A young reporter was given the opportunity to interview a very successful, very wealthy banker. The reporter asked him,
"Sir, What is the secret of your success?"
He said "Two words, young man."
"And, Sir, what are they?"
"Right decisions."
"But how do you make right decisions?"
"One word." he responded.
"And, sir, What is that?"
"Experience."
"And how do you get Experience?"
"Two words"
"And, Sir, what are they?"
The banker replied with a smile, "Wrong decisions."
from: http://www.funtoosh.com/jokes/
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Globalization and the “sacred canopy” of Cults in India
India, in present times, has been widely characterized by the restructuring of the economic order, ever increasing interactivity between the local and global communities through the information and communication technologies and mass media, and explicit reformulation of the discourses of social development. Further, the unbroken democratic practices under the Constitution, in India, has given rise a distinct political culture in the country. In this context, it is expected that in India religion and religious activities will be on decline and/or get privatized, and structures associated with religion get progressively diminished as public space does have place for such activities. However, what we see is that the patterns of social living associated with religion in all its diverse forms are not at all getting constricted or withering away. In fact, it is becoming more and more difficult to ignore the presence of religion in the contemporary society. Nor it is possible to find explanations about this as something else or in some other social fact.
Sociology of religion aims to discover the patterns of social living associated with religion in all its diverse forms, and to find explanations for the data that emerge. It is not, in contrast, concerned with the competing truth claims of the great variety of belief systems that are and always have been present in human societies. That is the sphere of theology, with the relatively modern discipline of religious studies hovering, somewhat uneasily, in between. Sociologists must resist the temptation to subsume the study of religion into alternative, and for some at least more congenial, areas of interest. Precisely this has happened in the past and has impeded understanding. It derives from a persistent tendency to think primarily in terms of decline rather than growth when to comes to the religious sphere. So doing implies that the presence, rather than the absence, of religion in the modern world requires an explanation. All of the leading lights of early sociology devoted considerable attention to the sociology of religion in one way or another. Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel were all aware of the importance of religion to the functioning of human societies and paid careful attention to this factor in their different analyses. Religion continues to remain a uniquely human experience, without any analog found among any other living being. Thus, religion forms a “sacred canopy” that shields both individual and society from a seemingly purposeless existence.
In the 1990s religious problems such as deceitful recruitment and fundraising by the Unification Church (in United States) and criminal activities by Aum (in Japan) and ‘Santandal of Balak Bramhachary’ and ‘Ananda Margis’ (in India) cults provoked cult controversy and a cautious attitude towards religion among ordinary people. Yet, religious movements are not always harmful to society, and indeed sometimes initiate development of our culture and society. The cult controversy originated from the conflicts between some controversial religions and their self-proclaimed ‘victims’. We must remember religion enters into a dynamic interplay with different sociological variables in different times, places, and circumstances, thus the functional and substantive aspects of cults in contemporary society have to be understood in terms of the changes that are taking lace in society. Religion does not remain untouched by these changes, as evidenced in the phenomenal proliferation in the number of ‘gurus’, ‘babas’, and godmen with their ‘feel-good’ mutts or monasteries. To outsiders these may seem utterly misleading and money laundering institutions where individualism is propitiated at the expense of holism. It is assumed that lack of cultural awareness and stressful life pattern does not allow the people to concentrate on religious abstractions, causing in them an attraction for this outcropping tribe of godmen who try to offer a made-easy version of ‘Hindu’ philosophy. Another reason that is pointed out is that, these godmen run cults are taking opportunity of the profound and fast changes in values, norms and modes of behaviour in all domains of social space, which have undermined the traditional hierarchies, giving birth to a new social order devoid of any authority system that provide guidance and control. In this overall weakened changing social milieu, mainstream religion and religious organizations, with its embedded norms of sacred and profane, fail to counter these tribes of godmen due to unparalleled growth of mass media and its deep cultural penetration with the help of which the former can increase their reach. The Temple of Jagannath at Puri, in this sphere stands as an exception, because the farsighted organization of and the philosophy propagated by this Temple has allowed it to take advantage of mass media to increase its reach. Religious symbols, meanings and practices, traditions and institutions are seen by the new generation as tools for developing esoteric identities, sensitivities and consciousness. This new process of identity formation allows a sense of fluidity in religious identity of individuals’ thus continuously reconfiguring Indian society’s moral and religious values. In context of contemporary consumerist culture higher value is placed on practicality in living a religious life to achieve individual’s personal spiritual end, therefore, giving fealty to religious functionaries or organizations is now limited in only achieving the said end. Religiosity in contemporary society this way allows individuals to go beyond the iconoclastic restrictions of the past, re-prioritize their orientation to accommodate greater maneuverability between internal and external pluralism.
In context of the above, it will be relevant to examine how cults are defined by sociologists. To start with, we may accept that a cult could be defined as any group of people whose beliefs and rituals, though remain part of a major religion, but are not mainstream. A cult can be defined in general as any group of people holding to a common belief system, but in practice the term cult is often used pejoratively, to refer specifically to ‘a quasi-religious organization using devious psychological techniques to gain and control adherents’(Collins English Dictionary).
Lorne L. Dawson (2006:28-29) exploring the literature concludes that the definition of cult is a slippery concept, therefore, goes on to “say that cults share the following cluster of traits:
1. Cults are almost always centred on a charismatic leader, who is usually the inspirational founder of the religion. The authority of this leader is relatively unrestricted. Consequently, these groups are subject to gradual disintegration when the leader dies or is discredited (Miller, 1991). Not sur¬prisingly, then, the vast majority of cults are relatively short-lived and small.
2. Cults usually lay claim to some esoteric knowledge that has been lost, repressed, or newly discovered, and they offer their believers some more direct kind of ecstatic or transfiguring experience than traditional modes of religious life.
3. Cults often display no systematic orientation to the broader society, since their primary focus is on the spiritual development of their members. This commonly means they are loosely organized and subject to frequent organizational changes.
4. To borrow from the sociologist Bryan Wilson: In comparison to established faiths, cults tend to ‘offer a surer, shorter, swifter, or clearer way to salvation’. They offer a more ‘proximate salvation' and, in principle, one more readily attained by more people. ‘In new religions,’ Wilson explains, ‘there is prospect of spiritual abundance’ (1982b: 17, 20).
This profile fits most cults, which are relatively unknown. You may have noticed, however, that it does not really describe several of the more famous groups figuring in the public controversy about NRMs. Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church, for example, are quite long-lived and large. Accordingly, many of their features are sect-like. They are more organized and sophisticated in their relations with the larger world. With the exception of the Unification Church, whose founding leader is still alive, they have also managed to survive the death of their charismatic founder. Originally, though, these groups did display the traits I have suggested, and they do continue to have many of the other attitudes and practices, such as the emphasis on esoteric teachings and the satisfac¬tion of individual needs. Perhaps, then, yet another intermediate category should be added to church-sect typology, that of ‘established cult'.”
According to Mac Iver and Page (1950: 602), “…cults are not yet religions in the proper sense of the term. They are hallowed ways of doing things or of celebrating things done, and the sanctity is apt to be transferred from the functions or occasions to the rite associated with it. The social is still fused with the suprasocial”. For Johnson (1966:437-438), “cult…is a voluntary organization… (that) shows its looseness of organization by permitting its members to come and go, and to participate in other religious groups at the same time if they wish. The coherence of the group depends upon the emotional hold of a leader over the members, or upon the fascination of the beliefs or rituals…There is a tendency for cults to emphasize one doctrine above all others, or to focus upon a god or goddess with certain definite characteristics…Cult seem to flourish in metropolitan centers- that is, in places where vast population live close together physically, yet have heterogeneous cultures and many diverse problems of adjustment.”
