Blog 528 – 01.18.2017

Pick Your Poision

Lead has been known to be toxic since Roman times but even though they knew it caused hallucinations, brain damage, and death they used it wide spread across the empire. First one might ask how they knew that. Well, they used slaves to mine it and those slaves breathed the dust, drank it in their water and had their skin repeated exposed to lead and because of that exposure they went mad and died. Secondly one might ask since the ruling class knew lead was poisonous why did they use it for all their plumbing (our word plumbing comes from the Latin word for lead). The Romans used lead to line all their cooking pots, their public baths, and even to sweeten their wine, but why did they use it knowing how dangerous it was? Because it was cheap and plentiful.

In my lifetime it took a great push back against the lead and gasoline industries to force them to remove lead from paint and gasoline even though they knew it was harming us all. Why did they do it? Because it was plentiful and cheap? Some historians believe the root cause of the collapse of the Roman Empire was lead poisoning. Did you know that the primary cause of death for the beautiful American Bald Eagle is lead poisoning from eating animals with lead shot in them and fish with lead lures in them? How could any civilization survive when profit and expediency is placed above the welfare of people and animals. I have written at length that the most noble thing that the founding fathers of the American Revolution in the second American Revolution, producing and ratifying the U.S. Constitution, wrote was it’s true justification – “To promote the general welfare.” When the profit motive or expediency causes us to lose sight of that our empire is in decline too.

Other examples of poisons that are promoted are: tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, and fossil fuels. They are harmful, make us sick, and are killing us. They do not promote the generally welfare. At various times, scientists, doctors, and politicians have all been bought by those industries to lie and say that these products are benign and completely beneficial. Poison peddlers all, but why would anyone do that? Because the products are cheap, plentiful, expedient and there are tremendous profits to be made. I see no distinction between a crack or heroin dealer and a public official who decides to choose water polluted with lead for the Flint, Michigan utility because there is money to be saved or made.

I titled this article, “Pick Your Poision” because that is what we do every time we choose any product or service that does not promote the general welfare. The Romans in power who thought lead-mining slaves were valueless and even the masses in the end were also poisoned by the lead they so profited from. The tobacco, alcohol, drug, and petroleum barons too are not untouched or their families by the poisons they peddle that have made them rich. The good old golden rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The greater truth is that anything we do to others we are doing to ourselves. The sooner we realize it the sooner we will begin making this place the heaven it could always have been and was meant to be.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White