Teaching Babies Languages

Many wise and insightful things have been said about how easily babies learn language. Many clever and extensive scientific studies have informed the subject. But many intriguing questions remained unresolved--questions like:

Does learning more than one language early in life enhance (or, perhaps, interfere with) learning the baby's first, obviously crucial, "native" language?

Does it enhance (no one, to my knowledge, has suggested it might interfere with) learning other things like acculturation, artistic sensitivity, imaginative and creative thinking, or even logic and other cognitive abilities?

To what extent does it depend on close emotional relationships?

To what extent is the capacity to learn a language or languages (particularly their grammars) inborn?

To what extent, and when, does language-learning ability come of age and fade (in other words, to what extent, and when, is there an "awakening" for this capacity in early childhood development, and a "sun-setting")?

Despite these and other interesting controversies, a few things stand clear--they are obvious even with the most rudimentary and unsophisticated observations: essentially, little kids learn languages more quickly than older kids and grown ups*:

They pick up vocabulary faster (despite the obvious disadvantage of not knowing translational cognates).

They pick up variations in grammar quicker (which probably has to do both with climbing out of learned mental ruts and with the increased embarrassment that comes on with latency and expands in adolescence).

And they learn better pronunciation (which is probably mostly related to the fact that monolingual kids learn to ignore certain phonemic distinctions; for example, childhood learners of Mandarin who have no phonemic experience with other languages learn to be unable to distinguish a "rrr" sound from a "lll" sound, and this learned inability becomes deeply--perhaps ever neurologically--ingrained; yes, this is a learned inability).

Combine these advantages with the equally obvious social and vocational advantages of being fluent in more than one language, and it becomes clear that an important part of optimal child-rearing is assuring that young kids (age, say, zero to twelve) be richly exposed to multiple languages. In the Berlitz family, the grand patriarch and founder of the dynasty, Maximilian Berlitz, had a couple of interesting rules for the kids. One was that each adult had an assigned language: grandpa spoke with the children only in German, for example; momma, only in Russian; the nanny, only in Spanish. One Berlitz offspring recalls wondering as a child why he didn't have his own personal language since each adult seemed to have a different, private language; he decided he would probably get one when he was older.

Another family rule which applied to all kids of elementary through high-school age was that each one studied a new language each year.

What a rich educational bounty it is to give a child multiple language fluencies!

And--being nontraditional and inconvenient--how often neglected!


Note: * The exception to youth's advantage is for people who already know several languages who seem to be able to learn an additional language quickly; reportedly, for example, a U.N. translator who had simultaneous translation abilities in six languages and conversational fluency in some two dozen others was able to learn Icelandic to conversational proficiency in two weeks. It has been estimated that learning a foreign language of the same general group as a language one already knows (such as learning another Indo-European or Romance language, e.g., Spanish or Hungarian, if one already knows French) requires 40 to 60 hours studying vocabulary and a comparable amount of time in conversational practice (grammar is not studied as a separate discipline but is learned en passant during the practice).

Nation Building

The astonishing effectiveness of the Grameen Bank in raising tens of millions of people in Bangladesh and India from the enslaving cycle of poverty coupled with the astonishing collapse, in September, 2008, of the First-World international banking system (and add to those the difficulties encountered in the U.S. struggles to bring Iraq and Afghanistan into the 21st century) raise anew a perplexing, age-old question: What does it take to make civilization rise--and keep working? Philosophers have struggled with this question for at least 2500 years since Plato took it on in the dialogs he wrote of Socrates; politicians have been struggling with it more pragmatically for at least 7500 years since the first cities arose in Mesopotamia.

The essential conundrum is that while it is clearly beneficial in some ways for people to live in proximity to one another--both (1) to specialize their individual efforts (so that someone skilled in shoe-making, for example, can spend time making shoes rather than farming or building a house), and (2) to provide for needs that are best handled collectively (such as defense)--it is also clearly disadvantageous in some ways (since the neighbors are bound to have their share of immature, infirm, and irresponsible members).

There are human-caused destabilizing or anti-civilizing forces. The first constraint on these is religion: every religion, it seems, embodies the basic, civilizing principle (sometimes called the "Golden Rule"): "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This is the essence of the civilization contract, although religions generally impose or enforce this by holding out some other reward, either magical (e.g., heaven), social (e.g., fellowship), or personal (e.g., tranquility or enlightenment).

