mental dialogue (a joke):
"you forgot to mention 'eating too much.'"
(LOL at this point)
"but that would be 13, a baker's dozen. which is why bakers get fat, eating too much."
(i knew it would happen, i would think of more causes after publishing the list.)
Monday, June 29, 2009
A Dozen Possible Causes of Obesity; my yellowjackets; where will I live?; personality types
(The 'Dozen Causes of Obesity' are actually at the very END of this post, not the beginning. I wrote a lot of 'diary' stuff first. So scroll to the bottom if you are reading about obesity.)
because of the yellowjackets under my apartment door, i have to plan my outings and errands so that i get everything done at once, instead of making separate errands after i forget something. this is an advantage, and a disadvantage, of living so close to town - that i have a short distance to anyplace i need to go shopping, so i don't care much if i forget something and then go back out again a little later to get it. i can't do that now. i bought a yellowjacket trap, and (even after i figured out how to set it up properly) they're totally ignoring the trap!
i haven't blogged much because: 1. i am focused on apartment-hunting, and 2. i haven't been exposed to drugs very many times lately, except in the past few days. drugs always make me talk a lot more. they change my personality at work, too, and i talk to people differently, and behave differently in social situations - not necessarily better. i think my personality changes in a way where it seems like i don't need anybody, like i don't need friends, and like i'm always happy and don't empathize with other people's emotions, when i'm on drugs. it's a fake happiness facade, sort of a coldness.
hair: still going with the no shampoo, dreadlocks experiment. originally, i was 'scrunching' the hair, wadding it up, crumpling it, the way i used to do when i had a perm and used mousse, long ago. now, i'm not doing that anymore. the scrunching was making these loops of hair, and i decided i wanted to see what would happen if i just let it be straight. i don't think my hair will form really strong dreadlocks on its own. unless i let the wind blow it really badly, but i don't really feel totally committed to dreadlocks yet. one thing i am doing now is checking for fluffy towel lint before taking photographs! the towel lint fluffs annoyed me so badly, i actually edited one of my pictures to remove them - and that's saying something, because editing a picture is something i associate with fakeness, artificial, made-up runway models in magazines who have perfect, airbrushed photos. i had one picture that i thought turned out really good, but all my eyes could see was the one bright white spot of towel fluff tangled in the hair, and i couldn't see anything else. 'just another discovery in the experiment,' is the idea - that this is one more thing i didn't know about when i started this.
martin: was 'let go,' which i guess means fired. i feel as though i will be able to see him again, but it won't be easy to do. 'they' tried to bond me with him in a long-lasting way, and 'they' made a big deal out of it, and they made me write these letters and things to him, which i'm assuming was part of what made him avoid me. i'm still going with the 'parallel universe theory,' somewhat, though - that he has tried to contact me, but can't. i've actually verified with somebody that they were trying to call my answering machine, left a message, and the answering machine said 'thank you for your message' and disconnected them, and i never got the recording. meanwhile, other people were able to leave messages, just not that person. however, it seemed like an artificial setup, like it was too easy to prove, just like the several incidents of email interference that were also 'too easy to prove.' so it seemed like i was 'supposed' to prove to myself that emails and phone calls were being intercepted. anyway, phone hacking, 'phreaking,' is part of the theory. but i have not tried to contact him recently. i am guessing that he will be back in the fall for another semester, but i won't know for sure until then, and i am just looking at his pictures to try to understand what he's doing.
west virginia: they have been reminding me that i never really wanted to live in state college. i moved here because i was young and i was not yet independent. i had never lived on my own before, didn't know how to pay bills, and that kind of thing. so i moved in with my brother, and had help from my parents, in the beginning. then, for one reason and another, i ended up staying here, but still did not really 'bond' with this place.
however, i have bonded with peter. and peter is married, and i can't participate much in the big decisions, such as his medical care, or where he will live. i can't take him away, because his son has friends here, and i don't want to uproot his son. i would actually invite him to come to west virginia with me.
i am remembering the fresh air in west virginia. the hills are very different there, topographically. they are lots of small lumps, very complicated, instead of these long, regular, huge mountains with huge valleys in between. these are the allegheny mountains, i think. the appalachian mountains are... like another planet. there's a reason why this matters. the fresh air thing - i often notice that when i go to the other side of the mountain, away from the town, the air is fresher over there, no auto exhaust. but in west virginia, i suspect (according to this theory) that the large number of irregular hills makes it easier to have places where the air is fresh, because the hills block the polluted air from blowing over that way. however, i lived in a rather rural area, too, and i might remember fresh air just because of that. also, there's a lot more forest in west virginia, instead of tilled agricultural land with no trees. (don't get me started on the subject of 'the reasons why people are doing corporate monocropping, and why it's always corn and soybeans,' from a libertarian-anarchist point of view. it has to do with property taxes, subsidies, laws, and stuff.)
i've decided that fresh air is very important to my happiness, and i want to raise children in a place that has fresh air. you don't know what it's like until you've been someplace where the air is very different, if you live in a city and you have auto exhaust around you all the time, and the smell of asphalt streets, a dry smell. in the fresh air, it's humid and smells like flowers and trees, and with every breath you feel a pleasant sensation instead of the yucky, sickening, auto-exhaust nausea that you feel in the city.
i'd like to go back to west virginia, except that peter is almost like a child to me, someone who i feel that i need to take care of. if i had a good, safe place in west virginia, if i owned land there and i was settled, then i'd invite peter and his family to move into my 'community.' i'm putting that in quotation marks, but i actually would like to start an intentional community for real.
the enneagram: i've been reading about instinctual subtypes. i knew about them a few years ago, but i hadn't read any more detailed information until recently. when i read more details, it became very useful. it explains a lot about different people's styles, their priorities. you don't need to know the enneagram at all to understand the instincts. the three instincts can be learned about on their own, separately from the enneagram.
i'm going to copy-paste:
***
Sexuals attract others without really trying. They also repel others in the same way, like an anti-pheromone. This works like a screening function in the mating process. People typically have a strong reaction one way or another towards Sx's, and vice versa.
Self Pres (self-preservation) people instinctively avoid certain foods and environments, and are likewise drawn to those things that nourish and sustain them. Sp's have a strong reaction against things that threaten to harm their comfort or health.
Social is driven towards gaining protection and empowerment within larger entities.
Soc's typically react strongly against things which would jeopardize or displace their position or reputation.
***
by the way, a guy named naranjo, who talked to ichazo, when they were developing the enneagram and the three instincts, this naranjo guy experienced some electronic mind control incidents exactly like some things that have happened to me. it's at a site which i think is called ocean-moonshine.net, info from the underground, in a link called 'the hidden lore of the enneagram' or something. i'm not connected to the internet at the moment so i can't look it up. (i'm offline.) he describes having a lot of weird physical sensations at one point, and also, some fake incidents of being urged to go to a particular location at a certain time, where he 'coincidentally' happened to meet somebody he was supposed to meet, and was told 'these things happen when you are on the path.' my answer to that: no, they don't. they happen when criminals push buttons on machines and force people to do things. the end. this is a crime. it is not a 'spiritual' event and has nothing to do with being on the path.
anyway, about the instincts. each person favors one of the instincts more than the others. that's their primary instinct, most strongly developed. then there is the next strongest one, then the weakest one. and you can understand a lot about their behavior, their style, if you understand that they are acting on their strongest instincts. they use abbreviations to show the strongest instinct, followed by the second strongest.
i've decided that i am probably this: myers-briggs ISTP, enneagram type seven, self-pres/sexual instinct (sp/sx). this is after many years of reading about personality types, and also having some suggestions from 'the voices' about what they thought i am. the sp/sx description fits me quite well, especially when i reread journals and fiction stories that i wrote a long time ago, as a teenager: they had a very mystical, mythical, pagan, folklore, fantasy style to them (sp/sx is described as 'the mystic, the mate, the quiet supporter') - not like the 'all business' style that you usually see with the other type, sp/so (self-pres/social). i always tend to focus on one or two very close, long-term friends, instead of a large social group. maintaining a large, impersonal social group is very difficult for me... and yet, i will be working on this after my life gets a little more settled.
the myers-briggs test is screwed up, and it tells everybody they're an intuitive, when they're not. lots of people are getting 'INTJ' and 'INTP' when they are actually SP artisans. the test needs to be redesigned. david keirsey has a 'temperament sorter' which helps a lot.
i took the myers-briggs test many times, back when i didn't understand it, and i got: INTP, INTJ, and INFP, after several different tests. those are wrong, and it was actually 'the voices' who talked with me and convinced me that i'm not an intuitive. i don't like using symbols, abstractions, metaphors, etc very often, but i'm capable of understanding them if i know that they're being used. but i don't like to use them myself. i had to struggle against the prejudice that 'sensors are bad/stupid, intuitives are good/smart,' which is a belief that you find in a lot of the forums.
obesity: i have been getting voices complaining to me about obesity. THEY'RE the ones who had me write about it in a previous post, where i was saying, what would the 'mainstream world' tell dennis he had to do in his 'makeover.' they always say, 'lose weight,' as though that's something a person can easily just choose to do, on a whim, just because they want to, as though it's their fault and as though they have control over it. 'lose weight' isn't part of MY makeover, but it might possibly happen as an accidental side effect (or not! some of the dietary changes might actually cause some people to GAIN weight).
so here is everything i have learned about obesity so far. i assume that obesity is *just barely* under your own control, but not very much. two people can sit side by side at the same table, eating exactly the same meal, in exactly the same quantities of the exact same foods, and one person will be very fat, and the other person will be very thin.
causes of obesity that i have learned about so far: (i will probably remember more of them after i've published this, which usually happens when i write a list of any kind. these are in *no particular order*, so they're not ordered by importance.)
*** A DOZEN POSSIBLE CAUSES OF OBESITY ***
1. bottle-feeding, infant formula. you MUST breastfeed babies. if you cannot breastfeed them, you must find a wet nurse, a substitute who will breastfeed them for you. *DO NOT* bottle-feed babies ANY kind of formula at all, and, in my opinion, that includes cow's milk, even if it's raw milk, even if it's the healthiest, organic, hormone-free cow's-milk that you milked that morning from your own cow at your own farm at home... although that's the 'best-case scenario' to choose from if you absolutely have to.
another thing, it's good to breastfeed children for a very long time, like until they're three years old, or even older than that. it's called 'extended breastfeeding.' in the united states, this is viewed as strange, creepy, taboo, something which is almost like pedophilia or child pornography, like having a sexual relationship with a child. it's also seen as encouraging immaturity and dependence instead of teaching children to 'be strong and stand on their own and not need mommy anymore.'
extended breastfeeding *doesn't* make children clingy and dependent - just the opposite, it makes them strong and trusting and socially open to other people. and breastfeeding is *not* a 'sexual relationship with a child,' not in a bad way, even though it's true, breasts and nipples are sexual, and the feelings and sensations of it are sexual. but this country was populated by PURITANS. does that tell you anything about our culture? we are the puritans. i'm not sure, i should read about the puritans - they're probably LESS anti-sexual than modern american culture, with its hypocrisy of blatantly encouraging sex on tv and movies, but being all secretive and forbidding about it at the same time, and valuing unnaturalness and artificial breast implants and shaving every inch of your body so you look like a plastic doll or a robot... don't get me started. anyway, breastfeeding older children is very healthy for them, and it is *not* an inappropriate relationship.
2. plastics? plastics might possibly affect child development. i won't let my babies use a pacifier. they can suck their thumbs the old-fashioned way. don't let them put plastic in their mouths. don't get dental fillings either, especially at a young age.
3. vaccines. vaccines do so many bad things to the body, i can't list them all. i don't know for sure, but i suspect that some of the newer vaccines might be worse than some of the old ones, or else it's because nowadays, they're vaccinating at a very, very young age, as early as two years old or younger. worst case scenario: a bottle-fed baby, on soy formula, who gets vaccinated before age two, will probably become obese and have health problems all of their life because the vaccines and the formula screwed up their development. they can also get severe ADHD, autism, allergies, etc.
fat isn't just a useless body tissue - it isn't just an extra unneeded thing that you should get rid of. fat is a tissue that actually does something. it produces hormones, among other things. it is an active, living body part, made of cells and blood vessels, just like any other organ or tissue. vaccines create auto-immunity problems in a lot of tissues, including the intestines and the nervous sytem tissues, and vaccines probably attack the adipose (fat) tissues too. obesity could be an autoimmune disorder of the adipose tissue.
4. drugs, including secondhand drugs. because of my experiences, i know that you don't even need to be *taking* any drugs. you just need to be exposed to somebody else who is using drugs, and they will go through your skin, or else you get them on your hands and then you touch your food when you pick it up. so if you know somebody who uses prescription drugs, you're sharing those drugs secondhand. i experienced temporary, short-term weight gain after contact with a person using a psychiatric drug that causes weight gain. but it's even worse if you are taking any drugs yourself. that even includes some natural, herbal drugs. i've noticed weight changes with st. john's wort sometimes.
a co-worker recently broke up with her boyfriend. she is a heavy person; but she told me, and showed me, that she had suddenly, drastically lost a lot of weight, and her clothes weren't fitting anymore, because she said she was too upset to eat much because of breaking up with her boyfriend. however, i think it isn't because she's 'too upset to eat.' i think her boyfriend has a prescription drug, but i'm not sure. by staying away from him, she is no longer getting secondhand drug exposure from him, and she is able to suddenly lose like twenty pounds, or whatever it was. i'm not kidding, it was a huge sudden weight loss in only like one month. and she wasn't even trying. she showed me how there was all this extra space in her old clothing (you know, like those advertisement photos where somebody pulls their pants waist out to the side to show how much extra space there is).
5. nutrient supplements. synthetic vitamins and minerals have been used more and more. they are everywhere. that includes weird things like amino acids and lots of other new supplements which aren't just vitamins or minerals. now they're in these sports drinks, which i won't touch. i wish i could find the article again, an article i read which said that using synthetic vitamins will trigger allergies. it's true, i started eating a breakfast cereal fortified with all those fake vitamins and right away started sneezing and having a runny nose, which hadn't happened to me in years - i have no nasal allergy problems at all, unless i go inhale the pollen of a couple specific types of flowers, but no big deal. anyway, don't take nutrient supplements while pregnant. don't give them to children. that includes fluoride. fluoridated drinking water is very bad for you. anyway, it is possible that synthetic nutrient supplements are contributing to obesity problems, which have been getting worse and worse in the past couple decades.
6. air pollution? some studies are connecting air pollution with obesity. i'm not sure about this. i think that air pollution does do a lot of bad things to you, but i think that people living in the cities tend to be the type where the mother and father both have jobs, and they leave their babies at the day care, where they get... bottle-feeding. instead of breastfeeding. living in the city is very expensive, so both parents have to work. they can't stay home and breastfeed. so air pollution may or may not be one of the causes of obesity. they noticed that obesity is associated with big cities that have air pollution. however, i still see a lot of obese people in areas that are 'rural poor,' where they don't have much air pollution. poverty seems to be the cause of it. poverty, once again, causes families to send both parents off to work, and the children are kept at day care, or with a babysitter, bottle-feeding them. i could write all about what causes poverty - the income tax, for instance, and property taxes, and 40-hour work week labor laws, which cause people to always be under-employed because nobody wants to pay overtime... don't get me started...
7. rbgh - recombinant bovine growth hormone. this is a synthetic hormone given to dairy cows. i have never gained weight more quickly and easily than when i was drinking a lot of milk. however, i read that rbgh was only created recently, in the mid-nineties, and i was in college, gaining weight (about 25 pounds: normally i range from 120-130, but in college, i went up to 135-145) and drinking a lot of whole milk, in the early nineties... although actually, i left school in 1997, so that kind of overlapped with the time period. i'm not sure. anyway, the hormone helps the cows produce a very large amount of milk... but the hormone comes out in the milk, and then it affects the humans who drink it, making them get fat and have other hormone problems. don't drink milk. just don't.
some people are switching to other kinds of milk, organic milk, raw milk, etc, making sure that it says it doesn't have any hormones - i assume that's okay. anyway i've noticed a problem happening when i eat butter in particular, or ice cream: my thighs and butt get slightly fatter, literally overnight. i wake up the next morning, and when i walk, my thighs will be rubbing together because they've gotten fatter. it can't be just from the amount of butter itself, because it happens even if i eat only a very small amount of butter. it has something in it which triggers a fat increase. and i swore it happened even when i ate butter imported from europe, where bovine growth hormone is illegal, and i was deliberately avoiding rbgh by buying that. so it might just be all dairy products. or pasteurized ones. i really don't know. that's why i'm not sure whether it will be helpful just to avoid rbgh, but still drink and eat dairy products.
8. microwave ovens, microwaved foods, ready-to-eat foods. i hesitate to say that, because i don't entirely agree. they say that the severe obesity epidemic began in america about the same time that microwave ovens became popular. it's true in some ways, but not the whole story. supposedly, the worst thing you can do is microwave foods that are in plastic containers. i don't know enough about this, especially about plastics and their estrogen-like effects. i know a lot about things which cause direct, immediate, observable effects ('i ate this food, and felt sick and restless within an hour' is observable). some of the effects of plastic are hard to observe. the only time i have seen problems with plastic is from my composite resin dental fillings, which gave me, and are still giving me, chronic breast pain. (i will be getting rid of those fillings before pregnancy.) i noticed it with a plastic retainer in my mouth, too, after i had braces - same thing, breast pain. so the microwaved foods might not all be bad, if they aren't in plastic containers. again, i don't know enough about this.
9. chemicals. unknown chemicals in food, or in your environment, your house, on the soil, in the air. i don't know enough to be specific. this includes pesticides and herbicides, and heavy metals. it can be in the paint in your house, in certain kinds of drywall that puts out fumes, anything that causes environmental illness can also affect obesity, but i don't know how much of an effect it has. lots of chemicals are hard to avoid, especially when you don't know about them until it's too late.
10. hormone disorders. hormone problems happen sometimes without a good explanation. but other times, hormone problems are caused by xenohormones, xenoestrogens - chemicals that behave like hormones when they get in your body. they can affect the thyroid too. i don't know the whole list of chemicals that do this. if anyone ever tells you that you have a hormone problem, you have to wonder what is *causing* the hormone problem. don't just assume that hormone problems happen for no reason. the doctor won't bother asking what's causing it. doctors will just prescribe hormone pills for you. doctors usually don't have any idea about the chemicals in foods and in the environment which can have hormone-like effects. their solution to everything is just 'prescribe a pill.' nutritional disorders can also affect the hormones. you can have nutrient deficiency, and nutrient excess or toxicity. i think that toxicity happens a lot more often than people think, because of the huge amounts of synthetic vitamins added to foods and drinks. they add WAYYYYY too much. and synthetic vitamins behave differently than natural vitamins, especially synthetic vitamin D added to milk. synthetic vitamin D excess will actually cause symptoms resembling deficiency. you'll think you're not getting ENOUGH vitamin D, when actually, you're getting too much of the FAKE vitamin D. so anyway, all those things can affect your hormones or behave like hormones.
