health – Page 4 – Hopeful Romantics

The Language Deficiencies of Jargon and Buzz Words

Language can be an art form. It is the tool, the medium with which writers and orators work to define the human experience. With the best of writing and, in fact, in the best or oratory and even casual conversation we use language to drill down on those experiences, to define a more precise description of our senses and emotions. It is also the brick and mortar of societies and civilizations.

Language enables us to make distinctions in what we mean. Through language we explore nuances and distinguish the severity of lack of it between one sensation or emotion and another. We organize our thoughts through language and can convey those thoughts and assign shadings of value to what is relatively the same experience. Language gives us the psychic leverage to not only interpret experiences, emotions, and idea with greater precision, it creates the means for the access to an even broader understanding of the human condition.

So, after centuries of honing and refining language, what do we do? We dumb it down. We take these complex experiences, ideas, and events of the human condition that have been passed on for generations and assign easy phrases and cheap jargon to cover the spectrum. We communicate in broad strokes and then fail to understand why there is so little understanding. Even our deeper emotions are communicated in sound bites and bytes and bits of phrases and jargon we employ for the general sensory experience.

And then we wonder why we screw up in romance, go to war, and can’t get across the complexity of social and political solutions. In fact, we encourage generality. We pretend to be distinctive, and issue buzz words like we are all unique in our own special way, we are like snow flakes, truly one of a kind. Yet we bow down to the altar of category and conformity. It seems that any message or idea that requires actual thought is scorned upon. We would rather have it short and sweet, even if in the end we find it confusing and unusable in our efforts to determine fact from fiction, to discern what someone is really trying to get at.

We encourage dumbing down in everything from our news programs to our entertainment. Love stories are over simplified with easy buzz words of engagement, loss, alienation, and then re-engagement. If only the world went like that. We watch our supposed movie heroes stumbling awkwardly like pre-adolescents when confronting the opposite sex. We find regal and entertainment that boys from the comedic boy groups don’t have the linguistic wherewithal to even ask girls out, yet along find ways to charm them into bed. In a world of free sex and mutual sexual aggression on both sides of the gender aisle, the viewing and reading audience is supposed to find it a major victory when our young heroes actually do it.

Forget about the nuances of relationships, the involvement and complexities of actually living together, of getting to know one another and absorbing the related personality and psychological changes our mates realize over time and experience. It would take far too many words to explain the vagaries of romance, as it does the vagaries of violence and the socio-political process, so we boil them down to simplistic jargon.

So in communication, when we try to communicate, even about our deepest emotions, we resort to buzz words and phrases. We stammer and stumble, as it is awkward enough trying to explain ourselves, and more so because we try to do it in general and often impenetrable terms. And when we try to explain concepts or issue forth on social, political and economic issues, we fear belaboring points and instead resort to sound bytes. Sound bytes that are encouraged by the media.

Sound bytes that are also encouraged by our friends and associates. Everyone is overworked and the input from so many information sources has created an overload. We can no longer focus and have witnessed a serious diminishing of attention spans. We are easily distracted, and while time management skills are not always the best, we simply don’t have the time for deeper explanations. We want it short, and we want it to the point. Simple phrases for complex issues. Who cares if we can’t understand?

Now there is a change and a need for change in communication forms. Some years back people did have time, and they would belabor points, deliver laborious and useless preambles, before getting to the point. We would sit and sigh, biting our tongues while they rambled on in tangential and desultory forms hoping there is a point to what they are saying. Many people still resort to this as their principal measure of communications. We roll our eyes as they try to decided what year the year took place–was it ’81 or ’83?– was it Sam or Steve? And all this discourse is replete with ridiculous biographies and personal tidbits about people you know nothing a bout and don’t care to.
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But then on the other hand, when information is relevant and may strike a point where nuance is significant in distinguishing the elements of one idea or emotion from the next, or at least explore them on deeper levels, we find the person we are addressing issues for the summary “got it.” They are telling us they full understand what they are saying. They knew where we are going, so no need to continue the conversation.

But, in fact, the majority of the time they really don’t “got it.” They got part of it. The broad strokes. And the broad strokes will only give you so much understanding. When it comes to romantic relationships or going to war, innuendo and greater detail have special significance. If we are to promote understanding and not just add to the confusion, the drilling down into greater explanation can make all the difference between war and peace or love and abandonment. It can make the difference between the successful implementation of a program or action and its failure.