The second is rational philosophy: Life goes better for everyone (including, most compellingly, our children and our children's children) if we are all nice to one another (i.e., fair and honest, and even permissive of one another's idiosyncrasies). However, there is a problem with this attitude or orientation. Although it seems obvious and valuable during calm, contemplative moments, it regularly falls apart in the face of real-world, real-life challenges, i.e., it is hard to see the disadvantages of stealing from one's neighbor--that in stealing from one's neighbor one encourages the development of a social milieu in which, in the future, one's neighbor may steal from oneself. In a similar way, many people "believe in" the law, but few have Socrates' strength of personal philosophical commitment: they are not able or willing to accept death because it is the will of (and presumably for the betterment of) the State.

The third kind of constraint on destabilizing, anti-civilizing forces is force. A stronger warrior or a community's police or military can impose their will on the aberrant behavior of an individual or smaller group. However, this can be very difficult to control in service of the ongoing, general public good (this is illustrated, for example, by the violence that so often develops in urban gangs, by the recurrence of police brutality, by the recurrent ascension of organized crime and drug cartels, and by the civil rights abuses of the Bush-Cheney administration).

Finally, the fourth constraint is standardized, codified (written) rules of civil order--from the codes of Draco and Hammurabi to those of British Common Law and the U.S. Constitution (and their derivatives). These hold promise, when combined with the first three ingredients (religious mores, rational philosophy, and forceful police and military), of providing ongoing civilized accord.

But why do people band together and subjugate their individual wills for common action? The fundamental role of government is to provide members (that is, citizens) with goods and services that can be handled more effectively and cost-efficiently by the group than by individuals. These fall into two broad categories: infrastructure and public services.

There are several kinds of infrastructure:
(1) highways (including overpasses, bridges, and tunnels; and also traffic controls),
(2) mass-transit (including airports and air-traffic control),
(3) water supply (including purification),
(4) waste-water management,
(5) solid waste treatment and disposal (including hazardous wastes),
(6) power generation and transmission (that is, delivery of energy),
(7) telecommunications (trunks and regulation), and
(8) land improvement (including monuments and public works)

As to different kinds of public services:
(1) education and entertainment (lifelong resources),
(2) health care,
(3) wealth storage (including retirement protection),
(4) emergency services (police, fire, and health), and
(5) basic research (scientific and social).

Each of these subheadings warrants an essay--if not a volume or two. Each can, to some extent, be provided by private individuals. Each must be the subject of codified rules, and supervised with transparency and clear responsibility for public, versus private, betterment.

But even with all four of these constraints in effect, and all of the various kinds of infrastructure and public services in place, there are two more missing ingredients for nation-building--ones that are often overlooked. The first of these is incubation. No matter how facilely and fully formed the substratum of civilization may spring, like Athena from the mind of Zeus (or civil governance from the "guns and butter" of zealous "nation building" efforts), it can only take hold and function in an integrated and ongoing way over a period of years--even over a generation or more. Nation building requires providing the accouterments of civilization; but it also requires the long, slow plodding of acculturation. Just as, in a parallel way, the maturation of an individual requires years of growth and experience and, similarly, so does the long, slow thrust of psychotherapeutic healing from childhood neurotic damage, even so do a people emerge only slowly over a time span of years to decades into a clearer, more civilized light.

The second of these elusive, often overlooked ingredients is patient practice. As with individual maturity or mental health, salutary civil administration is not a "condition" so much as it is a "process." It must, in Barack Obama's words, "be perfected." As with a healthy biological organism, it must continually be subject to growth and repair.

Nation building is a complex and delicate affair. It requires an integrated set of community mores and codes (that is, laws), and mechanisms for applying internal and external force consistent with those mores and codes. It requires elaborate infrastructure and public services. And it requires two final ingredients as well: it must include the means (including appropriate child-rearing practices and lifelong education/entertainment opportunities) for people to learn, over a period of time, to live in a civilized society and to tolerate its frustrations and annoyances; and it must include a willingness (and mechanisms) for repairing and developing the salutary civil administration for many years, in fact, forever.

