Well if you've read the "legal" page (the previous segment), you'll understand when I say Mr. John Stuart Mill and I are both here to tell you that what's good for General Bullmoose IS NOT good for everybody. Maybe not even for General Bullmoose! But HE ALONE should have to bear the consequences of BELIEVING it's good for him. In reality it seems we're all still in Dogpatch "paying" for General Bullmoose's inflated opinion of himself --- he apparantly has us believing it with him. We've been considered the "ignorant masses" so long most of us evidently see ourselves that way. Our ususal response to evidence of possibilities alternative to "expert" opinions is: "But they've had all this specialized training!", as if others are incapable of reading in their mother tongue and thinking. A professional opinion actually is just that --- an opinion --- SOMETIMES based on first-impression superficial evidence, never considering other possibilities.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Prejudice means literally pre-judgement, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning. ... But we cannot reject out of hand, any more than we can accept at face value ..." ---- Carl Sagan, "Sense and Nonsense at the Edge of Science" ----------------------------------------------------------------------

This neither describes all professional opinions nor is limited to professionals. It may, however, identify the only "heart disease" that's "contagious" ---attitude. Sadly, in the area of life under discussion here, the seemingly most caring individuals are the most susceptible. The "established" way of healing ("allopathic medicine" in the Western world) is part of their "culture" ---- their "religious upbringing", if you will, even if they profess none. Especially friends and family. They do care about you and want the best for you. Imagining they KNOW what's best is the problem. Mindless sentimental love can be as misguided as zeal. Ever see a toddler (not quite mentally and emotionally ready for it) given a new pet; and who "loves" the baby duck, kitten, puppy or whatever so much it gets smothered --- literally "loved to death"? Zeal OR love that's uninformed, mis-informed, or insufficiently informed can have similar results at any age in virtually any setting.

Sadly, recovery from this "illness" can be agonizingly slow and painful. Most of all, it requires "want-to" --- willingness to truly and calmly listen, think and reason --- which often proves extremely difficult for human-nature-as-we-know-it; which has a deep unconscious obsession with independently deciding good and bad, right and wrong (and even attempting to "enforce" it's view). That's what all the world's political wrangling is rooted in. It's what every war that's ever been fought has ultimately been about.

So, even in this more "enlightened" twenty-first century, (as the following true story illustrates) it appears that a professional chemist with degrees from Oxford and MIT, Anthony Standen, picked a timelessly apropos title for his 1950 book --- SCIENCE IS A SACRED COW.