11. plants and weeds. after my experiences with transdermal herbal oils, i know that you can have drug effects just by touching plants or inhaling the air around them. small quantities of plant drugs in your environment could affect you, depending on what kinds of local weeds and plants you live with. i read just recently about a couple of poisonous plants that can cause birth defects, such as cleft palate (harelip). all you have to do is walk next to them, walk through a patch of weeds, and if you are close enough to get this poisonous plant on you, it could cause birth defects, miscarriages, etc. the same thing could happen with obesity. that wouldn't explain the recent severe obesity epidemic in the past couple decades, though, because people have ALWAYS been surrounded by plants and weeds, for millions of years. however, the article i read did tell me about birth defects, which i would like to know. i forget which poisonous weed it was. something which we have in pennsylvania. lupine? i forget.
anyway, i think 'plants and weeds' are not very likely to be a major cause of obesity, but they can cause some strange, unpredictable symptoms in people if you don't know that they've been exposed to a poisonous or medicinal plant. and they can affect your sensitivity to other drugs, by interacting with them. i just have to mention it because this is my special area of expertise. view it as 'herbal medicine,' which isn't necessarily safe just because it's natural. natural herbs have side effects too, whether you eat them, drink them, take them in pills, or are simply living near them.
12. soybean oil, vegetable oil, hydrogenated oils, overcooked fats? these started being used in the twentieth century. the weston price website talks about how bad these are for you. they can explain it much better than i can. www.westonaprice.org. i think that's the right URL.
vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils are chemically different from natural saturated animal fats. the oils have been changed so much, they can't be used properly by the body. some of them, like soybeans, have hormone-like effects. it's probably worse when given to young children, or during pregnancy, where it drastically affects their development for the rest of their lives.
i am becoming interested in raw foods, but i haven't started trying to eat anything raw yet - but cooked fats might possibly be worse than raw fats. raw fats might be better for you. i want to avoid parasites, which can be deadly, like trichinellosis, so i want to learn a lot more about this before i try eating anything raw (other than fruits and vegetables). i mentioned raw foods (raw meat, and possibly insects) and raw fats because cooking foods can change the fats, too, but not as badly as hydrogenated vegetable oils. i'm still researching these diets to be safe before i try anything.
***
so i've listed a dozen possible causes of obesity (and as soon as i publish this, i'll recall a few more), other than 'you're eating too much.' the causes of obesity are more complicated than that. there has to be a reason why it's suddenly gotten very, very severe in the last couple decades, out of nowhere. people have ALWAYS eaten food! but in the old days, hardly anyone was fat, not like nowadays anyhow.
because of the yellowjackets under my apartment door, i have to plan my outings and errands so that i get everything done at once, instead of making separate errands after i forget something. this is an advantage, and a disadvantage, of living so close to town - that i have a short distance to anyplace i need to go shopping, so i don't care much if i forget something and then go back out again a little later to get it. i can't do that now. i bought a yellowjacket trap, and (even after i figured out how to set it up properly) they're totally ignoring the trap!
i haven't blogged much because: 1. i am focused on apartment-hunting, and 2. i haven't been exposed to drugs very many times lately, except in the past few days. drugs always make me talk a lot more. they change my personality at work, too, and i talk to people differently, and behave differently in social situations - not necessarily better. i think my personality changes in a way where it seems like i don't need anybody, like i don't need friends, and like i'm always happy and don't empathize with other people's emotions, when i'm on drugs. it's a fake happiness facade, sort of a coldness.
hair: still going with the no shampoo, dreadlocks experiment. originally, i was 'scrunching' the hair, wadding it up, crumpling it, the way i used to do when i had a perm and used mousse, long ago. now, i'm not doing that anymore. the scrunching was making these loops of hair, and i decided i wanted to see what would happen if i just let it be straight. i don't think my hair will form really strong dreadlocks on its own. unless i let the wind blow it really badly, but i don't really feel totally committed to dreadlocks yet. one thing i am doing now is checking for fluffy towel lint before taking photographs! the towel lint fluffs annoyed me so badly, i actually edited one of my pictures to remove them - and that's saying something, because editing a picture is something i associate with fakeness, artificial, made-up runway models in magazines who have perfect, airbrushed photos. i had one picture that i thought turned out really good, but all my eyes could see was the one bright white spot of towel fluff tangled in the hair, and i couldn't see anything else. 'just another discovery in the experiment,' is the idea - that this is one more thing i didn't know about when i started this.
martin: was 'let go,' which i guess means fired. i feel as though i will be able to see him again, but it won't be easy to do. 'they' tried to bond me with him in a long-lasting way, and 'they' made a big deal out of it, and they made me write these letters and things to him, which i'm assuming was part of what made him avoid me. i'm still going with the 'parallel universe theory,' somewhat, though - that he has tried to contact me, but can't. i've actually verified with somebody that they were trying to call my answering machine, left a message, and the answering machine said 'thank you for your message' and disconnected them, and i never got the recording. meanwhile, other people were able to leave messages, just not that person. however, it seemed like an artificial setup, like it was too easy to prove, just like the several incidents of email interference that were also 'too easy to prove.' so it seemed like i was 'supposed' to prove to myself that emails and phone calls were being intercepted. anyway, phone hacking, 'phreaking,' is part of the theory. but i have not tried to contact him recently. i am guessing that he will be back in the fall for another semester, but i won't know for sure until then, and i am just looking at his pictures to try to understand what he's doing.
west virginia: they have been reminding me that i never really wanted to live in state college. i moved here because i was young and i was not yet independent. i had never lived on my own before, didn't know how to pay bills, and that kind of thing. so i moved in with my brother, and had help from my parents, in the beginning. then, for one reason and another, i ended up staying here, but still did not really 'bond' with this place.
however, i have bonded with peter. and peter is married, and i can't participate much in the big decisions, such as his medical care, or where he will live. i can't take him away, because his son has friends here, and i don't want to uproot his son. i would actually invite him to come to west virginia with me.
i am remembering the fresh air in west virginia. the hills are very different there, topographically. they are lots of small lumps, very complicated, instead of these long, regular, huge mountains with huge valleys in between. these are the allegheny mountains, i think. the appalachian mountains are... like another planet. there's a reason why this matters. the fresh air thing - i often notice that when i go to the other side of the mountain, away from the town, the air is fresher over there, no auto exhaust. but in west virginia, i suspect (according to this theory) that the large number of irregular hills makes it easier to have places where the air is fresh, because the hills block the polluted air from blowing over that way. however, i lived in a rather rural area, too, and i might remember fresh air just because of that. also, there's a lot more forest in west virginia, instead of tilled agricultural land with no trees. (don't get me started on the subject of 'the reasons why people are doing corporate monocropping, and why it's always corn and soybeans,' from a libertarian-anarchist point of view. it has to do with property taxes, subsidies, laws, and stuff.)
i've decided that fresh air is very important to my happiness, and i want to raise children in a place that has fresh air. you don't know what it's like until you've been someplace where the air is very different, if you live in a city and you have auto exhaust around you all the time, and the smell of asphalt streets, a dry smell. in the fresh air, it's humid and smells like flowers and trees, and with every breath you feel a pleasant sensation instead of the yucky, sickening, auto-exhaust nausea that you feel in the city.
i'd like to go back to west virginia, except that peter is almost like a child to me, someone who i feel that i need to take care of. if i had a good, safe place in west virginia, if i owned land there and i was settled, then i'd invite peter and his family to move into my 'community.' i'm putting that in quotation marks, but i actually would like to start an intentional community for real.
the enneagram: i've been reading about instinctual subtypes. i knew about them a few years ago, but i hadn't read any more detailed information until recently. when i read more details, it became very useful. it explains a lot about different people's styles, their priorities. you don't need to know the enneagram at all to understand the instincts. the three instincts can be learned about on their own, separately from the enneagram.
i'm going to copy-paste:
***
Sexuals attract others without really trying. They also repel others in the same way, like an anti-pheromone. This works like a screening function in the mating process. People typically have a strong reaction one way or another towards Sx's, and vice versa.
Self Pres (self-preservation) people instinctively avoid certain foods and environments, and are likewise drawn to those things that nourish and sustain them. Sp's have a strong reaction against things that threaten to harm their comfort or health.
Social is driven towards gaining protection and empowerment within larger entities.
Soc's typically react strongly against things which would jeopardize or displace their position or reputation.
***
by the way, a guy named naranjo, who talked to ichazo, when they were developing the enneagram and the three instincts, this naranjo guy experienced some electronic mind control incidents exactly like some things that have happened to me. it's at a site which i think is called ocean-moonshine.net, info from the underground, in a link called 'the hidden lore of the enneagram' or something. i'm not connected to the internet at the moment so i can't look it up. (i'm offline.) he describes having a lot of weird physical sensations at one point, and also, some fake incidents of being urged to go to a particular location at a certain time, where he 'coincidentally' happened to meet somebody he was supposed to meet, and was told 'these things happen when you are on the path.' my answer to that: no, they don't. they happen when criminals push buttons on machines and force people to do things. the end. this is a crime. it is not a 'spiritual' event and has nothing to do with being on the path.
anyway, about the instincts. each person favors one of the instincts more than the others. that's their primary instinct, most strongly developed. then there is the next strongest one, then the weakest one. and you can understand a lot about their behavior, their style, if you understand that they are acting on their strongest instincts. they use abbreviations to show the strongest instinct, followed by the second strongest.
i've decided that i am probably this: myers-briggs ISTP, enneagram type seven, self-pres/sexual instinct (sp/sx). this is after many years of reading about personality types, and also having some suggestions from 'the voices' about what they thought i am. the sp/sx description fits me quite well, especially when i reread journals and fiction stories that i wrote a long time ago, as a teenager: they had a very mystical, mythical, pagan, folklore, fantasy style to them (sp/sx is described as 'the mystic, the mate, the quiet supporter') - not like the 'all business' style that you usually see with the other type, sp/so (self-pres/social). i always tend to focus on one or two very close, long-term friends, instead of a large social group. maintaining a large, impersonal social group is very difficult for me... and yet, i will be working on this after my life gets a little more settled.
the myers-briggs test is screwed up, and it tells everybody they're an intuitive, when they're not. lots of people are getting 'INTJ' and 'INTP' when they are actually SP artisans. the test needs to be redesigned. david keirsey has a 'temperament sorter' which helps a lot.
i took the myers-briggs test many times, back when i didn't understand it, and i got: INTP, INTJ, and INFP, after several different tests. those are wrong, and it was actually 'the voices' who talked with me and convinced me that i'm not an intuitive. i don't like using symbols, abstractions, metaphors, etc very often, but i'm capable of understanding them if i know that they're being used. but i don't like to use them myself. i had to struggle against the prejudice that 'sensors are bad/stupid, intuitives are good/smart,' which is a belief that you find in a lot of the forums.
obesity: i have been getting voices complaining to me about obesity. THEY'RE the ones who had me write about it in a previous post, where i was saying, what would the 'mainstream world' tell dennis he had to do in his 'makeover.' they always say, 'lose weight,' as though that's something a person can easily just choose to do, on a whim, just because they want to, as though it's their fault and as though they have control over it. 'lose weight' isn't part of MY makeover, but it might possibly happen as an accidental side effect (or not! some of the dietary changes might actually cause some people to GAIN weight).
so here is everything i have learned about obesity so far. i assume that obesity is *just barely* under your own control, but not very much. two people can sit side by side at the same table, eating exactly the same meal, in exactly the same quantities of the exact same foods, and one person will be very fat, and the other person will be very thin.
causes of obesity that i have learned about so far: (i will probably remember more of them after i've published this, which usually happens when i write a list of any kind. these are in *no particular order*, so they're not ordered by importance.)
*** A DOZEN POSSIBLE CAUSES OF OBESITY ***
1. bottle-feeding, infant formula. you MUST breastfeed babies. if you cannot breastfeed them, you must find a wet nurse, a substitute who will breastfeed them for you. *DO NOT* bottle-feed babies ANY kind of formula at all, and, in my opinion, that includes cow's milk, even if it's raw milk, even if it's the healthiest, organic, hormone-free cow's-milk that you milked that morning from your own cow at your own farm at home... although that's the 'best-case scenario' to choose from if you absolutely have to.
another thing, it's good to breastfeed children for a very long time, like until they're three years old, or even older than that. it's called 'extended breastfeeding.' in the united states, this is viewed as strange, creepy, taboo, something which is almost like pedophilia or child pornography, like having a sexual relationship with a child. it's also seen as encouraging immaturity and dependence instead of teaching children to 'be strong and stand on their own and not need mommy anymore.'
extended breastfeeding *doesn't* make children clingy and dependent - just the opposite, it makes them strong and trusting and socially open to other people. and breastfeeding is *not* a 'sexual relationship with a child,' not in a bad way, even though it's true, breasts and nipples are sexual, and the feelings and sensations of it are sexual. but this country was populated by PURITANS. does that tell you anything about our culture? we are the puritans. i'm not sure, i should read about the puritans - they're probably LESS anti-sexual than modern american culture, with its hypocrisy of blatantly encouraging sex on tv and movies, but being all secretive and forbidding about it at the same time, and valuing unnaturalness and artificial breast implants and shaving every inch of your body so you look like a plastic doll or a robot... don't get me started. anyway, breastfeeding older children is very healthy for them, and it is *not* an inappropriate relationship.
2. plastics? plastics might possibly affect child development. i won't let my babies use a pacifier. they can suck their thumbs the old-fashioned way. don't let them put plastic in their mouths. don't get dental fillings either, especially at a young age.
3. vaccines. vaccines do so many bad things to the body, i can't list them all. i don't know for sure, but i suspect that some of the newer vaccines might be worse than some of the old ones, or else it's because nowadays, they're vaccinating at a very, very young age, as early as two years old or younger. worst case scenario: a bottle-fed baby, on soy formula, who gets vaccinated before age two, will probably become obese and have health problems all of their life because the vaccines and the formula screwed up their development. they can also get severe ADHD, autism, allergies, etc.
fat isn't just a useless body tissue - it isn't just an extra unneeded thing that you should get rid of. fat is a tissue that actually does something. it produces hormones, among other things. it is an active, living body part, made of cells and blood vessels, just like any other organ or tissue. vaccines create auto-immunity problems in a lot of tissues, including the intestines and the nervous sytem tissues, and vaccines probably attack the adipose (fat) tissues too. obesity could be an autoimmune disorder of the adipose tissue.
4. drugs, including secondhand drugs. because of my experiences, i know that you don't even need to be *taking* any drugs. you just need to be exposed to somebody else who is using drugs, and they will go through your skin, or else you get them on your hands and then you touch your food when you pick it up. so if you know somebody who uses prescription drugs, you're sharing those drugs secondhand. i experienced temporary, short-term weight gain after contact with a person using a psychiatric drug that causes weight gain. but it's even worse if you are taking any drugs yourself. that even includes some natural, herbal drugs. i've noticed weight changes with st. john's wort sometimes.
a co-worker recently broke up with her boyfriend. she is a heavy person; but she told me, and showed me, that she had suddenly, drastically lost a lot of weight, and her clothes weren't fitting anymore, because she said she was too upset to eat much because of breaking up with her boyfriend. however, i think it isn't because she's 'too upset to eat.' i think her boyfriend has a prescription drug, but i'm not sure. by staying away from him, she is no longer getting secondhand drug exposure from him, and she is able to suddenly lose like twenty pounds, or whatever it was. i'm not kidding, it was a huge sudden weight loss in only like one month. and she wasn't even trying. she showed me how there was all this extra space in her old clothing (you know, like those advertisement photos where somebody pulls their pants waist out to the side to show how much extra space there is).
5. nutrient supplements. synthetic vitamins and minerals have been used more and more. they are everywhere. that includes weird things like amino acids and lots of other new supplements which aren't just vitamins or minerals. now they're in these sports drinks, which i won't touch. i wish i could find the article again, an article i read which said that using synthetic vitamins will trigger allergies. it's true, i started eating a breakfast cereal fortified with all those fake vitamins and right away started sneezing and having a runny nose, which hadn't happened to me in years - i have no nasal allergy problems at all, unless i go inhale the pollen of a couple specific types of flowers, but no big deal. anyway, don't take nutrient supplements while pregnant. don't give them to children. that includes fluoride. fluoridated drinking water is very bad for you. anyway, it is possible that synthetic nutrient supplements are contributing to obesity problems, which have been getting worse and worse in the past couple decades.
6. air pollution? some studies are connecting air pollution with obesity. i'm not sure about this. i think that air pollution does do a lot of bad things to you, but i think that people living in the cities tend to be the type where the mother and father both have jobs, and they leave their babies at the day care, where they get... bottle-feeding. instead of breastfeeding. living in the city is very expensive, so both parents have to work. they can't stay home and breastfeed. so air pollution may or may not be one of the causes of obesity. they noticed that obesity is associated with big cities that have air pollution. however, i still see a lot of obese people in areas that are 'rural poor,' where they don't have much air pollution. poverty seems to be the cause of it. poverty, once again, causes families to send both parents off to work, and the children are kept at day care, or with a babysitter, bottle-feeding them. i could write all about what causes poverty - the income tax, for instance, and property taxes, and 40-hour work week labor laws, which cause people to always be under-employed because nobody wants to pay overtime... don't get me started...
7. rbgh - recombinant bovine growth hormone. this is a synthetic hormone given to dairy cows. i have never gained weight more quickly and easily than when i was drinking a lot of milk. however, i read that rbgh was only created recently, in the mid-nineties, and i was in college, gaining weight (about 25 pounds: normally i range from 120-130, but in college, i went up to 135-145) and drinking a lot of whole milk, in the early nineties... although actually, i left school in 1997, so that kind of overlapped with the time period. i'm not sure. anyway, the hormone helps the cows produce a very large amount of milk... but the hormone comes out in the milk, and then it affects the humans who drink it, making them get fat and have other hormone problems. don't drink milk. just don't.
some people are switching to other kinds of milk, organic milk, raw milk, etc, making sure that it says it doesn't have any hormones - i assume that's okay. anyway i've noticed a problem happening when i eat butter in particular, or ice cream: my thighs and butt get slightly fatter, literally overnight. i wake up the next morning, and when i walk, my thighs will be rubbing together because they've gotten fatter. it can't be just from the amount of butter itself, because it happens even if i eat only a very small amount of butter. it has something in it which triggers a fat increase. and i swore it happened even when i ate butter imported from europe, where bovine growth hormone is illegal, and i was deliberately avoiding rbgh by buying that. so it might just be all dairy products. or pasteurized ones. i really don't know. that's why i'm not sure whether it will be helpful just to avoid rbgh, but still drink and eat dairy products.