Cults have a controversial existence in contemporarary times because largely they adopt the following characteristic features:
• The leader assumes God-like authority over its members.
• It provides an escape from reality. Reality has to do with the truth of things, truth which can be validated by other people. Cult religion provides few “reality checks”.
• It preys upon people with heavy guilt and shame and offers a false solution: total commitment to the cult.
• Cult religion demands a complete break from life to this point. All the “past” is bad or evil. Only present life in the cult is good.
• Cult religion thrives in secrecy. It creates a secret garden of perfect religion. It hides its doctrines, its rules, and its community behavior under the cloak of secrecy.
• The leaders have perfect truth and goodness and they “lord it over” the rest. They use coercive power, fear, intimidation, and manipulation to keep people in line.
• Everything is black and white. There is no gray. There is little sense of personal humility or of the Mystery of God.
• It uses scripture to defend its subjective version of the truth and to condemn all others.
The questions that should not escape from our purview are - Why and how are people attracted to these cults? What sort of people are they, and what are their backgrounds? Functionalist speculation would put forward that the people who are attracted to these cults are those who have had a deprived life, and are now desperately seeking some sort of satisfaction from these, which would make them feel more complete. Social institutions, like family, are in periods of serious transition, and that may serve to increase any alienation and separateness among individual members from the groups around them. So even if these individuals have all the material benefits in their life yet they are emotionally or psychologically deprived. Of those who are religiously inclined, it would be more likely those individuals, who are in a religiously confused state due to changed social reality, therefore are not any more secure and satisfied in their traditional faith and rituals, are most susceptible to the messages of cults. Another aspect that is progressively coming to the fore is that society tends to treat people more impersonally - resulting in both greater alienation and greater need to define oneself personally. Therefore, we see more and more people search for an identity separate from their parents and unique to themselves. This is related to the forces of globalization, since such searches for identity were not prevalent in past where identity and social roles were more rigidly defined and inclusive. A cult controls its members primarily through the promotion and inculcation of a hierarchical, cult-type belief system within a person's own mind, rather than by means of external, physical restraints. The belief system itself is the primary active agent in cult mind control. Cults actively promote and market their belief systems. Commercial companies use marketing and public relations techniques to promote an idealized image of their product or service to potential consumers, and cults do much the same. However, the difference with a cult is that both their product, and any consequences resulting from purchase and use of their product, is entirely subjective and intangible in nature. The ‘product’ that is marketed by a cult is its belief system, together with the attitudes and behaviour codes that are part of that belief system. Because of the nature of their product, cults do not really operate in the public domain. They operate in a private world, within an individual's personal religious framework or set of beliefs, and within an individual's own subjective world of self-esteem and self-confidence. They operate within a person’s mind. Some cults promote an overtly religious type of belief system. Others, such as so-called therapy cults, promote a secular type of belief system, based on quasi-scientific or quasi-psychological principles. Some so-called New Age cults combine religious and secular elements in their belief system. In general, cult organizations promote utopian ideals of self awareness or self-transcendence, ostensibly for the benefit both of the individual and of the world at large. Cult belief systems present a vision in which any individual, through following the group’s teachings, can begin to realize their own higher potential. Believers begin to aspire to a ‘new life’ or a 'new self', based on these ideals. At the same time as they begin to aspire to this improved new self, believers begin to see their old self, their pre-cult personality, as having fallen short of the ideal. An old self - new self dichotomy can grow up within a cult member's mind, as they gradually eschew beliefs and behaviour associated with their old self, and adopt attitudes and affiliations that seem appropriate for their new self. They may even come to see their unreformed old self as the enemy of their emerging new self. Cults have to compete to market their belief systems and gain adherents, just as ordinary commercial organizations have to compete to market their products or services and gain customers. Indeed some of the marketing techniques are not entirely dissimilar. Commercial businesses often use aspiration based marketing techniques, promoting their products and services to potential customers by implying that purchase of a particular product will enhance an owner's self esteem and social status. Consumers are sometimes encouraged to measure their own self-worth in terms of the quality of their possessions. The marketing advantage enjoyed by a cult is that, as a quasi-religious organization, it is protected from outside investigation, by a legal system which attempts to protect freedom of religion and freedom of belief. Broadly, freedom of religion allows cults to use their own self-referential ethical codes to justify their own behaviour, and to remain unaccountable to any outside agency. There are no consumer protection laws to regulate the marketing of personal or religious belief, without any independent quality control of the product offered. Another advantage enjoyed by a cult stems from the fact that it does not really operate in the public domain; it operates primarily within the private and subjective realm of a person's mind. Both the actual product marketed by a cult, and any consequences resulting from purchase or use of the product, are largely subjective and intangible in nature. This means that no criticisms of the allegedly harmful effect that a cult's belief system may have had upon a member’s mind or behaviour can ever be proved objectively. Robert J. Lifton (1961) pointed out eight criteria of mind control that can be used about understanding the working of the cults. They are:
1. Milieu Control: Environment control and the control of human communication. Not just communication between people but communication within people's minds to themselves.
2. Mystical Manipulation: Everyone is manipulating everyone, under the belief that it advances the “ultimate purpose”. Experiences are engineered to appear to be spontaneous, when, in fact, they are contrived to have a deliberate effect. People misattribute their experiences to spiritual causes when, in fact, they are concocted by human beings.
3. Loading the Language: Controlling words help to control people's thoughts. A totalist group uses totalist language to make reality compressed into black or white – “thought-terminating clichés”. Non-members cannot simply understand what believers are talking about. The words constrict rather than expand human understanding.
4. Doctrine over Person: No matter what a person experiences, it is the belief of the dogma which is important. Group belief supersedes conscience and integrity.
5. Sacred Science: The group's belief is that their dogma is scientific and morally true. No alternative viewpoint is allowed. No questions of the dogma are permitted.
6. The Cult of Confession: The environment demands that personal boundaries are destroyed and that every thought, feeling, or action that does not conform to the group’s rules be confessed; little or no privacy.
7. The Demand for Purity: The creation of a guilt and shame milieu by holding up standards of perfection that no human being can accomplish. People are punished and are taught to punish themselves for not living up to the group’s ideals.
8. The Dispensing of Existence: The group decides who has a right to exist and who does not. There is no other legitimate alternative to the group. In political regimes, this permits state executions.
Combination of institutional, pedagogical and cultural factors decides the attitude of people towards religion that again both shapes and is shaped by the socio-cultural systems within which it operates across time, place, and circumstance. Cults and new religious movements cannot, therefore, be seen as devoid of social basis. Religiosity survives in the context of consumerism through cults and new religious movements. It is seen that the relationship between the values of the expressive revolution and the emergent individualism that are bridged by cults and new religious movements. Cults have created a space within the personal and public rights in religious matters in contemporary society. Thus, we can conclude that in contemporary society, towards one end of religious spectrum are the established mainstream religious and humanist systems of belief and practice, in the middle are non-conformist sects and fashionable fads of various kinds, and towards the other end are various religious cults that tend towards being exclusive coteries. We can broadly differentiate between cults, sects, and mainstream religious or secular belief systems, by considering the degree to which a particular group’s belief system and culture originates from within the group, and is separate and distinct from the relevant mainstream belief system and culture. From this perspective, sects can be characterized as tending to disagree with some details of the relevant mainstream belief system, while cults can be characterized as tending to deny and reject outright significant parts of the relevant mainstream belief system.
