Dying From the Inside Out

     As I mentioned in an earlier post, a close friend recently let me know that she has been struggling with an eating disorder. Again, I am moved to voice my opposition to our culture that worships impossible proportions for women, and then makes them feel ugly or inferior for not being able to conform.

     It has been estimated that by the age of 17, a girl will have seen 250,000 commercial media messages. The vast majority of these messages perpetrate the myth of the impossibly slender ideal. According to Statistics Canada, “prevalence of the most common eating disorders is 0.3-1% for anorexia nervosa and perhaps three times that for bulimia nervosa”. I am left wondering if the reason these disorders are affecting such a large portion of young people has any correlation to the massive number of advertisements they are bombarded with daily.

     That’s why I was thrilled when I heard that a Swedish store named Åhléns has been sending ripples through the world with a picture taken at one of its stores. The picture is of a mannequin with far more realistic proportions than the traditional stick thin ideal of female advertising. One leader on this is Dove, but to hear about more businesses adopting this brightens my day.

     From the barbie dolls at young ages to magazines and celebrities later, this image of the “perfect” woman has to stop. Every woman is perfect to some, and vile to others. You can’t judge a person by what the mirror and measuring tape tell you. Like everything else, women are subjective and trying to objectify them is causing great harm to the girls among us who chase perfection.

     I hope this new mannequin and the massive positive reaction to it signifies a change for the future. Too many girls have been made slaves to the scale; sticks are not sexy.

     If anyone reading this thinks, “That’s me,” then I have a message just for you.

Relax, you’re beautiful exactly how you are.

An Undeniable Truth

      All week, I have heard people say to me “It’s supposed to be spring! last year it was twenty-five degrees at this time, when will winter end?” or something along those lines; and yeah, it’s true last year WAS a lot warmer, but a snowy march should be nothing new to us. We’re Canadian, it’s the hot and sunny march that is out of place! 

So, lets see what you know about global warming.

      Anyway that got me to thinking about climate change, and how different the world is going to be by the time we are adults. Huffington Post and National Geographic both warn of food and water crises that could alter world food production, health, stability, and economic growth by 2030. We will only be 34. By the time we are 54, some predictions indicate that things like coffee, chocolate, honey, peanuts will be rare for those of us in (developed countries). For our brothers and sisters in Africa, the middle east and southern Asia, food and water shortages will probably raise some more serious issues then us hankering for coffee, sweets, and a PB&J.

      In spite of all the evidence, I have come across a surprising number of people who refuse to believe the overwhelming science of climate change. Maybe there’s comfort in the denial, but personally I don’t get it. If you're still determined to not believe it, try to fight this flowchart! 

(Slate climate change flowchart.)

      So consider the extreme storms, droughts, erratic weather and vanishing arctic. It’s here. It’s real. It’s happening. Climate change can no longer just be ignored, or written off as a natural and balanced phenomena. Our world is changing, and I believe our continued ability to thrive and survive in the future depends heavily on how we treat this issue in the present.

   P.S. If you disagree with me, tell me why!

WWW.

I think it would be safe to assume that, for 14 hours a day, there is a computer within a foot of you. It could even be under an inch! That tiny box in your pocket has more information in it that any person could have learned in their entire life 30 years ago, and with a few swipes of your finger on a touch screen, you can access any of it. Or  you can communicate with people anywhere in the world. It has brought dictatorships to their knees, it has connected humanity, it has given many people a job, and yet we still just watch cat videos and read tweets. My idea for this blog is the internet. It can be our friend, our enemy, and it will shape tomorrow.

In 1969, just a few days after the last of the hippies left Woodstock, a silent (revolution) took place at UCLA. “LO” was typed into the very first computer by professor Leonard Kleinrock. It continued to crash before he could finish his word “LOGIN”. Eventually the system worked, and the infant internet was born. Twelve years later there would still only be 213 computers. Fourteen after that there were 16 million, and by today there are over 1.7 billion people who are connected. 