8. microwave ovens, microwaved foods, ready-to-eat foods. i hesitate to say that, because i don't entirely agree. they say that the severe obesity epidemic began in america about the same time that microwave ovens became popular. it's true in some ways, but not the whole story. supposedly, the worst thing you can do is microwave foods that are in plastic containers. i don't know enough about this, especially about plastics and their estrogen-like effects. i know a lot about things which cause direct, immediate, observable effects ('i ate this food, and felt sick and restless within an hour' is observable). some of the effects of plastic are hard to observe. the only time i have seen problems with plastic is from my composite resin dental fillings, which gave me, and are still giving me, chronic breast pain. (i will be getting rid of those fillings before pregnancy.) i noticed it with a plastic retainer in my mouth, too, after i had braces - same thing, breast pain. so the microwaved foods might not all be bad, if they aren't in plastic containers. again, i don't know enough about this.
9. chemicals. unknown chemicals in food, or in your environment, your house, on the soil, in the air. i don't know enough to be specific. this includes pesticides and herbicides, and heavy metals. it can be in the paint in your house, in certain kinds of drywall that puts out fumes, anything that causes environmental illness can also affect obesity, but i don't know how much of an effect it has. lots of chemicals are hard to avoid, especially when you don't know about them until it's too late.
10. hormone disorders. hormone problems happen sometimes without a good explanation. but other times, hormone problems are caused by xenohormones, xenoestrogens - chemicals that behave like hormones when they get in your body. they can affect the thyroid too. i don't know the whole list of chemicals that do this. if anyone ever tells you that you have a hormone problem, you have to wonder what is *causing* the hormone problem. don't just assume that hormone problems happen for no reason. the doctor won't bother asking what's causing it. doctors will just prescribe hormone pills for you. doctors usually don't have any idea about the chemicals in foods and in the environment which can have hormone-like effects. their solution to everything is just 'prescribe a pill.' nutritional disorders can also affect the hormones. you can have nutrient deficiency, and nutrient excess or toxicity. i think that toxicity happens a lot more often than people think, because of the huge amounts of synthetic vitamins added to foods and drinks. they add WAYYYYY too much. and synthetic vitamins behave differently than natural vitamins, especially synthetic vitamin D added to milk. synthetic vitamin D excess will actually cause symptoms resembling deficiency. you'll think you're not getting ENOUGH vitamin D, when actually, you're getting too much of the FAKE vitamin D. so anyway, all those things can affect your hormones or behave like hormones.
11. plants and weeds. after my experiences with transdermal herbal oils, i know that you can have drug effects just by touching plants or inhaling the air around them. small quantities of plant drugs in your environment could affect you, depending on what kinds of local weeds and plants you live with. i read just recently about a couple of poisonous plants that can cause birth defects, such as cleft palate (harelip). all you have to do is walk next to them, walk through a patch of weeds, and if you are close enough to get this poisonous plant on you, it could cause birth defects, miscarriages, etc. the same thing could happen with obesity. that wouldn't explain the recent severe obesity epidemic in the past couple decades, though, because people have ALWAYS been surrounded by plants and weeds, for millions of years. however, the article i read did tell me about birth defects, which i would like to know. i forget which poisonous weed it was. something which we have in pennsylvania. lupine? i forget.
anyway, i think 'plants and weeds' are not very likely to be a major cause of obesity, but they can cause some strange, unpredictable symptoms in people if you don't know that they've been exposed to a poisonous or medicinal plant. and they can affect your sensitivity to other drugs, by interacting with them. i just have to mention it because this is my special area of expertise. view it as 'herbal medicine,' which isn't necessarily safe just because it's natural. natural herbs have side effects too, whether you eat them, drink them, take them in pills, or are simply living near them.
12. soybean oil, vegetable oil, hydrogenated oils, overcooked fats? these started being used in the twentieth century. the weston price website talks about how bad these are for you. they can explain it much better than i can. www.westonaprice.org. i think that's the right URL.
vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils are chemically different from natural saturated animal fats. the oils have been changed so much, they can't be used properly by the body. some of them, like soybeans, have hormone-like effects. it's probably worse when given to young children, or during pregnancy, where it drastically affects their development for the rest of their lives.
i am becoming interested in raw foods, but i haven't started trying to eat anything raw yet - but cooked fats might possibly be worse than raw fats. raw fats might be better for you. i want to avoid parasites, which can be deadly, like trichinellosis, so i want to learn a lot more about this before i try eating anything raw (other than fruits and vegetables). i mentioned raw foods (raw meat, and possibly insects) and raw fats because cooking foods can change the fats, too, but not as badly as hydrogenated vegetable oils. i'm still researching these diets to be safe before i try anything.
***
so i've listed a dozen possible causes of obesity (and as soon as i publish this, i'll recall a few more), other than 'you're eating too much.' the causes of obesity are more complicated than that. there has to be a reason why it's suddenly gotten very, very severe in the last couple decades, out of nowhere. people have ALWAYS eaten food! but in the old days, hardly anyone was fat, not like nowadays anyhow.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Michael Jackson probably went crazy because of skin-bleaching chemicals.
I never really liked Michael Jackson's music, even back in 1983 when I first heard it. But I'm still shocked that he died - he wasn't very old, only 50. It's strange when celebrities die and I actually know who they are. Most of the time, I have no idea who it is that the headlines are talking about. But Michael Jackson is a celebrity I remember.
I found out that he started wearing his one glove because he was developing vitiligo, the irregular loss of skin color, on his right hand. I never knew that until just today. Now I wonder what caused the vitiligo.
Supposedly, he started bleaching his skin to make the color change more evenly instead of irregularly. And the more I read about skin lighteners - and I don't know what brand name, or what type of skin lightener he used - the more I am convinced that he started going crazy because of the chemicals in the skin lighteners.
Some skin lighteners contain mercury. Again, I don't know if he used that kind. But mercury definitely makes people go crazy and become 'eccentric' in really extreme ways. There are other chemicals in those lighteners, not just mercury, that will affect your mind if you put this chemical all over your skin every day, or several times a week, or however often he had to do the skin bleaching.
Once again, I'm seeing ignorance about the fact that whatever touches your skin will go through the skin and affect all of your body and mind. People think that the skin is an impermeable, impenetrable barrier. It is not. It is more like a filter, blocking out some things, letting some things through. Larger molecules get blocked, smaller molecules go through, and some of it depends on whether they are water-soluble, oil-soluble, or not very soluble in either one.
Skin also excretes wastes and other chemicals from your body. So molecules are crossing the skin in both directions, going inwards and outwards.
I suspect that the body excretes pharmaceutical drugs, or partially metabolized fragments of the drugs, through the skin, and the drugs then contaminate the clothing. Sometimes, a partially metabolized drug is still active - it still behaves like a drug, sometimes being very similar to the original drug. I would have to do more research to find out what types of chemicals are excreted in sweat, or possibly in skin oils.
I read an article recently about how somebody had lead and arsenic poisoning because he had been picking morel mushrooms, for years, in apple orchards where lead-arsenate pesticides had been used long ago. The pesticides contaminated the soil.
They tested to find out whether the morel mushrooms contained lead or arsenic, and if I recall correctly, they found either very little, or none, in the mushrooms. So they were unable to explain why this person had lead and arsenic poisoning.
It's obvious to me that if you are crawling around on the ground, digging up mushrooms with your bare hands, touching soil against your skin, you are going to absorb the lead arsenate directly through the skin. It bothers me that people don't know this, and that they ALWAYS assume you have to EAT something in order to get poisoned. All you need to do is TOUCH something to get poisoned, especially when it's just a metal ion like lead arsenate. Those are small molecules, not large ones, and therefore they can go through the skin.
So I got the feeling, from reading this article, that everyone was confused about how he could be poisoned whenever the mushrooms contained very little lead arsenate.
I think that transdermal absorption of drugs, poisons, chemicals, and herbal oils is something very important for doctors and researchers to know about.
I found out that he started wearing his one glove because he was developing vitiligo, the irregular loss of skin color, on his right hand. I never knew that until just today. Now I wonder what caused the vitiligo.
Supposedly, he started bleaching his skin to make the color change more evenly instead of irregularly. And the more I read about skin lighteners - and I don't know what brand name, or what type of skin lightener he used - the more I am convinced that he started going crazy because of the chemicals in the skin lighteners.
Some skin lighteners contain mercury. Again, I don't know if he used that kind. But mercury definitely makes people go crazy and become 'eccentric' in really extreme ways. There are other chemicals in those lighteners, not just mercury, that will affect your mind if you put this chemical all over your skin every day, or several times a week, or however often he had to do the skin bleaching.
Once again, I'm seeing ignorance about the fact that whatever touches your skin will go through the skin and affect all of your body and mind. People think that the skin is an impermeable, impenetrable barrier. It is not. It is more like a filter, blocking out some things, letting some things through. Larger molecules get blocked, smaller molecules go through, and some of it depends on whether they are water-soluble, oil-soluble, or not very soluble in either one.
Skin also excretes wastes and other chemicals from your body. So molecules are crossing the skin in both directions, going inwards and outwards.
I suspect that the body excretes pharmaceutical drugs, or partially metabolized fragments of the drugs, through the skin, and the drugs then contaminate the clothing. Sometimes, a partially metabolized drug is still active - it still behaves like a drug, sometimes being very similar to the original drug. I would have to do more research to find out what types of chemicals are excreted in sweat, or possibly in skin oils.
I read an article recently about how somebody had lead and arsenic poisoning because he had been picking morel mushrooms, for years, in apple orchards where lead-arsenate pesticides had been used long ago. The pesticides contaminated the soil.
They tested to find out whether the morel mushrooms contained lead or arsenic, and if I recall correctly, they found either very little, or none, in the mushrooms. So they were unable to explain why this person had lead and arsenic poisoning.
It's obvious to me that if you are crawling around on the ground, digging up mushrooms with your bare hands, touching soil against your skin, you are going to absorb the lead arsenate directly through the skin. It bothers me that people don't know this, and that they ALWAYS assume you have to EAT something in order to get poisoned. All you need to do is TOUCH something to get poisoned, especially when it's just a metal ion like lead arsenate. Those are small molecules, not large ones, and therefore they can go through the skin.
So I got the feeling, from reading this article, that everyone was confused about how he could be poisoned whenever the mushrooms contained very little lead arsenate.
I think that transdermal absorption of drugs, poisons, chemicals, and herbal oils is something very important for doctors and researchers to know about.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Jumping over a bees' nest to get in and out of my apartment
Ever since I visited the rhododendrons at Black Moshannon, I've been having heart symptoms similar to what happened the last time I contaminated my house with herbs. I walked near those bushes, so I assume that the soil beneath the bushes had enough of the rhododendron poison on it to contaminate my shoes. I thought rhododendrons weren't very poisonous. I mentally categorized them as 'mildly' poisonous, especially because I've been around them in the past and didn't notice any problems, and because people plant them as decorative bushes. However, there are different varieties; and I'm more chemical sensitive than I used to be. Plus, people (stupidly) plant other extremely dangerous plants, like foxglove, as 'decorative flowers,' so rhododendrons could be the same way.
So... I decided today that I would try to use my 'Little Green' vacuum shampooer, intended for cleaning furniture, and shampoo out the foot well area of my car, where the gas pedal is. I figured that got contaminated when I stepped back into the car after the rhododendrons.
I dragged my long, orange extension cord out the door, and went down the steps to my car. I had to jiggle the extension cord around to undo some tangles, so it was banging and hitting the edge of the step below the door. There is a little metal rim which is hollow underneath. A minute after I started banging the cord around, bees started flying out from under the metal thing.
I shouted 'BWAH!' and ran down to the car, flailing my arms around. ('BWAH!' was the random noise that came out of my mouth. It wasn't really a word.) Then I shouted the s-word, the f-word, and the g.d.-word, then the f-word and the s-word a few more times, but the bees still didn't go away. I kept watching up there and saw them flying around. Soon they would fly down the steps and find me, standing next to my car, so I opened the car door and got inside and shut the door.
After waiting a few minutes, I didn't notice any bees flying around near my car. So I got out and did my rug shampooing project. Nothing bothered me, but I was really paranoid, and every time I saw a flying insect, or the slightest motion in my peripheral vision, I jumped and looked in all directions to see if a swarm of bees was around me.
They were yellowjackets. I got in a yellowjackets nest when I was a teenager, when my friend Christina and I were playing in the woods, getting ready to climb up a big tree, while barefoot. A nest was at the base of the tree, and we were standing in it. Christina said, 'I'm getting stung!' and I was confused. I thought maybe she was getting bitten by a spider, so I looked at her legs expecting to see a spider. But I saw these little things flying around, and then they were flying around me too.
So we ran home barefoot through the woods, through the sticker bushes, screaming. We felt no pain in our bare feet even on the stickers. We slapped each other anytime one of us saw a bee that the other one couldn't reach, and ran into the house smacking each other and ourselves, and screaming. I don't really remember what Mom said, but she helped us upstairs to get in the bathroom, take our clothes off, and look at all the stings, and check for any bees that might still be in the clothing.
Luckily neither of us were allergic to yellowjackets, so we only had itchy painful bumps all over, but we were mostly okay.
So I wasn't allergic to yellowjackets a long time ago, and I hope I'm still not allergic to them.
Well, so back to the present. I finished shampooing the carpet. I was using the furniture shampooer in a way it wasn't meant to be used. It was a dainty little machine meant for use on things that were relatively clean, like chairs and couches. I was using it on a car floor with chunks of soil, rock, and dry grass. (They usually say things like 'first remove gross filth and heavy soil,' which I did not do.) It kept clogging and I had to clean it out several times. I couldn't go upstairs to my apartment to use the water, so I used the creek, since I was only using plain water without any soap.
Then I had to go to the bathroom, and also, I was starting to get some skin contact with some of the various herbal drugs that had contaminated my car floor. It wasn't just rhododendron, it was also the old drugs, the more benign ones like St. John's Wort, which is a nuisance but not as life-threatening. So I was noticing symptoms, but nothing really severe. I decided to go out to Sheetz and use their bathroom and also buy a snack.
I thought I might go buy bee spray, but I didn't. I am reluctant to do that. There are a few reasons why I would rather not use a spray. First, even though I talk about how I am continuing to eat an omnivorous diet, which means that I'm willing to kill animals, I still don't enjoy the sight of something writhing in pain and agony for hours, even something like bees. The bees would get sick and they would be crawling around, being tortured, and I would have to go look for them and try to step on them to put them out of their misery. So that would be horrible and unpleasant. The other thing is that if I spray the doorstep, the spray will inevitably make me as sick as it makes the bees. I will then smell bug spray forever while I'm in my house. I have to do a lot of work this month, moving my stuff out, so I need a lot of physical energy, and getting sick with poisonous pesticides will be counterproductive. I also have to open that door to use the fan, although I could try putting it in a window - and I probably won't be keeping the door open much anymore now that the bees are upset and distrusting.
I'm going to find out whether they sell an ultrasonic bee deterrent.
So eventually, I had to get back into the house. I went to Sheetz, went to the bathroom, bought a snack and came home. I was now feeling my heart pounding (not because of the bees, but because of what was on the floor), and knew I needed to wash off the herbal contaminants, so I wanted to get inside and change clothes and take a shower. I went up the steps, saw a bee, and ran back down the steps and into my car again. If my heart was pounding before, it was pounding a lot now. I didn't want to have a heart attack because of being terrified by bees while I was on drugs.
I went back up the stairs, and shouted, 'ONE TWO THREE GO!!!' and opened the door, jumped inside, and SLAMMED the door shut behind me - over the extension cord, which was still plugged in.
After the door shut, I looked around to see if any bees had gone inside the open door, as it had been left open for about an hour now, since I couldn't go up there to shut it. There weren't any bees in the house.
So I unplugged the extension cord, and left it hanging where it was - I'll get it later. I took a shower, washed off the herbal drugs, and changed clothes, and felt much better, and my heart was no longer pounding. But now I'm sort of trapped in here, and I have nothing to do but blog, and look up 'ultrasonic bee deterrent' to find out whether maybe it's something they sell at Lowe's, or someplace else where I might buy it in town instead of ordering it online.
I was going through that door all this time, for weeks and weeks, and yes, several times recently I had seen a couple bees flying in and out of that little metal thing, but I had put it on my low priority list, because I didn't think I would do anything bad enough to disturb them.
I could light a candle next to it, but it would be uncomfortably close to the house, and I don't want to be lighting candles next to flammable objects and surfaces until AFTER I've moved all my stuff out - just kidding, I wouldn't do it even then. And yeah, I probably shouldn't even try to joke about that. And there is still one other person here in this house during the summer, besides me, maybe two people, although some of the other rooms are empty. It feels like everybody's gone, but there are still a few people living here. There's at least one car in the parking lot and I saw a girl earlier today (while I was sitting in my car looking up at the bees flying around my porch).
I could also maybe pour water over the metal thing, except that would require me to crouch above it for a few seconds, which I don't want to do. And the water would just splash through it and around it, without bothering the bees much.
So I haven't decided what to do yet. If I don't do something, then either the landlord, or the next tenants moving in, will have to do something, and surely, they will choose the most brutal and disgusting method available, the poison spray. I'm not going to tell the landlord about it unless I feel there is no other choice. I'd like to try to take care of it myself first.
So... I decided today that I would try to use my 'Little Green' vacuum shampooer, intended for cleaning furniture, and shampoo out the foot well area of my car, where the gas pedal is. I figured that got contaminated when I stepped back into the car after the rhododendrons.
I dragged my long, orange extension cord out the door, and went down the steps to my car. I had to jiggle the extension cord around to undo some tangles, so it was banging and hitting the edge of the step below the door. There is a little metal rim which is hollow underneath. A minute after I started banging the cord around, bees started flying out from under the metal thing.
I shouted 'BWAH!' and ran down to the car, flailing my arms around. ('BWAH!' was the random noise that came out of my mouth. It wasn't really a word.) Then I shouted the s-word, the f-word, and the g.d.-word, then the f-word and the s-word a few more times, but the bees still didn't go away. I kept watching up there and saw them flying around. Soon they would fly down the steps and find me, standing next to my car, so I opened the car door and got inside and shut the door.
After waiting a few minutes, I didn't notice any bees flying around near my car. So I got out and did my rug shampooing project. Nothing bothered me, but I was really paranoid, and every time I saw a flying insect, or the slightest motion in my peripheral vision, I jumped and looked in all directions to see if a swarm of bees was around me.
