In chapter 11 of her 1941 book on religion, The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L. Sayers, while discussing the nature of problem solving, touches on the subject of medication:
There used to be a firmly-rooted belief that to every poison there existed “the antidote” – a benevolent drug which would exactly reverse, each by each, the effects of the original poison and restore the body to the status quo ante. There are in fact, I believe, only two drugs which are complementary in this way, atropine and physostigmine. . . . With other drugs which are used to counteract one another, the reversal of the effects is only partial, or is rather a counteraction of the symptoms than a healing of the mischief done to the organs. . . . In certain instances, one disease can be got rid of only at the cost of contracting another, as in the malaria treatment of syphilis.
Sauntering has a way of bringing serendipitous treasures like this passage. It reminds us of some of the environmental planning by local, state, and federal agencies.
To begin with, planners are medicators; their plans, medications. A wilderness area, say, exists in its actual state, when along comes a tiny percentage of 300 million people declaring a desired state, differing from the actual. With this, a problem is born: the wilderness is declared ill, in need of medication that will move (sometimes literally with bulldozers) the actual state to the desired. For this, medication is devised and given, yet brings regrettable by-products for which agency medicators prescribe new medications. On this goes to sickening overmedication. At no stage can there be a reverse, an undoing, a healing antidote to the mischief done to the environment.
Name your top horror story.
My horror story is mountaintop mining and valley fills in Appalachia. There is no recovery from taking the top of a mountain and dumping it into a valley.
Why is this allowed under the Clean Water Act?
Posted by: Michael Jablonski | November 14, 2005 at 12:51 PM