So for expedience we encourage the dumbing down and discussion in general terms. We have texting now, which further encourages generality. And so with countless sources for our information, feed lines for every subject, and all the modern technological delivery systems for that information, we are more confused about life and its experiences than maybe ever before. We talk to people in messages created by Madison Avenue, or Wall Street, on populist pundits, or cable news. Terms, jargon, buzz words to describe ridiculously complex situations and emotions.

Perhaps it is because all the technological advancements we are more exposed to the complexities of life and society, than ever in hisotry. Perhaps this very exposure, especially on a global level, is so overwhelming, we are compelled to simplify. In the face of our confusion we utilize jargon and buzz words as weapons to manage the world around us. We wish for the easy answers, and believe that like the kid who finds horse manure in his Christmas stocking, there is a pony down there somewhere.

There is no pony. Just horse manure. Unless we teach our children to realize the world in complex terms and attempt to define it accordingly, we will continue to degrade our society and civilization. This, of course, means education. Not the education where for the convenience of teaching 97 kids to a classroom where we resort to simplistic terms to chronicle the events and lessons of world history and all the cultural attributes within. No.

We need to teach them how to think on complex levels. We need to show them how to absorb this information overload from all the reference channels and create from it the cognitive process that can best serve their expansion in the 21st century and beyond. We need to teach them there isn’t just one way of approaching a subject, but there are many, and they all may have varying degrees of merit and credibility. Most will warrant consideration, and in the end, despite our best intentions to live simply defined and well managed lives, there often isn’t the correct and incorrect approach. There are only decisions to be made that are either prudent, effective or principled.

In other words, on communications levels, we have to attempt to keep them from making the same mistakes we are making. We have to teach them that convenience is not necessarily expedient and the simplistic approach to the complex elements of life won’t make you happier or more uncomfortable.

We have to teach them the love for language. And then, the few of use that still remember, have to show them how to use it.

Death and Nonsense in the Spiritual Sweat Lodge

Years ago my grandfather went to the steam baths. These were not the steam baths of today, anemic cubes of tile with a little spritz of hot vapor every now and then. No these were the old time Russian Baths. These were the real thing. The steam was so thick you could barely see through the moist fog. It was hot in there, not warm and tolerable like the wussy steam baths in the modern health clubs. In the old Russian Baths, you really sweat.

The Russian-style steam baths permeated the East Coast. They catered to the European immigrants and the stout hearted Americans who sought them out for solace and comfort. Old men would sit in there for extended period, meditating in silence or talking silently with their friends and associates. Younger men, that is any man under forty, would also enter the baths, but they would leave a lot earlier than the older gents who could just suck up that hot, wet air. Some of these old time Russian baths are still around.

Sometimes I went with my grandfather. It was an experience, as a pre-teen or young teenage kid, watching these men sit naked or wrapped in sheets. There they were hunched over, save for the ones who for extra stimulation were bathed by some old guy who seemed to live inside the steam bath. He would soap up their bodies with a real sponge, and then swirl a bouquet of hot Eucalyptus leaves in the air and then rub them over the the wet, gleaming skin. It was good for the stimulation. The toxins would ooze from your pores.

Even junkies and assorted drug addicts visited the baths to sweat all the toxic residue from their pores. The steam bath population was comprised of a democratic society. In Los Angeles, as a somewhat older me, the Pico Baths, still remain, a homage to another era. The Pico Baths has the sauna, of course, they all did, but the real attraction was the steam bath. Hot steam. The real thing. Peel the plaster off the walls. No messing around.

I remember sitting in there and shortly before he died, John Belushi was being treated to the Eucalyptus treatment. There he was, splayed out on the wooden table like a giant white whale, getting soaped for treated for all to see. He didn’t care, and in the tradition of the time, no one else did either. It was his attempt to clean out, I suppose. If nothing else, the man knew how to live before he died.

Even before I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, I knew the Indians had the sweat lodges. It was a cleansing proposition, clear the body so the mind and spirit had a better view. Sweat all that crap out of you. It made sense. I knew the story. And while I had Indian friends, I never asked to be part of a sweat lodge ceremony. I understood it was their thing and the Anglos who begged in were tolerated maybe, but still interlopers. I stuck with the health club, even though it was nothing like my grandfather’s Russian baths or the Pico Baths, in Los Angeles.