From Third- to First-World: Building a Lifestyle

In 1976 Mohammad Yunus, who had raised himself out of the impoverished throngs of Bangladesh to obtain a Fulbright Scholarship and earn a doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University, was teaching economics at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh when he embarked on a most intriguing experiment. He wanted to break the traditional cycle embodied in the well known line from the song, "the rich get richer and the poor get children." What did it take, he asked himself, to empower someone to break out of the chains of poverty?

The result was the Grameen Bank, a bank that would make microloans--often less than $100--to impoverished individuals who had no credit history and no collateral. But they needed more than the few dollars. They needed a paradigm shift in the ways they viewed themselves, and in the social support networks in which they lived.

So Mohammad Yunus developed a new, comprehensive personal contract and social context for every microloan participant. Each Grameen borrower had to develop a specific business plan for themselves. Usually this grew out of some activity they were already engaged in--growing vegetables, sewing, husbanding a few chickens or a goat or cow, or the like. They defined a specific small investment that would grow their would-be business--a cart or a sewing machine or a chicken coop, for example. And they had to gather in groups of five individuals who would meet with a banker once a week to discuss their problems and progress and provide one another social and emotional support.

Moreover, each borrower had to agree to a set of precepts called the "Sixteen Decisions"--recited together at the meeting each week. These were:

(1) We shall follow and advance the four principles of Grameen Bank--Discipline, Unity, Courage, and Hard work--in all walks of our lives.

(2) Prosperity we shall bring to our families.

(3) We shall not live in dilapidated houses. We shall repair our houses and work towards constructing new houses at the earliest.

(4) We shall grow vegetables all the year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.

(5) During the plantation seasons, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible.

(6) We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize our expenditures. We shall look after our health.

(7) We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.

(8) We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.

(9) We shall build and use pit-latrines.

(10) We shall drink water from tubewells. If it is not available, we shall boil water or use alum.

(11) We shall not take any dowry at our sons' weddings, neither shall we give any dowry at our daughters' weddings. We shall keep our centre free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.

(12) We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone, neither shall we allow anyone to do so.

(13) We shall collectively undertake bigger investments for higher incomes.

(14) We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help him or her.

(15) If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any centre, we shall all go there and help restore discipline.

(16) We shall take part in all social activities collectively.

The Grameen Bank grew--and learned its business of transforming the lives of the poor--and grew some more. It spawned a new field, "microfinance," which included not only microloans to the poor and developing a set of principles and social practices that enabled them to raise themselves out of poverty, but also making available to them a spectrum of financial services--a safe way to store and save up their money, a reliable way to send payments far afield, and insurance mechanisms. In addition, Grameen Bank sponsored schools, health clinics, other aspects of an entire community fabric, no longer of impoverished but of organized, purposeful, motivated individuals.

The techniques the Grameen Bank developed led to a loan-repayment rate over 85%. Gradually the population the bank served shifted as they discovered that women were much more likely than men to use their financial advancements for the benefit of their families; and they were much more likely than men to repay the loans.

By 2006 some 97% of the clients served by the bank were women.

By 2006 the Grameen Bank had several thousand branches in towns and villages throughout Bangladesh and South-East India; it had loaned out several billion dollars; it had helped raise tens of millions of people from the enslaving cycles, generation after generation, of poverty.

By 2006 the Grameen Bank had developed a self-sustaining banking model that was no longer dependent on philanthropic donations. And it had inspired the founding of more than 700 microfinance institutions in Asia, Africa, and South America.

In 2006 Mohammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize--the first time in history that a proprietary corporation had been awarded a Nobel prize.

Financial Crisis of 2008--A Summary

...
... The Calendar
...

1980s--Reagonomics lays a groundwork of deregulation and trickle-down economic policies; U.S. borrowing spree (personal and federal) and poor international balance of payments swell

1990s--fiscal belt-tightening and poor oversight let the embers grow

2000-2007--Federal ignorance and complicity let the housing bubble swell adding non-regulated, non-transparent, sub-prime mortgage derivatives; credit default swaps grow to trillions of dollars; and short-term Wall Street profits are linked to excessive management pay incentives

late 2007 into 2008--sub-prime mortgages begin to reset to higher interest rates; housing-loan defaults rise

April-May 2008--Bear Stearns, one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading firms, fails; bought by J. P. Morgan, a huge financial services firm with $2.3 trillion capitalization and deposit base, with Fed guarantee of shakiest assets

July, August 2008--bonds ratings lowered, raising margin requirements; credit default swaps overhang financial markets; credit markets tighten