They were yellowjackets. I got in a yellowjackets nest when I was a teenager, when my friend Christina and I were playing in the woods, getting ready to climb up a big tree, while barefoot. A nest was at the base of the tree, and we were standing in it. Christina said, 'I'm getting stung!' and I was confused. I thought maybe she was getting bitten by a spider, so I looked at her legs expecting to see a spider. But I saw these little things flying around, and then they were flying around me too.
So we ran home barefoot through the woods, through the sticker bushes, screaming. We felt no pain in our bare feet even on the stickers. We slapped each other anytime one of us saw a bee that the other one couldn't reach, and ran into the house smacking each other and ourselves, and screaming. I don't really remember what Mom said, but she helped us upstairs to get in the bathroom, take our clothes off, and look at all the stings, and check for any bees that might still be in the clothing.
Luckily neither of us were allergic to yellowjackets, so we only had itchy painful bumps all over, but we were mostly okay.
So I wasn't allergic to yellowjackets a long time ago, and I hope I'm still not allergic to them.
Well, so back to the present. I finished shampooing the carpet. I was using the furniture shampooer in a way it wasn't meant to be used. It was a dainty little machine meant for use on things that were relatively clean, like chairs and couches. I was using it on a car floor with chunks of soil, rock, and dry grass. (They usually say things like 'first remove gross filth and heavy soil,' which I did not do.) It kept clogging and I had to clean it out several times. I couldn't go upstairs to my apartment to use the water, so I used the creek, since I was only using plain water without any soap.
Then I had to go to the bathroom, and also, I was starting to get some skin contact with some of the various herbal drugs that had contaminated my car floor. It wasn't just rhododendron, it was also the old drugs, the more benign ones like St. John's Wort, which is a nuisance but not as life-threatening. So I was noticing symptoms, but nothing really severe. I decided to go out to Sheetz and use their bathroom and also buy a snack.
I thought I might go buy bee spray, but I didn't. I am reluctant to do that. There are a few reasons why I would rather not use a spray. First, even though I talk about how I am continuing to eat an omnivorous diet, which means that I'm willing to kill animals, I still don't enjoy the sight of something writhing in pain and agony for hours, even something like bees. The bees would get sick and they would be crawling around, being tortured, and I would have to go look for them and try to step on them to put them out of their misery. So that would be horrible and unpleasant. The other thing is that if I spray the doorstep, the spray will inevitably make me as sick as it makes the bees. I will then smell bug spray forever while I'm in my house. I have to do a lot of work this month, moving my stuff out, so I need a lot of physical energy, and getting sick with poisonous pesticides will be counterproductive. I also have to open that door to use the fan, although I could try putting it in a window - and I probably won't be keeping the door open much anymore now that the bees are upset and distrusting.
I'm going to find out whether they sell an ultrasonic bee deterrent.
So eventually, I had to get back into the house. I went to Sheetz, went to the bathroom, bought a snack and came home. I was now feeling my heart pounding (not because of the bees, but because of what was on the floor), and knew I needed to wash off the herbal contaminants, so I wanted to get inside and change clothes and take a shower. I went up the steps, saw a bee, and ran back down the steps and into my car again. If my heart was pounding before, it was pounding a lot now. I didn't want to have a heart attack because of being terrified by bees while I was on drugs.
I went back up the stairs, and shouted, 'ONE TWO THREE GO!!!' and opened the door, jumped inside, and SLAMMED the door shut behind me - over the extension cord, which was still plugged in.
After the door shut, I looked around to see if any bees had gone inside the open door, as it had been left open for about an hour now, since I couldn't go up there to shut it. There weren't any bees in the house.
So I unplugged the extension cord, and left it hanging where it was - I'll get it later. I took a shower, washed off the herbal drugs, and changed clothes, and felt much better, and my heart was no longer pounding. But now I'm sort of trapped in here, and I have nothing to do but blog, and look up 'ultrasonic bee deterrent' to find out whether maybe it's something they sell at Lowe's, or someplace else where I might buy it in town instead of ordering it online.
I was going through that door all this time, for weeks and weeks, and yes, several times recently I had seen a couple bees flying in and out of that little metal thing, but I had put it on my low priority list, because I didn't think I would do anything bad enough to disturb them.
I could light a candle next to it, but it would be uncomfortably close to the house, and I don't want to be lighting candles next to flammable objects and surfaces until AFTER I've moved all my stuff out - just kidding, I wouldn't do it even then. And yeah, I probably shouldn't even try to joke about that. And there is still one other person here in this house during the summer, besides me, maybe two people, although some of the other rooms are empty. It feels like everybody's gone, but there are still a few people living here. There's at least one car in the parking lot and I saw a girl earlier today (while I was sitting in my car looking up at the bees flying around my porch).
I could also maybe pour water over the metal thing, except that would require me to crouch above it for a few seconds, which I don't want to do. And the water would just splash through it and around it, without bothering the bees much.
So I haven't decided what to do yet. If I don't do something, then either the landlord, or the next tenants moving in, will have to do something, and surely, they will choose the most brutal and disgusting method available, the poison spray. I'm not going to tell the landlord about it unless I feel there is no other choice. I'd like to try to take care of it myself first.
Monday, June 15, 2009
beliefnet test results
Forgot to mention, my parents were officially Episcopalian, but we rarely went to church, except sometimes with my grandmother.
I'm already familiar with secular humanism. One of my most important authors, Tom Flynn, is a secular humanist. He's the one who wrote the book about not celebrating Christmas - I stopped once and for all because of that book, and had already been moving in that direction for several years anyway.
I answered some of the questions in a way that would be logically contradictory, because sometimes I have a concept which is 'similar to' what they are asking, but logically inconsistent with my atheism. For instance, there was a question about who gets saved, and I was able to fill in several answers, and I said something like 'everybody, because God is all-forgiving.' On that question, I also said, 'adhere strictly to the rites, practices, etc to be rewarded after life,' because I do, in fact, have a set of rules to adhere to, in order to be 'rewarded,' quote unquote, 'after life,' quote unquote, which means: to bear healthy, happy children, and build a strong community that continues to live after you yourself die. And the third answer I gave on that question was, 'humankind is "saved" through human effort, not through divine intervention or whatever.'
There was an annoying popup ad that kept appearing throughout the quiz. I had to change the settings on my browser to stop it from happening. It was, like, almost every time I pressed the button.
I had a hard time with 'should you reject conventional medical treatment, and just pray instead?' Rejecting conventional medical treatment is central to my beliefs, but prayer and meditation ISN'T what I do instead. I believe I have a 'different set of conventions' about what kinds of medical treatment should and shouldn't be done.
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (98%)
3. Liberal Quakers (92%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (90%)
5. Neo-Pagan (82%)
6. Theravada Buddhism (78%)
7. Sikhism (75%)
8. Nontheist (74%)
9. Hinduism (72%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (70%)
11. Orthodox Quaker (70%)
12. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (68%)
13. Reform Judaism (67%)
14. New Age (63%)
15. Seventh Day Adventist (59%)
16. Eastern Orthodox (58%)
17. Orthodox Judaism (58%)
18. Roman Catholic (58%)
19. Scientology (58%)
20. Taoism (56%)
21. New Thought (55%)
22. Jehovah's Witness (55%)
23. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (54%)
24. Jainism (51%)
25. Baha'i Faith (50%)
26. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (50%)
27. Islam (46%)
I'm already familiar with secular humanism. One of my most important authors, Tom Flynn, is a secular humanist. He's the one who wrote the book about not celebrating Christmas - I stopped once and for all because of that book, and had already been moving in that direction for several years anyway.
I answered some of the questions in a way that would be logically contradictory, because sometimes I have a concept which is 'similar to' what they are asking, but logically inconsistent with my atheism. For instance, there was a question about who gets saved, and I was able to fill in several answers, and I said something like 'everybody, because God is all-forgiving.' On that question, I also said, 'adhere strictly to the rites, practices, etc to be rewarded after life,' because I do, in fact, have a set of rules to adhere to, in order to be 'rewarded,' quote unquote, 'after life,' quote unquote, which means: to bear healthy, happy children, and build a strong community that continues to live after you yourself die. And the third answer I gave on that question was, 'humankind is "saved" through human effort, not through divine intervention or whatever.'
There was an annoying popup ad that kept appearing throughout the quiz. I had to change the settings on my browser to stop it from happening. It was, like, almost every time I pressed the button.
I had a hard time with 'should you reject conventional medical treatment, and just pray instead?' Rejecting conventional medical treatment is central to my beliefs, but prayer and meditation ISN'T what I do instead. I believe I have a 'different set of conventions' about what kinds of medical treatment should and shouldn't be done.
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (98%)
3. Liberal Quakers (92%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (90%)
5. Neo-Pagan (82%)
6. Theravada Buddhism (78%)
7. Sikhism (75%)
8. Nontheist (74%)
9. Hinduism (72%)
10. Mahayana Buddhism (70%)
11. Orthodox Quaker (70%)
12. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (68%)
13. Reform Judaism (67%)
14. New Age (63%)
15. Seventh Day Adventist (59%)
16. Eastern Orthodox (58%)
17. Orthodox Judaism (58%)
18. Roman Catholic (58%)
19. Scientology (58%)
20. Taoism (56%)
21. New Thought (55%)
22. Jehovah's Witness (55%)
23. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (54%)
24. Jainism (51%)
25. Baha'i Faith (50%)
26. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (50%)
27. Islam (46%)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
i'm creating a new religion (work in progress)
they've been using my screen name, retmeishka, to refer to this particular new religious sect. we've tried different variations of the word, such as 'retmeishkan.' however, i'm seeing this as just 'internal jargon' for the time being, and it might not be the final name for the religion. the final name could be decided by consulting with several people who join it, once it exists and once people have been invited into it. i want the word to roll off the tongue easily enough. i'm able to say 'retmeishkan,' but maybe not everyone feels comfortable with it. and it sounds like 'red martian' or 'red munchkin' if you're not familiar with the word. you tell people 'i'm retmeishkan,' and they say 'what? you're red munchkin?' so, that might just be a temporary word until the final name has been decided, but for now, internally, we're referring to it as retmeishkan. so when i say 'retmeishkan,' it feels like sort of joking, not serious, but that's how we're referring to it for now. it won't be that way permanently, not set in stone.
i have been identifying the religion. i was going to go to 'beliefnet' and see, but i forgot to do that. i want to identify what makes this religion similar to, and different from, other religions.
it began because they wanted me to get rid of my mustache. when they first started attacking me, they didn't bother me much about not shaving my body hair, but the mustache in particular was always what they complained about (the voices). i started bleaching it as a compromise, but i was not willing to shave it or wax it or remove the hair. and bleaching a very long mustache doesn't look good - you end up with very long, highly visible bleached-white hairs instead of long, highly visible, dark brown hairs. but i chose that, instead of removing it, because i was very strongly against it, because of my beliefs and values and what it means to me.
i read an article talking about how women like men who have slightly feminine attributes, instead of liking the men who are extremely masculine. but the article went on to say that eyebrow-plucking (on women) was attractive, because it was still true that men like women with 'feminine' faces, and thin eyebrows are feminine, whereas thick eyebrows are masculine. they made it sound as though it was scientifically, objectively proven that we must pluck our eyebrows in order to look feminine, and that 'arched' eyebrows are more feminine, too. i can't STAND 'arched' eyebrows. they don't look like anything human to me at all. they don't look 'feminine,' either. the most beautiful women i've seen are the ones with whole, unplucked eyebrows, even when the eyebrows are thick, even when they go across the nose. those look real to me. (but 'we' don't have any disagreement about that. that's 'beating a dead horse.')
it's articles like that which make people believe things like 'humans lost their body hair because less hair means you're more intelligent than an animal, and it means we're not animals ourselves, and it means we are ABOVE them, and it's "more evolved" than animals.' like losing hair is 'progress,' instead of merely 'uniqueness' or 'some strange quirk of our species.' i see the hair loss as just a unique, strange quirk of our species. and i like the 'aquatic ape theory,' too - that humans might have lived at the edge of the sea, and were seafood hunters, spending most of their time in the water, or we might have lived by a huge lake when we evolved, and we lost hair, like the whales, dolphins, and seals, and we got subcutaneous fat, to be like sea mammals. it's just a quirk, not 'better,' not 'more progress,' not 'above the animals.' pigs don't have hair, rhinos and hippos don't have hair, some breeds of dogs and cats, whales, dolphins.... lots of mammals don't have hair.
well, what about 'being retmeishkan?' what does it mean to be retmeishkan? is it a noun, an adjective? are you A retmeishkan? i'm not sure about all that yet.
to clarify what's different about my religion, i ask these questions: why don't i just join some existing group? there are similar groups, and i've thought about joining a religion, but i feel dissatisfied with the ones that exist - they're not what i want.
a few examples:
amish: don't want to study the bible exclusively. i think a wide variety of books, both modern and old, teach about right and wrong, and how to live. i also want men with long hair. at least in the mainstream, men are permitted to grow long hair, whereas in the amish, they are not. however, just because they're permitted to, doesn't mean they do it. so my religion requires them to, and sees long hair as normal.
mennonite: similar reasons. i do drive a car, so i could be mennonite, but i have the same issue with physical appearance and seeing the christian bible as only one out of many books to read and follow.
so the bible is not the exclusive, one-and-only source of spiritual guidance. yet there is good information in there, but you can't refer to the bible as one whole, single book, as it was written over many years by many different people. the bible itself is already many different authors, many different books, and there are also large sections that are excluded from some versions of the bible, the taboo sections which are not known to most people, but are known to people who study religion. i don't recall all the names, but i think it's the gnostics and the book of thomas and others, which were sometimes part of the bible, and other times were taken out.
*christian bible is only one out of many different books that give spiritual guidance. bible was written by humans, who are fallible. human guidance IS valuable and trustworthy, but at the same time, it is not perfect, and there are many variations, many options, that are just as good, but different.
*men should have long hair and beards; male beauty is similar to female beauty; this is very important, not trivial, not just personal preference or being picky. male beauty matters a lot.
this was deeply repressed, in my beliefs, until the voices began questioning me about it. i stopped trying to convince my boyfriends to do what i wanted them to do with their hair. i already tried. it always triggered a rebellious 'I CAN DO WHAT I WANT!' response - or at least, i'm thinking of eric, who definitely would be described as 'defiant' and 'rebellious,' a rule-hater if there ever was one. he was formerly catholic, and doesn't like being micromanaged. but i have many years of experience with frustration about guys' hair, and about nobody respecting my wishes, and i gave up on it. they always just acted like hair was trivial and unimportant, and my desires were unimportant, and it didn't matter what i wanted.
so, this is being incorporated into the religion. there are people who enjoy following rules, and are happy to be told what to do, especially if the rules have a good reason and good intention behind them. i like rules where you can see the positive consequences yourself. follow this rule, then observe how much it helps you - like the feingold diet, which will work immediately on the first day you use it - you feel drastically better instantly - i can't rave loudly enough about the diet.
long hair isn't as obvious as to the 'why', because i have emphasized, over and over, while talking to the voices, 'no, growing long hair and beards WILL NOT guarantee that you get girls or get sex, if you're already having trouble with women. it will most likely just add to the attractiveness of men who are already attractive, while not doing much of anything for the men who are already seen as unattractive.' if someone is looking for the magic key to reliably seducing women and getting sex, then the natural grooming standard DOES NOT guarantee that. it might do the opposite: there will be many mainstream women who think it's AWFUL to grow long hair and beards. (*note, when i mention beards, i also include groups like native americans, and some asians, who don't grow beards. they're still included. i greatly value racial variety, in fact it's one of my highest priority values. i'm planning on adopting some nonwhite children, once i have my family settled.*)
*racial variety is a high value. this is another attribute of 'retmeishkanism,' (i say that word with a little smile, with cognitive dissonance) a word that's still just internal jargon to refer to this unique, tiny, not-yet-existing religion, with its one single follower - me. conscious, deliberate racial variety, instead of racial purity.
jewish: i have dietary restrictions similar to the kosher rules. i like the kosher food rules. however, i believe the intention behind them was to protect against illness, not just to unquestioningly obey a rule handed down by god, a rule which has no purpose other than 'god said so.' avoiding trichinosis is the reason why they don't eat pork. so if preventing diseases and parasites is the purpose of the rules, i have a lot of rules to add to the kosher rules. but i like the idea of voluntary regulations on food quality and how it's prepared and handled, and i agree with some of the kosher food rules i've seen. protecting our food quality is very, very important for health.
*'retmeishkanism,' (once again, said with a little smile, as it's not quite right, and probably won't be the final word, and i feel a bit silly) is what i might call a 'lifestyle regulating' religion. it isn't a 'liberal' religion. the protestant religions, and even catholicism and the other christian religions, don't regulate your daily life very much at all. you go to church on sunday, but then, you live the rest of your life freely, and nothing much is expected of you. you're allowed to eat whatever you want, look however you want, go to school wherever you want, and so on. there is very little lifestyle regulation at all. it's hardly any 'micromanaging.' retmeishka, this religion, DOES have micromanaging about some things: what you eat, how you look, and maybe perhaps how you dress, but the clothing question is not yet settled, and i am also a nudist, so there are two sides to the clothing question. nudism on the one hand, and on the other hand, what types of clothes do we wear whenever we're cold and need clothing, and when we go to the town and interact with mainstream people who require clothing. both sides need to be settled.
*nudism within the community is permitted (but not required, as of yet), and some form of modesty, some compromise with mainstream society, in public. there may be regulation of what types of clothing look good, and are healthy or unhealthy (i don't know if wearing polyester fabrics is good for you - that's probably no big deal, but i'm at least asking the question whether certain fabrics might have chemicals or something.). i strongly dislike most american clothing styles, and i desire some kind of change, but haven't settled on that, and would like to consult with the eventual new adherents. it's a work in progress.
disagree with jewish circumcision. some jews also disagree with that: there are groups of jews organizing to oppose circumcision, while still remaining jews - i've read about it.