But here we are in search of spiritual enlightenment and chasing the buck. That’s the set up, it seems, for self-help gurus who utilize the sweat lodge so their paying clients can achieve some form of enlightenment. It is a way for some self-help gurus to demonstrate to their clients that they can achieve strength and confidence by mastering physical discomfort. My grandfather, on the other hand, walked across Europe to get on a boat to come here, so he could find relaxation and not adversity in the steam baths. He would have been surprised to find death waiting for him among the white tiles and hot steam.

But death came to some poor schmucks, sure enough. For close to $10 thousand apiece, for the “Spiritual Warrior Retreat, patrons had the rare privilege of seeking success by overcoming hardship, only to find out that they couldn’t quite pull it off. They died instead. One wonders why, when feeling a little woozy, they didn’t make for the door, or the lodge flap, whatever it was. Apparently, from reports listed both in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, they were dissuaded from doing so.

Now I subscribe to the age old axiom there is a sucker born every minute. In this case, no doubt there are people who benefit from the “spiritual warrior” experience. I can only imagine what lame souls they may have been before they saw the light of all creation, reaching that cathartic moment amid the communal B.O. where they realized, “hey, I can turn my life around.”

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With self-help gurus, it seems the kind of experience takes some of life’s speed bumps and proclaim that any progress their subscribers achieve are to be regarded as great spiritual triumphs. Now certainly the argument can be made that life is an endurance trial. That one can only prevail by surmounting past mistakes and overcoming adversity. It is at best questionable whether adversity can be manufactured in a sweat lodge or any other controlled circumstances where the full impact of what you may face in the harsh world is never fully realized. It is adversity light.

Adversity is organic. Failure, embarrassment, and destruction are endured when the world comes down around us. We fail at business, get divorced, suffer the loss of a loved one, lose our jobs, watch Bernard Madoff walk off with our money, or we near retirement age only to find that Wall Street has turned our investments into garbage. You don’t suffer that kind of loss in a sweat lodge. You may lose your life, but at least you are not left to scrape up the shattered pieces of what used to be your life and try to reassemble them into some workable manner.

The Indians didn’t go to the sweat lodge to overcome adversity. They had enough thrown at them before they ever got near the sweat lodge. The Indians went into the sweat lodge for the same reasons my grandfather went into the Shvitz. They went to sweat, to purify themselves in small ways, clean the toxins, think and either share some camaraderie or to be left alone. It was a way of getting out of the house, losing the wife and family for a couple of hours so you could get your thoughts together.

My grandfather didn’t go to the steam baths to garner spiritual enlightenment. Besides the sweat and relaxation, he may have gone for business tips. These old cockers would sit around talking shop, offering financial advice in everything from stock tips to evaluating real estate and other prevailing markets. There were no business channels back then. Neil Cavuto, and Jim Cramer, the dozens of others, were not around to bolster the markets with bad advice. There was the Wall Street Journal and a few other things. That was it. And these men, sitting around in steam, talking investments, this was your financial network.

If they had only known that their daily practice of meeting in the steam baths would someday be an appendage to the whole self-help guru thing, an $11 Billion industry, they would have choked on the slimy mucous hockers they used to raise up from the back of their throats and spit into their sheets. These guys had lived tough and overcome all sorts of adversity to make their way in the world.

They had endured pogroms, plagues, the Great Depression, in some cases Two World Wars, and countless business challenges. They didn’t need to hear how to overcome obstacles from some wiseacre who had no clue what real adversity was all about. They would have looked at someone lecturing them, imploring them to become the spiritual warriors they were meant to be as deranged and in need a swift kick in the ass. And they would look at those who bought into this program, who paid thousands for the privilege of sweating, as a bunch of suckers with too much money to spend.

James Arthur Ray is the gentleman who presided over the sweat lodge sessions where three of his clients died. He has proved to the world that he, too, can overcome adversity and rise to the challenge. Despite the fatal loss of three of his flock, he has taken to the road again, where more lucky souls will benefit from the secrets of his success. As for the deaths of three people and all the negative headlines…hey…no sweat.

