‘What’s the matter?’ I ask the Hissy Cat and it hisses at me, which is how it got its name.
The Hissy Cat is attractive. Its fur is silky smooth to touch. Can that make up for its bad personality?
I am cat sitting at another person’s house. The Hissy Cat runs outside in the morning and sits in the center of the back lawn, glaring at the house. At night the Hissy Cat has to be let in and fed. Sometimes it does not want to come back in. Then I have to wait for it, pretending to be patient. I have to wait until it’s ready to come back in the house, because I obviously cannot catch a small, four-legged animal in the dark.
History seems to me to be the record of all the Hissy Cats throughout the ages. They had to have a mate. They had to fight and kill. They had to take over another backyard, another street, or another town. They had to steal, and so forth.
The owners said the Hissy Cat liked to be under the bed or to hide behind the window curtain. So I never knew when the Hissy Cat was in my room, getting ready to bother me. There was no way of keeping it out, except closing the door and locking it out. A pet is usually regarded as a member of the family, but having a Hissy Cat is like having an enemy inside the house.
My husband and I finally gave the Hissy Cat some catnip and this helped its mood tremendously. It became a relaxed and friendly cat, ready to roll over and have its belly rubbed. Catnip is not addictive for cats. So if you have an irritable, angry cat of your own, I suggest that you give it some catnip at least once a week to keep it in a good mood.
Some Questions for Discussion
The most popular pets are cats and dogs. Have you ever owned a pet?
Some people say they are cat people and some people say they are dog people. Do you personally prefer cats or dogs?
Cats don’t need to be walked outside. Cats can have a cat box containing cat litter for when they urinate or defecate. The owner refreshes the cat box with a scooper or throws the cat litter away.
It is said that women prefer cats and men prefer dogs. What do you think about that?
Some people have pets that are less trouble, like birds or fish. My neighbor owns a parrot. The parrot once flew through the air and landed on my shoulder. I didn’t know what it was! Have you ever known anybody to have an unusual pet, like a parrot or a snake?
The Hissy Cat in the story above was a female cat. Did you think it was a male cat, because it was described as angry and aggressive?
Anger means a strong feeling of displeasure or hostility.
Example: He threw his book on the floor in a fit of anger.
Hatred. One person can hate another and keep this a secret. We can also hate places, foods — just about anything.
Example: I hate the color called lime green.I don’t care if it’s the fashion color this year.I can’t stand it and I won’t wear it.
Hostility is always clearly expressed.
Example: The hostilities were acts of war.
Antagonism and animosity both indicate outright conflict.
Example: My teenage daughter told me last night to get out of her room. Why is she always saying these cruel things? To antagonize me? Why is she filled with such animosity?
Rage and Fury are similar: Intense, explosive, often destructive emotions.
Quote: “Beware the fury of a patient man.” – John Dryden
Example: When I heard my boyfriend’s mocking laughter, I flew into a rage and slapped him right across the face.
Resentment is ill will that smolders for a long time, because we think that someone is hurting us.
Example: She resented the fact that she had not gotten a raise in ten years.
Indignation is righteous anger because we think someone did something wrong, unjust, or evil.
Example: Public indignation about large payoffs to rich people
A fit of temper is an outburst of rage.
Example: He slammed his fist down on the table in a fit of temper.
A quick temper is a tendency to become easily angry or irritable.
Example: A man with a quick temper is the opposite of a man with patience.
Sullen and sulky are very similar. The person does not speak but shows in some other way that they are angry.
It seems that these words are used to define each other, but they all mean ill will. In practice, fine distinctions are often not made between the meanings of these words. They are just used in certain ways.
A parent may complain, for example, that her child was sulky and refused to eat dinner. Rebellious teenagers often appear sullen but don’t say anything antagonistic; that is, anything to start an argument. Resentment is considered to be a particularly unhealthy emotion, because it is held in the body for a long period of time. A person can harbor a resentment secretly. Rage and fury are more explosive and outwardly visible. One speaks, for example, of a raging storm.
