[FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

Wed Aug 25 12:28:49 EDT 2021

Thanks.  Nicely done, Dr. Steelman,

In my 4 decades with diabetes, I have lived through (and mostly ignored) 4 different medical fads, all demanding,  all diminishing quality and spontaneity of life, and all ultimately determined to be nugatory, or even damaging.  Why wouldn't a wise patient be skeptical about fad 5.0? If Peirce is right, the correct regimen is that upon which they will converge in the very long run, if they ever do converge.  No reason to believe I will be running that far.  And of course, they may never converge?  Truth is a rare commodity in a universe that is mostly random.

So why do I care, if I am ignoring the fads?  Well, because I honor them with my guilt.   Why do I bother to do that?  I have no idea. 

N

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2021 12:04 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] On the: RLY!? side

Maybe I can steelman it, since I have so many personal relationships with anti-vax people. 

When I look around at the world, I see a clear difference between those people like me and those people who seem very different from me. Interacting with the people who are very different is stressful and time consuming. For example, explaining to my oncologist that it's very difficult for me to follow the diet she recommends, she being a very petite Asian, me being a 180 lb white dude who needs to be strong enough to pick up a 900 lb motorcycle when I drop it. Even beyond the cultural differences between us, there are blatant physiological and day-to-day context differences.

These tiny differences are easy to let roll off, unless someone chooses to dig in their heels and make a stink about it. When someone, particular an *authority* like my oncologist, digs in and makes a stink about some "suggestion" they make on how to live my life, I get irritated, which eventually grows into anger. I'm also reflective enough to know that her recommendation is Correct, True, right, proper. But when I reflect like that, I might become disappointed in myself, squeezing my fat in the mirror or whatever. So the anger can turn to insecure self criticism. Or it can simply seethe and fester into resentment and distancing from her *and* her kind. Neither is a good outcome.

This can go on for decades ... very smart people who I tend to trust, want to trust, lead to nothing but resentment or self criticism. Why would I continue to do that? Why continue to engage?

Then some distant "authority" comes to me with rhetoric that sounds very similar to that of my oncologist ... snooty, know-it-all, "advice" or "mandates" for what I should be doing in order to be a moral person. Well, screw them! Not only have I lived for decades as I am, without being a vegetarian, without being at some sort of "optimal weight", without taking Vitamins every day, etc. Not only that. But I also read things from fairly reputable sources that simply contradict what they're telling me! Maybe, rather than vegetarianism, I should eat more animal protein and less carbs to get my fat % down? Obviously, these authorities don't know everything.

The more they dig in, the more it pushes me to dig in. The more emphatically you are pro-vaccine, the more emphatically I become anti-vaccine. Reason and reasonableness leaves the building.

On 8/24/21 6:37 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:
> What can possibly poses people to have a GD tantrum about vaccines.  The cynical of me thinks it's basically a tantrum mixed with deranged and dangerous levels of trolling. While the "Jedi" side er the small part wanting to see the best of these GD raving lunatics. It's, frankly, baffled.
> The powers that be say put a GD mask on, and thank antivaxers.  What 
> is pissing me off and just straitup confusing the ever living *** me  
> is how does this thinking work? Rejecting a compound that'll keep you 
> healthy? For me: I (literally) couldn't get in line fast enough! I 
> think I broke my caregiver who, I wanted to drive me their just in 
> case. Meen while the other extreme are these people having GD tantrum. 
> It's like: here's something that'll help you not get this virus,its 
> free and you just need to get in a line. The first thing they say is: 
> omg! free? why that smacks of [something they read someplace]. And ma 
> freedoms
> 
> Can some please help me get just WTF these people are on, or how the hell anything about how they think can possibly make any sense?

--
☤>$ uǝlƃ

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/