The timing was spot on in a more abstract way, however. At a time when people are hurtling faster and faster into the future, riding the wave of modern technology, people seem to be getting less healthy, not more so. You'd think that with learning more things, it'd be the other way around, but, you'd be wrong. The symposium was a sobering wake up call to anyone who didn't think there was a problem.
Case in point: Nutrition. We know more now then we ever knew about food and the molecular-enzymatic-genetic dance that nutrients do in our bodies, yet we're no healthier for it. If anything, people are far worse off. Obesity and diabetes (what one speaker lumped together as "diabesity") is a growing problem that threatens to eat our economy alive as fast as a bunch of kids hopped up on caffeinated soft drinks and sugar devour a packet of McNuggets. We all know what to do (eat right); we just don't do it.
Another case in point: We have more technical and scientific knowledge now about electro-magnetism and radiation, yet no one seems to think anything about being bathed in EMF from cell phones, microwaves, and a plethora of other sources. Nor does anyone think that this is a bad thing.
What's going on here? Actually, it's the conjunction of a number of factors. Powerful interests that make money on the status quo, and with the new technologies that come down the pike coupled with the public's rather apathetic nature. For most of us, if we're not dying from it immediately, we don't consider it to be dangerous.
Of course, that's not entirely fair of me. Part of the apathy stems from the fact that so many people have come to depend on these things, and consider them "normal." A lot of my colleagues have found the iPhone, for instance, to be indispensable. All the same, industry does do a lot to block knowledge of how dangerous their products can be, all the while wowing us with ads for how wonderful life is with them.
Most pernicious is the marketing toward children. Parents today have it really bad; they not only have to work like donkeys, but have to shepherd their children through the minefield of modern life. Problem is, the shepherding is a bit distracted, owing to the fact that they're working like donkeys. So other voices, all of whom want to sell the children something and for the parents to pay for it, find it easy to slip through the parent filter and hawk directly at the children. Why else is all the candy at the checkout counter put at children's eye level? Why else are so many cute mascots associated with horrible food-like substances? Why has the level of discourse continued to drift toward things being more "extreme?" Someone is trying to have a conversation with our children, and the message increasingly is one of, "Don't worry about tomorrow, eat this crappy food, and be sure to buy this or your nothing but a failure."
So it was nice to see at the symposium a lot of people, such as Dr. Devra Davis, who are urging everyone to slow down and notice what's going on around us. Dr. Davis is the author of "The Secret History of the War on Cancer," and other literature that asks the simple question, "Who's interests are behind what's being sold to us?" It's a question that more of us need to ask.
On the nutrition front, attendee Dr. Mark Hyman helped call attention to the growing "diabesity" epidemic, and the simple steps that can be taken to help solve it. Simple, but very difficult. Modern life just doesn't offer an easy way to feed ourselves with whole foods as in the past. Still, basics apply, and a lot of people still do them: don't eat garbage, and get regular exercise. One thing Dr. Hyman said which I thought was excellent advice: Don't exercise, play. Exercise in a gym is drop-dead boring. Play, however, is very stimulating. So, go play. Bike, swim, play basketball, throw a frisbee. Just avoid the Hot Pockets.
Ironically, the symposium itself was filled with people who all want to sell you something for your practice. I think my favorite was the hair grower. Looking like the old fashion hair dryers that housewives across America used to gather under, it uses lasers and diodes to stimulate the scalp, and bring more blood flow to the hair follicles, thus increasing the nutrients they get so that they can grow. Of course, I can do the same thing with a seven-star hammer and a bottle of Si Wu Tang, but it's not nearly as cool as a big, honkin, hair-dryer looking thing with 20 lasers and a mess of diodes in it. It will also, I was assured, annihilate planet Alderon and crush the rebellion once and for all, should the need arise.
There was much more to see and do, of course, including massage (Thanks, Mikala!) and some free acupuncture, provided by my colleagues from Pacific College, but I can't write about everything that went on there. Next time it rolls around, and you have the time and money, check out the symposium. Or, you can skip it and watch some tube while eating Domino's and drinking Mountain Dew.