Ire is a word meaning anger that we mostly read in literature. Here are some other words for anger we seldom hear used in ordinary speech: Enmity is a deep-seated, often mutual hatred. Rancor comes from deep grievances that seem to call out for revenge. Antipathy is a deep-seated repugnance or aversion. (We are not likely to say: “I feel antipathy towards you.” We are more likely to say: “I don’t like you.”) Wrath applies to anger that seeks revenge or punishment, often on an epic scale; e.g., the wrath of God, as in the Christian Bible.
Anger is usually felt in the body as an increase in tension. Sometimes the face of an angry man turns red and sometimes it turns white.
Sometimes you will not see that the other person is angry, because he is hiding it. He is suppressing his anger.
Sometimes people are angry but don’t feel angry, and this is called repressed anger. Mental health professionals consider it good when an angry person knows that he is angry and experiences his anger in his body. When he does not know that he is angry, this is one way of “being out of touch with one’s feelings.”
Even though a person knows he is angry and is experiencing anger in his body, that does not mean he must speak in anger or act in anger. Often the angry person is seeing things from one side only, temporarily forgetting that there are at least two sides to everything. Often the angry person feels afraid or helpless.
Some Question for Discussion:
(1) When was the last time you felt angry?
(2) On that occasion, how long did you feel angry? Was it for one or more days?Was it for five or ten minutes? Or was it more like a flash of anger?
(3) When you felt angry, did you speak in anger?
(4) What happened then?
(5) Have you ever tried to count to 10 before speaking in anger?
(6) The angry person always feels he is right and the other person is wrong, isn’t it so?
(7) Do you think there is any point in arguing with a person when he is angry?
(7) What are some ways you calm down when you are angry?
The photograph is a detail from a painting by Rachell Sumpter entitled “Molten Kin.”
Electrons sometimes communicate with each other instantly even if they are billions of miles apart. It doesn’t matter whether they are 10 inches or 10 billion miles apart. This was discovered in 1982 at the University of Paris by a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect. He discovered that communication can travel faster than the speed of light.
Such instantly communicating particles are not individual entities, argues University of London physicist David Bohm, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something. He believes our universe is actually a gigantic super-hologram.
Working independently in the field of brain research, Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.
The brain works as a kind of lens, translating the frequencies it receives from our five senses—sight, sound, touch, hearing, and taste—into what appears to be the concrete world of our perceptions. Pribram believes the brain uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions.
The most interesting aspect of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm’s theory. If the solidity of the world is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram, selecting some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforming them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite simply, it ceases to exist.
As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion. Although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.
We are really receivers floating through a sea of frequency in the super-hologram.
This new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram’s views, is called the holographic paradigm. A small but growing number of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at so far. It may solve mysteries, psychological and otherwise, that have never before been explainable by science.
With the phenomenon of telepathy, for example, it is now much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual ‘A’ to that of individual ‘B’ at a distance.
Consensus reality determines what is called “bizarre” and what is called “normal.” Consensus reality itself is formulated and ratified at the unconscious level, where all minds are infinitely interconnected.
In a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly make sense.
Aspect’s findings have opened the door to new ways of thinking. As all things we think are “really there” are revealed to be a sort of interference pattern, metaphysics is the new real.
Some Suggested Questions for Discussion:
We like to categorize what we see and have experienced, of course, but according to the holographic paradigm all the distinctions we have learned to make must be false, unreal, or artificial. Does this mean we must feel uncertain and confused about everything? Does this mean we must live in fear of the unknown? What does it mean?
Have you ever experienced a flash of insight or known something you couldn’t possibly know through the ordinary five senses?
Many married people can anticipate each other’s thoughts and actions. Mothers can sense many things about their own children. This is not considered unusual. Would you call this telepathy or mind reading? Or would you simply say that this is called intimacy?
Whether something is considered bizarre or ordinary seems to depend on the words we use to talk about it, doesn’t it?
Do you think most people become frightened when confronted with something they cannot explain?
Do you feel better when something scary has been explained by science? Or don’t you care about that?
