Posts Tagged ‘ Biology ’

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

November 15, 2006

By Mark S. Meritt

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology
Gregory Bateson

Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World

November 15, 2006

By Mark S. Meritt

Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World
David Marbury-Lewis

To Poughkeepsie Journal, Re: Public Breastfeeding

June 21, 2005

By Mark S. Meritt

Abridged version published in the June 26, 2005 issue

On June 19, 2005, the Poughkeepsie Journal published a column, reproduced below. In response, Mark S. Meritt responded with one of dozen of letters. The Journal published a number of them over several days, including an abridged version of Mark’s letter, reproduced here in full.

The Letter

I was disheartened to see Jonna M. Spilbor’s diatribe against public breastfeeding, particularly since it was published on Father’s Day, a day meant to celebrate parenting. I’m sure many will respond with justified dismay. Rather than reiterate arguments many will likely make, I want to get to the heart of the matter.

Everything that has ever lived has succeeded by pursuing what is healthful for it. So often, though, we deny ourselves those things that are good for us and even convince ourselves that they are bad. When people embrace what is healthful for themselves and others, they tap into the processes that foster life on this planet and contribute to fundamentally positive change in the world. When people spend their time and effort railing against what they perceive to be wrong with the world and demanding that their way hold for all, they merely ensure that the objects of their complaints will never go away.

It is well worth pointing out, though, that this applies not only to Spilbor’s criticism of public breastfeeders but to many people’s criticism of people like Spilbor. Whatever side of whatever issue we may be on, the fact remains, as Daniel Quinn so wisely said, “When you defeat a thousand opponents, you still have a thousand opponents. When you change a thousand minds, you have a thousand allies.” Here’s to generating good things for people by meeting them where they stand instead of perpetuating fruitless battles by remaining apart from them.

Sorry, mother’s milk belongs under wraps

By JONNA SPILBOR

If I could be a cop for just one day, I wouldn’t arrest people for minor infractions like rolling through traffic lights at desolate, late-night intersections. Instead, I would drive around in a paddy wagon, filling it up with people who engage in activities that are perfectly legal, but so utterly annoying they ought to be outlawed.

For example, there ought to be a law against making noise while chewing soft foods, holding up a grocery line because you forgot the milk and reclining your seat on trains and planes, unless the person directly behind you is either (1) a stuffed animal or (2) completely invisible.

Yet, it’s simply a fact of life that humans will engage in a long list of legal yet torturous behavior, leaving the rest of us little choice but to scowl and bear it.

I’m here to say unequivocally, wholeheartedly, and with every ounce of maternal instinct washing over my being like a prickly rash — breast-feeding in public should not be one of them.

Bloated bosoms took to the streets of Manhattan en masse recently when 200 lactating women, calling themselves “lactivists” collected their hungry infants and staged a “nurse-in” in front of ABC’s television studios to protest a passing comment made by famed journalist Barbara Walters.

Walters, while chatting with her coffee klatch on her daytime talk show, “The View,” casually mentioned how she felt “uncomfortable” on a recent flight, having been seated next to a woman who was nursing a baby at her seat.

Other than cashing in her first-class ticket, there wasn’t a darn thing Babs could do about it. Federal law, as well as laws in at least 35 states, allow nursing mothers to breast-feed wherever they are otherwise lawfully situated. Restaurants, retail stores and yes, airplane seats included.

Public suckling may be perfectly legal, but should it be?

In New York, for instance, which happens to be a very breast-friendly state, exposure laws make it a crime for a woman to bare that portion of her breast that is “below the top of the areola” unless she is exposed for the purpose of breast-feeding.

The implied expectation of the law is this: The public has every right to be uncomfortable, indignant and even call the police at the sight of a bare-breasted woman basking in her bareness. But once a woman adorns the same bare breast with a 10 pound hungry person, the rest of us must gushingly accommodate her, or get the hell out of the way.

Just because you give a boob a job doesn’t magically change society’s long-ingrained attitudes about public nudity. Why then, does the law — and nursing mothers — expect the rest of us to embrace a stranger’s desire to express milk from her bosom while seated six inches from our burrito?

I know what you’re going to say. A baby’s gotta eat. Sure. But until your child can chew, he doesn’t need to eat with the rest of us.

Look, I’m no prude, but I do think there are certain, perfectly healthy activities that are simply too private for public consumption. Pap smears do a lot of good too, but you won’t catch me having one in Macy’s window.

One “lactivist” in attendance at the protest was quoted as saying, “People don’t want to see it because they feel uncomfortable with it, and they feel uncomfortable with it because they don’t see it.”

