February 20th, 1998
WHO'S SELLING WHAT?
By Jackie Giuliano
During a visit to my wife's doctor's office recently, I was witness to an incredible
phenomenon that reminded me of all the layers of assumptions we make every day about how
our world works.
Tissue Box in the Waiting Room Supplied by Drug Company" by Jackie Giuliano.
Bonnie was getting a number of routine tests as part of an overall physical
examination, so I was in the office for nearly two hours. On the table with the magazines,
I noticed a tissue box that looked odd. Upon closer examination, I realized that the box
was covered with advertisements from a drug company! That was just the beginning of an eye
opening experience.
While sitting in the waiting room, working on my laptop computer, no fewer than eight
people representing six pharmaceutical companies came into the office. Every 15-20
minutes, a gift was given to the staff and armloads of free prescription drugs were given
away.
When I asked about these visits, the receptionist confirmed that this happens all through
the day, every day! I could not believe what I was seeing. During my short stay in the
office, I observed:
- Elaborate, polite bantering by one rep as she introduced her new replacement. "Oh,
you'll have to come visit us again," the receptionist said to the woman who had been
the rep assigned to the office. Then, the new rep got out her datebook and set up a time
when she could take the staff out to lunch, "You know, like we did for you last
Thanksgiving." Then, they handed over four or five cartons of drugs.
- Another rep walked up to the counter, very business-like, and handed a brightly colored
plastic box containing candy to the receptionist. There were no words exchanged, no
greetings. It was a ritual, acted out every week by this rep and the doctor's staff. While
the box was passed around, the rep handed over boxes and boxes of free drugs.
- The next rep's ritual involved cookies and she handed over a large tray, brightly
wrapped with multi-colored cellophane. It was so odd to see such an elaborate gift given
with no words exchanged, no "Oh, I brought something for you." or
"Thanks!" Each was simply doing what was expected. Then, after handing over the
boxes of her company's drugs (at least 100 small boxes), the rep left the office to visit
the next office, brightly colored cellophane trailing behind.
When I left the waiting room to use the restroom, I saw this gaggle of reps moving from
doctor's office to doctor's office. They were running into each other in the hall,
greeting each other warmly, then moving on to their next office. This was simply business.
All the reps were counting on a sacred truth of the pharmaceutical industry: the doctor
with the most free drugs on hand is more likely to prescribe those drugs to their
patients.
But what about the TV commercial that proclaims "More doctors prescribe ______ over
any other drug." Sadly, they probably do so because that company is more effective at
marketing (and has better gifts) than the others.
All this got me thinking about the pervasive influence that our corporate culture has on
our lives. That influence is dramatic and insidious and interferes with our ability to
make reasoned decisions, support effective legislation, and just live our lives according
to the values we select. I think about this more and more as our environmental problems
seem to get more complex and our leaders seem less likely to take action.
How many decisions and choices that we make are our own or actually the result of
subliminal, repetitive, and constant advertising we have been exposed to from an early
age? In fact, drug companies are now advertising in major newspapers and magazines with
the banner, "Ask your doctor about ______________."
Did you ever count the number of commercials you are exposed to? By age 5, most children
in the U.S. see hundreds of thousands of commercials.
We live in a culture which has 260,000 billboards, 17,000 newspapers, 12,000 periodicals,
27,000 video outlets, 400 million television sets, and well over 500 million radios (not
including those in cars).
We are awash with social conditioning that is virtually inseparable from our true self.
Yet in order to fully comprehend our planetary - and personal - crises, we must learn to
separate ourselves from the conditioning.
Our resistance to learning how to follow our heart may start early in school. Richard
Heckler in Anatomy of Change offers a clue to the failings of our educational system:
"Traditional education encourages us to live society's image and discourages us
from awakening to our deeper and more energetic impulses. We are not taught how to use
ourselves in the learning process. Without knowing that, we lose our individuality by
following the images that society and the media systematically place in front of us. We
bury the intelligence of our body in order to be uniformly responsive and predictable,
which marks the death of preverbal, preliterate wisdom."
The traditional, Western way of educating, particularly in science, by teaching facts and
concepts and "scientific truths" results in a static and fixed sense of what is
real. We grow up with the idea that there are absolute truths and that it is everyone's
goal to obtain a "stable" lifestyle that is free of change.
How can a person so educated possibly feel a part of a universe that is based on constant
change and upheaval? How can such a person ever feel comfortable identifying with the
natural world? "We are never educated," says Heckler, "into the how of
living through change."
