Showing posts with label re-embedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label re-embedding. Show all posts

30 April 2012

Bluetooth or Bluejay?

Recently my boss wanted to be nice to some of her new staff members as so she thought kindly and offered us an iPad each. This threw me into a real quandry, because I am concerned about the energy embodied in such gadgetry, obviously, but also because I object to the way more and more areas of my life are mediated through an electronic machine. I have recently tried to identify birdsong and constellations with the assistance of an iPhone (not my own). I suggested some campus chickens instead but nobody thought I was serious.

The day I received my iPad I was carrying it across our admittedly rather leafy campus when I was accosted by a jay, which stood in my path and eyeballed me. I was arrested and charmed and we spent a good five minutes in a strange sort of mutual fascination. Other students came and went but both the bird and myself were undisturbed. Reading later on the web that these are shy creatures I was even more charmed.

Relearning this sort of direct relationship with our animals cousins is surely a better way to protect their habitats than reading endless dire statistics about the loss of rainforests and species. I hope this is the flavour of a conference organised at London Zoo where I'll be speaking on 25th of this month. Called, Economist as if Life Mattered, the publicity for the conference runs like this:

'What does the global economy have to do with orangutans, polar bears, spotted owls, elephants and cod? Along with countless other species, these animals are on the verge of extinction and our current unsustainable economic system is the main driving force behind the global extinction crisis. On the 25th of May, join conservation and economic experts to explore these links and outline strategies for prioritising wildlife conservation in the new economy.'

You can find the full programme here and it would be great to be joined by others who are, like me, resisting the costing and commodification of nature.

As for my relationship with my new iPad things are not going well, in spite of my request for a green cover - a lurid, vapid green, as it turns out. I notice that I was almost immediately conveyed to the 'App store' and so the spending of money is a crucial part of being an iPad owner - so much for the 'free' gift. I am also fighting the desire to download the Tetris App, which for me is rather like having 'just that one drink'. By some route I cannot understand, and perhaps with subliminal intention, my Mail function is stuck. I am not hurrying to seek assistance to unstick it.
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6 April 2012

A Matter of Life and Death

The contraceptive pill was developed in 1952 and will celebrate its half-century this year. Becoming widely prescribed through the 1960s, it offered women an escape from the fear of constant pregnancy, and its dangerous consequences. But the discovery of synthetic female hormones had other consequences. Women who did not wish to have their monthly period at inconvenient times were advised that they could take the pill continually, removing their natural cycle altogether. While this removed the inconvenience of pain and blood during high days and holidays it also removed from women their particular connection with natural cycles, whether of the moon or the seasons, which many women report are closely related to their menstrual cycle. In other times and cultures this connection is a source of pride and even reverence.

As a result of their ability to manage their cycles of fertility and child-bearing through the use of artificial hormones women have been able to become the equals of men in the labour-market. They have no need to take extended periods away from work to raise their children and no longer ‘suffer’ the tiredness, irritability and pain that a menstrual cycle frequently involves. The medical model of health has enabled them to become the equals of men, but it has detached them from their own bodies and from their place in the natural world.

As women who had taken synthetic hormones during their youth reached the age of menopause they were confronted with a dilemma: the body that had been medically managed now reasserted itself. Without any experience of the natural rhythms and changes of their wombs they were unable to cope with the stress of the ending of the system of menstruation, which may have become distorted by long years of consumption of artificial hormones.

Those who undertook to move through menopause to their phase with lower levels of oestrogen and progesterone found that their skin became more flexible and they gained weight, especially at the waist. This did not conform to contemporary standards of physical beauty. Women who had learned that modern medicine could offer, in the words of a German pharmaceutical company, ‘a better life’ turned to their doctors, who began prescribing synthetic hormones in the form of HRT: hormone replacement therapy. Initially described as a temporary ‘treatment’ for the medical problem of hormone loss, HRT is now routinely continued for many years, offering women the ability to appear young for longer. As the image to the right of the Dolní Věstonice Venus demonstrates, these standards of beauty are not fixed. I offer her as a role model for the post-menopausal woman.

A whole generation of women has now travelled through the fertile period of their life-cycle without any experience of their natural hormone cycle. This has enabled them to enter board-rooms and win prizes while still spending quality time with their one or two children. It has prevented them from experiencing the wisdom of their bodies, and the fundamental connection with natural systems and cycles that was traditionally the unique gift of their sex. I should stress immediately that I am not suggesting that anything is gained through the early deaths of thousands of women as a result of uncontrolled childbirth, but I am questioning the assumption of modern medicine, and the men who have been the inventors and developers of artificial hormones, that medical management of female menstrual cycles can be undertaken without any consideration of its social, cultural and spiritual cost.
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