I notice that the sea level is rising. I notice wars and poverty. I notice that I need a haircut. Having good looking hair is a social necessity. It’s like having pleasant manners and knowing when to say “Thank you.” And when I’m having a bad hair day, that means that my whole day is ruined, not just my hairdo.
Is my hair a trivial subject not worth writing about in an educational setting? Nothing could be further from the truth. Our external appearance is extremely important socially. We judge new people instantly upon meeting them, and these first impressions may not change for a lifetime.
I don’t sleep with rollers pinned in my hair all night, or use hairspray to keep my hairdo in place, but I always have to take care of my hair. I have seen women with blue crew cuts and men with red spikes sticking up from the top of their heads. Personally, I like a haircut that does not require much attention. Unusual hairdos that cry out, “I am different,” generally require a lot of time, money, and gel to keep them that way.
Like most women, I don’t cut my own hair. Every month or two, I visit a hair salon, where my haircutter decides what would look best.
I was born a strawberry blond. That means that my fair hair as a girl had tinges of red. By the time I was in high school, my hair had darkened to a medium brown. I started to go gray in my twenties, and I used henna products to color my hair and hide the gray. Henna is based on the color red, and for many years I was a red-head.
Later in life I stopped using any hair coloring, but some of my conversation students objected, saying, “You’re not an old lady! Do something about your hair!” After being a gray-haired old lady for a while, therefore, I followed their advice and dyed my hair blond, just as it was as a child.
I feel younger now, simply knowing that other people think I look better.
Some Questions for Discussion:
(1) Do you ever want to change the color of your hair? Why?
(2) How often do you get your hair cut?
(3) If you tell your haircutter you want your hair a certain way, does he or she listen to you and follow those instructions?
(4) Do you like going to a hair salon?
Photo and Text Copyright (c) 2009 Barbara A. English All rights reserved.
His name was Angelo. Angelo used to climb the stairs backwards on his buttocks to get to his apartment after work, because he was crippled and there was no elevator in this building. He worked for the bakery downstairs. Angelo was born in this building. His mother had been an immigrant from Italy.
If you walked past Angelo’s door any time of the day or night, you’d hear him crying out in pain. A neighbor told me that Angelo could have gone for medical treatments, but he was distrustful of anyone trying to help him.
One day, after the bakery had been closed for a couple of years, I saw Angelo laying on an ambulance stretcher in the hallway. I did not say anything to the policewoman and emergency workers, and they did not say anything to me. If I had known Angelo at all, I think I would have asked, “Where are you taking him?” I would have asked because, as far as I know, Angelo had no family in New York.
The police department stuck a bright green notice across the door of his apartment this summer, when Angelo died. The green paper sealed the door more tightly than a steel latch and lock. A neighbor confirmed that Angelo was dead.
Months later another neighbor told me he doubted that there had been any memorial service for Angelo.
Today as I was going downstairs, I noticed a bucket of soapy water and a long-handled mop outside of Angelo’s apartment. The mop handle was lodged diagonally in the doorway, barring all intruders. Some workmen had emptied the contents of the apartment into big black garbage bags. About a dozen of these were stacked on the first floor for pickup by the sanitation department.
In addition, two work orders were taped to the glass door near the entrance to the building. They said that the Greenwich Village Historic District had authorized construction work on the third floor of the building. The landlord was getting ready to renovate apartment 13.
The apartments are all pleasantly rectangular in that line. I mention this because in our building the apartments can be oddly shaped. This row of buildings was built to house the influx of workingmen arriving from Italy in the early 1900s. A neighborhood historian told me that this building will celebrate its ninety-eighth birthday this year, and that means it was built in 1911. The original architect’s floor plans were lost long ago.
When the crew is finished renovating apartment 13, it will have new blond wood flooring. It will have a tiled bathroom, whereas each of these apartments originally came equipped only with a john and no place to bathe. A john is a small room, only big enough to contain one toilet, with no sink for washing the hands and no tub for taking a bath. Maybe there were bathhouses in the neighborhood then. I don’t know.
The renovated apartment will have in addition a beautiful kitchen area with a sink, stove, refrigerator, counter space, and wooden cabinetry. The thick, cracked plaster walls will be removed and new sheetrock walls will be painted bright white.