We can only learn to be in connection with the natural world, and with our fellows on this
world, by being fully present in our bodies, following our energy, and trusting our
perceptions. Yet we have been taught that learning occurs by sitting still in an
uncomfortable chair (or in a comfortable chair in front of the TV) and having someone
lecture to us about someone else's perceptions of the universe.
We become swallowers of history, language, and mathematics but are rarely encouraged to
let go of that which is not meaningful or relevant. We also need to be taught how to sit
so we may better receive; and how to appreciate the actual process of writing and drawing;
and how to participate in the joy of flourish when the name we write is connected to who
we are; and how to follow the interest generated by our deeper levels of excitement.
True learning, receiving the transmission of experience, happens at a level much deeper
than cognition. It is in the experience of the lived body that we have the opportunity to
contact and learn from the process of being alive.
There is a deep conditioning that we have experienced since the Scientific Revolution.
This conditioning takes many forms, but the most common in the West may be our ability to
intellectualize as a form of diversion and evasion, a way to circumvent feeling.
Heckler says that "becoming overinvolved in our thoughts is a way to avoid the
emotions, gestures, and expressions that were at some time in the past responded to
unfavorably or with disapproval."
In addition to being told that the natural world was wild and unsafe, most of us were told
that we were awkward in our movements, that we couldn't draw or be creative, and that you
risk ridicule and censure if you do those things. Hence, there are many resistances to
thinking on our own and trusting our judgement.
The conditioning we experience is a powerful obstacle to learning and opening up to the
connections that exist in the natural world. This conditioning is a complex web that has
been woven for a number of generations. It has a solid foundation of faulty assumptions
created in a post-war environment, particularly in the United States, where the world was
taught that the most powerful people are those who consume the most and who shelter
themselves the most completely from the natural world. Climate controlled, insulated homes
filled with all the modern conveniences became the symbols of power and affluence.
These values became the foundational teachings of our educational system, a system built
upon the premise that farmers had to be trained to be the factory workers required to
churn out the goods that we all needed to consume.
This conditioning is heavily influenced by our media saturation that begins at birth (some
would say even before birth) as our parents create gender roles and participate in the
stereotyping that insidiously exists at every turn of the head. Our definitions of what it
is to be safe and secure are fixed at an early age as we are taught to shelter ourselves
from even the mildest temperatures and protect ourselves from nasty bugs and dirt.
Revulsion to insects, rodents, and soil (called "dirt"), begins at an early age.
We are taught from an early age that we need the latest vacuum cleaner to get every last
bit of "dirt" out of our homes. Things that our culture reviles are called
"dirt-y."
Moving less in order to be more efficient and productive is part of our early training as
well. We are on a constant quest for "labor-saving" devices that give us more
time to do things. We want cars so we don't have to walk places, and we design our homes
so that everything is "at our fingertips." Minimizing movement is emphasized -
even our chairs have wheels so that we can move around in our office without having to
move our bodies.
This trend toward virtual immobility as a goal in our Western culture has had profound
implications on our ability to feel, not only a connection to the natural world, but a
connection to each other and ourselves as well. Bringing movement back into our lives can
have a profound effect on our well-being.
When we place our attention in our body, we begin to feel, and our feeling connects us to
our energy. Our energy then informs us of our direction and meaning in life. If we respond
from our energy, we are responding from that part of ourselves that is least conditioned.
If we act from our energy, and not from our ideas, social images, or what others expect,
we feel enriched with genuine expression and life.
Our "conditioning," which varies from individual to individual in content and
intensity, may be the greatest obstacle we face. Awakening a relationship to our bodies
and our senses is a way around much of that conditioning.
In movement therapy classes I have taken, people from all walks of life moved and felt
together as if they knew each other. Often, however, we knew nothing in the traditional
sense about each other. Rarely did I know where the other people lived or where they
worked or what their interests, prejudices, or politics were. Yet in these sessions,
through dance movements alone, with a partner, or in groups, issues such as trust, love,
fear, giving, receiving, and other profound emotions and states of being were explored.
Words have been so abused in our world. Definitions of such fundamental concepts as trust,
safety, and security have been so co-opted by political forces that we cannot rely on
language as the sole communicator of awareness. The U.S. Department of Defense doesn't
like to use the term "peace" in documentation. Instead, they say "permanent
pre-hostility." Instead of the word bullet, they prefer "kinetic energy
penetrator." The invasion of Panama was called a "pre-dawn vertical
insertion." Instead of saying soldiers were killed, they say soldiers were
"arbitrarily deprived of life." Wrongly amputated legs in military hospitals are
referred to as "therapeutic mis-adventures."
