alternatives

i love me some alternative health practices. for everything western science and medicine have gotten us, there is part of me that understands them to be fundamentally constituted by oppression, racism and misogyny. besides that, though, i am not a remotely spiritual person, but believe me, i have a rich inner life that seems to be intimately tied to my physical well-being. so it makes more sense to me, even logically (by western science's own lights!) that body parts and mental states would be connected than that they wouldn't, and that, say, your thyroid is connected to your tendons and both are affected by, say, a constant refrain about how ugly or useless you are. after all, body parts and mental states are more proximate to each other than to a stranger's mind trained to isolate, invade and manipulate things, and certainly more proximate to each other than to a scalpel. it also makes sense to me that 5,000-year-old practices would have something over 200-year old (and less) practices. so while i'm not against doctors or anything like that, i say, bring on the acupuncturists and the yoga instructors and the chiropractors (all of whom can be bad or good at their jobs, just like doctors).

that said, i loooooovvvve evolution. i lurve it. it encompasses many of my core values: it is slow, low-achieving, impersonal, and optimistic in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary while simultaneously bitter. i have a friend who gets giddy considering the majesty of space; i get giddy considering the majesty of time. so much time. and it is so beautiful and comforting to think of myself as a bit of a beast, and at the same time know that it doesn't really matter how i think of myself anyway; that evolution would think it's cute that i am even conscious to begin with, or that i experience something called sentience. i love that. i also love that evolution implies many of the connections that alternative health practices also imply, as yet undiscovered by mere humans. to me, both things have such a deep logic that eludes common (as in: widespread as well as cheap) human thinking, and perhaps that is why they aren't universally accepted: because they (say, Traditional Chinese Medicine and evolution) don't affirm the specialness of the people who perceive themselves to be in power. to me, the best thing to be skeptical about is power.

when i got a regular eye exam recently, the doctor was explaining something about the human eye and i somewhat idly speculated what the evolutionary mechanism behind it could be. he speculated back and it was very cozy. however, a few minutes later as he was walking me back to the front desk he said, "people around here don't like it when you talk about evolution. they'll string you up!"

unfortunately, i haven't been surprised once as i make my life in appalachia/the american south. many stereotypes have been as apparent as the ones about righteous liberals were in the city from which i recently moved. so, the beat goes on. within my crowd, made of similarly displaced yankees or others, it's popular to make fun of hillbillies with their backwards and provincial and uneducated ways (though some northern conservatives i know share many values with these hillbillies), and i hate how they vote and how some people treat their animals and kids. but the banner of evolution hasn't exactly done this local population any favors. as late as the 1970s, people around here have been forcibly sterilized in the interest of improving genetic stock.* a colleague of mine interviewed one such man recently. my point is the same as above: connections happen where you least expect them, and some ways of looking at the world are more conducive to revealing those connections than others. also though, all i have is my own little beastie self, so i probably won't be finished being appalled any time soon.

*this isn't actually evolution, by the way. it's just some twisted version of someone's sadistic idea of it.