I’m posting this here on facebook, and this guy has a much better narrative, but since I’m like the only person here at work and I have pretty much nothing better to do I’m going to indulge in a rant of my own here. The fact that anti vaxxers are convinced that there is some kind of magical natural way to evade horrific diseases suggests to me that they dont take them seriously, which is mostly because of herd immunity but it also suggests this sort of historical myopia, as if the current state of the world is just how things have always been. What? Disease has never been a big deal. Polio? Measels? Whooping cough? That was like, caveman times. That was like, another planet. Except all you need to do is compare the state of human civilization pre- and post-vaccine to see the dramatic benefit the discovery of vaccination has gifted to us. And then poke around and see if you can find out why, and maybe learn something about how vaccines actually work. I feel like it’s the same phenomena that causes some people to accept that the world is only 6000 years old – it’s just so hard to wrap your head around time scales in the billions, it’s simpler to think of a world that was just blinked into existence a little while before the storybook started. It’s funny in a way since it’s an oversimplification that could be traced to not doing your homework in highschool – the real world is just complicated enough to require a grasp of actual facts to put all the pieces together. It’s so much easier just to make up something that makes sense in light of the things that get passed around in your social groups and from tv. It’s a story that seems to make all the more sense since as it blooms forth from your daily life, and then it’s all wrapped up in your sense of self, it’s who you are, and so suggestions or even facts to the contrary seem like personal attacks, and are fought as such. Or maybe it’s as simple as the powerful, relentless marketing barrage of a multi-billion dollar organic and natural remedy industry has manipulated people into believing that nothing a person creates could be better than something that nature creates. As if the two processes were at odds not by the physical acts of man and nature but by the fact that natural forces are beyond our understanding and thus intrinsically better whenever there is a comparison to be made. As if we weren’t just talking about various arrangements of chemical elements that exist everywhere. So much effort goes in to marketing, into manipulating behaviours to be conducive to channeling people’s money in every which way. Where did you hear that gingko biloba was good for your heart or whatever? Where did they hear that? It will never end. Human civilization will never be allowed to rest, to be content that our behaviors are healthy so long as entrepreneurship and infinite growth is revered in our society above all else. There will always be someone out there to tell you you’ve been doing it wrong all along, and here’s how you should be doing it, and here’s how they can help you do it.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 18:20:46 +0000
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