Reference
Dawson, Lorne L. 2006, 2nd Edition, Comprehending Cults. The Sociology of New Religious Movements, Ontario: OUP Canada
Greeley, Andrew M. 1982, Religion: A Secular Theory. New York: Free Press.
Hammond, Phillip E. (ed.). 1985, The Sacred in a Secular Age: Toward Revision in the Scientific Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press
Johnson, Harry M. 1981, Sociology. A Systematic Introduction, New Delhi: Allied
Lifton, Robert Jay. 1961, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, University of North Carolina Press
Mac Iver, R. M. and Charles H. Page, 1950, Society, Madras: Macmillan
Wilson, Bryan. 1990, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Sociology of religion aims to discover the patterns of social living associated with religion in all its diverse forms, and to find explanations for the data that emerge. It is not, in contrast, concerned with the competing truth claims of the great variety of belief systems that are and always have been present in human societies. That is the sphere of theology, with the relatively modern discipline of religious studies hovering, somewhat uneasily, in between. Sociologists must resist the temptation to subsume the study of religion into alternative, and for some at least more congenial, areas of interest. Precisely this has happened in the past and has impeded understanding. It derives from a persistent tendency to think primarily in terms of decline rather than growth when to comes to the religious sphere. So doing implies that the presence, rather than the absence, of religion in the modern world requires an explanation. All of the leading lights of early sociology devoted considerable attention to the sociology of religion in one way or another. Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel were all aware of the importance of religion to the functioning of human societies and paid careful attention to this factor in their different analyses. Religion continues to remain a uniquely human experience, without any analog found among any other living being. Thus, religion forms a “sacred canopy” that shields both individual and society from a seemingly purposeless existence.
In the 1990s religious problems such as deceitful recruitment and fundraising by the Unification Church (in United States) and criminal activities by Aum (in Japan) and ‘Santandal of Balak Bramhachary’ and ‘Ananda Margis’ (in India) cults provoked cult controversy and a cautious attitude towards religion among ordinary people. Yet, religious movements are not always harmful to society, and indeed sometimes initiate development of our culture and society. The cult controversy originated from the conflicts between some controversial religions and their self-proclaimed ‘victims’. We must remember religion enters into a dynamic interplay with different sociological variables in different times, places, and circumstances, thus the functional and substantive aspects of cults in contemporary society have to be understood in terms of the changes that are taking lace in society. Religion does not remain untouched by these changes, as evidenced in the phenomenal proliferation in the number of ‘gurus’, ‘babas’, and godmen with their ‘feel-good’ mutts or monasteries. To outsiders these may seem utterly misleading and money laundering institutions where individualism is propitiated at the expense of holism. It is assumed that lack of cultural awareness and stressful life pattern does not allow the people to concentrate on religious abstractions, causing in them an attraction for this outcropping tribe of godmen who try to offer a made-easy version of ‘Hindu’ philosophy. Another reason that is pointed out is that, these godmen run cults are taking opportunity of the profound and fast changes in values, norms and modes of behaviour in all domains of social space, which have undermined the traditional hierarchies, giving birth to a new social order devoid of any authority system that provide guidance and control. In this overall weakened changing social milieu, mainstream religion and religious organizations, with its embedded norms of sacred and profane, fail to counter these tribes of godmen due to unparalleled growth of mass media and its deep cultural penetration with the help of which the former can increase their reach. The Temple of Jagannath at Puri, in this sphere stands as an exception, because the farsighted organization of and the philosophy propagated by this Temple has allowed it to take advantage of mass media to increase its reach. Religious symbols, meanings and practices, traditions and institutions are seen by the new generation as tools for developing esoteric identities, sensitivities and consciousness. This new process of identity formation allows a sense of fluidity in religious identity of individuals’ thus continuously reconfiguring Indian society’s moral and religious values. In context of contemporary consumerist culture higher value is placed on practicality in living a religious life to achieve individual’s personal spiritual end, therefore, giving fealty to religious functionaries or organizations is now limited in only achieving the said end. Religiosity in contemporary society this way allows individuals to go beyond the iconoclastic restrictions of the past, re-prioritize their orientation to accommodate greater maneuverability between internal and external pluralism.
In context of the above, it will be relevant to examine how cults are defined by sociologists. To start with, we may accept that a cult could be defined as any group of people whose beliefs and rituals, though remain part of a major religion, but are not mainstream. A cult can be defined in general as any group of people holding to a common belief system, but in practice the term cult is often used pejoratively, to refer specifically to ‘a quasi-religious organization using devious psychological techniques to gain and control adherents’(Collins English Dictionary).
Lorne L. Dawson (2006:28-29) exploring the literature concludes that the definition of cult is a slippery concept, therefore, goes on to “say that cults share the following cluster of traits:
1. Cults are almost always centred on a charismatic leader, who is usually the inspirational founder of the religion. The authority of this leader is relatively unrestricted. Consequently, these groups are subject to gradual disintegration when the leader dies or is discredited (Miller, 1991). Not sur¬prisingly, then, the vast majority of cults are relatively short-lived and small.
2. Cults usually lay claim to some esoteric knowledge that has been lost, repressed, or newly discovered, and they offer their believers some more direct kind of ecstatic or transfiguring experience than traditional modes of religious life.
3. Cults often display no systematic orientation to the broader society, since their primary focus is on the spiritual development of their members. This commonly means they are loosely organized and subject to frequent organizational changes.
4. To borrow from the sociologist Bryan Wilson: In comparison to established faiths, cults tend to ‘offer a surer, shorter, swifter, or clearer way to salvation’. They offer a more ‘proximate salvation' and, in principle, one more readily attained by more people. ‘In new religions,’ Wilson explains, ‘there is prospect of spiritual abundance’ (1982b: 17, 20).
This profile fits most cults, which are relatively unknown. You may have noticed, however, that it does not really describe several of the more famous groups figuring in the public controversy about NRMs. Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, and the Unification Church, for example, are quite long-lived and large. Accordingly, many of their features are sect-like. They are more organized and sophisticated in their relations with the larger world. With the exception of the Unification Church, whose founding leader is still alive, they have also managed to survive the death of their charismatic founder. Originally, though, these groups did display the traits I have suggested, and they do continue to have many of the other attitudes and practices, such as the emphasis on esoteric teachings and the satisfac¬tion of individual needs. Perhaps, then, yet another intermediate category should be added to church-sect typology, that of ‘established cult'.”
According to Mac Iver and Page (1950: 602), “…cults are not yet religions in the proper sense of the term. They are hallowed ways of doing things or of celebrating things done, and the sanctity is apt to be transferred from the functions or occasions to the rite associated with it. The social is still fused with the suprasocial”. For Johnson (1966:437-438), “cult…is a voluntary organization… (that) shows its looseness of organization by permitting its members to come and go, and to participate in other religious groups at the same time if they wish. The coherence of the group depends upon the emotional hold of a leader over the members, or upon the fascination of the beliefs or rituals…There is a tendency for cults to emphasize one doctrine above all others, or to focus upon a god or goddess with certain definite characteristics…Cult seem to flourish in metropolitan centers- that is, in places where vast population live close together physically, yet have heterogeneous cultures and many diverse problems of adjustment.”