When You Still Want to Marry a Virgin

We are nearing the close of the first decade of the 21st Century. Yet there are men who still want to marry a virgin. Forget the bygone days when the mother-in-law or some other responsible party held up the bloody wedding night sheet to proclaim the chastity of the blushing bride. Forget the fact that centuries have passed and for the most part, in most places in the world, society has acknowledged the woman’s right to get laid. Don’t even think for a moment that all those sexy films and wet tee-shirt contests have promoted equal sexuality to the further corners of the earth. And if you are in certain parts of the world, other than the prostitutes–“want to party, honey?”– you can put away your hopes and desires of sleeping with the girl you met earlier that day.

In some parts of the world, that woman won’t have sex. She can’t. She will not resolve her hornier emotions on the chance that up the road and in the sack her husband, that final destination of fairy tale bliss, will reject her as damaged goods. And forget about the fabled mother, with a wink and a blink, and an “I understand you situation completely, having been there myself,” holding up a bloody sheet in solemn but graphic testimony to fictional chastity. Twenty centuries later, we men are almost wise to that trick.

But then, again, maybe not. According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the new Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is more threatening to many male Egyptians than the triumphant return of Cleopatra. For a mere $29.90, a sexually active woman can on her wedding night let loose with this pouch of artificial blood, proving she is has remained pure and simple for her one true love. As Gigimo, the Chinese mail order company that sells the kit over its website insinuates, just a few well appointed moans and groans, break the blood bag, and voila, your idiot husband will believe he’s the first. Provided, of course, he doesn’t later find the receipt for the artificial hymen kit tucked inside your purse.

Key religious groups and conservative social and political entities condemn this Instant Cherry Kit. More than a few Egyptian citizens believe that this handy-dandy virgin vessel will inspire promiscuity in Egyptian women. Confident they can fool their grooms, they will also fool around. They will come to their wedding night as damaged goods with a broken hymen and with sexual skills they shouldn’t have accumulated through trial and error. Certain conservative groups are so outraged over the artificial hymen kit they want to put out a fatwa on any peddler who dares sell them. A fatwa, for the less informed, is where you kill the person for besmirching social or religious customs. Strong stuff.

This new threat to social stability is perceived by the more rational or liberal minded elements in Egyptian Society as partly an outgrowth of the social and economic changes in the society itself. Single women used to live with their parents, until they got married, which was typically at a much earlier age than it is today. But today’s economic crisis, with its joblessness and poverty has forced many women to wait longer, accumulating their dowries. So you have women single longer and dating longer. Things do happen.

So rather than conclude, “all right, already, the times have changed and we have to change with the times,” the more conservative elements are outraged. As noted before, they are concerned promiscuity will spread. And, you know, probably it will. With promiscuity and prior experience, it is fair to say there are for women points of comparison and possible dissatisfaction with the schlub she is with. In other words, there will be discord. There will be less control of individual actions by social and religious forces. Life will be chaotic.
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No wonder everyone is upset. Not that Egypt is necessarily the paragon of order and control. Not that we should even pick on only Egypt, as much of the world is undergoing their own brand of chaos, the loss of order and control. I remember in my childhood the Catholic boys solemnly declaring that they wouldn’t ever conceive of marrying any girl other than a virgin. This, mind you, was at the cusp of social change in this country, when sex, drugs, and rock and roll, dramatically replaced Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, as our social gyroscopes. So weren’t those guys in for a rude awakening?

Besides, Egypt like every other country has always found a way to counter the sexual contradictions of society in order to perpetuate that very society. Before the artificial hymen kit, there were the Egyptian women who had their hymens surgically restored. Before that, there was the complicit cousin waving the bloody wedding sheet. In short, people will screw around. It is just a question of how open we want to be about it.

As a world, we suffer from hypocrisy. It’s part of out nature. We preach one thing and do another. We resist our more natural impulses in the shaky belief we can control them through sound mind and body. Whatever that is. We invoke the celestial to give us guidance. Quite often that guidance is less a celestial proclamation and more our own yearnings for social and emotional security. And control. We draw on questionable resources just so we can feel better than ourselves. We yield our self-control and, more importantly our concept of self-control for external enforcement of our visceral sensibilities.