I wish I were joking, but these are real examples.
Even in our common, everyday language, assumptions abound about the way the world and
society work. Phrases abound that have terrible origins. We will often casually say that
we have given someone the "third degree" when referring to questioning someone
for information. Few realize, however, that this phrase comes from the 300 years of horror
when nine to 20 million women, and some men, were burned at the stake for witchcraft. The
third degree was the final - and most horrible - level of torture when victims said
whatever their tormentors wanted them to say.
"Rule of Thumb" by Jackie Giuliano
We will say that some idea is a "rule of thumb." Yet this phrase refers to
the time in old England when it was legal, and recommended, to beat your wife. You simply
had to use a stick that was no wider than the width of your thumb. That was the "Rule
of Thumb."
Ever call someone a "stool pigeon?" This phrase comes from the days of the
passenger pigeon, an amazing bird whose flocks, in the 1850s, would darken the U.S. skies
for four hours as a flock 240 miles long by 1 mile wide passed overhead. Such a flock
contained over 2 billion birds. By 1914, the last passenger pigeon, Martha, died in the
Cincinnati Zoo, the species driven to extinction by relentless hunting and a complete lack
of understanding of the population dynamics of this bird.
It seems that the reason why there were so many passenger pigeons was because they, for
some reason, needed huge communities of birds to be present for successful mating and
reproduction. They were extremely social birds and it wasn't long before someone noticed
that a live bird could be used as bait. A living passenger pigeon would be tied to a stool
which was put out into a field. This was the stool pigeon. Within minutes, hundreds of
birds would gather, to be shot or clubbed.
The energy of these origins lingers on in us all. The witch burning times lasted for 300
years. Six generations of children watched their mothers burn. How can we come to terms
with that horror? Gay men are stilled called "faggots" to this day. How many
know that this term comes from the times of the witch burning as well? Gay men were often
collected together, tied in bundles, and burned in the witches' fire. The term for a
burning bundle of wood is a faggot.
Many of the scientific tools developed during the Scientific Revolution came directly from
the inquisition's tools for torture. Few know this grisly origin of much scientific
methodology. Special interest groups have crafted how people perceive science. How often
do we wait for "scientific proof" of the health impact of a toxic exposure when
many have already died? One sick child or one dead person should be enough to suggest
caution, yet thousands of chemicals that are known carcinogens are on the market today for
political and economic reasons. We must find another language while we redefine common
terms and erase other terms of horror from common usage.
We may need some quiet to make some sense out of all the conflicting information. We may
need to turn off our TVs, close the newspapers, and look inward. Heckler says that,
"There is a time to quiet ourself so that we may look at and listen to who we are.
There is also a time, and a need, to go with our desires and urges. This is the path of
passion. It is the making of a seasoned and rich soup that we call our process, the all of
who we are."
Maybe that is it: finding out who we are - or at least realizing that we need to. The
only way to do that may be to stop listening to the voices on the outside - and listen to
our hearts. Then it won't matter who's selling what.
We look with uncertainty
Beyond the old choices for
Clear-cut answers
To a softer, more permeable aliveness
Which is every moment
At the brink of death;
For something new is being born in us
If we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway;
Awaiting that which comes . . .
Daring to be human creatures.
Vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
-- Anne Hillman
RESOURCES
1. Learn more about the U.S. military from those in the business from the Center for
Defense Information. Their video, "The Language of War," discusses the abuse of
language by the military.
2. Look for Richard Heckler's books at Powells bookstore at http://www.powells.com
3. Learn about society's campaign against women and the Earth that began long ago. Learn
of the times of the witch burnings when the Catholic Church tried to extinguish the last
vestige of our connections with the Earth. The film, the Burning Times (National Film
Board of Canada) will open your eyes. Learn about it at http://www.onf.ca/FMT/E/MSN/19/19994.html
4. If you live in the Los Angeles area, experience the power of movement with Eve Athey
Ray, MA, MFCC through her Movement Expression classes. She can be reached at (818)
788-3740. You can take a 2 hour introductory session or an intensive 9-week program. It
will change your life.
5. Learn how to curb consumerism from the Media Foundation at http://www.adbusters.org./main.html
6. Follow those who watch the media for abuses. One group is Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting. Visit them at http://www.igc.org/fair/
7. Follow many environmental and social issues at http://www.macronet.org/macronet/
{Jackie Giuliano can be found trying to move through the confusion in Venice, California.
He is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, and the
University of Phoenix Southern California Campuses. He is also the Educational Outreach
Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
to send space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and the Sun. Please send
your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at jackieg@jps.net} |
