17. No Sensible Person

September 27, 2018 Mind-Body Column No Comments

Regardless of how it presents itself, black magic is what it is.

One may keep pretending that nothing has happened. In the long run, this means: hands full of blood that comes indeed from somewhere.

No side effects?!?

Acupuncture, homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic therapy*. Just to mention four. In recent years, big research trials (bigger than ever) have once again clearly demonstrated that it is all utter nonsense. The book of Prof. Dr. Edzard Ernst, ‘Trick or Treatment’, may currently be the best resource in this context and should be ‘required reading’.

In the meantime the public opinion still assumes that there are valid arguments pro:

So would ‘the four’ be difficult to test according to the current paradigm of scientific reasoning. >< They are of course completely testable.
They would be ‘holistic’. >< They are absolutely not holistic.
They would not be ‘materialistic’. >< They are absolutely materialistic.
They would have alternative explanation schemes that do not fit into the house of modern science. >< Gnomes do also have those schemes.
They would at least have no side effects. >< They have side effects to a deafening extent. Namely: they are almost fully based on placebo. This is a psychological mechanism that is proven to be very powerful (yes, even that powerful, dear magician). As a result, it is quasi certain that it has powerful side effects too.

The disrespectful disregard of the own psychological ‘inner strength’ by concealing it in a needle, pure water or manipulation is not ‘innocent’.

On the contrary. That inner strength is indeed extremely important. Using it under the guise of external factor X makes people dependent on external factor X and not on themselves (anymore). One does no longer seek inside oneself. One more and more loses oneself. One gets ‘dissociated’ of oneself. And that is very likely one of the main causes of psychosomatics and depression. Who says: ‘no side effects’?!?

It’s not just ‘a little this and that and we’ll see’… One might put it even rawer. Gaining any form of ‘control’ (money, status …) over people, by wrongly letting their own inner strength come seemingly from an external act which makes them lose the natural connection with themselves, is the very definition of black magic. It is high time that it gets also openly interpreted this way. I’m already doing it.

It’s not so much the issue “It does make me feel better anyway.” The real issue is: at what cost does it make me feel better?

This is all the more important when politicians behave like populiticians. The people (‘populum’…) get what the people ask. HM. The people (part of it anyway) ask for homeopathy, for example, but do the people also ask ‘to be simply deceived’ or ‘to be kept on a short leash by black magic ‘? No, they do not!

Of course, there is also much placebo within mainstream medicine. Of course, patients are often handled in a little ‘empathic’ way, while we know that empathy should be central. Of course it is a fact that dubious science is being done and that science itself is evolving. Double-blind studies for instance are mainstream for only about fifty years.

But there is a persistent intention of thorough science. That intention is incredibly important. In black magic, the opposite intention is going on. (Hopefully not in individual practitioners but in the philosophy within which they are working.)

Gnomes

If you tell a patient that black magic ‘is worth a try’, you might just as well say, scientifically seen, that gnomes are worth a try. This will contaminate your scientific authority. At long term people even have doubts about the authority of medical science itself. This opens the way to no matter what. Gnomes have at least the benefit of being cute.

Black magic is far from cute. The fact that it is divulged to a very worrying degree, does not affect the nature of it. No sensible person can call oneself a scientist at heart and at the same time passively watch from one’s ivory tower how darkness envelops the country. Aggression is not to be preached. Making sense is, indeed, from a to z.

We should not turn against benevolent people, but against their black magic wherever that presents itself.

Also in the interest of those people and of aspirant wizards who opt for such a career in good faith. May we let these well-meaning people go their way in order to then get them to see, 10 or 20 years later, that they have built their career on ‘black’?

One should not pull people away from their (even black) hooks just like that.

That should be done in an empathic way. One should also avoid that others get hooked. And furthermore, they pay for it, whether or not tempted by a financial allowance. That contribution is not a reduction of the total cost. The total cost is the amount that remains to be paid. The allowance is the root that drives people to pay. The allowance is the root that drives people to pay the total cost … for their own ‘reap’!

Because that’s what black magic in another terminology means. It is, moreover, normal that it shows itself in an attractive way, not as something that everyone runs away from. If the devil makes himself being talked about, he will, of course, not show his tail.

* to the extent that it goes beyond massage and physiotherapy. Nothing wrong with those, of course.