They’ll probably make it into a one-bedroom apartment with a separate living room and even some built-in closets. These rooms originally had no closets, just shelves above the kitchen sink. People used to hang their few items of clothing in separate metal or wooden closets. The renovated apartment will have air conditioning outlets in both the bedroom and the living room, and plenty of other outlets in the kitchen for appliances. When Angelo’s mother first moved in, this building was not electrified.
When I moved here in 1971, the majority of the apartments were occupied by elderly Italian women wearing black dresses. They were widows, born in the old country, who were afraid of the landlord and called him “The Boss.” I was just a young woman then, 22 years of age and a recent college graduate. I would pass them in the hallways on my way upstairs, and never once did those women in black turn to welcome me or talk with me. The Italian immigrants thought women who lived alone were up to no good. In their view, I should be married, not working.
This whole area, so trendy and upscale now in terms of high-priced real estate, was in those days a poor section of Little Italy, and the community here was clannish in nature. They clung together as a group and excluded all others.
They seem to have excluded Angelo as well, even though he was Italian. I heard from a neighbor that even when he was a little boy, everybody liked to pick on Angelo. He was yelled at by his irascible mother, who was said to be the spitting image of the tough character Mammy Yokum in the old L’il Abner cartoon series. Angelo was bullied at school and they never gave him any peace where he worked, either. He never married.
In the meantime, the whole world changed and this neighborhood was no exception. The Village is now one of the most desirable sections of the city in which to live. Most of the young people living in this building are paying very high rents. The tenants usually do not speak with me in the hallways when I see them, even if I say hello to them in passing. They walk down the stairs with wires plugged into their ears from their cell phones and other electronic devices, and they don’t plan to stay in New York City for more than one or two years. In other words, my neighbors are transients, and they probably see me as a throwback to a bygone era, just as toothless Angelo always was to me.
Divisions between people come in so many different varieties, I’m sure I cannot list them all!
I want to say that I don’t know the dead man any better than you know him. I shouldn’t even be writing this, because I am not in possession of all the salient facts. Since the Village is an historic district, however, I thought I would tell you a little history, all that I know about Angelo, who lived in this neighborhood his whole life, who I used to see every day pushing a cart filled with bread down the street for Zito’s Bakery. Zito’s Bakery has been closed for many years now. I never once said hello to Angelo, and he never once turned his head to look at me, even though Angelo and I lived in the same building for 38 years.
As soon as Angelo’s apartment is renovated, it will most likely go on the market for over $3,000 per month rent. I do not exactly wish to put it this way, but as I’m sure you know from reading the above, the dead man himself was worth nothing at the time of his death.
Angelo is survived only by his apartment, located in the heart of lucrative Greenwich Village.
You may be wondering why I started talking about Angelo and ended up talking about Angelo’s apartment. It is a peculiarity of human nature that apartments are often seen as more interesting and valuable than the people who live in them. Maybe this is because we cannot change human beings, but an apartment can be renovated in a few weeks, given a work crew and enough money.
By the way, it bothered me for a long time that Angelo was suffering so much and nobody could help him. Maybe he did not know how to ask for assistance or how to say what was wrong.
Questions for Discussion:
Not all cultures are clannish, excluding outsiders. Individuals can be clannish or cliquish, too. A clique is a smaller faction that forms within a larger group. Have you ever experienced this?
Have you ever had the experience of being rejected for social reasons; that is, reasons that had nothing to do with you as an individual and your personal qualities?
Where you live, do you feel like an outsider? Or do you feel at home there?
If you are unhappy where you live, do you ever think of moving to a place you might like better?
People talk about the danger of pandemics, the spread of contagious diseases. What about the spread of contagious desires? When I hate you for having something I’ve always wanted, that’s called envy. Envy is the very G-spot of the global economy, the stimulation point which keeps the juices of modern commerce flowing.