So there’s for the past, what about the future? Quantum computing is supposed to be this amazing new thing happening right in our town, but I know absolutely nothing about it. All I got from looking it up was that it’s really fast and can factor huge numbers very quickly and overpower classical computer immensely. If anyone knows a thing about it, please comment. I’d love to figure out what all the fuss is about.

So quantum aside, I really don’t know what is next for the internet. Kansas city now has Google Fiber, the fastest connection in the world. So I’d be surprised if nothing came out of that. Also, SOPA and PIPA failed, which would have sterilized the best of the internet through copyright law. 

Google Glass is so cool

Also, for those of us on the less tech-y side of things, google glass looks just plain awesome!

But this cat is cooler

And just to preserve the part of the internet we all know and love,

Our demon-haunted world

     I spent a good part of the March break in Quebec City this year, and while I was there, I met a girl l have not been able to forget. While dancing with her one night, I glanced down, and I couldn’t fail to notice the raised pink scars lining the inside of her arm. Later I saw that her hips were also marked with the very same parallel ridges. I didn’t mention it, and neither did she. One look in her eyes, and I could tell she knew. 

     Only a few days later, I learned that one of my closest friends has been suffering with anorexia for months. 

     With all of these things happening at once, mental health (depression, eating disorders, schizophrenia) has definitely been on my mind. In this blog post, I’d like to take a look back into the history of mental health, and maybe even try to guess what lies ahead.

1800s Asylum

     From problems with the gods, to Prozac, the way society sees mental health has shifted drastically over the course of our history. Ancient peoples usually thought that mental illness came from the gods or demons. Charms, hexes, and ointments were seen as the best way to treat these problems. The  only light in this dark age was the Greek Hippocrates who classified paranoia, epilepsy, mania and melancholia. In the middle ages, people who were mentally ill were believed to have demons inside them, and they were killed. Joan of Arc, the warrior maiden who liberated France from British occupation, heard voices inside her head that she believed were holy. The church inquisitors believed her to be possessed by a demon and she was burned at the stake.

     From the Renaissance through to the late nineteenth century, confinement, institutionalization and torture were seen as the best treatment for deviants from society. Insane asylums were very profitable businesses at the time. Some owners would even let people pay a penny to see the patients being abused. Harsh treatments and restraints were seen as therapeutic. It was not until very recently that we started to try digging into the root cause and possible solutions to the widespread mental illness in our world.

Ashley Smith

     Psychoanalysis and prescription antidepressants now dominate the mental health landscape. The mental health facilities now are much different from the ones of the past, and far more effective. However, we still know little about these illnesses of the mind. Our treatments are far from perfect, as proved by the sad case of Ashley Smith who was in solitary confinement 23 hours a day at the Kitchener prison for women, and repeatedly choked herself with cloth strips. It seems clear that prison authorities had no idea how to help her. I hope that, in the future, we will have a good enough understanding of the brain to be able to identify and treat these diseases.

     In the words of Cardinal Roger Mahoney, "Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members -- the last, the least, the littlest." Maybe one day, we will be able to say with pride that even those who are so ill that they can’t function in society are receiving the treatment they need. I hope that day is not too far off.

Meat, Inc.

     Though it is a very old idea, I believe that vegetarian-veganism will change the world. Fifty years ago, no one knew what a vegan was, being a vegetarian was kind of like being from Mars, and no one thought twice about fur, or leather, vivisection, or animal rights. 

     Over the last half century all that has changed. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel a turning of tides concerning the treatment of animals in our society. Increasingly, people are peeling back the layers of advertising and deception to discover the true source of the food we eat three times a day. Each person that experiences this awakening does so in their own unique way. Here is how it all changed for me.