Cults have a controversial existence in contemporarary times because largely they adopt the following characteristic features:
• The leader assumes God-like authority over its members.
• It provides an escape from reality. Reality has to do with the truth of things, truth which can be validated by other people. Cult religion provides few “reality checks”.
• It preys upon people with heavy guilt and shame and offers a false solution: total commitment to the cult.
• Cult religion demands a complete break from life to this point. All the “past” is bad or evil. Only present life in the cult is good.
• Cult religion thrives in secrecy. It creates a secret garden of perfect religion. It hides its doctrines, its rules, and its community behavior under the cloak of secrecy.
• The leaders have perfect truth and goodness and they “lord it over” the rest. They use coercive power, fear, intimidation, and manipulation to keep people in line.
• Everything is black and white. There is no gray. There is little sense of personal humility or of the Mystery of God.
• It uses scripture to defend its subjective version of the truth and to condemn all others.
The questions that should not escape from our purview are - Why and how are people attracted to these cults? What sort of people are they, and what are their backgrounds? Functionalist speculation would put forward that the people who are attracted to these cults are those who have had a deprived life, and are now desperately seeking some sort of satisfaction from these, which would make them feel more complete. Social institutions, like family, are in periods of serious transition, and that may serve to increase any alienation and separateness among individual members from the groups around them. So even if these individuals have all the material benefits in their life yet they are emotionally or psychologically deprived. Of those who are religiously inclined, it would be more likely those individuals, who are in a religiously confused state due to changed social reality, therefore are not any more secure and satisfied in their traditional faith and rituals, are most susceptible to the messages of cults. Another aspect that is progressively coming to the fore is that society tends to treat people more impersonally - resulting in both greater alienation and greater need to define oneself personally. Therefore, we see more and more people search for an identity separate from their parents and unique to themselves. This is related to the forces of globalization, since such searches for identity were not prevalent in past where identity and social roles were more rigidly defined and inclusive. A cult controls its members primarily through the promotion and inculcation of a hierarchical, cult-type belief system within a person's own mind, rather than by means of external, physical restraints. The belief system itself is the primary active agent in cult mind control. Cults actively promote and market their belief systems. Commercial companies use marketing and public relations techniques to promote an idealized image of their product or service to potential consumers, and cults do much the same. However, the difference with a cult is that both their product, and any consequences resulting from purchase and use of their product, is entirely subjective and intangible in nature. The ‘product’ that is marketed by a cult is its belief system, together with the attitudes and behaviour codes that are part of that belief system. Because of the nature of their product, cults do not really operate in the public domain. They operate in a private world, within an individual's personal religious framework or set of beliefs, and within an individual's own subjective world of self-esteem and self-confidence. They operate within a person’s mind. Some cults promote an overtly religious type of belief system. Others, such as so-called therapy cults, promote a secular type of belief system, based on quasi-scientific or quasi-psychological principles. Some so-called New Age cults combine religious and secular elements in their belief system. In general, cult organizations promote utopian ideals of self awareness or self-transcendence, ostensibly for the benefit both of the individual and of the world at large. Cult belief systems present a vision in which any individual, through following the group’s teachings, can begin to realize their own higher potential. Believers begin to aspire to a ‘new life’ or a 'new self', based on these ideals. At the same time as they begin to aspire to this improved new self, believers begin to see their old self, their pre-cult personality, as having fallen short of the ideal. An old self - new self dichotomy can grow up within a cult member's mind, as they gradually eschew beliefs and behaviour associated with their old self, and adopt attitudes and affiliations that seem appropriate for their new self. They may even come to see their unreformed old self as the enemy of their emerging new self. Cults have to compete to market their belief systems and gain adherents, just as ordinary commercial organizations have to compete to market their products or services and gain customers. Indeed some of the marketing techniques are not entirely dissimilar. Commercial businesses often use aspiration based marketing techniques, promoting their products and services to potential customers by implying that purchase of a particular product will enhance an owner's self esteem and social status. Consumers are sometimes encouraged to measure their own self-worth in terms of the quality of their possessions. The marketing advantage enjoyed by a cult is that, as a quasi-religious organization, it is protected from outside investigation, by a legal system which attempts to protect freedom of religion and freedom of belief. Broadly, freedom of religion allows cults to use their own self-referential ethical codes to justify their own behaviour, and to remain unaccountable to any outside agency. There are no consumer protection laws to regulate the marketing of personal or religious belief, without any independent quality control of the product offered. Another advantage enjoyed by a cult stems from the fact that it does not really operate in the public domain; it operates primarily within the private and subjective realm of a person's mind. Both the actual product marketed by a cult, and any consequences resulting from purchase or use of the product, are largely subjective and intangible in nature. This means that no criticisms of the allegedly harmful effect that a cult's belief system may have had upon a member’s mind or behaviour can ever be proved objectively. Robert J. Lifton (1961) pointed out eight criteria of mind control that can be used about understanding the working of the cults. They are:
1. Milieu Control: Environment control and the control of human communication. Not just communication between people but communication within people's minds to themselves.
2. Mystical Manipulation: Everyone is manipulating everyone, under the belief that it advances the “ultimate purpose”. Experiences are engineered to appear to be spontaneous, when, in fact, they are contrived to have a deliberate effect. People misattribute their experiences to spiritual causes when, in fact, they are concocted by human beings.
3. Loading the Language: Controlling words help to control people's thoughts. A totalist group uses totalist language to make reality compressed into black or white – “thought-terminating clichés”. Non-members cannot simply understand what believers are talking about. The words constrict rather than expand human understanding.
4. Doctrine over Person: No matter what a person experiences, it is the belief of the dogma which is important. Group belief supersedes conscience and integrity.
5. Sacred Science: The group's belief is that their dogma is scientific and morally true. No alternative viewpoint is allowed. No questions of the dogma are permitted.
6. The Cult of Confession: The environment demands that personal boundaries are destroyed and that every thought, feeling, or action that does not conform to the group’s rules be confessed; little or no privacy.
7. The Demand for Purity: The creation of a guilt and shame milieu by holding up standards of perfection that no human being can accomplish. People are punished and are taught to punish themselves for not living up to the group’s ideals.
8. The Dispensing of Existence: The group decides who has a right to exist and who does not. There is no other legitimate alternative to the group. In political regimes, this permits state executions.
Combination of institutional, pedagogical and cultural factors decides the attitude of people towards religion that again both shapes and is shaped by the socio-cultural systems within which it operates across time, place, and circumstance. Cults and new religious movements cannot, therefore, be seen as devoid of social basis. Religiosity survives in the context of consumerism through cults and new religious movements. It is seen that the relationship between the values of the expressive revolution and the emergent individualism that are bridged by cults and new religious movements. Cults have created a space within the personal and public rights in religious matters in contemporary society. Thus, we can conclude that in contemporary society, towards one end of religious spectrum are the established mainstream religious and humanist systems of belief and practice, in the middle are non-conformist sects and fashionable fads of various kinds, and towards the other end are various religious cults that tend towards being exclusive coteries. We can broadly differentiate between cults, sects, and mainstream religious or secular belief systems, by considering the degree to which a particular group’s belief system and culture originates from within the group, and is separate and distinct from the relevant mainstream belief system and culture. From this perspective, sects can be characterized as tending to disagree with some details of the relevant mainstream belief system, while cults can be characterized as tending to deny and reject outright significant parts of the relevant mainstream belief system.
