Opus 2021-277: The New Normal

Most Americans have not lived long enough to see some of the trends that are developing.  They imagine that what they see is the way it has always been.  I guess that is normal.  Think about major problems people are having that never surfaced a century ago:  Peanut allergy, gluten intolerance, ADHD, autism, safe spaces, trigger warnings, living in mom’s basement at 40.  They existed but were rare and exotic not everyday concerns.  

Are they real problems?  Maybe.  I hear that people can die of peanut allergies.  I have worked with autistic children.  My wife has been told she is ADHD.  I still don’t understand the problem with gluten but who am I to criticize?  

I would wonder why they are so much more common.  Some have marked the rise of autism with the increase in vaccines.  I could lay the cause of some disorders at the feet of poor parenting and destructive teaching techniques.  I worked with a teacher who said if modern diagnosis had been available when he was a child, he would have been drugged to the gills and a total basket case today.  I have seen children who are perfectly calm, as calm as a young boy can be, when at our home, but the mother talks the doctor into giving drugs to calm the savage beast.  I always wonder.  

I believe that much of the panic we are facing comes from the same source as Covid Catatonic Syndrom:  The media, pharmaceutical industry and government (MPG).  We are bombarded with announcements that rice products are gluten free and hard candy is fat free.  Well, duh.  They always have been and always will be but now we have something more to worry about.  When I was teaching there was a sign on a wall in the faculty lounge asking people to not bring fish products because someone had an allergy.  It was never explained who it was or why the entire population of the school should change their diet because of that unnamed person.

In addition to a lack of historical perspective, a large factor in the fear campaigns is that people have been convinced that MPG can solve all their problems and meet all their needs.  MPG has replaced God in their lives.  As we have been adjusting our theology and trying to allow science and the medical gurus to strive for immortality, we have simply been changing the causes of death.  We don’t die of old age any more.  We now have fancy names.  Old age has no cure but heart failure might.

We are all going to die.  You might put off the inevitable but you can’t cheat death.  What we don’t like to hear is that personal discipline would probably do better than any medical procedure but that puts the responsibility back on us.  We would rather have a pill or an operation than eat right and exercise.  

See you on the other side, maybe.  

homo unius libri