*anti-circumcision. protect the wholeness of the body. this includes all organs and all medical treatments that remove or change parts of the body, including teeth.
some other religions forbid you to get medical care for certain health problems. i don't know much about this or what specifically they forbid you to do. i don't know whether i agree or disagree. there is such a thing as good medicine, and bad medicine. nowadays, i'm totally disgusted with almost everything that happens in a hospital or a doctor's office. however, that doesn't mean that all medical care as such is necessarily always bad or incompetent. i don't necessarily want to just accept god's will, if someone has an illness or injury. this question has not yet been settled. in fact, i'm interested in healing the sick, and i know someone who has diabetes type I and uses insulin, and i would like to find some alternative for his synthetic insulin, something like eating only protein foods, or something. there is such a thing as knowledgeable, competent, effective, moral medical treatment, but it isn't easy to find in the mainstream hospitals nowadays, under 'government medicine.'
there really are right ways, and wrong ways, of doing things. and there are also 'different but okay' ways. 'different but okay' means: i'm wearing orange clothes, and you're wearing green, and there's nothing wrong with that. strangely, loving the color orange is something that seems to run in my family. aunt jeannie loves orange (but she likes it on the pink-coral side) and my brother and i both love it, and we love redheads too. i think the weasley family is great. however, i include this in 'loving variety' instead of just loving redheads specifically. anyway, that's 'different but okay.'
and, with regard to medical care, it requires a lot of knowledge to decide. so here is what will probably happen in the religion: different sects will do different things. this is a 'sectarian differences' religion. we tolerate, encourage, and welcome dividing off into another sect if you disagree. we aren't the one-and-only way of doing things. religions, and intentional communities, as such, are SO BADLY NEEDED in this society, that i'm not going to stop someone from forming a new one and making their own. just having some kind of rules to follow, and some kind of community to support you, is so important and so badly needed, that we are glad, and grateful, to have somebody with a different opinion who will go form their own sect and make their own rules. so some of the rules for medical care might differ from sect to sect, because it requires so much knowledge and expertise, and there are different ways of doing things.
*new sects are encouraged, to deal with disagreements. some disagreements are viewed as 'different but okay.' communities and religions, as such, are so helpful and so important, that we'd rather see people branch off and form a separate group, so that we end up with two groups. that's better than just seeing the original group crumble apart and cease to exist. both groups can still exist, and cooperate with each other, and shop at each other's markets, and talk to each other. shopping at each other's markets is important: economically, 'the more the merrier' - the more people who are cooperating economically, the stronger and more self-reliant your community is. for instance, i might live close to a group of amish people, because in the amish community, there are small markets all within horse-carriage distance - it's a small, local community with a greater degree of self-reliance. everything you need is somewhere close by. i'm not amish, but i'd cooperate with the amish and buy products from them. that's just an example. i might not literally do that, but that's the idea.
how is it self-reliant to buy products from other people? well, self-reliant might not be the right word to use. i could use a different word. i want to distinguish it from: relying on fiat money and government money and borrowed money, which is what we want to get away from. we want to know that as the fiat money system bubbles happen over and over again, we will still have jobs, and food, and houses. we might have trouble paying our property taxes in fiat money, though, and we might end up being unofficial squatters on our land when the government wants to evict us. it could happen. but we will feel more secure knowing that locally produced food is available from people who are willing to help us, willing to cooperate with us, willing to give and receive from us, even if we do not use fiat money.
the borrowed-money system is so unstable, and jobs and businesses only exist for a couple years before they do layoffs or go bankrupt, and this is what i want to protect against. 'self-reliance' meant that we won't need to go to the government, asking for welfare checks, or unemployment compensation, which the mainstream people will have to do. mainstream society will be lining up around the block at the unemployment office trying to get their checks, or trying to get hired for jobs which are being created by the government ('let's build a giant bridge from altoona to bellefonte!' *note - to get that joke, you have to understand that altoona and bellefonte are two towns without any water in between them, and no reason to build a bridge. this wouldn't be obvious to someone who wasn't familiar with pennsylvania. let's build a big bridge from one point on the land, to another point on the land, just to have something to do!*)
i'll write down the other differences, which i wrote on a piece of paper, that distinguish the 'retmeishkan' religion.
*small, new, local sect with few followers. i'm the one and only adherent to this religion. there are many other adherents to the 'idelogical cluster' or 'beliefs cluster,' groups of beliefs which tend to occur together, such as anarchism and long hair and anti-circumcision. but this particular, small, local variant is my own unique little sect with its small differences from people who are in a similar beliefs cluster.
*anarchist, minarchist
*intentional community. groups of people will live together physically. this is different from, for instance, mainstream christianity in the united states, which doesn't have groups of people living together unless they are monks or nuns. however, there might be more than one intentional community, in different places, with 'my' religion. so they aren't all necessarily local to this particular place, but can be local groups in many different places.
*health, diet, lifestyle regulation. very strong rules, such as 'bottle feeding is against our religion.' breastfeeding babies is so important, it is not at all trivial, it is a VERY BIG DEAL in capital letters. bottle-feeding, and formula-feeding, and feeding anything other than human milk, causes a lifetime of obesity, health problems, allergies, and almost every other problem which is common in society today. along with vaccines, which are also a huge major cause of chronic diseases.
breastfeeding is so important, that if a mother has a problem that makes her unable to breastfeed, she is expected to find a wet nurse. and the community is a close, local group of people cooperating, so a wet nurse will be available. you aren't just told to go find one when there aren't any available. this is planned ahead of time. anyway, health-diet-lifestyle regulations are a very important part of this religion, which makes it different from 'liberal christianity' in the usa today, which doesn't tell you anything about how to eat or how to raise your babies, or anything like that. since this will be a local community, it will be visible and obvious to everybody if, for instance, somebody isn't breastfeeding their baby. it will be visible to everyone, and the response will be 'oh my gosh, you need help. let's find someone to help you.' immediately. it won't be something where nobody notices, for months or years, that you're doing something harmful, and nobody steps in to help. that is why a local-community lifestyle really does have health benefits for its members.
another difference: i oppose using synthetic vitamins and minerals. i do not advocate going out and buying a bunch of vitamin pills to make you healthier. in fact, i think those pills are dangerous. i've used them, and i react badly to them: they are toxic. synthetic vitamins and mineral pills are very dangerous. and they might cause other problems, which i have read about: there is a theory that breast density, heavy breasts, are associated with synthetic multivitamin pills, and this is visible on mammograms. i'm sure there are other things that these synthetic multivitamins do to the body, but i don't have time to get into it now. synthetic vitamin d, in particular, causes symptoms of vitamin d deficiency, strangely enough - i've read that it does, but i can't find the reference anymore.
(also, i haven't mentioned this before, and it might seem trivial, but i think children shouldn't be given pacifiers, either. they're made of plastic, and you shouldn't have plastic in people's mouths - no plastic dental fillings, no plastic retainers, no plastic pacifiers. the plastic is swallowed, in tiny quantities, and goes through the mouth surface directly, and affects the body, and might cause obesity and other endocrine problems. just let kids suck their thumbs, and let them do extended breastfeeding for many years. there's no reason why they have to have pacifiers instead of sucking their thumbs. i was told that my dental deformities, my malocclusions, were caused by thumb-sucking, but i don't believe that to be true. i was told that thumb-sucking caused me to develop an overbite. i think this is wrong, but i can't prove it right now. i'd show them weston price. and how is sucking a pacifier different from sucking a thumb, with regard to the teeth?)
*physical beauty. physical beauty is a sign of good health. 'ugliness' is usually a sign that somebody is sick or has a problem. there are variations in how people look, but in general, as a rule of thumb, 'all healthy people are beautiful.' i know that in reality, it doesn't always seem that way, but that's the general idea or intention behind it. healthy is beautiful, and 'ugliness' is a sign of illness or other problems.
however, my interpretation of physical beauty is one of the differences between my religion and other religions, and the natural grooming rules, including long hair on men, is something that makes this religion what it is. you can recognize a 'retmeishkan' if the men, women, and children are all following the natural grooming rules. i haven't settled yet on questions about how to wear our hair, for instance, in a bun, or combed versus uncombed, or what to do with the afro texture which is so different from my own. there are some variations there that are still within the standard. but that is part of my definition of what is beautiful. 'regulation of physical beauty' is an attribute of this religion. noticing it, paying attention to it, placing a high importance on beauty as a sign or symptom associated with good health. and also, a particular physical appearance indicates that you are a member of this community. and making rules for how to improve and protect health and beauty - that is different from mainstream christianity in the usa, which does not notice or regulate physical beauty, or even talk about it very much.
*the body. some religions (based on unhealthy enneagram type ones) tend to suppress the body, destroy the body, or see the body as evil. retmeishka (retmeishkanism? the awkwardness of my internal jargon) sees the human body as 'animal.' and there is nothing wrong with being an animal. animal isn't evil. i am a prude, and i know that i'm a prude, and i hide my sexuality and my feelings, and i am somewhat quiet and timid about talking about these things or expressing them, but still i actually believe in acceptance of the body and seeing the body as a healthy, normal thing, not something evil and sinful. that is supported by objectivism and nathaniel branden as well.
*family, fertility, sex, childbearing. this is different from mainstream usa culture. based on julian simon. i don't agree with every single word he says - for instance, i disagree with him about pesticides - but i agree with much of the spirit behind it and with almost everything else that he's arguing for. julian simon argues that pesticides like DDT aren't as bad as they've been portrayed. i disagree: they're WORSE than they've been portayed! not just DDT, but *ALL* pesticides, are *SO BAD* for humans, animals, insects, etc, that they should not be used - it affects us directly, because we would like to go *hunting* and eat the food that we hunt. eating wild animals and insects is what we want to do, so pesticides affect us directly, and are not just some abstraction of 'maybe it will possibly do something bad to some obscure species of animal someday,' but rather, it makes human beings sick, right here, right now, all of the time. ... anyway, as for fertility. i agree with his concept that increasing population, as such, is *not* the root of all evil. there are other problems: government regulations, taxes, and other laws are the cause of many things we see happening, for instance, how wastefully the land is used, and how people do monocropping and corporate farming and other things. anyway, this religion advocates having large families, and pregnancy and childrearing is of central importance.
mainstream culture believes that having children is a burden and it takes away your freedom. it's true that once you have children, you can't, or shouldn't, do certain things. you shouldn't move around a lot from place to place when you have children - it tears them away from their friends and all the people and places they know. and i know, because i remember when we moved from greensburg pa to scott depot wv, in 1983, and how traumatic that was. and i remember, before that, when i was held back and wasn't allowed to go into kindergarten because my birthday was past the cutoff date, so i had to wait another year, and all of the kids i was with in nursery school went on to kindergarten, and i had to go to nursery school for another whole year, and then i was a year older than everyone else in my class. i know how it is to be torn away from all of the people you know. i actually remember the thing about waiting another year to go into kindergarten, even though i can remember hardly anything else from back then, from that early in my life, from that young of an age - that's the one thing that i clearly remember. i remember being surprised and confused and not understanding why all of the other nursery school kids went on to kindergarten, and i didn't, and i had to let all of them go. it seemed stupid and pointless and i didn't understand it. it was really, really bad. they said i wasn't mature enough, and my birthday was past the cutoff date. the immaturity would be because of my ADHD, my hyperactive behavior.
anyway, you shouldn't tear kids away from everyone they know. so yes, it limits your freedom to move around from place to place. 'you can move when you get older.' it isn't as bad to move away, if you're old enough to decide it on your own, and have control over it. but you shouldn't be forced to leave because your parents decide it, and you have no control over the decision.
anyway, that's not the only way your freedom is limited by having children. there are many things you can't do or shouldn't do, after having kids. but the mainstream culture believes that 'having your freedom' is so much more important than anything else, that women are viewed as 'liberated' if they stay single and 'childfree by choice.' this is not viewed as a loss, but something to be proud of, something higher, more educated, better, 'more evolved,' 'more human,' more intelligent, higher class. having lots of children is viewed as low-class and uneducated.
having few children, or none at all, is seen as 'having a wider perspective about the effects of overpopulation.' my mother and father both believe that the world is overpopulated, and that we'd all be better off if a few billion people were suddenly wiped out by a nuclear bomb or something (that would be mostly dad saying that, i think - mom believes it but is less violent or extreme about it, however even *she* doesn't strongly oppose the idea that 'killing a whole bunch of people is a good thing.'). they both believe that there are too many people, and they both believe we'd be better off if a very large number of people died. this belief is seen as more educated, and superior, to 'small-minded' people who are 'thoughtless' about the 'harmful consequences' of having children, especially if you have more than two children (replacing the parents). julian simon blows this argument out of the water, totally destroys it - it is illogical, even the idea of 'replacing the parents,' which is meaningless when you look at what everybody else is doing, and how it's impossible to calculate or predict how many children are going to be born by all the people who you have no control over, and why is it that maintaining this particular number of people is good, but a lower number, or higher number, is bad. 'replacing the parents by having only two children' is meaningless. but mom and dad both believe in it. and the belief is seen as superior, high-class, higher-educated.
there is a common belief in the united states that 'low class people,' 'stupid people', 'poor people,' and 'uneducated people' are having large numbers of children, while smart, educated, superior, high-class, wealthy people are knowledgeable enough to restrain themselves and educated enough to know that unprotected vaginal intercourse leads to pregnancy (which the poor people supposedly don't know). you can google 'madeleine hoax' - darn it, i can't remember her name. madeleine somebody, an anthropologist, who visited other countries, and there was this one place where they hoaxed her, and told her that they weren't aware that sex leads to pregnancy. they pretended not to know that having sex makes people get pregnant, and she believed them, and wrote a book about it, which influenced all of 'white people' culture's views about primitive cultures, and is still there today in the 'educated' attitudes about primitive cultures, the contempt they have towards them, their own superiority, their seeing them as 'ignorant.' maybe her name's not madeleine. and i don't know how to spell it. i'll remember it later.
there's a belief that the number of smart people is decreasing, because smart people are smart enough not to have children, whereas stupid people are too stupid to restrain themselves. i've seen this belief in a lot of places, and i used to believe it myself before reading julian simon.
so, my religion opposes all of those views and attitudes about having children. large families should be supported by a close community, where your friends and neighbors participate in raising your children, babysitting them, breastfeeding them if you cannot, taking care of them when you have a problem, and educating them at home instead of sending them to public schools.
*economics, financial security. we oppose the fiat money system, the banking system, and the current way of borrowing and lending money (although there might be better ways to borrow and lend money, which will be decided later). we believe that people should trade using whatever money or barter they want, which will be decided locally, not globally, and it should not be enforced by law. we advocate a smaller, more local economy, in an intentional community.
*ecologic view. i am not comfortable with a lot of environmentalism, after reading julian simon: i don't like it if it says that you should make more government laws and bigger, more universal laws that apply to everybody - for instance, 'everybody everywhere should reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.' i think that law is wrong and misguided. however, my religion does have something of an ecological view, except it will be decided at the community level - we want healthy people, so we don't want to be living right next to a big factory putting out lots of smoke, or chemicals, or something. and we don't want pesticides, herbicides, etc. so, there is something resembling an ecological viewpoint here. but it is not exactly like a lot of the environmentalist movements, it's somewhat different. i'd say my emphasis is on economics: that the reason why a lot of the environmental problems happen is because of the monetary system and the laws. if you remove the laws and the money system, those problems won't happen anymore.
*psychology, personality. it is a 'meditative' or 'spiritual' religion. we are not necessarily 'praying to god,' but we do meditate, and search for the true self. understanding yourself is important to this religion. there are many books and many different sources of information about this. some of it is from psychology - the myers-briggs personality types, the enneagram, and other books, and nathaniel branden. lots of self-help books and self-improvement books.
the religion is distinguished from other religions because: electronic mind control is explicitly talked about and accepted as reality, as something caused by humans. hearing voices is interpreted as coming from living humans using technology, instead of coming from god, deities, demons, spirits, guides, ghosts, or anything else. that is part of our psychology and our search for our true selves, for free will and individuality, for controlling our own minds and bodies, for protecting ourselves against being controlled externally by other people using technology, for understanding what we really want and how we really feel. protecting ourselves, finding countermeasures, building shielded areas, talking about it, teaching it to our children: this is central to the religion, central to how we meditate, central to how we view ourselves. that is something that distinguishes my religion from other religions.
again, much of this came from asking the question 'why don't you just join so-and-so?' why not just join the amish, the mennonites, jewish, jehovah's witnesses, mainstream christianity, etc? why not just join another intentional community, like earthaven? the answer to that question is: because i want something slightly different, which none of those places are doing. there are certain things which are specific, unique, belief clusters occurring together in a particular combination. i like the idea of 'belief clusters.' it's really true, there are certain groups of beliefs and practices which tend to cluster together, when you read them on the internet. like anti-circumcision, and natural childrearing, and 'baby-wearing,' and co-sleeping, and extended breastfeeding, and other childraising practices. so, i'm saying that i don't see any other places which have ALL of my chosen belief clusters, occurring all together in one place. i'm not totally unique, however i do have a particular combination of belief clusters which doesn't appear in many other places.
*defensive pacifism with omnivorous diet. we are pacifistic, not aggressive, but also, we are probably going to fight back if some burglar (or government agency??? children and youth services? this is a very likely scenario which i am worried about, after seeing what happened at the FLDS ranch - i agree, it fits the definition of genocide) breaks into the house and tries to kidnap the children, or something. self-defense, family defense. mostly pacifistic, not aggressive, not making war with other sects, not initiating wars, not participating in government wars.
this religion is *intended* to provide an excuse, when the government drafts you, that you can tell them, 'i am retmeishkan. fighting in a war is against my religion.' this will be a 'sincere' religion, where you can clearly look at someone, and notice that their physical appearance and lifestyle is drastically, obviously different from the mainstream. the men have long hair and beards, and they dress differently, and raise lots of children, and live in an intentional community together. it is clearly, obvious a sincere belief system, which is present in their everyday lives, highly visible. it isn't just something that they spontaneously wrote on the paper in order to be 'too cowardly' to go fight in a war for the united states, or because they're 'betraying' the usa, or being 'unpatriotic,' or whatever. retmeishka (apologies, just the temporary name) will be a visible, obvious religion affecting every moment of their lives.
omnivorous diet, as part of this 'pacifism': some pacifists believe that you shouldn't kill any animals. this variant of 'pacifism' has to do with cooperating with other humans, but it doesn't include not killing animals. we see humans as an omnivorous, almost carnivorous species, and it is not wrong or immoral for carnivorous animals to kill and eat other animals. sharks, lions and tigers, other carnivores - we don't tell them 'you're immoral for eating that antelope.' we accept ourselves as an omnivorous animal. we believe carnivorous behavior is part of our nature, and we do not go against our nature. we believe that the human diet is healthiest when it includes some kind of animal or insect meat, especially for pregnancy and childrearing. we believe humans are 'just another animal,' although we see ourselves as a special, wonderful, unique, amazing, interesting animal.
*social behavior, social norms. there is some regulation of this in the religion, but i haven't gone into detail yet. i just jotted it down on a piece of paper. this has to do with community life, how we make decisions, etc, and also how we talk to each other. no details yet. and i'm in a hurry now because i have to eat before going to work.
*glossolalia, new words, new language. glossolalia is something that i do, that i have always done since childhood, making up new words and new sounds that have no meaning in english. this is associated with music writing, and with learning new foreign languages. in this religion, glossolalia is seen as a normal, healthy thing. it might be accepted and encouraged in children. i don't mean that everybody is required to do it. i just mean, it will be seen as 'normal' or 'something that happens,' and not a sign of mental illness or strangeness. it will be known, familiar, and accepted, but not required of everyone.