Reference
Dawson, Lorne L. 2006, 2nd Edition, Comprehending Cults. The Sociology of New Religious Movements, Ontario: OUP Canada
Greeley, Andrew M. 1982, Religion: A Secular Theory. New York: Free Press.
Hammond, Phillip E. (ed.). 1985, The Sacred in a Secular Age: Toward Revision in the Scientific Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press
Johnson, Harry M. 1981, Sociology. A Systematic Introduction, New Delhi: Allied
Lifton, Robert Jay. 1961, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, University of North Carolina Press
Mac Iver, R. M. and Charles H. Page, 1950, Society, Madras: Macmillan
Wilson, Bryan. 1990, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Friday, September 17, 2010
When did we start talking in acronyms, and why?
Acronyms have become so prevalent that they suffer what anything does when coined without end: devaluation. “Oh, my God” still packs quite a punch in the right circumstances. “OMG”, by contrast, is barely effective as a plaything any more. (“OMG he’s cute.” “OMG is it ten already?”) LOL began life as “laughing out loud”, a way for internet chatterers to explain a long pause in typing. Now, LOL means “you just said something so amusing my lip curled for a moment there.” And how many BFFs will truly be best friends forever? Teens, with their habit of bleaching once-mighty words (from “awesome” to “fantastic”), can quickly render a coinage banal.
The kids are not ruining the language, though. Grown-ups play the same inflationary game. Walk into any business and a cloud of three-lettered titles surrounds you. The one who used to be just the boss, or the managing director, now styles himself the CEO, for chief executive officer. This alone would be one thing, but it turned into a viral infection: CIO, CTO, CFO, COO, CLO, and so on, for what used to be the heads of technology, finance and operations, and the company lawyer. The so-called C-suite is an allegedly prestigious club, but whither prestige as its ranks swell? Throw in the VPs and SVPs who swarm all over American offices—not just vice-presidents, but senior ones—and everyone is a manager. A study of Linked-In, the networking site, found the number of C- and VP-level members growing three to four times faster than the membership overall. Who, then, is managed any more?
All this seems natural in a technological age, when almost anything we do depends on computers. The first modern computers had acronymic names (ENIAC and UNIVAC), and they set the tone for the subsequent half-century; in fact ever since IBM gave us the cheap PC, homes have been flooded with CPUs (central processing units) that grow in power at an alarming rate, progressing from reading CD-ROMS to downloading MP3s (formerly known as songs) to controlling your HDTV. No one knows what the future of technology holds, but we can be confident it will arrive in a swirl of capital letters.
Acronyms have become so ubiquitous that we look for them even where they don’t exist. They are a major source of the folk etymologies that ping around the internet, etymologies for words that aren’t actually acronyms. “Fuck” isn’t short for “for unlawful carnal knowledge”, “posh” has nothing to do with “port out, starboard home”, and a “tip”, while it might be to insure promptness, certainly doesn’t derive its name from that phrase. All these words are much older than the profusion of acronyms in English. When, in fact, did we start talking in acronyms, and why?
The armed forces have much to do with it. And the American army seems to have contributed more than its share. But acronyms don’t have a particularly long pedigree. You won’t find them in the papers of GEN George Washington or LTG Ulysses Grant. (Grant was occasionally referred to as USG, but this was long before the “United States Government” he fought for was universally known by those same letters in bureaucratese, as it is today.) David Wilton, a linguist, says that a 19th-century “smattering” turned into a flood with the first world war, when one of the most famous among them, AWOL (“absent without leave”), is definitively attested for the first time.
The smattering became a smorgasbord with the coming of FDR—the first president (1933-45) to be known so frequently by his initials alone. Roosevelt brought the New Deal economic programme, and many a pointy-headed planner, to Washington, DC. In the midst of the Great Depression, these idealists thought they could remake society with a host of new government programmes. The long names begged for a shorthand: when the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Works Progress Administration were being rushed out of the door, it was natural to dub them the TVA and the WPA.
There may have been another temptation as well. The use of letters as symbols began with the physical sciences: Jons Jacob Berzelius had invented the one- and two-letter system for the chemical elements in 1813, and physicists had unlocked the secrets of the universe with insights from F=MA to E=MC. By analogy, perhaps, something that had an acronym felt scientific and controllable, tempting to government planners in the chaotic world of the mid-20th century. Enter the FBI to police the country, the CIA to spy on others, and the SEC to wrestle with financial markets.
If acronyms meant trying to define something so it could be controlled, this was especially tempting in medicine. Diseases, physical and mental, used to get curt, Germanic names: mumps, measles, madness. (When my paediatrician told me my son had croup, I felt transported to a mud-and-thatch hut in medieval Europe.) But as science progressed, the ailments began to get more Latin- and Greek-derived names: typhoid, cholera, mania, melancholy. Then the late-20th-century version of this trend came along: stringing together a long series of polysyllables to describe an illness—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and so on. It’s only natural that these would become AIDS and COPD. If croup were discovered today, its lovable monosyllable would have no chance: it would be called acute laryngeal irritation disorder or ALID.
At the same time, clever marketing people seized the chance to get into the medical, or quasi-medical acronym game. Having a hard time getting men to talk to their doctor about certain boudoir-related issues? A clever two-step solves the problem: dub it “erectile dysfunction”, and then since nobody wants to say that either, “ED”. Before you know it, celebrities are advertising your medication.
The principle of inflation applies here too, though. When I first saw an advertisement promising treatment for “restless leg syndrome, or RLS”, I thought “now they’re just making it up,” trying to sell drugs. It turns out that RLS is a real thing, also known as Wittmaack-Ekbom’s syndrome (as usual, after two of its discoverers). The names of a German and a Swedish scientist seem to me to give a lot more solidity to the syndrome than that triad of capital letters.
Psychology is another realm where many are not convinced that acronymic new “syndromes” and “disorders” are real. No one is insane any more, or even eccentric, or highly strung; they have BPD or OCD (borderline personality disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder). And it’s tempting to think that we might be over-medicalising kids when we talk about their ODD (oppositional-defiant disorder) and ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). In the old days, conservatives grumble, we had a different label for these kids—“badly behaved”—and we treated their condition with a good hard swat. The grumpy reaction against acronymic inflation may be making us ignore real advances in psychology, throwing the scientific baby out with the alphabet-filled bathwater.
The proliferation of acronyms through texting seems particularly Anglophone. And, there’s a whiff of the American about many acronyms. The standard term for a text in America is itself a set of capitals (SMS, short message service). Now other languages are following suit. However, there is nothing inherently American, or even Anglo-phone, about acronyms.
Acronyms are tools, no better or worse than the people who enliven or burden our lives with them.
(From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Autumn 2010, Extract of Robert Lane Greene who is an international correspondent for The Economist and is writing a book about the politics of language around the world.)
The kids are not ruining the language, though. Grown-ups play the same inflationary game. Walk into any business and a cloud of three-lettered titles surrounds you. The one who used to be just the boss, or the managing director, now styles himself the CEO, for chief executive officer. This alone would be one thing, but it turned into a viral infection: CIO, CTO, CFO, COO, CLO, and so on, for what used to be the heads of technology, finance and operations, and the company lawyer. The so-called C-suite is an allegedly prestigious club, but whither prestige as its ranks swell? Throw in the VPs and SVPs who swarm all over American offices—not just vice-presidents, but senior ones—and everyone is a manager. A study of Linked-In, the networking site, found the number of C- and VP-level members growing three to four times faster than the membership overall. Who, then, is managed any more?