Sept. 7, 2008--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapse and are nationalized; they were formed in 1968 and 1970 respectively as privately owned GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) to purchase and securitize mortgages to assure availability of home-buyer loans

Sept. 15, 2008--Lehman Brothers, a huge global financial services firm, files chapter 11--largest bankruptcy in U.S. history; disorderly process allowed by Fed frightens Wall Street regarding future willingness of U.S. to protect major institutions

mid-Sept. 2008--credit markets seize up; large and small would-be borrowers face liquidity crises

Sept. 16, 2008--American International Group (AIG), an enormous global insurance company with considerable long-term assets, threatens to fail due to illiquidity from raised capital requirements due to downgrade of AA bond ratings; receives $85 billion government credit for 80% of equity

Sept. 25, 2008--Washington Mutual (WaMu), the largest U.S. savings and loan association, goes into receivership after 10-day run-on-the-bank withdrawals total $16.4 billion

Sept./Oct. 2008--Wachovia, the 4th largest bank-holding company in the U.S., looks weak; potential sale to Citigroup falls through

Sept./Oct. 2008--Congress passes TARP bailout; TARP is a $700-billion "Troubled Assets Relief Program" to purchase "poison" bank assets (mostly securitized, sub-prime and alt-A mortgage defaults); Congress is under tremendous public scrutiny and condemnation

Nov. 2008--TARP funds are diverted by Treasury into purchase of big banks' equity but these funds go into bank reserves, not lending; biggest recipients are:
...Citigroup ($45 billion in bailout funds)
...J.P. Morgan Chase ($25 billion)
...Bank of America ($25 billion)
...Wells Fargo ($25 billion)
...Goldman Sachs ($10 billion)
...Morgan Stanley ($10 billion)
...PNC Financial Services ($7.6 billion)
...U.S. Bancorp ($6.6 billion)
...SunTrust ($4.9 billion)

Nov. & Dec. 2008--international reductions of interest rates

Dec. 31, 2008--Wachovia, continuing weak, is purchased by Wells Fargo; a few days later Moody's downgrades Wells Fargo because of Wachovia acquisition


...
... The Remedies
...

(1) let big corporations fail if they must, but in an orderly way--
...nationalize them (to limit the spreading and protect the guts of the systems),
...replace the management,
...sell off valuable assets, and
...hold weak assets for calmer times
...(shareholders lose money; creditors do not)

(2) break up (early) any corporations that are "too big to be allowed to fail"

(3) regulate rating agencies--and forbid bond-issuers from paying for ratings (these should be paid for by the borrowers or the government)

(4) regulate Wall Street more carefully and knowledgeably--
...regulate (and limit) obscure derivative securities and credit default swaps
...impose new capital requirements for banks
...forbid SEC regulators from revolving-door into Wall Street (require delay)
...require SEC to have experienced, Wall-Street-savvy regulators
...require mark-to-market accounting and transparent financial records

Whither the Planet? Whither the Species?--An Introduction

Over the past few decades the mighty social engines of democracy and capitalism have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of lives of poverty and hunger. This has been most marked in Asia and Africa, but has been evident in Europe and the Americas as well. At the same time these engines have been responsible for summoning the apocalypse by feeding the twin daemons of overpopulation and technological suicide. How does this vast and complicated game sort out? What is to become of us and our only planet?

We know, for example, that--thanks to sophisticated modern farming (thanks to genetic seed modifications, industrial scaling of food production and distribution, and international spread of financial risks through commodities trading)--there is enough food produced in the world to feed the entire human population; yet because of political and financial greed, a billion people go to bed hungry every night. We know that through the bounty of sunlight, the internal heat of the Earth, and the winds and tides, there is enough energy available--helped by the wisdom of ecology and of efficient conservation--to satisfy the energy needs of humanity a hundred times over; yet we exhaust our fossil resources, destroy our planet's beautiful and valuable diversity, and poison--perhaps irretrievably--the very air we breath, the water we drink, and the soil that nourishes us. We know that through the miracles of science and technology, the major ills of humanity can be cured, our every travel and communication whim can be satisfied, and staggering questions about who we are and how the world works can be answered; yet those same miraculous adventures, science and technology, stand ready to mutilate, poison, burn, and irradiate catastrophically--if not to annihilate--our entire human species and our biological brethren as well.