Apparently, circular reasoning is the one negative side effect of breast-feeding that “lactivists” don’t talk about much. Personally, I no sooner want to observe a woman breast-feeding her baby in public, than I would want to witness her conceiving her baby in public. Forcing me into becoming an audience to a public showing for which I didn’t buy tickets, is an invasion of my rights — is it not?

Perhaps baby isn’t too happy about it either. I imagine the bond between mother and child, especially during the first year of life, is a beautiful, magical force like none other.

If breast-feeding contributes to that bond, why would a mother want to detract from the experience by doing it while walking the dog or having her hair done? Just because the law allows you to, bonding with baby is not something that should be multitasked.

Jonna M. Spilbor is a Rhinecliff-based attorney. Write her in care of: Poughkeepsie Journal Opinion Page, P.O. Box 1231, Poughkeepsie, NY, 12602-1231. Or in care of: letterstoeditor@poughkeepsiejournal.com

Adding a Final Nail to the Coffin

June 28, 2004

By Mark S. Meritt

When they die, many people have embalming fluid fill their bodies to keep them from rotting. The body then goes into fine clothing and sometimes makeup. The clothed body, sometimes accompanied by other personal property, then lies within plush padding. The padding is built into a coffin made of steel and wood that has been crafted and chemical-finished as carefully as expensive furniture. The coffin then moves into a large concrete and steel vault. The vault lies in a hole in the ground, often dug with and to be later filled by a backhoe. The hole in the ground sits within a cemetery that, except for the headstones, looks like a park as the result of a large amount of effort, chemicals and equipment — equipment that can be used on top of graves only because the vaults prevent the equipment from caving in the ground underneath.

Or sometimes the coffin goes into a mausoleum, which often sits in a large, ornately decorated building, and which makes bodily decomposition even more problematic than burial does.

Or sometimes the coffin goes into a very hot oven, which uses so much fuel that it destroys the coffin and the body so thoroughly that virtually all that’s left afterward are a few pounds of bone fragments lying in the bottom of the coffin’s steel frame. These fragments need to be ground up by a powerful machine if they are to look like “ashes.” Toxins, incidentally, enter the atmosphere as a result of the combustion process.

Each year in the United States, we bury (Smith, 2003 — see Resources below):

827,060 gallons of embalming fluid, which includes formaldehyde
180,544,000 pounds of steel, in caskets
5,400,000 pounds of copper and bronze, in caskets
30 million board feet of hardwoods, including tropical woods, in caskets
3,272,000,000 pounds of reinforced concrete in vaults
28,000,000 pounds of steel in vaults

…and who knows how much padding, clothing, makeup and other personal effects.

Imagine all the effort, all the expense, all the resources. Spent on things that nobody will ever see again a few days after the person dies. Spent to ensure that, even after nobody will ever see the person again, the person as much as possible will avoid decomposition, avoid rejoining the community of life, the very community from which the person had gotten every molecule of his or her being from conception until death. Spent to keep ever more space on this planet in the service of nothing but giving living people a tidy place to wander while they visit dead people.

These kinds of practices may seem entirely sensible to a culture that imagines itself to be something apart from nature, that imagines people to be something apart from and above nature. But they seem entirely senseless to me.

When I die, I’ll wear no clothing or makeup. I won’t bring along any trinkets. As little else will come between me and the ground as the law will allow. And the ground I go in will not be in a typical cemetery. That ground will be in what hopefully may one day become a more typical cemetery. That ground will be in a green cemetery. Specifically, that ground will be in Greensprings, New York State’s first green cemetery.

Throughout Europe, the United States and elsewhere, green cemeteries serve simultaneously as cemeteries and nature preserves. Burial plots are not arranged tightly in neat rows on a lawn which requires vaults for each plot. They are distributed sparsely and randomly throughout woodlands and meadows which continue to exist as unmanaged ecosystems. Burials are not marked by gravestones but by native trees or shrubs, or by indigenous stone markers that lie flush with the earth. Bodies are not embalmed but are simply kept cool to prevent decomposition until they reach the cemetery. The cost of burial in such places is much less expensive than in a traditional cemetery, and the locale is almost invariably a more interesting and beautiful place to visit afterwards. Intriguingly, the majority of people who opt for green cemeteries don’t describe themselves as environmentalists.

Green cemeteries certainly aren’t the only option for a more “natural” burial. There are home funerals, and even burial in a traditional cemetery can be lighter on the Earth — and on your pocketbook — than you might think. Look into the Resources noted below.

How should I end this piece? I’ve said all I wanted to say. Do I need a pithy ending, a sensibly phrased and well-segued conclusion? After all, much of the point of green burial is that death isn’t simply an ending, the final point on a line, but rather just another step in the ongoing cycle of life on this planet. Instead of rejecting our place in that cycle, we can honor it, in both life and death.

I guess that’s a thought worth ending on.