All this seems natural in a technological age, when almost anything we do depends on computers. The first modern computers had acronymic names (ENIAC and UNIVAC), and they set the tone for the subsequent half-century; in fact ever since IBM gave us the cheap PC, homes have been flooded with CPUs (central processing units) that grow in power at an alarming rate, progressing from reading CD-ROMS to downloading MP3s (formerly known as songs) to controlling your HDTV. No one knows what the future of technology holds, but we can be confident it will arrive in a swirl of capital letters.
Acronyms have become so ubiquitous that we look for them even where they don’t exist. They are a major source of the folk etymologies that ping around the internet, etymologies for words that aren’t actually acronyms. “Fuck” isn’t short for “for unlawful carnal knowledge”, “posh” has nothing to do with “port out, starboard home”, and a “tip”, while it might be to insure promptness, certainly doesn’t derive its name from that phrase. All these words are much older than the profusion of acronyms in English. When, in fact, did we start talking in acronyms, and why?
The armed forces have much to do with it. And the American army seems to have contributed more than its share. But acronyms don’t have a particularly long pedigree. You won’t find them in the papers of GEN George Washington or LTG Ulysses Grant. (Grant was occasionally referred to as USG, but this was long before the “United States Government” he fought for was universally known by those same letters in bureaucratese, as it is today.) David Wilton, a linguist, says that a 19th-century “smattering” turned into a flood with the first world war, when one of the most famous among them, AWOL (“absent without leave”), is definitively attested for the first time.
The smattering became a smorgasbord with the coming of FDR—the first president (1933-45) to be known so frequently by his initials alone. Roosevelt brought the New Deal economic programme, and many a pointy-headed planner, to Washington, DC. In the midst of the Great Depression, these idealists thought they could remake society with a host of new government programmes. The long names begged for a shorthand: when the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Works Progress Administration were being rushed out of the door, it was natural to dub them the TVA and the WPA.
There may have been another temptation as well. The use of letters as symbols began with the physical sciences: Jons Jacob Berzelius had invented the one- and two-letter system for the chemical elements in 1813, and physicists had unlocked the secrets of the universe with insights from F=MA to E=MC. By analogy, perhaps, something that had an acronym felt scientific and controllable, tempting to government planners in the chaotic world of the mid-20th century. Enter the FBI to police the country, the CIA to spy on others, and the SEC to wrestle with financial markets.
If acronyms meant trying to define something so it could be controlled, this was especially tempting in medicine. Diseases, physical and mental, used to get curt, Germanic names: mumps, measles, madness. (When my paediatrician told me my son had croup, I felt transported to a mud-and-thatch hut in medieval Europe.) But as science progressed, the ailments began to get more Latin- and Greek-derived names: typhoid, cholera, mania, melancholy. Then the late-20th-century version of this trend came along: stringing together a long series of polysyllables to describe an illness—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and so on. It’s only natural that these would become AIDS and COPD. If croup were discovered today, its lovable monosyllable would have no chance: it would be called acute laryngeal irritation disorder or ALID.
At the same time, clever marketing people seized the chance to get into the medical, or quasi-medical acronym game. Having a hard time getting men to talk to their doctor about certain boudoir-related issues? A clever two-step solves the problem: dub it “erectile dysfunction”, and then since nobody wants to say that either, “ED”. Before you know it, celebrities are advertising your medication.
The principle of inflation applies here too, though. When I first saw an advertisement promising treatment for “restless leg syndrome, or RLS”, I thought “now they’re just making it up,” trying to sell drugs. It turns out that RLS is a real thing, also known as Wittmaack-Ekbom’s syndrome (as usual, after two of its discoverers). The names of a German and a Swedish scientist seem to me to give a lot more solidity to the syndrome than that triad of capital letters.
Psychology is another realm where many are not convinced that acronymic new “syndromes” and “disorders” are real. No one is insane any more, or even eccentric, or highly strung; they have BPD or OCD (borderline personality disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder). And it’s tempting to think that we might be over-medicalising kids when we talk about their ODD (oppositional-defiant disorder) and ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). In the old days, conservatives grumble, we had a different label for these kids—“badly behaved”—and we treated their condition with a good hard swat. The grumpy reaction against acronymic inflation may be making us ignore real advances in psychology, throwing the scientific baby out with the alphabet-filled bathwater.
The proliferation of acronyms through texting seems particularly Anglophone. And, there’s a whiff of the American about many acronyms. The standard term for a text in America is itself a set of capitals (SMS, short message service). Now other languages are following suit. However, there is nothing inherently American, or even Anglo-phone, about acronyms.
Acronyms are tools, no better or worse than the people who enliven or burden our lives with them.
(From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Autumn 2010, Extract of Robert Lane Greene who is an international correspondent for The Economist and is writing a book about the politics of language around the world.)
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
‘UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS’ IN A DEHUMANIZED GLOBALIZED WORLD
There is a need to understand the problem of undocumented workers in a globalized economy, and the plight they encounter in their struggle for day-to-day survival. ‘Undocumented workers’ is the term used for illegal immigrants/entrants, who side-stepping the legal migration laws, take residence and engage in unsanctioned employment in the destination country, mostly under socio-economic compulsion in their country of origin, have a shadowy existence without no/proper documentation. The paper examines the causes of such a phenomenon, the exclusions they endure and its impact in today’s era of globalization.
We need to analyze, under the changed circumstances due to globalization, how economic migration has taken a new form, giving rise to a underground labour market that not only burdens the economy of the destination country, but also gives shape to a newer form of slavery, involving undocumented workers, that further degrades the allocative efficiency of the labour market. Despite the economic benefits, it is a well established fact that globalization of this era has also bred greater inequality in and between societies, has led to increased automation and a shift in emphasis from mass labour to elite labour within the labour market, has created asymmetry by massive capital mobility and restricted labour mobility, has resulted inequalities in distribution of opportunities and resources, has undermined the local determinants ignoring the socio-cultural needs of the people.
Given this context, for a developing country like India, that host millions of undocumented workers, mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal, faces serious crises herself in tackling poverty and unemployment, therefore, it gives us all together a new dimension to the problem of undocumented workers. Finally, it is also necessary to explore the possibility of promoting fairness and sustainability in employment, globally.
We need to analyze, under the changed circumstances due to globalization, how economic migration has taken a new form, giving rise to a underground labour market that not only burdens the economy of the destination country, but also gives shape to a newer form of slavery, involving undocumented workers, that further degrades the allocative efficiency of the labour market. Despite the economic benefits, it is a well established fact that globalization of this era has also bred greater inequality in and between societies, has led to increased automation and a shift in emphasis from mass labour to elite labour within the labour market, has created asymmetry by massive capital mobility and restricted labour mobility, has resulted inequalities in distribution of opportunities and resources, has undermined the local determinants ignoring the socio-cultural needs of the people.
Given this context, for a developing country like India, that host millions of undocumented workers, mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal, faces serious crises herself in tackling poverty and unemployment, therefore, it gives us all together a new dimension to the problem of undocumented workers. Finally, it is also necessary to explore the possibility of promoting fairness and sustainability in employment, globally.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
CHEMOTHERAPY IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO TRY AND ELIMINATE CANCER!
AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY...
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.
3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc., and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.
WHAT CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.
b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk, cancer cells are being starved.
c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells.
To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water--best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.
13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Florescence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
Fwd. by Dr. Amit Sanyal
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.
3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc., and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.
WHAT CANCER CELLS FEED ON:
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.
b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk, cancer cells are being starved.
c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells.
To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water--best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.
13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Florescence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
Fwd. by Dr. Amit Sanyal
Friday, September 10, 2010
"SEVEN BIASES in family literature"
In the literature about "family," seven biases can be identified. It is useful to keep in mind the idea that sociology is about "what is" rather than "what should be."
The ageist bias is that the literature focuses mainly on adults, and often sees seniors and babies as passive rather than as active participants in family social dynamics.
The conservative bias is one in the literature which supports socially conservative policies, as represented by the religious right wing. There is little tolerance for variations from norms described and supported by conservatives.
The heterosexual bias is one that implies that a family is based on marriage between one man and one woman; and that other arrangements are deviations (gay, lesbian, single, commune, bisexual).
The microstructural bias is a focus on internal family social interaction without considering the broad social forces which also affect family structure and dynamics.
The monolithic bias sees the concept of a standard, orthodox or traditional family as a measure against which all variations are seen as temporary deviations. That orthodox family may be the nuclear conjugal family or the extended family.
The racist bias sees families as normal when in the dominant ethnic majority of society, usually white, Anglo Saxon, and that variations of ethnic minorities are seen as aberrations or deviations from the norm.
The sexist bias has two aspects to it; seeing feminine roles as concentrating on household chores, and masculine roles as making major decisions for the family.
Remember that the word "family" itself is not culturally universal, and that kinship principles may be arranged in various ways in various cultures and societies. The word "family" derives from Latin, meaning domestic slaves and servants. Akan society, for example, has no word meaning "family" and the kin system is based on matriliny. It has single words for household residents and matrilineage or matriclan, which we do not have.
{It is worth noting that the word family originally meant a band of slaves. Even after the word came to apply to people affiliated by blood and marriage, for many centuries the notion of family referred to authority relations rather than love ones. The sentimentalization of family life and female nurturing was historically and functionally linked to the emergence of competitive individualism and formal egalitarianism for men.}- Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were, pp. 43-44
By Phil Bartle in http://www.scn.org/cmp/modules/fam-bia.htm
The ageist bias is that the literature focuses mainly on adults, and often sees seniors and babies as passive rather than as active participants in family social dynamics.
The conservative bias is one in the literature which supports socially conservative policies, as represented by the religious right wing. There is little tolerance for variations from norms described and supported by conservatives.
The heterosexual bias is one that implies that a family is based on marriage between one man and one woman; and that other arrangements are deviations (gay, lesbian, single, commune, bisexual).
The microstructural bias is a focus on internal family social interaction without considering the broad social forces which also affect family structure and dynamics.
The monolithic bias sees the concept of a standard, orthodox or traditional family as a measure against which all variations are seen as temporary deviations. That orthodox family may be the nuclear conjugal family or the extended family.
The racist bias sees families as normal when in the dominant ethnic majority of society, usually white, Anglo Saxon, and that variations of ethnic minorities are seen as aberrations or deviations from the norm.
The sexist bias has two aspects to it; seeing feminine roles as concentrating on household chores, and masculine roles as making major decisions for the family.
Remember that the word "family" itself is not culturally universal, and that kinship principles may be arranged in various ways in various cultures and societies. The word "family" derives from Latin, meaning domestic slaves and servants. Akan society, for example, has no word meaning "family" and the kin system is based on matriliny. It has single words for household residents and matrilineage or matriclan, which we do not have.
{It is worth noting that the word family originally meant a band of slaves. Even after the word came to apply to people affiliated by blood and marriage, for many centuries the notion of family referred to authority relations rather than love ones. The sentimentalization of family life and female nurturing was historically and functionally linked to the emergence of competitive individualism and formal egalitarianism for men.}- Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were, pp. 43-44
By Phil Bartle in http://www.scn.org/cmp/modules/fam-bia.htm
Live humbly, there are great people around us, let us learn to BE POLITE…EVERYONE WE MEET IS FIGHTING A HARD BATTLE!
A conversation between a passenger and Software Engineer in Shatabdi Express!!
Vivek Pradhan was not a happy man.. Even the comfort of the
air-conditioned compartment of the Shatabdi express could not cool his
frayed nerves. He was the Project Manager and still not entitled to
air travel. It was not the prestige he sought, he had tried to reason
with the admin person, it was the savings in time. As PM, he had so
many things to do!!
He opened his case and took out the laptop, determined to put the time
to some good use.
'Are you from the software industry sir?' the man beside him was
staring appreciatively at the laptop. Vivek glanced briefly and
mumbled in affirmation, handling the laptop now with exaggerated care
and importance as if it were an expensive car.
'You people have brought so much advancement to the country, Sir.
Today everything is getting computerized.'
'Thanks,' smiled Vivek, turning around to give the man a look. He
always found it difficult to resist appreciation. The man was young
and stockily built like a sportsman..... He looked simple and
strangely out of place in that little lap of luxury like a small town
boy in a prep school. He probably was a railway sportsman making the
most of his free traveling pass.
'You people always amaze me,' the man continued, 'You sit in an office
and write something on a computer and it does so many big things
outside.'
Vivek smiled deprecatingly. Naiveness demanded reasoning not anger.
'It is not as simple as that my friend. It is not just a question of
writing a few lines. There is a lot of process that goes behind it.'
For a moment, he was tempted to explain the entire Software
Development Lifecycle but restrained himself to a single statement.
'It is complex, very complex.'
'It has to be. No wonder you people are so highly paid,' came the reply.
This was not turning out as Vivek had thought. A hint of belligerence
crept into his so far affable, persuasive tone.
'Everyone just sees the money. No one sees the amount of hard work we
have to put in. Indians have such a narrow concept of hard work. Just
because we sit in an air-conditioned office, does not mean our brows
do not sweat. You exercise the muscle; we exercise the mind and
believe me that is no less taxing.'
He could see, he had the man where he wanted, and it was time to drive
home the point.
'Let me give you an example. Take this train. The entire railway
reservation system is computerized. You can book a train ticket
between any two stations from any of the hundreds of computerized
booking centers across the country.
Thousands of transactions accessing a single database, at a time
concurrently; data integrity, locking, data security. Do you
understand the complexity in designing and coding such a system?'
The man was awestruck; quite like a child at a planetarium. This was
something big and beyond his imagination.
'You design and code such things?'
'I used to,' Vivek paused for effect, 'but now I am the Project Manager.'
'Oh!' sighed the man, as if the storm had passed over, 'so your life is easy now.'
This was like the last straw for Vivek. He retorted, 'Oh come on, does
life ever get easy as you go up the ladder. Responsibility only brings
more work. Design and coding! That is the easier part. Now I do not do
it, but I am responsible for it and believe me, that is far more stressful. My
job is to get the work done in time and with the highest quality.
To tell you about the pressures, there is the customer at one end,
always changing his requirements, the user at the other, wanting
something else, and your boss, always expecting you to have finished
it yesterday.'
Vivek paused in his diatribe, his belligerence fading with
self-realization. What he had said, was not merely the outburst of a
wronged man, it was the truth. And one need not get angry while
defending the truth.
