“Actually, you don’t get one.” is arguably a special insight, given how many people were bothering her under a contrary impression; but probably not one that pleases the audience.
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Oh, quit being a baby and eat your Lutefisk.
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My impression was that, for her, it was an extra burden to bear. She was a mother to a young child and had late stage breast cancer. Her disease was being managed and it was certain that she would die soon but no one knew how much longer it might be. Soon enough that when she asked the doctor if she could return to work he said, “Is that how you want to spend your final days?” So, yes, maybe that there is no special insight was something profound she had to offer; it touched me. However, I think that instead of having other people seek out something from her she would have preferred to have been receiving care and nurturing.
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So this might be off topic a bit, but since we are discussing woo.
I, share the frustration that many have with Western science’s approach to our health, and I do think that holistic health practitioners at the very least provide another point of view of how good health might be attained, by addressing the body as a system and not parts. Certainly the basics like sleeping well and eating well seem to be obvious areas where medicine should be involved, yet often doctors will prescribe a pill instead of working people to adjust their habits.
On the flip side, though, once you start down the rabbit hole of holistic health, there is a tendency to blame those who are sick for not managing their health properly. So much of the woo seems to be about gaining a sense of control - if I eat this magical food I will make the cancer go away, if I think good thoughts I will be good enough to be well again. Maybe it points out how people feel that the medical approach spits in the face of a patient’s emotional and spiritual needs and takes the control away from the sick person. Who here has not had the experience of spending a few minutes in a doctor’s office trying to explain the frustration and sadness of an sickness that is lingering too long only to be handed a script and told to stop by the billing office on the way out?
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Oh, indeed, it sounds like the “Impart on us your special doomed insights” thing was insufferable and they’d have been much better off keeping quiet.
My point was merely that “There is no special doomed insight” is very likely to be about the biggest, and least popular, special doomed insight that you in fact get.
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There seems to be the impression that those in unfortunate circumstances can be mined by the well off and healthy to somehow obtain that imagined spiritual or philosophical advantage that money can’t buy but is allegedly obtained only by suffering. Perhaps even to feel the closeness of one holding the trump card in a high handed debate to close off any rebuttal, the F-you I’m dying so let me win the damn debate one if not some insight. More often than not people attempt to obtain ‘the secret’ for free as though the suffering ones were another type of human, nearly biblical, sent so serve the human community in the sense of a mythical suffering Christian Jesus figure, rather than showing up to cook a meal, pay a bill, or buy a plane ticket for a relative or friend. This thought pattern is embedded in the culture and needs to be repaired just like racism. In its most extreme form you see 0.1%er white people claiming that taxation of the rich is akin to antisemitic pograms, but bugging the disabled and dying is another shade in the spectrum.
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OT: love your user name!
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This may be the best internet comment I read all day.
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I remember it from MST3K when they were riffing on a General Hospital kinescope.
I’ll give Sheryl Crow that much: Her answers are way less annoying. (“Don’t blame yourself” is kind of the counterpoint to “it’s your fault for stress/diet/mystical/mental reasons”.)
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She’s not eating it, though…
To misquote Pterry, “Just because you know [something] exists, it doesn’t mean you have to go round believing in it”.
What, the whole quart?
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