So there is good news, and there is bad news. We have unprecedented power to manipulate and control the sources of human wealth and happiness. At the same time we must show--for our very survival--wisdom and restraint, long-range planning and philosophical perspective. Yet our society's development seems characterized by nearsightedness and hedonistic exuberance.

The signs are clear. There are barbarians at the gate. The tower guards are sounding a furious alarm. We must rise from our slumber; we must hear and heed the calls to action--now, before it is too late.

Defining Health

Is health the absence of disease, the absence of symptoms, the absence of disability? That seems like a rather negative way to go about defining something that should be a positive, enhancing aspect of life. Yet that is essentially the approach of "modern" medicine (sometimes called "Western" or "allopathic" medicine). "Treatment" consists of fighting off the offending symptoms. If the patient has a fever, give an antipyretic drug such as aspirin to bring the fever down; if nasal congestion, a decongestant such as pseudoephedrine; if an infection, an antibiotic such as penicillin; if a headache, an analgesic ("pain killer") such as acetaminophen (Tylenol).

This seems at first blush like a sensible approach. It sees a diseased human as a smoothly functioning biological machine on which some discordant process has been imposed; counteract the process, and smooth functioning will be restored. But this approach has problems, both theoretically and clinically.

From a theoretical standpoint, it basically represents a reductionist view--that a healthy person is the sum of a lot of healthy parts; if one part is disrupted, one can simply restore that part to smooth functioning and the overall person is restored to health. But the "parts" of a human being are too complicated and interdependent for this view to be workable. For example, a fever may be one of the body's orchestrated suite of ways to fight an infection: there are very few infective bacteria that can reproduce if the body has a few degrees of fever, say a core temperature of 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Or a fever can result from a systemic inflammatory response such as rheumatoid arthritis; from an environmental imbalance such as a hot room with sweating inhibited by dehydration; from a poison; or even from a cancer or other causes. So treating a fever with an antipyretic may be at least irrelevant and at worst an interference with the body's normal, healthy coping mechanisms.

For another example, treating a bacterial infection with a chemical that kills the bacteria such as an antibiotic like penicillin may, at first, seem like an obvious approach. But there are a couple of things wrong with this theoretically--and these are borne out clinically. First, an antibiotic doesn't just kill the egregious organisms, it kills other bacteria as well; and a healthy human lives in dynamic equilibrium with many kinds of bacteria--most classically with the ones that make vitamin K in our intestines, but in fact with many different kinds of bacteria that interact with and are in balance with many body processes and systems. So, giving an antibiotic does not usually just kill off the offending organisms, it decimates the body's normal, health-promoting bacterial friends as well.

Second, when a bacterial species is exposed to an antibiotic, its metabolic and genetic selection processes go to work to outwit that antibiotic. Since bacteria reproduce and evolve very rapidly, over a matter of hours and days the infecting pathogen is likely to produce resistant strains so that the antibiotic is ineffective and the infective disruption of the body's processes can get back under way.

Rather than taking such a reductionist or "separate parts" view, it is wiser, from a theoretical standpoint, to see a human being or a human life as a wholistic* orchestration of a lot of different systems, subsystems, and processes on a lot of different levels. After considerable thought and observation (including clinical experience), some people have characterized the most abstract or generalized levels as these four--

physical--this is the "lowest" (least important) level; it refers to the body's machinery: from that for locomotion to digestion, from vision to reproduction

emotional--this is the next higher level; it refers to how one experiences life: from happiness, satisfaction, and love to boredom, depression, and hate

mental--above and more important than the "emotional" level is the "mental"level; this refers to the clarity and alacrity of cognitive functions such as memory and problem solving

spiritual--this highest, most important, level refers to the sense of purpose in life, the sense of belonging, of having meaningful goals and moving toward them

Note: Many people would feel intuitively that the "emotional" level is more important than the "mental" level--in other words, that feeling love, happiness, joy--even sadness and anger--is more important than mental clarity and sureness of memory, but this is not born out by the careful observation of "disease" and how it is experienced by the patient, nor of healing processes. Some would even say that the "physical" level ranks high--that physical pain, for example, can distract you from a full emotional life and from mental clarity. But clinical observation ranks these four levels as I have listed them with the "spiritual" level highest and the "physical" level lowest, less important than the "emotional" or "mental."