Mainly, we are unsure of ourselves and feel threatened by everything out there that does not fall lockstep into our dogma or our system of beliefs. Conservatives are threatened by one thing. Liberals are threatened by another. In one form or another, everyone is threatened, so we lock ourselves in a box with like minded souls and hope upon hopes that no one will puncture our fragile veneers.

Sometimes it is ridiculous. Like this. We order from the Chinese a thirty dollar hymen kit so we can proclaim and reinforce the righteousness of our own limitations. It’s amazing. Yet on one level we should be grateful. Seldom does our fragile emotional security come this cheap.

Time for a Mandatory Government National Service

It is time for the federal government to institute a national service. That is a service where it is mandated that younger people are drafted to service the public good for two years. This is not a military draft, mind you, but a system where college graduates can first apply their skills for the general benefit of the American Citizenry, and where high school graduates and dropouts can learn trades and other ways of becoming productive members of this society.

In my plan, people will have a choice regarding which service they care to enter. They can devote their newly learned business acumen to joining others in repurposing our neglected factories and manufacturing plants in the Rut Belt and Eastern Seaboard. Rather than rely on imports, we can once again rekindle our manufacturing ability that initially made us the dominant country in the world. A reconstituted effort in manufacturing would alleviate some of our natural deficit and reliance on trading partners we would rather not owe money.

Young people can use their cutting edge technological and business skills and combine them with seasoned business executives, many of whom are currently out of work in this dreadful economy, in redeveloping factories for domestic production and manufacturing. This would put the laid off factory workers back on the job and rekindle the economy in blighted parts of the nation. We would be servicing our fellow Americans and not just the bottom line.

Other younger folk can work with seasoned veterans in rehabilitating our infrastructure and developing alternate energy sources. They could work on environmental cleanup. They could work in healthcare where personnel are needed to serve our sub-income and even middle income citizens. They could work in legal areas and provide legal assistance to people in need. In short, they could work to improve the general health and economic well being of this nation, and not just a corporate bottom line.

Those who have such an affinity, can be drafted into military service. This is becoming essential. While an all volunteer army has its merits, and a professional army is a better performer, certain drawbacks to the notion of our volunteer army are starting to reveal themselves. Not the least of which is our shortage of troops and the constant reliance on our National Guard. This has caused the degrading of performance, despite all best efforts, as troops are cycled over and over again back into combat duty without adequate rest. Our troops are just exhausted. Should a real war erupt, where we need hundreds of thousands of combat ready troops we may find ourselves lacking.

Additionally, there have been those who have attempted to instill in our military the type of religious fervor that has no place in any government institution. It is one thing to have your beliefs, as we are all entitled, but when those beliefs are eclipsed by evangelical elements who all but enforce the doctrine of their own religious this is in direct contradiction to both our constitution and the wishes of our founding fathers. There are such incidents reports at the Air Force Academy and on Army bases around the world.

A drafted army would go a long way in ameliorating such religious fervor. People who are drafted for two years, would embrace the long honored military tradition of wanting to go in, do your tour of duty, and then go home. They will bring to the party, or the military, in this case, not only secular perspectives but the perspective other other religions. They will not look on their military duty as a religious crusade to smote the infidel but to protect and defend the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.
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While I am not overly worried, history has dictated that an all volunteer army can become a mercenary army that is loyal principally to the people that lead it and feed it. This is a far cry from a good thing. Additionally, when civilian soldiers are involved, Presidents and political leaders are less inclined to commit troops for useless and misguided wars. Can we say Iraq? When there are civilian soldiers, there is a much greater chance of public outcry and the sort of protests that finally ended the Vietnam debacle. Simply put, people seem less concerned about an all volunteer army as they are when it is their family members that are part of a citizen army. In all, we should consider the long run ramifications our army.

What would a government national service do? Besides all the do gooder, stuff, it would serve to bring this country together. Despite all national media, the information on the Internet, cell phones, texting, and everything else, we are probably a more disparate nation than we have been in half a decade. Technology hasn’t served well in bringing us together. We are segmented and alienated from each other.

