It's too simple, why are we so blind?

By Julia DeHoff

Just before and around Christmas I kind of had this epiphany. I started to think about things in a different way. The way we learn at the university and the contextless content started to get on my nerves so much.

 I started to really ask myself what the point of medicine even was, what it meant to be healthy. What it meant to be sick. How to actually achieve a healthy state. How modern medicine does nothing to solves the actual problems behind sickness, but just treats symptoms. I thought about how greed and the focus of money in our society might be the leading cause of cancer. I thought about the hypocrisy behind healthcare. The fact that there is a price-tag on helping people.

I thought about nature and how our civilization is so detrimental to nature, and ultimately to ourselves. I thought about how to change the way we look at health. I thought about how we could set up a community of people devoted to a healthy lifestyle, and how to teach the rest of society to change the way we live. And that means more than just eating vegetables and exercising, that means taking the focus of our lives off of money, and placing our energy rather into community service and working with nature.

 Instead of pill bottles and chemical infusions, which only lead to the taxation of the liver and kidneys, we could stop living in cities and breathe REAL air. We could drink water from streams, instead of treated water that has flouride and chlorine artificially added. We could take what we need, support our neighbors and leave the rest to nature. We could shut down factories and the stop the ridiculous use of plastic. We could live in a way where we are content and healthy and not more. Do we really need all the stuff we have? Do we really need it? We have too much stuff. I think that our focus on convenience and money and protecting and collecting our money has this psychosomatic effect on our health. All it brings is stress, and ultimately disease. It's like some karmatic payback for our greed.

Ultimately, we only need a few things to survive. I remembered in my first physiology class in 7th grade, we made a pretty short list on the board about "what humans need to be healthy."

Shelter/ Security/ Warmth

Clean Water

Good Food (proper nutrition)

Clean Air

Enough Sleep

Community: Family, Friends

Love/ Touch

Work/Play

(additional ones were art, music, education, laughter)

In my opinion: everything else is not vital, and excess thereof can lead to un-health.

So how can we change? It's so simple. It's so simple that I want to hit doctors on the head for not seeing it. And if they see it, I'd hit them twice for ignoring it. I literally clench my fists and "grrrrrrr" at our blindness. 

Why aren't we like Bhutan- They are so so much healthier. They are just starting to experience modern sicknesses with the increase of their development and "civilization." That already goes to show what development and business and greed and this excess shit we live with does to our health. 

Come ON world, open your FUCKING eyes. We're poisoning ourselves with the way we have built our society! We no longer have contact with our neighbors, we lock our doors at night in FEAR of people stealing our belongings, we hold nature as collateral- we SELL the energy of the sun and wind to others, we have to BUY land and clean water. 

What kind of a sick system is that? Nature doesn't belong to us, we belong to it. Nobody owns it, nobody should have the right to control it or sell it. Why don't we just live on it together, work together, produce what we need together and leave what we don't need. Why can't we do it the way the Native Americans or the Native Hawaiians did? 

A sign at Amsterdam Intl. Airport that caught my eye... Actions speak louder than words.

Why can't we just be more moral and therefore healthier? Why do we choose this dirty hypocritical lifestyle? And when people are sick--for whatever reason-- Why do we take their money to make them better? How can the well-being of a human wear a price-tag? It's sick. But it could be different. 

 I had nobody to really share my ideas with, so I wrote them down until my notebook was full. I was sitting on a train to Bavaria, writing down my ideas and I thought my brain was going to explode. This bubble of clarity, of finally understanding some of my aspirations and values was bursting inside. My heart was beating way faster than normal. I was warm, despite the snow and frosty wind. I couldn't sit still in my train seat. The fingers of my left hand drummed fervently against whatever surface they found. I'm sure that there was half-crazed, half-elated grin on my face. I felt completely high. I still do.

So I think that the change has to start now. Actually it's already started all over the world. There are people committed to living "off the grid", to supporting sustainable agriculture and community, to healing the natural way. And I will do the same.

Just enough to live contently and to support a family and the community. If everyone did it, we would be a lot healthier. I have no scientific evidence to prove it. And I'm not going into a lab to find any. I just believe it.

We need to change. I don't think that I can ethically be a doctor when all I do is prescribe pills for ailments that are brought on by our own way of living. Surgery is another story- that is one of the only branches of western medicine that I truly respect, but it's nothing for me. Antibiotics and vaccines were good once upon a time. But they're so overused now-a-days that they don't work anymore. But the natural remedies, the ancient ways of healing are still valid, and probably always will be. My focus has already been shifted. I highly doubt there's a way I can go back to believing in the medical system as it is. Or society as it is.

I'm going to become a naturopath, and live on my own sustainable farm. Off the grid, away from too much money and development. There will be community. There will be education. There will be a center for natural health.

Screw the current "model of living". Everyone seems so brainwashed and flowing with the coins in their bags. I will be that outsider that just will not give in.

Today I am going to make my own noodles from scratch, because I can't eat them store-bought without being a hypocrite. I wish I was using flour from my own wheat, and cheese from my own cows, and spinach from my own field. One day, I will. I hope that day will be soon.