When my co-worker has just bought a condo, while I’m still living in a small rented apartment, I might feel envy. It’s a kind of hatred or bitterness that arises when I think, “I’m the one who should have a beautiful condo. I’ve always been a better worker than she is. She doesn’t deserve that condo.” Envy is a form of anger connected with our possessions.
The word envy seems to be dying out of the English language. It is being replaced by the word jealousy, but envy and jealousy do not have the same meaning. Jealousy is when I see my husband joking around with another woman and I think, “He likes her better than he likes me.” I become afraid. I suspect I have lost his love. Jealousy is a feeling connected with our affections.
Envy makes barriers between people, but I have noticed that all forms of anger can make us feel protected. For example, I feel protected when I march down the city streets bristling with anger. Beggars don’t dare ask me for money. Retail clerks take one look at me and decide to serve my needs. When I’m angry and envious, I’ve merged my identity with the tattered advertising posters on the broken brick walls behind me scrawled with graffiti. I’m safe, because I blend in.
But personally, I don’t even want all this stuff they’re selling.
I know that an envious man or woman cannot possibly be successful or happy. My own anger or envy binds me to my enemy, or the job I dislike, with chains of steel.
If we value our freedom, which most of us say we do, we’ll need to learn how to rid ourselves of envy. If we weren’t full of envy and greed (which is a desire for more), we could be free.
But we think, “What could be wrong with wanting what everybody else has or wants? What could be wrong with hating people who have a lot of stuff that I wish I had, too?”
Some Questions for Discussion
(1) Is there anything wrong with wanting what other people have?
(2)Have you ever felt envy most strongly? What were the circumstances? What happened then?
(3)What do you think is the best way of ridding yourself of envy?
My student smiled and said, “Your odor is nice today.” She did not know that the word odor has a very negative meaning, like food rotting in a garbage can. Here are some words that always mean a bad smell:
Odor: There’s an odor inside the refrigerator. Maybe some food has gone bad.
Stink: A skunk sprays its enemy with a stinky fluid from inside its body to protect itself from attack.
Stench: The stench of garbage filled the alley.
Reeking: One woman at the party was reeking of cheap perfume.
Malodorous: The very strong perfume seemed malodorous to me.
Fumes: Sometimes the woman smelled fumes coming from the building’s furnace, because her apartment was located over the boiler room.
If I worked for a perfume company, however, I would not advertise our new line of stinks, stenches, and fumes! I would use some of the words which always mean a good smell. Full strength oil for sale this way is called perfume, and sometimes perfumes are very expensive. A diluted variety is called an eau de cologne, a usage which comes from the French language.
Here are some words for good smells:
Fragrance: This soap has the fragrance of roses.
Scent: Burninga candle scented with vanilla or cinnamon creates a nice atmosphere in your home.
Aroma: I like to be in the kitchen at dinnertime. I can smell the aroma of cooking food.
Other smell words are neutral.
Smell: The word smell itself is neutral. If I were a professor of biology or anatomy, I might tell you that the nerves in the human nose can detect the smell of smoke at a great distance.
Sniff: The man reached out his hand, and the dog sniffed it.
If you know one of these words, you can find the others easily in a standard reference work called a thesaurus. But you would need to look in a large dictionary of the English language to see sentences demonstrating how the words are used in real life. Electronic dictionaries often do not have this feature. But learning how words are used in actual practice is very important to gaining confidence in speaking English.
Some Idioms and Slang Expressions using the Smell Words
(1)“I smell a rat”: I suspect that someone is dishonest or that something evil or corrupt is going on.
(2)“That movie stinks”: That movie is extremely bad.
Some Questions for Discussion:
1.When my student noticed my nice perfume, what word should she have used instead of odor?
2.The smell of a rose is one of the most beloved of all fragrances. What other flowers have lovely fragrances?
3.What aromas do you enjoy in the kitchen? How about the aroma of baking bread?
4.Housewives are often in a battle with bad smells in their homes. For example, closets often smell of mildew, which is caused by dampness and not enough air circulation. If you install one small light bulb in a closet that smells of mildew, you can get rid of that bad smell. Do you know remedies for other bad smells in the home?
