[MD] The machine that goes bing

[John Carl]

There is a lesson dear to my soul, in the greatest philosophical movie of
all time, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.  Early on in this exploration
of life's meaning, a young pregnant woman is being transported down
institutional corridors and banging through the swinging doors.  As a
metaphor for life, it's perfect.  You have the tunnel, the lights and the
doors representing the stages of existence...
Only she's not really appreciative of the simile, she's wincing every time
her gurney bangs into another door.

Bang.

Wince.

Bang.

Wince.

Not the sanest place to introduce a new soul to the world, but a pretty
accurate depiction of the scientific worldview and it's treatment of birth.
 I would marvel at the power herr Doktor wields in the hospital - the
insanity of the place, seeing a list of patients in a row, one after the
other, bang.  wince.  It goes on and there is no value in the experience.

When the birthtime comes, the girl is surrounded by technicians and experts
who loom over her and sedate her and do what they want, whisking the child
away in the most professionally expedient manner and throwing her a lot of
"happy pills" and jargon and a machine that goes bing.

Now I had mentioned this in a reply to Horse on the subject of health care
and it seemed to get cut off or accidentaly deleted but I didn't have time
to check, had to rush out the door, with a quick pit stop on the way, and
there, in my pit stop area where the magazines are kept where the new issue
of Wired mag resides, I pull open to a story that feeds right into my
"machine that goes bing"  which is really sort of a large placebo.

The story in Wired is about a problem the drug companies are having these
days with an increasing phenomena of the placebo effect.  Even for drugs
that do really well in tests, they can't do better than the placebos because
people are growing more and more responsive to placebo.

Bang.  Wince.

Do you wanna know why?  Because that is the effect that a values-free
metaphysics has upon ordinary people.  Values and Religion and all that
stuff is all relative and there is no ultimate reason for believing
anything.  Just do what you like.  What feels good to your subjective self.
 This is a values vaccum into which people plug authority - big brother, big
momma, big whoever to take care of my childish needs and reassure me that
the machine still goes bing and every thing is ok.  The experts.

Having gone through five pregnancy/births at home with a midwife, and being
as intensely involved in the whole process the whole way through as its
possible for a guy to be, I know from swollen bellies.  The whole thing
about the scientific probing of the uterus with ultra sound, it comes across
as so important, so vital to know.  It really does nothing of use and just
bugs the kid.  Keep your machine that goes bing.  I don't want it.  And I
don't want it to spread.  People already trust too much to the men in the
white coats.  So much so that they'll get well under any attention at all.
 The chemicals aren't helping.  Looks like we'll have to try metaphysics
instead.

Bing.





Nowhere does SOM wield a more wicked scalpel than in the scientific mindset
of doctors and administrators of medicine.  The ills thereof are too
countless to imagine.