*imagination and pretending. make-believe. that was associated with glossolalia above. making something new, pretending. this is part of child psychology. i have read about pretending, in children, and using imagination, and i want to include that as something we accept and encourage as part of learning and living, even in adults. it would be 'green hat thinking' to edward de bono, but it's more than just that. it's also play-acting, role-playing, 'mantle of the expert,' etc. more details later.
*transdermal contamination theory. this has come to be of such huge importance to me personally that i want it to be a phenomenon that my community knows about and is familiar with. i can't find *anyone* on the internet who has written about a situation where they merely handled some medicinal herb seeds, and contaminated all of their carpets and clothing and belongings, *merely from seeds*, ephedra in particular, and had reactions as the chemical went through the skin, and the chemical lasted for *years* and did not biodegrade (ephedrine is like that - it doesn't biodegrade - it's very, very stable and long-lasting and has a long shelf life). i want this knowledge to be taught to others, and i want doctors to be aware of how it can explain some health problems such as erectile dysfunction (caused by prescription drugs and psychiatric drugs) and obesity. i want this to be less obscure, less esoteric, more well-known, and used for troubleshooting health problems. follow a decontamination protocol for curing people of illnesses and symptoms.
i jotted down a bunch of notes, but i'm in a hurry now, so i'll just write them here quickly. i've already said some of this stuff.
'prophets':
-drawn from variety of authors, ideologies
-use internet to locate ideas which are hard to find locally (hard to find in mainstream)
-not just one prophet or one book
-humans are fallible, make mistakes; and yet, humans are our guides. we should see the consequences of following some particular rule or piece of advice. rules are meant to be general, universal, and long-term (rules about how to be healthy, for instance), but they are not perfect or eternal, and they can change, or differ from place to place.
-mission/outreach? helping the sick, the poor, severely obese, people with ADHD or autism or other diseases caused by modern society
-some nomads, hunter-gatherers? traveling people, traders?
-not 'pagan'? different from pagans, doesn't do 'earth worship.' doesn't view 'nature' as a god, doesn't focus so much on the theme of 'the planet is a living organism and humans are violating the planet' belief system. doesn't do 'earth magic'. paganism might be more liberal, with fewer rules and regulations, but i'm not sure. paganist beliefs have many different variants, so i'm not sure - i'd have to read about it.
okay, i have to go eat, and i have to put gas in the car, or i won't be able to drive across town to go to work - i'm running on fumes, there is almost nothing left and the orange light is on.
i have been identifying the religion. i was going to go to 'beliefnet' and see, but i forgot to do that. i want to identify what makes this religion similar to, and different from, other religions.
it began because they wanted me to get rid of my mustache. when they first started attacking me, they didn't bother me much about not shaving my body hair, but the mustache in particular was always what they complained about (the voices). i started bleaching it as a compromise, but i was not willing to shave it or wax it or remove the hair. and bleaching a very long mustache doesn't look good - you end up with very long, highly visible bleached-white hairs instead of long, highly visible, dark brown hairs. but i chose that, instead of removing it, because i was very strongly against it, because of my beliefs and values and what it means to me.
i read an article talking about how women like men who have slightly feminine attributes, instead of liking the men who are extremely masculine. but the article went on to say that eyebrow-plucking (on women) was attractive, because it was still true that men like women with 'feminine' faces, and thin eyebrows are feminine, whereas thick eyebrows are masculine. they made it sound as though it was scientifically, objectively proven that we must pluck our eyebrows in order to look feminine, and that 'arched' eyebrows are more feminine, too. i can't STAND 'arched' eyebrows. they don't look like anything human to me at all. they don't look 'feminine,' either. the most beautiful women i've seen are the ones with whole, unplucked eyebrows, even when the eyebrows are thick, even when they go across the nose. those look real to me. (but 'we' don't have any disagreement about that. that's 'beating a dead horse.')
it's articles like that which make people believe things like 'humans lost their body hair because less hair means you're more intelligent than an animal, and it means we're not animals ourselves, and it means we are ABOVE them, and it's "more evolved" than animals.' like losing hair is 'progress,' instead of merely 'uniqueness' or 'some strange quirk of our species.' i see the hair loss as just a unique, strange quirk of our species. and i like the 'aquatic ape theory,' too - that humans might have lived at the edge of the sea, and were seafood hunters, spending most of their time in the water, or we might have lived by a huge lake when we evolved, and we lost hair, like the whales, dolphins, and seals, and we got subcutaneous fat, to be like sea mammals. it's just a quirk, not 'better,' not 'more progress,' not 'above the animals.' pigs don't have hair, rhinos and hippos don't have hair, some breeds of dogs and cats, whales, dolphins.... lots of mammals don't have hair.
well, what about 'being retmeishkan?' what does it mean to be retmeishkan? is it a noun, an adjective? are you A retmeishkan? i'm not sure about all that yet.
to clarify what's different about my religion, i ask these questions: why don't i just join some existing group? there are similar groups, and i've thought about joining a religion, but i feel dissatisfied with the ones that exist - they're not what i want.
a few examples:
amish: don't want to study the bible exclusively. i think a wide variety of books, both modern and old, teach about right and wrong, and how to live. i also want men with long hair. at least in the mainstream, men are permitted to grow long hair, whereas in the amish, they are not. however, just because they're permitted to, doesn't mean they do it. so my religion requires them to, and sees long hair as normal.
mennonite: similar reasons. i do drive a car, so i could be mennonite, but i have the same issue with physical appearance and seeing the christian bible as only one out of many books to read and follow.
so the bible is not the exclusive, one-and-only source of spiritual guidance. yet there is good information in there, but you can't refer to the bible as one whole, single book, as it was written over many years by many different people. the bible itself is already many different authors, many different books, and there are also large sections that are excluded from some versions of the bible, the taboo sections which are not known to most people, but are known to people who study religion. i don't recall all the names, but i think it's the gnostics and the book of thomas and others, which were sometimes part of the bible, and other times were taken out.
*christian bible is only one out of many different books that give spiritual guidance. bible was written by humans, who are fallible. human guidance IS valuable and trustworthy, but at the same time, it is not perfect, and there are many variations, many options, that are just as good, but different.
*men should have long hair and beards; male beauty is similar to female beauty; this is very important, not trivial, not just personal preference or being picky. male beauty matters a lot.
this was deeply repressed, in my beliefs, until the voices began questioning me about it. i stopped trying to convince my boyfriends to do what i wanted them to do with their hair. i already tried. it always triggered a rebellious 'I CAN DO WHAT I WANT!' response - or at least, i'm thinking of eric, who definitely would be described as 'defiant' and 'rebellious,' a rule-hater if there ever was one. he was formerly catholic, and doesn't like being micromanaged. but i have many years of experience with frustration about guys' hair, and about nobody respecting my wishes, and i gave up on it. they always just acted like hair was trivial and unimportant, and my desires were unimportant, and it didn't matter what i wanted.
so, this is being incorporated into the religion. there are people who enjoy following rules, and are happy to be told what to do, especially if the rules have a good reason and good intention behind them. i like rules where you can see the positive consequences yourself. follow this rule, then observe how much it helps you - like the feingold diet, which will work immediately on the first day you use it - you feel drastically better instantly - i can't rave loudly enough about the diet.
long hair isn't as obvious as to the 'why', because i have emphasized, over and over, while talking to the voices, 'no, growing long hair and beards WILL NOT guarantee that you get girls or get sex, if you're already having trouble with women. it will most likely just add to the attractiveness of men who are already attractive, while not doing much of anything for the men who are already seen as unattractive.' if someone is looking for the magic key to reliably seducing women and getting sex, then the natural grooming standard DOES NOT guarantee that. it might do the opposite: there will be many mainstream women who think it's AWFUL to grow long hair and beards. (*note, when i mention beards, i also include groups like native americans, and some asians, who don't grow beards. they're still included. i greatly value racial variety, in fact it's one of my highest priority values. i'm planning on adopting some nonwhite children, once i have my family settled.*)
*racial variety is a high value. this is another attribute of 'retmeishkanism,' (i say that word with a little smile, with cognitive dissonance) a word that's still just internal jargon to refer to this unique, tiny, not-yet-existing religion, with its one single follower - me. conscious, deliberate racial variety, instead of racial purity.
jewish: i have dietary restrictions similar to the kosher rules. i like the kosher food rules. however, i believe the intention behind them was to protect against illness, not just to unquestioningly obey a rule handed down by god, a rule which has no purpose other than 'god said so.' avoiding trichinosis is the reason why they don't eat pork. so if preventing diseases and parasites is the purpose of the rules, i have a lot of rules to add to the kosher rules. but i like the idea of voluntary regulations on food quality and how it's prepared and handled, and i agree with some of the kosher food rules i've seen. protecting our food quality is very, very important for health.
*'retmeishkanism,' (once again, said with a little smile, as it's not quite right, and probably won't be the final word, and i feel a bit silly) is what i might call a 'lifestyle regulating' religion. it isn't a 'liberal' religion. the protestant religions, and even catholicism and the other christian religions, don't regulate your daily life very much at all. you go to church on sunday, but then, you live the rest of your life freely, and nothing much is expected of you. you're allowed to eat whatever you want, look however you want, go to school wherever you want, and so on. there is very little lifestyle regulation at all. it's hardly any 'micromanaging.' retmeishka, this religion, DOES have micromanaging about some things: what you eat, how you look, and maybe perhaps how you dress, but the clothing question is not yet settled, and i am also a nudist, so there are two sides to the clothing question. nudism on the one hand, and on the other hand, what types of clothes do we wear whenever we're cold and need clothing, and when we go to the town and interact with mainstream people who require clothing. both sides need to be settled.
*nudism within the community is permitted (but not required, as of yet), and some form of modesty, some compromise with mainstream society, in public. there may be regulation of what types of clothing look good, and are healthy or unhealthy (i don't know if wearing polyester fabrics is good for you - that's probably no big deal, but i'm at least asking the question whether certain fabrics might have chemicals or something.). i strongly dislike most american clothing styles, and i desire some kind of change, but haven't settled on that, and would like to consult with the eventual new adherents. it's a work in progress.
disagree with jewish circumcision. some jews also disagree with that: there are groups of jews organizing to oppose circumcision, while still remaining jews - i've read about it.
*anti-circumcision. protect the wholeness of the body. this includes all organs and all medical treatments that remove or change parts of the body, including teeth.
some other religions forbid you to get medical care for certain health problems. i don't know much about this or what specifically they forbid you to do. i don't know whether i agree or disagree. there is such a thing as good medicine, and bad medicine. nowadays, i'm totally disgusted with almost everything that happens in a hospital or a doctor's office. however, that doesn't mean that all medical care as such is necessarily always bad or incompetent. i don't necessarily want to just accept god's will, if someone has an illness or injury. this question has not yet been settled. in fact, i'm interested in healing the sick, and i know someone who has diabetes type I and uses insulin, and i would like to find some alternative for his synthetic insulin, something like eating only protein foods, or something. there is such a thing as knowledgeable, competent, effective, moral medical treatment, but it isn't easy to find in the mainstream hospitals nowadays, under 'government medicine.'
there really are right ways, and wrong ways, of doing things. and there are also 'different but okay' ways. 'different but okay' means: i'm wearing orange clothes, and you're wearing green, and there's nothing wrong with that. strangely, loving the color orange is something that seems to run in my family. aunt jeannie loves orange (but she likes it on the pink-coral side) and my brother and i both love it, and we love redheads too. i think the weasley family is great. however, i include this in 'loving variety' instead of just loving redheads specifically. anyway, that's 'different but okay.'
and, with regard to medical care, it requires a lot of knowledge to decide. so here is what will probably happen in the religion: different sects will do different things. this is a 'sectarian differences' religion. we tolerate, encourage, and welcome dividing off into another sect if you disagree. we aren't the one-and-only way of doing things. religions, and intentional communities, as such, are SO BADLY NEEDED in this society, that i'm not going to stop someone from forming a new one and making their own. just having some kind of rules to follow, and some kind of community to support you, is so important and so badly needed, that we are glad, and grateful, to have somebody with a different opinion who will go form their own sect and make their own rules. so some of the rules for medical care might differ from sect to sect, because it requires so much knowledge and expertise, and there are different ways of doing things.
*new sects are encouraged, to deal with disagreements. some disagreements are viewed as 'different but okay.' communities and religions, as such, are so helpful and so important, that we'd rather see people branch off and form a separate group, so that we end up with two groups. that's better than just seeing the original group crumble apart and cease to exist. both groups can still exist, and cooperate with each other, and shop at each other's markets, and talk to each other. shopping at each other's markets is important: economically, 'the more the merrier' - the more people who are cooperating economically, the stronger and more self-reliant your community is. for instance, i might live close to a group of amish people, because in the amish community, there are small markets all within horse-carriage distance - it's a small, local community with a greater degree of self-reliance. everything you need is somewhere close by. i'm not amish, but i'd cooperate with the amish and buy products from them. that's just an example. i might not literally do that, but that's the idea.
how is it self-reliant to buy products from other people? well, self-reliant might not be the right word to use. i could use a different word. i want to distinguish it from: relying on fiat money and government money and borrowed money, which is what we want to get away from. we want to know that as the fiat money system bubbles happen over and over again, we will still have jobs, and food, and houses. we might have trouble paying our property taxes in fiat money, though, and we might end up being unofficial squatters on our land when the government wants to evict us. it could happen. but we will feel more secure knowing that locally produced food is available from people who are willing to help us, willing to cooperate with us, willing to give and receive from us, even if we do not use fiat money.
the borrowed-money system is so unstable, and jobs and businesses only exist for a couple years before they do layoffs or go bankrupt, and this is what i want to protect against. 'self-reliance' meant that we won't need to go to the government, asking for welfare checks, or unemployment compensation, which the mainstream people will have to do. mainstream society will be lining up around the block at the unemployment office trying to get their checks, or trying to get hired for jobs which are being created by the government ('let's build a giant bridge from altoona to bellefonte!' *note - to get that joke, you have to understand that altoona and bellefonte are two towns without any water in between them, and no reason to build a bridge. this wouldn't be obvious to someone who wasn't familiar with pennsylvania. let's build a big bridge from one point on the land, to another point on the land, just to have something to do!*)
i'll write down the other differences, which i wrote on a piece of paper, that distinguish the 'retmeishkan' religion.
*small, new, local sect with few followers. i'm the one and only adherent to this religion. there are many other adherents to the 'idelogical cluster' or 'beliefs cluster,' groups of beliefs which tend to occur together, such as anarchism and long hair and anti-circumcision. but this particular, small, local variant is my own unique little sect with its small differences from people who are in a similar beliefs cluster.
*anarchist, minarchist
*intentional community. groups of people will live together physically. this is different from, for instance, mainstream christianity in the united states, which doesn't have groups of people living together unless they are monks or nuns. however, there might be more than one intentional community, in different places, with 'my' religion. so they aren't all necessarily local to this particular place, but can be local groups in many different places.
*health, diet, lifestyle regulation. very strong rules, such as 'bottle feeding is against our religion.' breastfeeding babies is so important, it is not at all trivial, it is a VERY BIG DEAL in capital letters. bottle-feeding, and formula-feeding, and feeding anything other than human milk, causes a lifetime of obesity, health problems, allergies, and almost every other problem which is common in society today. along with vaccines, which are also a huge major cause of chronic diseases.
breastfeeding is so important, that if a mother has a problem that makes her unable to breastfeed, she is expected to find a wet nurse. and the community is a close, local group of people cooperating, so a wet nurse will be available. you aren't just told to go find one when there aren't any available. this is planned ahead of time. anyway, health-diet-lifestyle regulations are a very important part of this religion, which makes it different from 'liberal christianity' in the usa today, which doesn't tell you anything about how to eat or how to raise your babies, or anything like that. since this will be a local community, it will be visible and obvious to everybody if, for instance, somebody isn't breastfeeding their baby. it will be visible to everyone, and the response will be 'oh my gosh, you need help. let's find someone to help you.' immediately. it won't be something where nobody notices, for months or years, that you're doing something harmful, and nobody steps in to help. that is why a local-community lifestyle really does have health benefits for its members.
another difference: i oppose using synthetic vitamins and minerals. i do not advocate going out and buying a bunch of vitamin pills to make you healthier. in fact, i think those pills are dangerous. i've used them, and i react badly to them: they are toxic. synthetic vitamins and mineral pills are very dangerous. and they might cause other problems, which i have read about: there is a theory that breast density, heavy breasts, are associated with synthetic multivitamin pills, and this is visible on mammograms. i'm sure there are other things that these synthetic multivitamins do to the body, but i don't have time to get into it now. synthetic vitamin d, in particular, causes symptoms of vitamin d deficiency, strangely enough - i've read that it does, but i can't find the reference anymore.
(also, i haven't mentioned this before, and it might seem trivial, but i think children shouldn't be given pacifiers, either. they're made of plastic, and you shouldn't have plastic in people's mouths - no plastic dental fillings, no plastic retainers, no plastic pacifiers. the plastic is swallowed, in tiny quantities, and goes through the mouth surface directly, and affects the body, and might cause obesity and other endocrine problems. just let kids suck their thumbs, and let them do extended breastfeeding for many years. there's no reason why they have to have pacifiers instead of sucking their thumbs. i was told that my dental deformities, my malocclusions, were caused by thumb-sucking, but i don't believe that to be true. i was told that thumb-sucking caused me to develop an overbite. i think this is wrong, but i can't prove it right now. i'd show them weston price. and how is sucking a pacifier different from sucking a thumb, with regard to the teeth?)
*physical beauty. physical beauty is a sign of good health. 'ugliness' is usually a sign that somebody is sick or has a problem. there are variations in how people look, but in general, as a rule of thumb, 'all healthy people are beautiful.' i know that in reality, it doesn't always seem that way, but that's the general idea or intention behind it. healthy is beautiful, and 'ugliness' is a sign of illness or other problems.
however, my interpretation of physical beauty is one of the differences between my religion and other religions, and the natural grooming rules, including long hair on men, is something that makes this religion what it is. you can recognize a 'retmeishkan' if the men, women, and children are all following the natural grooming rules. i haven't settled yet on questions about how to wear our hair, for instance, in a bun, or combed versus uncombed, or what to do with the afro texture which is so different from my own. there are some variations there that are still within the standard. but that is part of my definition of what is beautiful. 'regulation of physical beauty' is an attribute of this religion. noticing it, paying attention to it, placing a high importance on beauty as a sign or symptom associated with good health. and also, a particular physical appearance indicates that you are a member of this community. and making rules for how to improve and protect health and beauty - that is different from mainstream christianity in the usa, which does not notice or regulate physical beauty, or even talk about it very much.
