I asked in a previous post discussing some people’s refusal to wear a mask and be vaccinated: what happened to “love thy neighbor?”
It seems that the reason and their answer is “freedom and choice,” which “trumps” Love.
According to Paul Krugman, syndicated columnist, “’Freedom,’ Florida and the delta-variant disaster, in an August 4th Seattle Times article”: what the right means when it talks about “freedom” is a matter of personal “choice.” Additionally, when the right talk about “freedom” what they actually mean is closer to “defense of privilege — specifically the right of certain people (generally white male Christians) to do whatever they want.
Freedom and Choice: if the right is not hypocritical then this means that all women have freedom and choice. In other words, the right to choose an abortion!
But they are all hypocrites.
Let us not lose sight of that truth. We have lived over the centuries in a society and culture with the paradigm of male domination. As I relate in Do You Like Jesus – Not the Church? (available on Amazon) concerning male dominance and climate change:
Philosophically and practically, it makes sense that “the Earth is female, reflecting the consonance between nature’s fecundity and the fertility of women.” Millennia ago, the earth as divine Mother was acknowledged and honored as truth. This was a time when a human’s consciousness was one of partnership with nature, not one of domination. This predominator mind recognized “our oneness with all of nature” and “was far advanced beyond today’s environmentally destructive ideology.” Both men and women worked together in equality and partnership for the well-being of society and the community.
As the wheel of time turned, things changed, and not for the better—for humanity or for the earth. The goddess traditions were gradually replaced with a paradigm of male domination in all areas of life. The serpent honored by the earth-based religions as a symbol of wisdom, prophecy, and death and rebirth was slowly transformed into an image of evilness by the Jewish scribes’ editing of Moses’s oral teachings and traditions and by the liars of Pauline Christianity.
It is a fact of history that the earth and women have lived under male domination for thousands of years and have suffered, emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually the consequences of this domination. If you dominate women, you feel entitled to dominate the earth, as the earth, or nature, symbolizes the feminine. The religious dualistic paradigms of the day put forth and endorse the belief that men are superior to woman and rule the earth and all its creatures. This results in the gates of hell opening to social, economic, and ecological servitude, abuse, death, and destruction by justifying any patterns of behavior toward the dominated. One of the primary means of domination is control of wealth, bodies, reproductive health, and sexual activity.
***
The delta variant might be the most contagious virus that we’ve ever seen in living memory. We are all equal and all individually unique. This uniqueness includes not only the strength of our heart and mind but also, the strength of our immune system. And this is the purpose of vaccinations: support and strengthen our innate immune ability.
What the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, anti-science, and seemly ones with a lack of common sense, aren’t aware of is that the immune system is plastic. Plastic? What we are talking about is the unity or oneness of mind and body.
Recent compelling evidence has shown that the emotional and immunological systems share more than a similarity of functions.
Studies over the last few decades have provided sufficient evidence for similarities and overlaps between the immune and emotional responses. The majority of living beings use both systems to adjust dynamically to the ever-changing conditions of the external environment. Both systems can either be protective for the body if kept under control or detrimental to it when they are in disarray.
It seems that the immune and emotional systems mirror each other and both the immunological and emotional responses are dynamic and continuously changing.
This points us to the fact that that both the emotional and immune systems are highly “plastic.” The term plasticity has been used to indicate the ability to change and adjust continuously depending on the external factors or living conditions.
In other words, adopt a healthier diet, develop a stable emotional intelligence, improve one’s socioeconomic conditions, and ceasing unhealthy habits such as drinking, or smoking have all been reported to be beneficial for both the emotional and immunological responses.
Innate immune cells are “extroverted,” as they are always looking out for something new coming from the outside world and continuously engage with the external environment.
Adaptive immune cells have an “introverted personality” because of their increased concern about creating an inner experience of life events, especially if they have been deleterious for the host. This is what immunologists call immunological memory. Innate and adaptive immune cells both work toward trying to adjust the body to accommodate the requests of the external and the internal environments.
Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Most important to us, the personality trait of a person who shows an awareness of the impact that their own behavior has on those around them increases their immunity.
And there is a consistent association between conscientiousness and a reduced inflammatory response.
Research has shown that chronic inflammation is associated with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and bowel diseases like Crohn’s disease.
The bottom line: be healthy and conscientious – mask-up and get vaccinated.