'My friend,' he concluded triumphantly, 'you don't know what it is to
be in the Line of Fire'.
The man sat back in his chair, his eyes closed as if in realization.
When he spoke after sometime, it was with a calm certainty that
surprised Vivek.
'I know sir ... I know what it is to be in the Line of Fire......'
He was staring blankly, as if no passenger, no train existed, just a
vast expanse of time.
'There were 30 of us when we were ordered to capture Point 4875 in the
cover of the night.
The enemy was firing from the top.
There was no knowing where the next bullet was going to come from and for whom.
In the morning when we finally hoisted the tri-colour at the top only
4 of us were alive.'
'You are a...?'
'I am Subedar Sushant from the 13 J&K Rifles on duty at Peak 4875 in
Kargil. They tell me I have completed my term and can opt for a soft
assignment.
But, tell me sir, can one give up duty just because it makes life easier?
On the dawn of that capture, one of my colleagues lay injured in the
snow, open to enemy fire while we were hiding behind a bunker.
It was my job to go and fetch that soldier to safety. But my captain
sahib refused me permission and went ahead himself.
He said that the first pledge he had taken as a Gentleman Cadet was to
put the safety and welfare of the nation foremost followed by the
safety and welfare of the men he commanded... ....his own personal
safety came last, always and every time.'
'He was killed as he shielded and brought that injured soldier into
the bunker.. Every morning thereafter, as we stood guard, I could see
him taking all those bullets, which were actually meant for me . I
know sir....I know, what it is to be in the Line of Fire.'
Vivek looked at him in disbelief not sure of how to respond. Abruptly,
he switched off the laptop.
It seemed trivial, even insulting to edit a Word document in the
presence of a man for whom valour and duty was a daily part of life;
valour and sense of duty which he had so far attributed only to epical
heroes.
The train slowed down as it pulled into the station, and Subedar
Sushant picked up his bags to alight.
'It was nice meeting you sir.'
Vivek fumbled with the handshake.
This hand... had climbed mountains, pressed the trigger, and hoisted
the tri-colour. Suddenly, as if by impulse, he stood up at attention
and his right hand went up in an impromptu salute....
This True Story was forwarded by Ms. Angana Dutta
Vivek Pradhan was not a happy man.. Even the comfort of the
air-conditioned compartment of the Shatabdi express could not cool his
frayed nerves. He was the Project Manager and still not entitled to
air travel. It was not the prestige he sought, he had tried to reason
with the admin person, it was the savings in time. As PM, he had so
many things to do!!
He opened his case and took out the laptop, determined to put the time
to some good use.
'Are you from the software industry sir?' the man beside him was
staring appreciatively at the laptop. Vivek glanced briefly and
mumbled in affirmation, handling the laptop now with exaggerated care
and importance as if it were an expensive car.
'You people have brought so much advancement to the country, Sir.
Today everything is getting computerized.'
'Thanks,' smiled Vivek, turning around to give the man a look. He
always found it difficult to resist appreciation. The man was young
and stockily built like a sportsman..... He looked simple and
strangely out of place in that little lap of luxury like a small town
boy in a prep school. He probably was a railway sportsman making the
most of his free traveling pass.
'You people always amaze me,' the man continued, 'You sit in an office
and write something on a computer and it does so many big things
outside.'
Vivek smiled deprecatingly. Naiveness demanded reasoning not anger.
'It is not as simple as that my friend. It is not just a question of
writing a few lines. There is a lot of process that goes behind it.'
For a moment, he was tempted to explain the entire Software
Development Lifecycle but restrained himself to a single statement.
'It is complex, very complex.'
'It has to be. No wonder you people are so highly paid,' came the reply.
This was not turning out as Vivek had thought. A hint of belligerence
crept into his so far affable, persuasive tone.
'Everyone just sees the money. No one sees the amount of hard work we
have to put in. Indians have such a narrow concept of hard work. Just
because we sit in an air-conditioned office, does not mean our brows
do not sweat. You exercise the muscle; we exercise the mind and
believe me that is no less taxing.'
He could see, he had the man where he wanted, and it was time to drive
home the point.
'Let me give you an example. Take this train. The entire railway
reservation system is computerized. You can book a train ticket
between any two stations from any of the hundreds of computerized
booking centers across the country.
Thousands of transactions accessing a single database, at a time
concurrently; data integrity, locking, data security. Do you
understand the complexity in designing and coding such a system?'
The man was awestruck; quite like a child at a planetarium. This was
something big and beyond his imagination.
'You design and code such things?'
'I used to,' Vivek paused for effect, 'but now I am the Project Manager.'
'Oh!' sighed the man, as if the storm had passed over, 'so your life is easy now.'
This was like the last straw for Vivek. He retorted, 'Oh come on, does
life ever get easy as you go up the ladder. Responsibility only brings
more work. Design and coding! That is the easier part. Now I do not do
it, but I am responsible for it and believe me, that is far more stressful. My
job is to get the work done in time and with the highest quality.
To tell you about the pressures, there is the customer at one end,
always changing his requirements, the user at the other, wanting
something else, and your boss, always expecting you to have finished
it yesterday.'
Vivek paused in his diatribe, his belligerence fading with
self-realization. What he had said, was not merely the outburst of a
wronged man, it was the truth. And one need not get angry while
defending the truth.
'My friend,' he concluded triumphantly, 'you don't know what it is to
be in the Line of Fire'.
The man sat back in his chair, his eyes closed as if in realization.
When he spoke after sometime, it was with a calm certainty that
surprised Vivek.
'I know sir ... I know what it is to be in the Line of Fire......'
He was staring blankly, as if no passenger, no train existed, just a
vast expanse of time.
'There were 30 of us when we were ordered to capture Point 4875 in the
cover of the night.
The enemy was firing from the top.
There was no knowing where the next bullet was going to come from and for whom.
In the morning when we finally hoisted the tri-colour at the top only
4 of us were alive.'
'You are a...?'
'I am Subedar Sushant from the 13 J&K Rifles on duty at Peak 4875 in
Kargil. They tell me I have completed my term and can opt for a soft
assignment.
But, tell me sir, can one give up duty just because it makes life easier?
On the dawn of that capture, one of my colleagues lay injured in the
snow, open to enemy fire while we were hiding behind a bunker.
It was my job to go and fetch that soldier to safety. But my captain
sahib refused me permission and went ahead himself.
He said that the first pledge he had taken as a Gentleman Cadet was to
put the safety and welfare of the nation foremost followed by the
safety and welfare of the men he commanded... ....his own personal
safety came last, always and every time.'
'He was killed as he shielded and brought that injured soldier into
the bunker.. Every morning thereafter, as we stood guard, I could see
him taking all those bullets, which were actually meant for me . I
know sir....I know, what it is to be in the Line of Fire.'
Vivek looked at him in disbelief not sure of how to respond. Abruptly,
he switched off the laptop.
It seemed trivial, even insulting to edit a Word document in the
presence of a man for whom valour and duty was a daily part of life;
valour and sense of duty which he had so far attributed only to epical
heroes.
The train slowed down as it pulled into the station, and Subedar
Sushant picked up his bags to alight.
'It was nice meeting you sir.'
Vivek fumbled with the handshake.
This hand... had climbed mountains, pressed the trigger, and hoisted
the tri-colour. Suddenly, as if by impulse, he stood up at attention
and his right hand went up in an impromptu salute....
This True Story was forwarded by Ms. Angana Dutta
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