*the body. some religions (based on unhealthy enneagram type ones) tend to suppress the body, destroy the body, or see the body as evil. retmeishka (retmeishkanism? the awkwardness of my internal jargon) sees the human body as 'animal.' and there is nothing wrong with being an animal. animal isn't evil. i am a prude, and i know that i'm a prude, and i hide my sexuality and my feelings, and i am somewhat quiet and timid about talking about these things or expressing them, but still i actually believe in acceptance of the body and seeing the body as a healthy, normal thing, not something evil and sinful. that is supported by objectivism and nathaniel branden as well.
*family, fertility, sex, childbearing. this is different from mainstream usa culture. based on julian simon. i don't agree with every single word he says - for instance, i disagree with him about pesticides - but i agree with much of the spirit behind it and with almost everything else that he's arguing for. julian simon argues that pesticides like DDT aren't as bad as they've been portrayed. i disagree: they're WORSE than they've been portayed! not just DDT, but *ALL* pesticides, are *SO BAD* for humans, animals, insects, etc, that they should not be used - it affects us directly, because we would like to go *hunting* and eat the food that we hunt. eating wild animals and insects is what we want to do, so pesticides affect us directly, and are not just some abstraction of 'maybe it will possibly do something bad to some obscure species of animal someday,' but rather, it makes human beings sick, right here, right now, all of the time. ... anyway, as for fertility. i agree with his concept that increasing population, as such, is *not* the root of all evil. there are other problems: government regulations, taxes, and other laws are the cause of many things we see happening, for instance, how wastefully the land is used, and how people do monocropping and corporate farming and other things. anyway, this religion advocates having large families, and pregnancy and childrearing is of central importance.
mainstream culture believes that having children is a burden and it takes away your freedom. it's true that once you have children, you can't, or shouldn't, do certain things. you shouldn't move around a lot from place to place when you have children - it tears them away from their friends and all the people and places they know. and i know, because i remember when we moved from greensburg pa to scott depot wv, in 1983, and how traumatic that was. and i remember, before that, when i was held back and wasn't allowed to go into kindergarten because my birthday was past the cutoff date, so i had to wait another year, and all of the kids i was with in nursery school went on to kindergarten, and i had to go to nursery school for another whole year, and then i was a year older than everyone else in my class. i know how it is to be torn away from all of the people you know. i actually remember the thing about waiting another year to go into kindergarten, even though i can remember hardly anything else from back then, from that early in my life, from that young of an age - that's the one thing that i clearly remember. i remember being surprised and confused and not understanding why all of the other nursery school kids went on to kindergarten, and i didn't, and i had to let all of them go. it seemed stupid and pointless and i didn't understand it. it was really, really bad. they said i wasn't mature enough, and my birthday was past the cutoff date. the immaturity would be because of my ADHD, my hyperactive behavior.
anyway, you shouldn't tear kids away from everyone they know. so yes, it limits your freedom to move around from place to place. 'you can move when you get older.' it isn't as bad to move away, if you're old enough to decide it on your own, and have control over it. but you shouldn't be forced to leave because your parents decide it, and you have no control over the decision.
anyway, that's not the only way your freedom is limited by having children. there are many things you can't do or shouldn't do, after having kids. but the mainstream culture believes that 'having your freedom' is so much more important than anything else, that women are viewed as 'liberated' if they stay single and 'childfree by choice.' this is not viewed as a loss, but something to be proud of, something higher, more educated, better, 'more evolved,' 'more human,' more intelligent, higher class. having lots of children is viewed as low-class and uneducated.
having few children, or none at all, is seen as 'having a wider perspective about the effects of overpopulation.' my mother and father both believe that the world is overpopulated, and that we'd all be better off if a few billion people were suddenly wiped out by a nuclear bomb or something (that would be mostly dad saying that, i think - mom believes it but is less violent or extreme about it, however even *she* doesn't strongly oppose the idea that 'killing a whole bunch of people is a good thing.'). they both believe that there are too many people, and they both believe we'd be better off if a very large number of people died. this belief is seen as more educated, and superior, to 'small-minded' people who are 'thoughtless' about the 'harmful consequences' of having children, especially if you have more than two children (replacing the parents). julian simon blows this argument out of the water, totally destroys it - it is illogical, even the idea of 'replacing the parents,' which is meaningless when you look at what everybody else is doing, and how it's impossible to calculate or predict how many children are going to be born by all the people who you have no control over, and why is it that maintaining this particular number of people is good, but a lower number, or higher number, is bad. 'replacing the parents by having only two children' is meaningless. but mom and dad both believe in it. and the belief is seen as superior, high-class, higher-educated.
there is a common belief in the united states that 'low class people,' 'stupid people', 'poor people,' and 'uneducated people' are having large numbers of children, while smart, educated, superior, high-class, wealthy people are knowledgeable enough to restrain themselves and educated enough to know that unprotected vaginal intercourse leads to pregnancy (which the poor people supposedly don't know). you can google 'madeleine hoax' - darn it, i can't remember her name. madeleine somebody, an anthropologist, who visited other countries, and there was this one place where they hoaxed her, and told her that they weren't aware that sex leads to pregnancy. they pretended not to know that having sex makes people get pregnant, and she believed them, and wrote a book about it, which influenced all of 'white people' culture's views about primitive cultures, and is still there today in the 'educated' attitudes about primitive cultures, the contempt they have towards them, their own superiority, their seeing them as 'ignorant.' maybe her name's not madeleine. and i don't know how to spell it. i'll remember it later.
there's a belief that the number of smart people is decreasing, because smart people are smart enough not to have children, whereas stupid people are too stupid to restrain themselves. i've seen this belief in a lot of places, and i used to believe it myself before reading julian simon.
so, my religion opposes all of those views and attitudes about having children. large families should be supported by a close community, where your friends and neighbors participate in raising your children, babysitting them, breastfeeding them if you cannot, taking care of them when you have a problem, and educating them at home instead of sending them to public schools.
*economics, financial security. we oppose the fiat money system, the banking system, and the current way of borrowing and lending money (although there might be better ways to borrow and lend money, which will be decided later). we believe that people should trade using whatever money or barter they want, which will be decided locally, not globally, and it should not be enforced by law. we advocate a smaller, more local economy, in an intentional community.
*ecologic view. i am not comfortable with a lot of environmentalism, after reading julian simon: i don't like it if it says that you should make more government laws and bigger, more universal laws that apply to everybody - for instance, 'everybody everywhere should reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.' i think that law is wrong and misguided. however, my religion does have something of an ecological view, except it will be decided at the community level - we want healthy people, so we don't want to be living right next to a big factory putting out lots of smoke, or chemicals, or something. and we don't want pesticides, herbicides, etc. so, there is something resembling an ecological viewpoint here. but it is not exactly like a lot of the environmentalist movements, it's somewhat different. i'd say my emphasis is on economics: that the reason why a lot of the environmental problems happen is because of the monetary system and the laws. if you remove the laws and the money system, those problems won't happen anymore.
*psychology, personality. it is a 'meditative' or 'spiritual' religion. we are not necessarily 'praying to god,' but we do meditate, and search for the true self. understanding yourself is important to this religion. there are many books and many different sources of information about this. some of it is from psychology - the myers-briggs personality types, the enneagram, and other books, and nathaniel branden. lots of self-help books and self-improvement books.
the religion is distinguished from other religions because: electronic mind control is explicitly talked about and accepted as reality, as something caused by humans. hearing voices is interpreted as coming from living humans using technology, instead of coming from god, deities, demons, spirits, guides, ghosts, or anything else. that is part of our psychology and our search for our true selves, for free will and individuality, for controlling our own minds and bodies, for protecting ourselves against being controlled externally by other people using technology, for understanding what we really want and how we really feel. protecting ourselves, finding countermeasures, building shielded areas, talking about it, teaching it to our children: this is central to the religion, central to how we meditate, central to how we view ourselves. that is something that distinguishes my religion from other religions.
again, much of this came from asking the question 'why don't you just join so-and-so?' why not just join the amish, the mennonites, jewish, jehovah's witnesses, mainstream christianity, etc? why not just join another intentional community, like earthaven? the answer to that question is: because i want something slightly different, which none of those places are doing. there are certain things which are specific, unique, belief clusters occurring together in a particular combination. i like the idea of 'belief clusters.' it's really true, there are certain groups of beliefs and practices which tend to cluster together, when you read them on the internet. like anti-circumcision, and natural childrearing, and 'baby-wearing,' and co-sleeping, and extended breastfeeding, and other childraising practices. so, i'm saying that i don't see any other places which have ALL of my chosen belief clusters, occurring all together in one place. i'm not totally unique, however i do have a particular combination of belief clusters which doesn't appear in many other places.
*defensive pacifism with omnivorous diet. we are pacifistic, not aggressive, but also, we are probably going to fight back if some burglar (or government agency??? children and youth services? this is a very likely scenario which i am worried about, after seeing what happened at the FLDS ranch - i agree, it fits the definition of genocide) breaks into the house and tries to kidnap the children, or something. self-defense, family defense. mostly pacifistic, not aggressive, not making war with other sects, not initiating wars, not participating in government wars.
this religion is *intended* to provide an excuse, when the government drafts you, that you can tell them, 'i am retmeishkan. fighting in a war is against my religion.' this will be a 'sincere' religion, where you can clearly look at someone, and notice that their physical appearance and lifestyle is drastically, obviously different from the mainstream. the men have long hair and beards, and they dress differently, and raise lots of children, and live in an intentional community together. it is clearly, obvious a sincere belief system, which is present in their everyday lives, highly visible. it isn't just something that they spontaneously wrote on the paper in order to be 'too cowardly' to go fight in a war for the united states, or because they're 'betraying' the usa, or being 'unpatriotic,' or whatever. retmeishka (apologies, just the temporary name) will be a visible, obvious religion affecting every moment of their lives.
omnivorous diet, as part of this 'pacifism': some pacifists believe that you shouldn't kill any animals. this variant of 'pacifism' has to do with cooperating with other humans, but it doesn't include not killing animals. we see humans as an omnivorous, almost carnivorous species, and it is not wrong or immoral for carnivorous animals to kill and eat other animals. sharks, lions and tigers, other carnivores - we don't tell them 'you're immoral for eating that antelope.' we accept ourselves as an omnivorous animal. we believe carnivorous behavior is part of our nature, and we do not go against our nature. we believe that the human diet is healthiest when it includes some kind of animal or insect meat, especially for pregnancy and childrearing. we believe humans are 'just another animal,' although we see ourselves as a special, wonderful, unique, amazing, interesting animal.
*social behavior, social norms. there is some regulation of this in the religion, but i haven't gone into detail yet. i just jotted it down on a piece of paper. this has to do with community life, how we make decisions, etc, and also how we talk to each other. no details yet. and i'm in a hurry now because i have to eat before going to work.
*glossolalia, new words, new language. glossolalia is something that i do, that i have always done since childhood, making up new words and new sounds that have no meaning in english. this is associated with music writing, and with learning new foreign languages. in this religion, glossolalia is seen as a normal, healthy thing. it might be accepted and encouraged in children. i don't mean that everybody is required to do it. i just mean, it will be seen as 'normal' or 'something that happens,' and not a sign of mental illness or strangeness. it will be known, familiar, and accepted, but not required of everyone.
*imagination and pretending. make-believe. that was associated with glossolalia above. making something new, pretending. this is part of child psychology. i have read about pretending, in children, and using imagination, and i want to include that as something we accept and encourage as part of learning and living, even in adults. it would be 'green hat thinking' to edward de bono, but it's more than just that. it's also play-acting, role-playing, 'mantle of the expert,' etc. more details later.
*transdermal contamination theory. this has come to be of such huge importance to me personally that i want it to be a phenomenon that my community knows about and is familiar with. i can't find *anyone* on the internet who has written about a situation where they merely handled some medicinal herb seeds, and contaminated all of their carpets and clothing and belongings, *merely from seeds*, ephedra in particular, and had reactions as the chemical went through the skin, and the chemical lasted for *years* and did not biodegrade (ephedrine is like that - it doesn't biodegrade - it's very, very stable and long-lasting and has a long shelf life). i want this knowledge to be taught to others, and i want doctors to be aware of how it can explain some health problems such as erectile dysfunction (caused by prescription drugs and psychiatric drugs) and obesity. i want this to be less obscure, less esoteric, more well-known, and used for troubleshooting health problems. follow a decontamination protocol for curing people of illnesses and symptoms.
i jotted down a bunch of notes, but i'm in a hurry now, so i'll just write them here quickly. i've already said some of this stuff.
'prophets':
-drawn from variety of authors, ideologies
-use internet to locate ideas which are hard to find locally (hard to find in mainstream)
-not just one prophet or one book
-humans are fallible, make mistakes; and yet, humans are our guides. we should see the consequences of following some particular rule or piece of advice. rules are meant to be general, universal, and long-term (rules about how to be healthy, for instance), but they are not perfect or eternal, and they can change, or differ from place to place.
-mission/outreach? helping the sick, the poor, severely obese, people with ADHD or autism or other diseases caused by modern society
-some nomads, hunter-gatherers? traveling people, traders?
-not 'pagan'? different from pagans, doesn't do 'earth worship.' doesn't view 'nature' as a god, doesn't focus so much on the theme of 'the planet is a living organism and humans are violating the planet' belief system. doesn't do 'earth magic'. paganism might be more liberal, with fewer rules and regulations, but i'm not sure. paganist beliefs have many different variants, so i'm not sure - i'd have to read about it.
okay, i have to go eat, and i have to put gas in the car, or i won't be able to drive across town to go to work - i'm running on fumes, there is almost nothing left and the orange light is on.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Men's Long Hair - Not rebellious, but conforming, compliant, obedient
Male long hair has been seen as:
rebellious
disobedient
countercultural
nonconformist
defying cultural norms
breaking rules
I want it to be seen as:
cooperative
compliant
conforming (to good rules)
obedient
long-term commitment
cultural identity
traditional
family-oriented
impulse resistance, self-restraint
responsibility
resisting short-term fads and trends and fashions
social approval
Long hair follows a standard of rules. It doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen when people are merely 'permitted' to wear long hair, as they are in this society. People are permitted to do it, but nobody does it, because it is actually a HIGHER achievement, not a lower achievement. It takes MORE effort to let the hair grow long, and resist changing it on impulse. People are defaulting to the easiest hairstyle, and so, everybody has short hair, except for a small minority of people who are hard to find.
There are better rules and there are worse rules. Merely complying with rules isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it is if you are following bad rules (such as 'Go to Iraq and bomb the cities and kill people.') If there are healthy rules to follow, then obedience is a good thing, not a bad thing. I don't mean unquestioning obedience regardless of the consequences. I mean: a trusting, questioning obedience to healthy, good rules that have positive consequences, positive results that you can see for yourself and verify.
I want the 'normal,' 'conformist' men of the society to wear their hair and beards long according to a set of standards. It won't be just a whim. It won't be something that you try for a while and then give up, to try something else. It will be a serious statement of your commitment to this cultural identity, this set of rules and beliefs. It will be a statement of a long-term plan, a long-term perspective on yourself, your family and friends, your society.
Portraying male long hair as being 'disobedient and rebellious' hasn't given us very many long-haired men at all. It gives us men who grow their hair a few inches long, for a few months when they are in a rebellious mood, and then they cut it off when they aren't in that mood anymore, or feel like being in a different mood. It's seen as an adolescent experiment that you are expected to outgrow someday. That's not what I want to see.
I want the SHORT male hair to be the shocking statement of rebellion. I want short male hair to be the disapproved-of, frowned-upon appearance. So, this is a community of people who are going to see long male hair as 'normal,' and short male hair as 'abnormal' or unexpected, an act of rebellion. It is the opposite of what we see now.
To be more precise: Totally shaved head hair is still seen as rebellious. However, it is considered 'normal' to grow up to about an inch and a half of hair. Neither too short, nor too long. But I want a community where all cutting of hair is seen as unusual.
Very long beards don't exist in any religion I've seen either. They have partial beards, or beards that reach a certain length and then get trimmed, cut, or shaped a specific way, but not full length beards. Theirs are always 'neither too long nor too short,' and 'must be a particular style.' And usually, in religions that have bearded men, they are required to cut their head hair. And also, it is usually restricted to small specific groups of men, not large groups, not everybody.
Knowing how to twist or braid the hair so that it will be pinned up out of the way is important. Long beards will get in the way and will be dangerous around machines, just like long head hair. Putting hair into a bun or braid, even the beard hair, will be expected in certain situations.
This could be life-threatening around machines, sometimes machines in everyday situations that we take for granted. My long hair once caught on the edge of a conveyor belt at a store checkout lane when I was at Target (I don't normally shop at Target, but I was in that shopping center to get something else. Everything I've ever bought from Target has been more expensive and yet worse quality). It was only for a second and I lifted it out before it became tangled. Hair has to be kept out of the way, and you have to be constantly aware of it, when you are near machines or in situations where it could be tangled, and you don't always know in advance what types of things it could tangle on. I've heard of people who caught their long scarves, or long pieces of clothing, in elevator doors and car doors. Hair could do the same.
I don't mind hair being worn up in a bun or braid, because I know that it will still be there later on. You don't have to see it all the time. (This was an issue because of the voices. They have frequently urged me to wear my long hair down instead of putting it up in a bun. I didn't mind it much in the past, but now that my hair would be described as 'greasy strings' or 'pseudo-dreadlocks-in-progress,' I don't always feel like wearing it down.)
So, they woke me up asking me questions about the meaning of male long hair. The most important focus is: male long hair will be seen as compliant, obedient, conformist, and accepting society, instead of noncompliant, disobedient, nonconformist, and rebellious.
(I also added the 'seduction' tag to this blog, because guys are changing their hairstyles to try to attract a particular girl, but only for a short time. I don't want hairstyles to be something that change just to get some particular person's attention. I want it to be a long-term commitment, and you aren't expecting to attract some particular girl with it, but instead, it means you're a member of this community, regardless of whether anyone finds it attractive or not.)
rebellious
disobedient
countercultural
nonconformist
defying cultural norms
breaking rules
I want it to be seen as:
cooperative
compliant
conforming (to good rules)
obedient
long-term commitment
cultural identity
traditional
family-oriented
impulse resistance, self-restraint
responsibility
resisting short-term fads and trends and fashions
social approval
Long hair follows a standard of rules. It doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen when people are merely 'permitted' to wear long hair, as they are in this society. People are permitted to do it, but nobody does it, because it is actually a HIGHER achievement, not a lower achievement. It takes MORE effort to let the hair grow long, and resist changing it on impulse. People are defaulting to the easiest hairstyle, and so, everybody has short hair, except for a small minority of people who are hard to find.
