Archeology and anthropology show that what we now call “extended” breastfeeding was unequivocally the vast majority of practice throughout the history of humanity (regardless of abundance of nutrients in available foods).
When mothers couldn’t or chose to not breastfeed, children often died. Now, there are other options, which allow these children to live.
The point is, there is not always an easy blanket right-or-wrong. As a culture, we apparently cannot deal with a range of options, of practices, without assigning good or bad, right or wrong to them (ahem, violent hierarchies). We decide on a norm, and demonize everything else, ignoring context.
But maybe, as individuals, we can try to overcome that and be at least a little bit nuanced and careful with our thinking.
| — | This could be said about a lot of people, in a lot of contexts. But it was said in War, Inc. Why did I not know about this movie, this “spiritual cousin to Grosse Pointe Blank,” earlier? Sure, it’s weird, and not always good. But still. Worth watching. |
“[Are meat-eaters] unethical? Only if anyone who eats anything whose production resulted in the death of animals is also unethical….
“And indeed everyone has blood on their hands as a direct or indirect result of their choices, consumption habits, and dietary practices. Everyone steps on someone else’s toes or hooves or talons or cute little paws or flippers or probosci or roots for ‘selfish’ reasons – even vegans. If meat-eaters are unethical by virtue of their meat-eating, so too is the vegetarian whose grain-based meals came from farmers whose tractors crush small mammals and whose cropland disrupts entire ecosystems. I don’t think either person’s actions are unethical, but I fail to see how someone could think the former was unethical without also taking issue with the latter. If you’re going to indict eating meat because it kills animals, you also have to indict other dietary practices that also kill animals, like grain – even if those deaths are ‘unavoidable’ or ‘accidental.’ Sure, the farmer may not gleefully set out to murder field mice with his tractor (although the rodenticide used in grain elevators might raise a few eyebrows), but does it matter if the end result – a bunch of dead animals – is the same?”
Amen!
Also:
“Is living in an apartment or a house built on the former homes of a dozen different species, several ant colonies, and the site of an indigenous people’s encampment from a hundred years ago ethical?
“Is wearing clothing made from conventionally grown cotton that required the use of chemical fertilizers whose runoff pollutes rivers, lakes, and oceans, thus hurting marine life ethical?
“Is eating pseudo-burgers made of soybeans that hail from monocrop farms whose owners razed the land on which they grow, killing families of groundhogs and field mice and trillions upon trillions of essential microbes that compose the topsoil ethical?”
Good intro to Price Foundation ideals by the writer of Nourishing Traditions, akin to a lot of the paleo/primal/caveman mores. Who wants to be part of a Providence-area chapter?
”[I] disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than ‘making a difference.’ There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.”
“[T]here is an internal ethical urge that demands that each of us serve justice as much as he or she can. But beyond the immediate attention that [Kristof] rightly pays hungry mouths, child soldiers, or raped civilians, there are more complex and more widespread problems. There are serious problems of governance, of infrastructure, of democracy, and of law and order. These problems are neither simple in themselves nor are they reducible to slogans. Such problems are both intricate and intensely local.
“How, for example, could a well-meaning American ‘help’ a place like Uganda today? It begins, I believe, with some humility with regards to the people in those places. It begins with some respect for the agency of the people of Uganda in their own lives. A great deal of work had been done, and continues to be done, by Ugandans to improve their own country, and ignorant comments (I’ve seen many) about how ‘we have to save them because they can’t save themselves’ can’t change that fact.”
“Let us begin our activism right here: with the money-driven villainy at the heart of American foreign policy. To do this would be to give up the illusion that the sentimental need to ‘make a difference’ trumps all other considerations. What innocent heroes don’t always understand is that they play a useful role for people who have much more cynical motives. The White Savior Industrial Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund. I have no opposition, in principle, to such donations (I frequently make them myself), but we must do such things only with awareness of what else is involved. If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement.”
If you watch advertisements, or cruise the supermarket shelves, you can’t fail to notice that everything is anti-bacterial now, as if common household bacteria have suddenly become as exotic and deadly and Ebola.
It’s a great marketing coup, but potentially a dangerous one. In our enthusiasm for all things anti-bacterial we are, thanks to the law of natural selection, breeding even more deadly forms of bacteria that laugh at our anti-bacterial handsoap. Just as with the overuse of pesticides and antibiotics, the overuse of anti-bacterial products assures that only the fittest bacteria survive, thereby selecting out ever more virulent strains with each new generation.
For this reason, in 2000, the American Medical Association recommended that the practice of common antimicrobials to household products be discontinued. Of course, no one listened to them.
And in our quest for antiseptic environments we lose the low-key exposures to both friendly and not-so-friendly bacteria that keep our immune systems in good working order. This is not to say we should wallow in filth, but it may well be healthier to wallow in a mud hole than in a vat of antiseptic gel.
| — | bell hooks |
Let’s remember the good times. I was just showing this to my son. He really dug it. From the Monkees’ movie, Head (1968).