The definition of health, then, from a wholistic perspective, is that all these levels are working well and are integrated smoothly so that the human being is physically able and active, is emotionally happy, has mental clarity, and experiences a sense of belonging and of moving toward meaningful goals.

This seems like a broader, more positive definition of "health" than "the absence of medical signs and symptoms." It is also in consonance with a range of observations of the human experience and has significant implications for healing systems--as we shall see in further essays.


* Note: Although this word is more commonly spelled "holistic," I prefer the equally correct "wholistic" because both semantically and etymologically the word is related to "whole" rather than "hole" or "holy."

Where Do Symptoms Go To Die?

Western or allopathic medicine represents a powerful perspective on health and healing. It provides a viewpoint that is logical and objective--in a word, scientific. It has been carefully built over centuries; it has been hard won from the grip of magical and religious thinking. It dictates that we observe illnesses and their comings and goings carefully, dispassionately, with the questions ever uppermost,"What was the cause?" and "What might be the cure?" It calls dedicated and compassionate people to its study; it aims to expand our understandings and to lighten the burdens of human suffering.

But Western or allopathic medicine--what we have been taught is "normal," "usual" medical thinking; what we often consider ALL THERE IS to health and healing--actually has some significant limitations. Conceptually, it is reductionist or atomistic: it is built on the perspective that the human body is the sum of many sub-systems and parts. There is a circulatory system of blood and lymph "plumbing" that delivers nutrients to and removes waste from the various parts of the body; in addition, there is a nervous system--comprised of the "central" nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and their "peripheral" connections (the nerves and sensory organs)--that collects information about the environment and about the workings of the body parts, and directs the body's activities; further, there is a musculo-skeletal system made up of bones and muscles that physically support and protect the body and assure both the physical interrelationships among the parts and also the body's overall locomotion. Conceptually, there are many other body systems as well.

But a human being is more than the sum of all these systems; a living, functioning, loving, and hurting person is a wholistic* expression of these parts: their "super-summation," their integration and their coordinated effects on themselves and on other human beings and the surrounding world.

One of the results of this conceptual limitation is that Western medicine fails to appreciate that some aspects of being a human being are, frankly, more important than others. "Normal" medical thinking tends to focus on physical attributes more than on emotions, mental clarity, or spiritual satisfactions. In fact, these higher planes of human experience have a definite hierarchical relationship with one another. Most people would rather feel happiness and love (emotional health) than sacrifice these in order to be relieved of physical pains and limitations (physical health). Similarly, people often experience that mental clarity--faithfulness of memory and accuracy of understanding--take precedence over diffuse emotional "warmth." And surely spiritual health--that is, a sense of meaningfulness and purpose in life and of connection with treasured, long-term goals--trumps all the other levels of "health."

This conceptual limitation of our usual medical thinking--its lack of a wholistic and hierarchical view--would not be particularly important if it did not have significant clinical effects. But careful observations indicate that it does. For example, medical treatments commonly have "side effects." Often these are trivial--a dry mouth, transient drowsiness, or loose bowels; certainly not as important or as imposing on one's overall sense of well-being as the original symptoms the medicine was prescribed to counteract. But sometimes the "side effects" are truly annoying, even debilitating or dangerous--for example, a headache, fainting spells, or intestinal bleeding. When the symptoms being treated are "traded in" for other significant symptoms, this is referred to as "symptom substitution." But without a wholistic or hierarchical perspective, there is rarely an appreciation for the extent to which interlocking body systems may be damaged when one system--with one set of symptoms--is singled out for "treatment," that is, for symptom suppression. It is rarely recognized how interfering atomistically with one or another of the body's functions--perhaps of the body's defenses or reactions to insult** or imbalances--can lead to broader decline in well-being. A physical symptom may be removed, but "disease" on the emotional, mental, or even spiritual planes may emerge and, when we use careful (wholistically sensitive) clinical observation, often does.

Where do symptoms, when treated (or suppressed) allopathically, go to die? Often they do not simply disappear, they spread to different body systems where they become different symptoms; often they reemerge more distressing and debilitating than they started.


Notes: * Although the more commonly accepted spelling of this word is "holistic," I prefer "wholistic" with a "w" because, after all, we are talking about "wholes" not "holes" (or "holy").

** In medicine, an "insult" is a shock or challenge to the body, such as a physical injury or a overdose of a drug.