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"Hospital", by Maxime Delacambre is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0. “We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state.” — Shirley Chisholm In part 1 of this article (published last year), I wrote about how to take care of your own health as prescriptions become harder to get and doctor appointments are booked out for the

Inclusion is important. It inspires meaningful communication and reciprocal action between people of all races, backgrounds, classes, and sexual orientations. It allows for a certain amount of mutual understanding—and when i say "certain amount", I mean that knowledge itself does not have the power to place us in someone else's shoes. For instance, many white peop le, after seeing the video of George Floyd being brutally murdered by a police officer, felt that they now knew

In spired by Gil Scott Heron's 1970 song, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". "The revolution that takes place in your head ? Nobody will ever see that." — Gil Scott Heron The revolution will not be televised The revolution will not be streamed, by a Harvey Weinstein dream team, pedophiles and rapists, sociopaths and misogynists, the revolution Will not be televised. You won't find the revolution hiding under phone screens, a swipe away, peddled out to you by greedy thugs

"W henever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." —Mark Twain Street art by Morley. We are living in a scary time —   a time when all we know is slipping away, bit by bit. Our knowledge itself is being compromised; we are trading brain cells for convenience because of the fear of silence, of boredom. Rather than making our brain functioning a priority, we are outsourcing. Outsourcing our tasks, our choices, our ability to think . AI,

by David Ramsey Advertisement for Camel cigarettes, 1946. Look, we’ve been here before. My grandpa smoked two packs a day for most of my memory of him. Everyone did. Doctors literally prescribed cigarettes for stress. They said it was good for you. Made you look cool. Helped you lose weight. Whatever. He felt fine until he didn’t. That’s exactly what’s happening with COVID right now, and nobody wants to hear it. People are catching this thing two, three times a year and actin

"Return to the state of the uncarved block. When the block is carved, it becomes useful. When the sage uses it, he becomes the ruler. Thus, 'A great tailor cuts little.'" -Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching I have had the Tao Te Ching in my book collection for years, and I have read it a few times — but today, I opened it up to the passage above and realized that I never really got the Tao Te Ching . Not that

I am no stranger to worrying about the future. In fact, it's almost impossible, in our day and age, to always be in the present moment, never thinking about the past or the future. Almost . In chaotic, difficult times, we must see to it that we are living deeply. Not simply on autopilot, gliding on the surface of life. It is easy to get lost in the details and drama of everyday life, forgetting that life exists outside of work, beyond appointments and plans and responsibili

In the United States of America, there has been a long tradition of trust—especially among the groups of people who haven't been systemically marginalized and discriminated against. Trust in this country, this government — trust that through all the tragedies, slavery, wars, economic depressions and recessions, that somehow, it will all turn out okay in the end. Trust that perhaps there is no end — that we are an immortal, endless empire, a country of vampires. But over the

"Where does personality end and brain damage begin? " -Douglas Coupland " Phone Addiction " by Zephyo is licensed under CC BY NC 3.0 At...

Humans like to think of ourselves as separate from the animal world—as if, by evolving to walk on two legs and write, invent, build, that we are somehow a higher life form than other animals. That our  use of machines somehow separates us, elevates us. The agricultural and the industrial revolutions, both arising as a result of the booming population of earth, the gathered people in cities, the invention of modern civilization— did  move us further away from our natural roots

Ah. Primary Care Practitioners (PCPs.) When was the last time you saw yours? Was anything solved? Are you on prescription drugs with side effects that are worse than the original problem? Just call in and make an appointment, although the next available may not be for 6 months or a year. Don’t be pissed at the doctor, though. This situation we are in is not the fault of medical practitioners themselves. An economic system in a downward spiral, worldwide pandemics, and a broke

Some people out there have looked at the science, thrown their hands up and said “Oh well, it’s all over. I now have an excuse to do nothing and complain all day, because the world is ending.” Even more unfortunate is that some of these people are calling themselves Doomers, which I take offense to. I like Jem Bendell’s “Doomster”, and I find it to be a good way of replacing a word that has been used in a derogatory way to describe us—a  subculture of people who have decided

"Non Conformist" by Leslie Oldaker, available at www.deviantart.com/lesley-oldaker/art. Licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0. Resisting the...

“Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the...

Multiple studies have shown that we judge others within the first millisecond to the first 3 seconds that we see them. Learning how to...

Last night my partner and I were watching a documentary called Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo. Like many cult leaders,...