research will be completed soon and brought fully into the light of day.
(4) This, by the way, is the correct argument against wearing masks for extended periods of time. Arguments talking about CO2 poisoning are full of it… but toxins, yes. Your body exhaled that stuff because it was done with it, or has successfully moved it over to the lungs for shipping out of the building. Now you place a recirculator at the shipping department exit… management; always mucking things up, you know? 🙂
(5) No, I am not a smoker.