I have heard that when a Japanese worker is laid off from his job, he might throw himself in front of a train. Suicide is crazy. No sane person would kill himself. Just because the world is crazy, doesn’t mean we have to be crazy, too.
The news in the media has been terrible. Sometimes it feels like our future has been stolen from us. We may not feel good today, but didn’t we all grow up believing that our completion would come sometime in the future? For this reason, we don’t want to think there’s no future.
Thinking about the question of whether the world is going to end soon is a waste of time. It’s just the bad habit of worrying, carried to an extreme. There’s good worrying, when I can think of something constructive to do with myself. I’m not personally in control of the future, so worrying about the future would have to be called bad worrying: worrying about something I can’t do anything about.
The fact that businessmen are still trying to make money off the end of the world is an indication to me that the world is not about to end anytime soon.
Questions for Discussion
Some people are very future-oriented. Their minds are on where they’re going later. They always seem to be leaving. Do you know someone like this?
Some people are very good at planning for the future. They have made 5-year plans and 10-year plans. They started saving for their retirement when they were 18 years old. Do you know someone like this?
If you are thinking about the future, what do you plan to do in the future?
Photo and Text Copyright (c) 2009 Barbara A. English All rights reserved.
Someone sent me an e-mail that Sheryl Crow, the singer, got breast cancer from drinking bottled water that had been left in a car. The heat inside the car, the e-mail said, caused dioxin to leach out of the plastic bottle into the water she drank. Dioxin is one of the most toxic substances known to man. Dioxin is released when plastics are made and also when they are disposed of. I don’t know if the story about Sheryl Crow is true. It is an e-rumor in reaction to the great toxicity of our environment.
In early 2002, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Manager of the Wellness and Lifestyle Medicine Department at Castle Medical Center in Hawaii, gave a TV interview on this subject. In his interview, Dr. Fujimoto warned us not to use plastic containers to heat our food in microwave ovens. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastic releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body.
He recommended using glass, such as Corning Ware or Pyrex, or ceramic containers for heating food. Such things as TV dinners, instant ramen, and soups should be removed from the container and heated in something else, even if its plastic packaging was designed for the microwave. Paper is not bad, but it is safest to use heat-resistant glass or a ceramic container.
Dr. Fujimoto reminded us that in recent years some of the fast food restaurants moved away from styrofoam containers to paper. The dioxin problem was one of the reasons.
Also, he said that plastic wrap, such as Saran Wrap, is extremely dangerous when placed over foods in a microwave oven. He suggested covering the food with a paper towel instead.
Despite the importance of this subject, nobody seems to know much about it. Plastics only came into wide usage about 30 or 40 years ago. Dioxin is formed when plastics are heated.
How hot do plastics have to be before dioxin and several other known disease-causing agents begin to leach out of them into your food? Nobody knows. The safest assumption is that even moderate heat will cause this leaching, and that we must therefore replace plastic with metal, glass, or ceramic containers to cook and store our food and water.
How does dioxin get inside our bodies ordinarily, even if we don’t use a microwave oven or drink bottled water? We eat it. Dioxin rises in the food chain and is therefore found in almost all meats, fish, and dairy products. This is considered to be one of the best reasons to switch to a vegan diet.
Dr. Fujimoto in an interview in 2006 with TruthOrFiction.com said that in Japan the majority of the population knows about dioxins, and the country has enacted regulations to protect its people.
I don’t hear this issue being discussed in the United States. On the contrary, when I go to the supermarket, I see a wide variety of microwaveable foods for sale, all packaged in plastic containers. These plastic containers are usually labeled as safe for use in a microwave oven, but we obviously should be skeptical of that claim. I also see row upon row of bottled water available in plastic bottles. We have all been advised not to re-use old water bottles, and I suppose that’s a good idea. Using a canteen, thermos, or a stainless steel bottle would probably be even safer.
