Friday, December 9, 2011

Friday Science: What the hell?

In the past several weeks I have read two scientific reports on some strange psychosis and delusional abnormalities.  They were both related to cultural beliefs and have a tag name of Culture-Bound Disorder.  The first article was about people, mostly from southeast Asia waking up from sleep unable to move.  They are awake and can move their eyes but cannot move.  Many of the mostly men "feel" an evil presence near them and sometimes see evil sitting on their chest.  The other disorder has set me so aghast and I am not sure I will recover, really!  It is more astounding than the Siamese twin males that were joined at the hip and had a normal lives complete with wives and children.  Much more shocking than birds mating in flight.  Even more morose than a shark with one eye.

There is an area in a distant part of India where people fear being bitten by dogs because it may make them pregnant with puppies.  A survey of the people in the area showed that only nine percent of the otherwise normal people thought the puppy prospect was absurd.   What??!!!?++&*????  I can assure you most definitely that you will not be the same person if you follow this link and read the article.  The man who wrote the article is an arrogant uncaring bonehead yet covers the topic well.

The Asian people become paralyzed and fear impending doom.  Of course they do.  If I woke up one morning and could not move a muscle I would only realize that I was not dead because I would be peeing myself.  These stricken people are mostly male, head of the household types with high levels of stress.  The people with the puppy problem develop life threatening physical problems and many swear they know of deaths resulting from the pregnancies. 

Buddy Hackett used to say he suffered from "Non-acrophobia" which is the fear of not being high!  I have a fear of spiders (most insects of size) and bow legged women.  Culture bound disorders are found in all cultures and they fade with geologic time, like old wives tales.  It is hard to remember that in some parts of the world, whether it is the twenty first century is completely irrelevant and meaningless.  Time is kept by planting seasons or floods.  Reality is from experiences and not book learned knowledge.  Possibilities are of the mind and not of facts.  If your grandma told you a dingo stole her baby, who are you to roll your eyes.
I will never recover to the same tilt because life is a balancing act.  A wise man leans and sways to and fro with the action of life.  This one has run me aground on a rocky crag.  Care must me taken from here and out.


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