"What do you mean?"
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| You without calcium - right? |
"Well you need the... you know... gai4 (鈣 = Calcium)"
and pause. It's a common conception in the West, never mind the East - the idea that without milk your bones will crumble and you will end up looking like Krang, a pile of flesh in mechanical armour. This is not the first time I have heard this when I tell people I can't drink milk and I am only too happy to inform people about the great social fallacy that is our supposed requirement for (cows) milk. I want to talk more about social fallacies than milk so I'll let Tommy from Snatch take it from the top (from 00:29 onwards)
So what is a social fallacy? I like to define it as a collective idea that people are so convinced by that they are happy to share, convince and argue for it but in fact lack any one of sources, source provenance or research into any possible conflicting ideas. Considering how our lives are steeped in a need for convenience and personal success, to expect people to spend a lot of their time doing proper research on any idea they believe in is 100% impossible, but is it possible to expect people to accept the gaps in their own knowledge? Can we temper our debates with disclaimers at every juncture? It may seem hard but humour me. I'll use another couple of food and drink examples to explain the point.
2 litres of water a day! and cigarettes.
Did you know Hitler pioneered research into smoking which had a massive effect on smoking being declared unhealthy? What an irony. We now universally accept the evil of smoking and modern legislation does as much as it can for the non-smoking demographic (and make no mistake - if enough of the electorate still smoked and wanted to smoke, there would be no bans on smoking anywhere. Democracy - you get what you ask for!) without making serious dents into income collected from nicotine/tobacco taxes. But we had that social fallacy before - that cigarettes were good for us - and we may laugh about it now but there are other things which are equally as misleading. Milk is one of them. One of my personal favourites though is water. This seem's like a weird road to go down because as far as I know I can't blame WATER COMPANY MONOPOLISTS on what I perceive to be a gross overestimate of our water requirements. I just want to ask why a 1945 report on water content is still our guideline for daily required water intake. That linked articles conclusion - drink when you are thirsty - is a big 'no shit' but it's one of the biggest social fallacies and so, so accepted by people. Keeping in mind in 1945 scientists were happily trying to work out how to make nuclear bullets for infantry and getting behind advertisements like this it does at least make me pause for thought.
So who cares about having too much water? People tend to stop drinking before they overdose on water so it's a harmless social fallacy, right? WRONG. The problem is in acceptance and not asking 'Why?' The benefits of smoking were also a social fallacy and it took decades of overwhelming, unbias research before people started to realise the truth. Living inside the goldfish bowl of our era, it may be another 30 years before we see that having too much water drowns our immune systems and is more or less the only cause for cancer there has ever been. Maybe that isn't true - we may never know!
Another of the biggest social fallacies is love. I think I've gone way over the limit of a reasonable attention span so that will be for another day but do ask yourself what love is and whether or not we have unreasonable expectations about it, whether or not we are being told what to know about love.What we do know is that we do not have all of the answers and probably never will. Danger lies in being provided with 'the answers' by groups who have vested interests in your opinions. Think as critically as you can about universally accepted recommendations for our lives, using as much evidence as possible to do so. Is it important to do so? Ask the people who smoked because they wished for the wondrous effects that come from smoking Dr Batty's cigarettes. The freedom to smoke is undisputed but convincing society that smoking is good for you merely gives you the illusion of freedom.
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| Complete with stamp of authenticity over the right shoulder! |
Be ahead of the curve. Remember that being able to look at the goldfish bowl from the outside will give you much greater power to understand and control events inside it. Perfecting it will make you happier and more successful - and it may even make you rich.
Peace