This one was my game changer

     As a kid, I loved meat. I would eat it at LEAST twice a day, but in the eighth grade, all that changed. I watched a documentary called Food Inc. (available here) : It is a compelling, well made, and informative exposé about the food we eat and where it comes from. This film was nominated for best documentary at The Oscars (It lost to another animal rights documentary, The Cove) and puts most of its focus on the food safety side of things. After seeing this movie I was appalled at the state of the industrial food system and how much I had been duped into still believing the image of the traditional farm. What I had always though of as a relatively organic and simple means of production was revealed to be a sadistic, dirty, inhumane process that applied the factory system to living things.

     This marked the beginning of my shift towards believing in animal rights. After discovering Food Inc., I slowly began to educate myself further on the subject. From this great blog (We are all animals) to endless hours on Netflix, my relationship with meat started to change. I started off disliking it, before I knew it, I had completely cut it from my diet. 

     But that’s enough about me! Now let’s get on to how this could affect our world. Global warming is upon us, and if you don’t believe it’s happening then click this, (global warming flowchart). If that doesn’t convince you…then just go down south and join the Tea Party where you can chat with other intellectuals like yourself. Anyway, I’m getting off topic. So global warming is here, saving the planet is not going to be easy, and we produce many greenhouse gasses every day (CO2, Methane, Nitrous oxide). Can anyone guess what the number one way to cut down on all of these gasses simultaneously would be? Removing meat either partially or completely from your diet! (Vegan is better, but one step at a time.) So not only is it healthier and more compassionate, it’s also good for the planet.

It's a good question, no one eats their pets

     Maybe this is why going vegetarian as taken off so quickly in the developed world. In 1971, 1% of U.S. citizens described themselves as vegetarians. In 2013,13% of Americans identify as vegetarian (7% vegan, 6% vegetarian). Now, considering that a lifelong vegetarian will save 760 chickens, 5 cows, 20 pigs, 29 sheep, 46 turkeys and half a tone of fish from the hell of the industrial food system, that 13% means much less cruelty, obesity, and greenhouse gasses in our world. So never think that your actions won’t make a difference, because even the smallest ones do.

     So if you’re looking to lose a few pounds, be more eco-friendly, or even a little more compassionate, I urge you to explore a world with less meat. It doesn’t have to be 100% vegetarian overnight, It took me months to get all the way there. But I do think you’ll find that once you start to walk down that road you never look back. In the words of another vegetarian, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.” so if it’s a more compassionate, healthy, and sustainable world you seek, then be the change.

Evolution

On February 12th 1809, two great emancipators were born. One would become a republican president who freed the slaves: the other freed the world from mythical creation stories and the haunting question of how we got here. The former was named Abraham Lincoln, and the latter is Charles Darwin. My blog post today is about the latter. 

The young Charles Darwin was not a motivated student. He found lectures to be a bore and did not finish his studies in medicine, natural history, or the arts. It wan not until he took a five year long journey on the HMS Beagle to map the coast of South America that the young intellectual rose to prominence. 

On this voyage he meticulously collected many different species of animals and began to see patterns in their origins and similarities. Another thing that struck him as odd was how certain fossils would be visible in places they did not belong, such as the bizarre find of seashells high in the Andes mountains. 

The Beagle made its long voyage around the world, and when it returned to England, Darwin had all the building blocks he needed to publish his famous book On the Origin of Species. This book proposed a theory of evolution based on natural selection. Though it was not almost unanimously recognized as correct by the scientific community for quite some time, it was the only theory that did not buckle under decades of skepticism. 

Did I mention he had an awesome beard?

Darwin’s theory attracted the interest of many religious institutions alongside scientific ones. Even though he was careful to downplay the role of natural selection in the creation of humans, simply stating; “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” He still got mixed responses to his theory. Some liberal men of faith defended it as the assurance that god is creating omnipotent laws to govern our world, while others would claim that his ideas were blasphemy. Even in our world, some religious people doubt that truth of Darwin’s theory.

The theory of evolution opened many doors in science, and poked many holes in faith. Lincoln may have freed the slaves, but Darwin freed the minds of the people. I have nothing but respect for this man, and his theory that undoubtedly changed the world.