The curse, of course, is either an out-right, straight-up application of psychic poison, or a trick to make a lethal dose of bad luck appear sweet and nutritious. The overall best curse is "May you get all you desire". Should you wish for everything, you will be innundated and come to a hopeless stand-still.
We're taught that voodoo is the implimentation of an idea of an outcome (either health or personal destruction) whose belief by the recipient causes the effect to occur, hence the accusation of magical thinking. This is a naive and dangerous interpretation at wost and unbelieveable at best, when the data finally comes in for analysis. The evidence is clear that misfortune and so-called "miracle-cures" occur about as frequently as the phenomenon of rain occurs somewhere on the planet on a daily basis with or without any insemination and consequent belief in festering ideas. Belief in ideas only "makes" unforseen or prophesized world events concerning the 'subject' happen more easily or readily. If you're looking for rain, you'll probably find it, in one form or another, so why be gloomy? Nutritious or toxic effects are more easily witnessed if one is mindful of them. Hence the common sentiment, "there's someone in the cosmos out to do you in", and there you have it! How often we ourselves are found the culprit, particularly when we continue the sorts of risks which end us every time, in the klink. Magicians invoke Kharma; enlightened scientists call on the laws of inertia and probability. Is there a difference?
Every long-term successful criminal is aware that each positive reinforcement (a successful get-away) carries with it a danger of arrogance – those positive strokes can be deadly. The self-assured sometimes fall faster than any equivalently weighted material. Hoodo witch-doctors are often masters of manipulating contingencies of reinforcement to affect turning points open to the victim or patient. Expectation is part of the proceedure, but not necessarily so.
Conan-Doyle explained how the process worked concerning 19th and early 20th century western medicine: placebo (then embraced by practitioners) was a measure of the doctor's skill in bed-side manners – the "real" cure. About the same time, veterinarians discovered that sickness behaviour was a signal (intentional or not, that is beside the point) for help. A predator will catch the signal and put an end to suffering, or a kindly mare will stand guard while the otherwise helpless body heals itself (or awakes from a nap). This is why we came to see nurturing the sick (or young or uneducated, still erroneously viewed as "sicknesses") as a motherly sort of thing.
It may have been the invention of female nurses which gave us the manly modern doctor who simply sticks it to you and signs the receipt after a two hour wait in a sterile looking room. The intention, of course, is to sterilize your attention. What you don't see can't hurt you, right? Ok, so you might not be old enough to remember before woman's liberation. By old-time standards, today we are surrounded by manly girls and girly men and probably are correct to ask "what's the friggin' difference?" Don't warriors of all varieties loudly express mutual aid when they protect the folks back home? Well, certainly not the modern variety in or out of uniform, unless they are fully deluded. Have I strayed again beyond the expected topic? I wouldn't be the first to suggest that cops create criminals in the interest of job security.
Even today's pharmaceuticals are measured against the incredibly effective results of placebos. The positive comparisons (sometimes up to 3% favourable, which, when you think about it, is a pretty low number) are achieved in double-blind experiments where neither the experimenter nor subject know which drug was delivered. The witch-doctor might advise them that preconceived knowlege entirely misses the point: nutritient, inert ingredient (like a "dead metaphor", considered "meaningless") and toxin are not always easily distinguishable on a purely intellectual basis.
Medieval scientists understood this when they discovered that honey makes the bitter go down better. It's a matter of taste, yes, but also of spectacle, where the speculum is no longer necessary. Besides, who says that the inert caking ingredient has no adverse effects? Did the pharmaceutical researcher try snorting it up their own nose? A medical student-volunteer will never assume the kindly (or is that ignorant?) experimenters are out to get them or are incapable of reviving them should unexpected misfortune befall. An interesting experiment would compare this approach with the certainly unkind, nazi method of forced experimentation on prison inmates, who know damn well their own well-being is not up front in the researcher's mind. If the well-meaning doctors would look into their own history, they would see that their forebearers were members of the amalgamated assassin-chemist guild (AACHG!) and not the beneficent order of sanitation engineers (BORES!).
The point is, the double-blind experiment is not always suitable to negate belief in silly (or not) ideas from playing its tricks. The subjective (phenomenal) distinction between nutrient and toxin by organic life-forms is still a mystery, even at the molecular level vigilantly surveiled by medical machinists oblivious to synergetic (some say "magical") effects of the big picture. We can only assume an affinity for kindred wave-forms and dis-affinity with strangers, but then what about the adoption of orphans?. Unique particle receptors is a metaphoric analogy to jig-saw puzzles – if it fits, wear it.
There is nevertheless an aesthetic awareness resting beneath induction and intuition, but one never knows for sure where a gravitudinal embrace will take us, or what it will bring. Sometimes shit happens; sometimes it's slung.
No comments:
Post a Comment