Since changes start with the young, it will behoove us to have a national service that not only augments our efforts to regain our national economy and sense of pride, but to share viewpoints on a person to person, intimate level. In short, it would benefit us all to see how the other half lives. MBA’s would be less eager to create the sort of business models that would leave a good segment of this country suffering as a result. Instead of a good portion of the country being numbers in a chart, they would be real people with real needs, hopes and dreams.

People would share in their efforts to rebuild this country. Sharing promotes camaraderie and is a boost to general morale. We would get to know each other again. We would get to work together. By starting this with younger people, acceptance and understanding would be infused into our culture, rather than forcibly spoon fed by the media and public school system. Mutual cooperation for the greater good would be for real rather than theoretical.

Call it the new, lemon scented, reconstituted WPA of the Roosevelt years. Call it the Peace Corps for the homeland, or Vista with Teeth. Call it whatever you want. But do it soon.

When You Wear Pants In Sudan

I have also quoted Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali for the less informed Ali grew up in the draconian circumstances of her native Somalia where she was forced to endure genital mutilation and the ignominies of an arranged marriage. She managed to flee to the Netherlands where she became a political activist and criticized Islam. Among other things, books, papers, etc., she wrote the screenplay and appeared in the controversial film, by Dutch director, Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh faced harsh criticism for his film and was ultimately assassinated by a religious zealot. Subsequently, Ali received numerous death threats. She lives in seclusion under the protection of the Dutch government.

Anyway, among her writings, the quote I so remember is that “The West refuses to recognize the obvious.” This statement in stark in its simplicity and so very true. It brings to bear Western History in the 20th Century where strategies of appeasement and distraction threatened the collapse of civilization as we know it. And once again, we are confronted by similar challenges.

I am reminded of all this because of the recent instance where a a Sudanese court fined a Sudanese woman $200.00 for wearing pants in public. A woman wearing pants in the 21st Century? Who could imagine such a thing? Surely the woman, Lubna Hussein, a notable journalist, is no shrinking violet. She is an educated woman who tested the law and understood the ramifications of her act. The penalty could have included jail time and the traditional forty lashes. Some places just love their traditions. I guess it is one thing to sing Happy Birthday, and quite another to deliver forty lashes for wearing pants. But in this case with the world watching, the judge expressed his leniency by merely handing down a fine.

Islamic law calls for women to dress modestly. In countries where Islamic law is in fact the law, the laws should be obeyed. We would expect the same here. Or do we? But in Islamic countries, traditions and laws are such that any real interference other than lip service results in invasions and nation building, and we have seen throughout history where that gets us.

I really find it hard to take issue that these laws are preserved with only a smattering amount of protest that is often mitigating by social pressure and outright fear for one’s well being. Nevertheless, it is their country and their laws, and it is up to their people to compel changes, if they so see fit. There are, after all, issues of sovereignty.

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We fake it. We pay lip service to ideas that we really can’t stand. We pretend that draconian issues require our understanding and we try to engage those who willfully and wantonly reinforce this culture. Simply put, we have given these practices enough credibility that cultures who practice the subjugation of women can somehow behave that way within Western borders.

We read periodically about men living here who kill and beat their wives because of the perceived shame they bring the family. We read about the guy who destroyed his TV because it was showing a woman’s bare legs. We pretend this is understandable and that those whom emigrate to the West and fail to adopt to Western culture are somehow practicing their ethnicity. Yeah, if it means following certain dietary customs. But it is not okay when men, especially men, can’t get used to the idea that their women have a greater freedom of movement in the West. That we can in fact criticize damn near anything with relative impunity, based on our constitutional rights.

We are the product of the Age of Reason. It is often forgotten here. We cling to our own arcane traditions, or what we believe are traditions, ignoring the thoughts and practices of our founding fathers. We praise them, vaunt them, but we really don’t have a clue or sense of the age they came from. But nevertheless, it was The Age of Reason. The Age when people quested after science, a logic.

So while we are unified as human being in one world, we are not unified by a single set of beliefs. And while we can tolerate the beliefs found in other nations, we don’t have to accept them as our own, make excuses for our own way of thinking, or pretend we are more equanimous than we actually are. We aren’t. We prefer what we have to what others have. We want to practice as we see fit and wear our pants around our heads if we so choose it. We don’t care for restrictions about religion. Hell, we don’t have much tolerance for dress codes. We like our women in blue jeans.

Hey, it’s obvious.