There are better rules and there are worse rules. Merely complying with rules isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it is if you are following bad rules (such as 'Go to Iraq and bomb the cities and kill people.') If there are healthy rules to follow, then obedience is a good thing, not a bad thing. I don't mean unquestioning obedience regardless of the consequences. I mean: a trusting, questioning obedience to healthy, good rules that have positive consequences, positive results that you can see for yourself and verify.
I want the 'normal,' 'conformist' men of the society to wear their hair and beards long according to a set of standards. It won't be just a whim. It won't be something that you try for a while and then give up, to try something else. It will be a serious statement of your commitment to this cultural identity, this set of rules and beliefs. It will be a statement of a long-term plan, a long-term perspective on yourself, your family and friends, your society.
Portraying male long hair as being 'disobedient and rebellious' hasn't given us very many long-haired men at all. It gives us men who grow their hair a few inches long, for a few months when they are in a rebellious mood, and then they cut it off when they aren't in that mood anymore, or feel like being in a different mood. It's seen as an adolescent experiment that you are expected to outgrow someday. That's not what I want to see.
I want the SHORT male hair to be the shocking statement of rebellion. I want short male hair to be the disapproved-of, frowned-upon appearance. So, this is a community of people who are going to see long male hair as 'normal,' and short male hair as 'abnormal' or unexpected, an act of rebellion. It is the opposite of what we see now.
To be more precise: Totally shaved head hair is still seen as rebellious. However, it is considered 'normal' to grow up to about an inch and a half of hair. Neither too short, nor too long. But I want a community where all cutting of hair is seen as unusual.
Very long beards don't exist in any religion I've seen either. They have partial beards, or beards that reach a certain length and then get trimmed, cut, or shaped a specific way, but not full length beards. Theirs are always 'neither too long nor too short,' and 'must be a particular style.' And usually, in religions that have bearded men, they are required to cut their head hair. And also, it is usually restricted to small specific groups of men, not large groups, not everybody.
Knowing how to twist or braid the hair so that it will be pinned up out of the way is important. Long beards will get in the way and will be dangerous around machines, just like long head hair. Putting hair into a bun or braid, even the beard hair, will be expected in certain situations.
This could be life-threatening around machines, sometimes machines in everyday situations that we take for granted. My long hair once caught on the edge of a conveyor belt at a store checkout lane when I was at Target (I don't normally shop at Target, but I was in that shopping center to get something else. Everything I've ever bought from Target has been more expensive and yet worse quality). It was only for a second and I lifted it out before it became tangled. Hair has to be kept out of the way, and you have to be constantly aware of it, when you are near machines or in situations where it could be tangled, and you don't always know in advance what types of things it could tangle on. I've heard of people who caught their long scarves, or long pieces of clothing, in elevator doors and car doors. Hair could do the same.
I don't mind hair being worn up in a bun or braid, because I know that it will still be there later on. You don't have to see it all the time. (This was an issue because of the voices. They have frequently urged me to wear my long hair down instead of putting it up in a bun. I didn't mind it much in the past, but now that my hair would be described as 'greasy strings' or 'pseudo-dreadlocks-in-progress,' I don't always feel like wearing it down.)
So, they woke me up asking me questions about the meaning of male long hair. The most important focus is: male long hair will be seen as compliant, obedient, conformist, and accepting society, instead of noncompliant, disobedient, nonconformist, and rebellious.
(I also added the 'seduction' tag to this blog, because guys are changing their hairstyles to try to attract a particular girl, but only for a short time. I don't want hairstyles to be something that change just to get some particular person's attention. I want it to be a long-term commitment, and you aren't expecting to attract some particular girl with it, but instead, it means you're a member of this community, regardless of whether anyone finds it attractive or not.)
Thursday, June 11, 2009
my new shoes are nontoxic!
i am overjoyed. today: positive decontamination results.
i bought new shoes for work. the old shoes had been contaminated badly for a very long time.
how did they get contaminated? mostly because i would put them on, wearing socks that had been contaminated by the carpets. the main contaminants on the carpet are: borax, tobacco, stevia, st. john's wort, and ephedra. i wear sandals at all times when i'm in the house, but sometimes my socks or feet get contaminated by accident anyway. so gradually, the old shoes had contamination building up in them over time.
my feet have been burning quite noticeably for a while now. i know they're getting poisoned with something when they sting like that. and i feel slow and tired at work, while wearing the contaminated shoes.
the new uniform and new pants were very helpful. but i didn't get new shoes for a while. then i bought some and tried them on today. i was so much more alert and clear and energetic. i wasn't slow and exhausted all day at work. (i also wore new socks, and kept them separate from the socks i wear in the house. the new socks are kept with the new shoes. i won't put contaminated socks into the new shoes.)
something unusual happened on the way home, too. i cried while listening to music. i haven't been able to cry much for a while.
i had also covered up the car seat with a garbage bag, too - the old garbage bag ripped off, and i started getting hit with the mystery chemical on the car seat - it resembles the new york contaminant, but it might have come from someplace else - it causes physical and emotional numbness, sexual dysfunction, and i think also high sugar, insomnia, restless legs, akathisia, and trouble swallowing. i thought it was abilify.
however, i might have gotten contaminated with a similar drug someplace else - it could have been on the waiting room couches at the doctor's office where i took peter, in altoona, or it could have been on the waiting room chairs at his dialysis place. it began rather recently, in the past couple months, at the same time that i tried to wear clothing that had been exposed to the new york contaminant. all of those incidents happened in the past few months - reopening the bag of new york clothes and wearing something from it, and going to the doctor's office several times with peter. so i'm not certain what drug it is or where it came from, i just know that the car seat contamination correlated with several different things.
(note: quick story behind the 'new york contaminant.' i visited a friend in new york; he was probably using an anti-anxiety drug at the time, or at least, had used the drug at some time in the past, and was contaminated with it. at the time, i did not know that it was possible to get severely contaminated with a drug just by touching someone briefly - i suspected it, but i didn't know how severe it would be. when someone is using a drug, it gets all over their clothing - partly because it is excreted in sweat, and partly because they are handling and touching pills, then touching their clothes. i have found, since then, that if i hug or touch someone who uses a drug, i can get hit with it very badly even with a very brief, shallow physical contact.)
so... i also covered up the car seat again today, along with wearing my new shoes.
well, i heard 'halo' sung by beyonce, and i've been writing about beyonce lately, about how her voice has so much range from high to low. i was feeling overjoyed, manic, and very excited all day because of the decontamination - i felt so much clearer and healthier. i was able to react emotionally to music, while driving home. i wept listening to 'halo,' and, as i said, it's been a long time since i was able to cry, and a long time since i responded strongly to music. the drugs and contaminants have made me emotionally numb, and physically unable to weep.
it is wonderful to have a positive confirmation of what i knew: that there's nothing wrong with me at all. i'm just contaminated. all i have to do is get away from all of the chemicals, and the clothing that's contaminated, and things like the car seat. i will get healthy quickly, immediately, for sure, within the very first day of being decontaminated.
it makes me hopeful for other people too. peter has been worse than usual, especially with erectile dysfunction, and whenever i lean against or sit on the couch in his living room, i become numb and sleepy, and i stop moving and i lie still, and i stop responding sexually. there is something on that couch. i don't know for sure what it is or where it came from. it might have come from me, but it might have also come from his clothing or his drugs. he wasn't using anything new, though. well, not really, but kind of.
he's using phosphate binders, and THEY ARE HORRIBLE. phosphate binders are about the most horrible drug ever created. they make you vomit. i don't know how he's surviving. i think the only way he eats anything is by sometimes skipping the phosphate binders. so, it could be phosphate binders that i'm reacting to. he's only been using those somewhat recently.
he also used one free sample of levitra, and didn't use it ever again, because it gave him a headache - not just a headache, but 'my head is going to explode - this is almost bad enough to go to the emergency room' kind of thing, lasting for hours and hours. i wonder if levitra could, paradoxically, cause impotence? this would be like homeopathy. at a low dose, it causes impotence, but at a high dose, it causes an erection. the concept of homeopathy is that a particular drug or chemical has some effect, whether good or bad, on a particular organ or tissue - the 'target organ'. it affects it, that's all you know, and depending on the dose, the effects can be helpful or harmful. so that's one theory.
but i still believe it was a contaminant that came from my new york clothing, which was probably abilify. and i don't know for sure.
i know that i felt better immediately today, wearing the new shoes and new uniform, and re-covering my car seat with plastic.
'passive detox' or 'passive decontamination' is the name i'm calling it. i call it 'passive' because i do not detoxify people by using new chemicals - for instance, i'm not going to use chelation, where they give people some activated charcoal, or something, and other chemicals, to try to get the heavy metals out of their bodies. and i'm not going to tell people to take a whole bunch of nutrient supplements and herbal pills. that's 'active.' you add a new chemical. i'm not adding anything, i'm just taking things away, but i'm doing a more thorough method of decontamination than any other 'detox' programs do. there are lots of detox programs and methods that exist, but i haven't seen anything yet that mentions clothing and surface contamination that goes through the skin (transdermal route of entry) and affects the body at microdosages for many months or years, even after somebody stops using the drug.
so 'we' were thinking about this, all day long - i was talking to voices about it, and they were seeing it as a program or method or protocol to follow, a set of rules for decontaminating yourself from drugs and chemicals that cause symptoms by entering the body through the skin.
i was overjoyed by the results. the new clothing and new shoes worked - i got rid of the contamination, and felt better immediately, the very first day.
it will be difficult to fix the car seats. i was thinking about reupholstering them. anything durable, any objects or belongings that are very expensive, and sentimental, things that can't be cleaned off or thrown in the garbage - those will be the worst.
this is like a 'cursed item.' cursed objects might be real. all you have to do is contaminate something with a poison that cannot be washed off, and it's 'cursed' forever. there are rumors that have been around for hundreds, or thousands, of years, about magic, and some of the phenomena can be explained if you know about transdermal drug contamination. cursed areas, cursed locations, cursed people, the 'untouchable castes,' all of those things could be explained if you knew that some people, places, or things were covered with chemicals or drugs that made them sick and would be passed from person to person through touch.
so it's nice to have hope.
dealing with air pollution will be a little more difficult... the health problems caused by urban air pollution - that's what i'm researching now. or rather, researched a little bit recently. 'dabbled in.'
so far:
1. no vaccines
2. no synthetic dietary supplements: vitamins, minerals
3. no drugs, no herbal drugs, no alternative medicine drugs (there could be some exceptions to this)
4. avoid air pollution
5. avoid contaminated objects and surfaces, avoid plants and drugs and chemicals that cause contamination
6. eliminate certain foods and chemicals from the diet, which can trigger reactions in some people
7. no dental fillings of any kind, no retainers, no braces
8. no removal of body parts, organs, teeth, tonsils, appendix, foreskin, etc
9. no implants, like pacemakers or defibrillators (i don't know what to do about pacemakers - i don't know enough about them)
10. no drinking tap water
i'm sure there are more things i'm forgetting, which i will think of as soon as i've posted this. or rather, 'they' will think of, and remind me about. there are more things to do and things to avoid, on the list of ways to prevent chronic illnesses.
what i have lived through is almost unimaginable to anyone who hasn't experienced environmental illness or chemical sensitivity.
i bought new shoes for work. the old shoes had been contaminated badly for a very long time.
how did they get contaminated? mostly because i would put them on, wearing socks that had been contaminated by the carpets. the main contaminants on the carpet are: borax, tobacco, stevia, st. john's wort, and ephedra. i wear sandals at all times when i'm in the house, but sometimes my socks or feet get contaminated by accident anyway. so gradually, the old shoes had contamination building up in them over time.
my feet have been burning quite noticeably for a while now. i know they're getting poisoned with something when they sting like that. and i feel slow and tired at work, while wearing the contaminated shoes.
the new uniform and new pants were very helpful. but i didn't get new shoes for a while. then i bought some and tried them on today. i was so much more alert and clear and energetic. i wasn't slow and exhausted all day at work. (i also wore new socks, and kept them separate from the socks i wear in the house. the new socks are kept with the new shoes. i won't put contaminated socks into the new shoes.)
something unusual happened on the way home, too. i cried while listening to music. i haven't been able to cry much for a while.
i had also covered up the car seat with a garbage bag, too - the old garbage bag ripped off, and i started getting hit with the mystery chemical on the car seat - it resembles the new york contaminant, but it might have come from someplace else - it causes physical and emotional numbness, sexual dysfunction, and i think also high sugar, insomnia, restless legs, akathisia, and trouble swallowing. i thought it was abilify.
however, i might have gotten contaminated with a similar drug someplace else - it could have been on the waiting room couches at the doctor's office where i took peter, in altoona, or it could have been on the waiting room chairs at his dialysis place. it began rather recently, in the past couple months, at the same time that i tried to wear clothing that had been exposed to the new york contaminant. all of those incidents happened in the past few months - reopening the bag of new york clothes and wearing something from it, and going to the doctor's office several times with peter. so i'm not certain what drug it is or where it came from, i just know that the car seat contamination correlated with several different things.
(note: quick story behind the 'new york contaminant.' i visited a friend in new york; he was probably using an anti-anxiety drug at the time, or at least, had used the drug at some time in the past, and was contaminated with it. at the time, i did not know that it was possible to get severely contaminated with a drug just by touching someone briefly - i suspected it, but i didn't know how severe it would be. when someone is using a drug, it gets all over their clothing - partly because it is excreted in sweat, and partly because they are handling and touching pills, then touching their clothes. i have found, since then, that if i hug or touch someone who uses a drug, i can get hit with it very badly even with a very brief, shallow physical contact.)
so... i also covered up the car seat again today, along with wearing my new shoes.
well, i heard 'halo' sung by beyonce, and i've been writing about beyonce lately, about how her voice has so much range from high to low. i was feeling overjoyed, manic, and very excited all day because of the decontamination - i felt so much clearer and healthier. i was able to react emotionally to music, while driving home. i wept listening to 'halo,' and, as i said, it's been a long time since i was able to cry, and a long time since i responded strongly to music. the drugs and contaminants have made me emotionally numb, and physically unable to weep.
it is wonderful to have a positive confirmation of what i knew: that there's nothing wrong with me at all. i'm just contaminated. all i have to do is get away from all of the chemicals, and the clothing that's contaminated, and things like the car seat. i will get healthy quickly, immediately, for sure, within the very first day of being decontaminated.
it makes me hopeful for other people too. peter has been worse than usual, especially with erectile dysfunction, and whenever i lean against or sit on the couch in his living room, i become numb and sleepy, and i stop moving and i lie still, and i stop responding sexually. there is something on that couch. i don't know for sure what it is or where it came from. it might have come from me, but it might have also come from his clothing or his drugs. he wasn't using anything new, though. well, not really, but kind of.
he's using phosphate binders, and THEY ARE HORRIBLE. phosphate binders are about the most horrible drug ever created. they make you vomit. i don't know how he's surviving. i think the only way he eats anything is by sometimes skipping the phosphate binders. so, it could be phosphate binders that i'm reacting to. he's only been using those somewhat recently.
he also used one free sample of levitra, and didn't use it ever again, because it gave him a headache - not just a headache, but 'my head is going to explode - this is almost bad enough to go to the emergency room' kind of thing, lasting for hours and hours. i wonder if levitra could, paradoxically, cause impotence? this would be like homeopathy. at a low dose, it causes impotence, but at a high dose, it causes an erection. the concept of homeopathy is that a particular drug or chemical has some effect, whether good or bad, on a particular organ or tissue - the 'target organ'. it affects it, that's all you know, and depending on the dose, the effects can be helpful or harmful. so that's one theory.
but i still believe it was a contaminant that came from my new york clothing, which was probably abilify. and i don't know for sure.
i know that i felt better immediately today, wearing the new shoes and new uniform, and re-covering my car seat with plastic.
'passive detox' or 'passive decontamination' is the name i'm calling it. i call it 'passive' because i do not detoxify people by using new chemicals - for instance, i'm not going to use chelation, where they give people some activated charcoal, or something, and other chemicals, to try to get the heavy metals out of their bodies. and i'm not going to tell people to take a whole bunch of nutrient supplements and herbal pills. that's 'active.' you add a new chemical. i'm not adding anything, i'm just taking things away, but i'm doing a more thorough method of decontamination than any other 'detox' programs do. there are lots of detox programs and methods that exist, but i haven't seen anything yet that mentions clothing and surface contamination that goes through the skin (transdermal route of entry) and affects the body at microdosages for many months or years, even after somebody stops using the drug.
so 'we' were thinking about this, all day long - i was talking to voices about it, and they were seeing it as a program or method or protocol to follow, a set of rules for decontaminating yourself from drugs and chemicals that cause symptoms by entering the body through the skin.
i was overjoyed by the results. the new clothing and new shoes worked - i got rid of the contamination, and felt better immediately, the very first day.
it will be difficult to fix the car seats. i was thinking about reupholstering them. anything durable, any objects or belongings that are very expensive, and sentimental, things that can't be cleaned off or thrown in the garbage - those will be the worst.
this is like a 'cursed item.' cursed objects might be real. all you have to do is contaminate something with a poison that cannot be washed off, and it's 'cursed' forever. there are rumors that have been around for hundreds, or thousands, of years, about magic, and some of the phenomena can be explained if you know about transdermal drug contamination. cursed areas, cursed locations, cursed people, the 'untouchable castes,' all of those things could be explained if you knew that some people, places, or things were covered with chemicals or drugs that made them sick and would be passed from person to person through touch.
so it's nice to have hope.
dealing with air pollution will be a little more difficult... the health problems caused by urban air pollution - that's what i'm researching now. or rather, researched a little bit recently. 'dabbled in.'
so far:
1. no vaccines
2. no synthetic dietary supplements: vitamins, minerals
3. no drugs, no herbal drugs, no alternative medicine drugs (there could be some exceptions to this)
4. avoid air pollution
5. avoid contaminated objects and surfaces, avoid plants and drugs and chemicals that cause contamination
6. eliminate certain foods and chemicals from the diet, which can trigger reactions in some people
7. no dental fillings of any kind, no retainers, no braces
8. no removal of body parts, organs, teeth, tonsils, appendix, foreskin, etc
9. no implants, like pacemakers or defibrillators (i don't know what to do about pacemakers - i don't know enough about them)
10. no drinking tap water
i'm sure there are more things i'm forgetting, which i will think of as soon as i've posted this. or rather, 'they' will think of, and remind me about. there are more things to do and things to avoid, on the list of ways to prevent chronic illnesses.
what i have lived through is almost unimaginable to anyone who hasn't experienced environmental illness or chemical sensitivity.
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