Most of us are in a hurry. We have jobs; we have projects; we have duties and responsibilities; we have important things to do. We have no time to chew our food, never mind cook our food. Is it not so? We would have to change our minds about a lot of things — we would really have to change our value system — in order to remain healthy. Nobody seems to care whether or not we are healthy. My boss just wants the work done. My teacher just wants the paper done. I have a lot of things to do today. Nobody cares about my food and my health, only me. Do I even care? What do you think it takes to change a person’s mind about making his own health a high priority? Is your mind already changed? This is an issue that concerns us all, and I’m sure we’ll all be keeping our eyes on it.
Photo credit: The graphic image at the top of this post is from a billboard advertisement for Vans sneakers.
Questions for Discussion
Have you ever taken a shower curtain out of its wrapper and wondered what that horrible smell was? Have you ever drunk water out of a plastic bottle that has been sitting around for awhile and wondered what that horrible taste was?
Everybody who lives in an industrialized country already has high levels of dioxin in his or her body. How could we not? Plastic production is booming and raw plastic is sold to companies that heat and mold it into everything from refrigerators to radios, from wallpaper to the insulation around wires, from your cell phone to your plumbing pipes. Look around your room. Make a list of everything you see that is made of plastic.
Some people think that microwave ovens are a miracle, because they can cook your dinner in a few minutes instead of a few hours. Do you cook food in a microwave oven? What are the conveniences of cooking in a microwave oven?
Did you know that you cannot make plastics without producing dioxins? A few other industrial processes also result in the production of dioxins. These toxins build up in the body slowly, accumulating in fatty tissue, causing infertility, endometriosis, miscarriages, birth defects, low sperm counts, low testosterone levels, diabetes, nervous system disorders, and, of course, ___________ . [Please fill in the blank.]
Did you know that while finished plastic is said to be non-toxic and very stable, one of its ingredients, vinyl chloride, is classified as a known human carcinogen? This was already known in the 1960s, but that did not prevent vinyl chloride from being used as a propellant in aerosols, like cans of hair spray, until 1974. Women used to spray this stuff on their heads to keep their hair in place! My question is: Do you think this is a true story or that I am making it up?
Are you aware of other environmental hazards? What do you think is the best way we can protect ourselves from environmental hazards going forward into the future?
People say we need to avoid all ingredients and household products having “chloro” as part of their names. What do you think about this?
Because dioxin accumulates in fat cells and because women’s bodies have more fat cells, people might be thinking that this is only a woman’s issue. That is not true. According to the Environmental Protection Agency [an agency of the government], much of the population of the U.S. is alreadyat the dose at which there can be serious health effects, according to Jonathan Campbell, a health consultant. You don’t have to be a woman to put a TV dinner packaged in plastic into the microwave and then eat it. Do you think you will ever do that again? Or do you think you will make every effort to buy glass or ceramic containers for food you put into the microwave?
While we would never put nylon, spandex, or polyester into an oven, of course, many people cook with Tupperware, a harder plastic which is considered to be oven-safe, and Teflon, a plastic coating that protects frying pans. Bakelite was an early form of plastic, and it is hard and fire resistant. However, a main ingredient of Bakelite is formaldehyde, and when Bakelite burns, that makes a very stinky fire indeed. We would not put a Coco-Cola bottle or most food trays, made of PET plastic, into an oven. There are about 22 different types of plastics in use currently. Who decides which are safe for cooking and storing our drinking water? How many long-term safety studies have been done?
The major source of dioxin is our food. It works its way up to the top of the food chain as we eat meat, fish, and dairy products. Those who have studied this subject recommend a vegan diet. Only vegetarian meat substitutes like tofu, beans, and rice have essentially no contamination. Do you know what a vegan diet is? It’s rather strict. Do you think that you and that the people you know would be willing to give up tasty or traditional foods you are now eating, like meats and cheeses, for example, solely to prevent a miscarriage ten years from now or a cancer 20 years from now? That might require a different kind of thinking, wouldn’t it? What is the difference between taking the short view (being short-sighted) and taking the long view?
Or does it go against human nature to change our food habits and values?
Around the year 1640 AD in France, René Descartes noticed that he was thinking. From this he concluded: “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes was a mathematician and a very important philosopher in the West.
Even though we are not philosophers, we are often asked to define our existence by making ‘I’ statements. We are forced to answer questions like these: “What is your favorite color? What hair style do you look best in? Do you want to get married? What subject do you want to study in school? What are your plans for the future?” And here is the most persistent question of all: “What do you think about that?”
We are expected to carve our personal identities out of solid stone, for the world yields up nothing without a struggle. We are supposed to become separate, self-reliant individuals.
I would say that the fundamental ‘I statement’ of an independent adult must be: “I’ll decide things for myself by thinking about them” or “I think, therefore I’ll be the judge of that.” As I go through the process of perceiving myself as different from all others, I acquire what is called good judgment and confidence in my own powers of discrimination. And part of that process is that I come to believe that I am right. It follows logically that you must be wrong.
How can this nonsensical state of affairs be the truth? This state of affairs is the truth because the human brain is hard-wired to make judgments automatically, like a machine.
In other words, we are judgmental because of the way our brains work.
Let me give you an example. I see someone in the street. If I don’t like something about her clothes, I may think: “Why can’t people look in a mirror before they go out of the house? What’s wrong with them?” Seeing and judging (perception and interpretation) take place simultaneously—and that is our basic dilemma as human beings. Our judgments fill our minds with negative thoughts, blocking any enjoyment and harmony in our lives.
By the time we reach adolescence, therefore, we may dislike the entire circle of people we know. “My boyfriend loans money to his friends, who don’t pay him back. He’s an idiot. School is boring and the other kids are repulsive. I dropped out of high school.” Until, to be honest, there is no one left for us to admire or love. The writer J.D. Salinger created a fictional character like this in his novel, The Catcher in the Rye. This is the perfect book to read about this state of mind. The main character is a teenager named Holden, who hates everyone he knows. This novel was first published in English in 1951 and has been translated into most of the world’s major languages. I recommend it to you most highly.
Most people learn not to blurt out their judgments in public, of course. But we have been taught it’s okay to dislike people—in the secret recesses of our own mind.
It is true that we all need to define ourselves through making ‘I’ statements. We all need discernment in order to make good choices for ourselves. But the ultimate statement of the discriminating mind will not be, “I think, therefore I’ll be the judge of that.” A wise person says: “Despite what I’m thinking, I know that I do not know.”
And it is good to reach that point, because it means we can remember all the times we thought we knew the truth, only to find out later how wrong we were.
Judging is nothing but a bad habit. The way to overcome any bad habit is by learning something new. In my opinion, you can take charge over the judging machine that is your brain by making a decision to be a happier person.
For example, you might make a practice of saying this to yourself when you wake up in the morning: “I set the intention to be happy today.” Maybe this sounds too simple, but it really works. It does not require more money, a better job, a different spouse, or going to live in another place. My brain may be hard-wired to judge and suffer the consequences of negative thinking, but I am not a machine. I am not a robotic creature. I have decided to change my mind. I have decided to view life differently.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” as the expression goes. That means that when a person decides that there is a better way to live, he or she will find a way to do so.
Some Questions for Discussion:
Does a person need an individual identity?
Have you ever had an identity crisis, a time when you were not sure who you were in relation to other people?
Do you have a strong identity from your family or from your religion?
Do you have a strong identity from your job or profession?
Do you find it hard to make ‘I statements’ to pass tests of proficiency in English?
Do you have any idea why Descartes felt he had to prove that he existed?
Have you ever changed your life by making a decision?
Have you ever changed your life by setting an intention?
Photo credit: The graphic image of the robotic woman is from an ad for Svedka vodka.
and friendly cat, ready to roll over and have its belly rubbed. Catnip is not addictive for cats. So if you have an irritable, angry cat of your own, I suggest that you give it some catnip at least once a week to keep it in a good mood.![[del.icio.us]](http://bookachat.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
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Let me give you an example. I see someone in the street. If I don’t like something about her clothes, I may think: “Why can’t people look in a mirror before they go out of the house? What’s wrong with them?” Seeing and judging (perception and interpretation) take place simultaneously—and that is our basic dilemma as human beings. Our judgments fill our minds with negative thoughts, blocking any enjoyment and harmony in our lives.