Cleaning up

[miriam_e]

A massive scam has been perpetrated upon us all.

When I was a kid the Saturday night bath was standard; that was what everybody did. I used to use ordinary, cheap soap on my hair. There were no shampoos or conditioners. When I grew older I used to love the smell of my girlfriend's underarms when we were having sex. And I was aware of the research explaining that humans released pheromones from the underarms -- that it was the reason women's periods would lock-step if they shared much time.

Barely a century ago Queen Victoria bathed a couple of times a year to set a good example for the people of the British Empire.

Now everybody assumes that we all must shower every day and that not to do so is somehow dirty. We all believe that the only way we can clean our hair is to use a shampoo and that it must be followed by a conditioner. Somehow we've allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into thinking that body odor is unnatural and a bad thing.

Our bodies have lost their natural surface ecologies that protect us from invasion by harmful weed organisms. The skin has been daily swept clear of the many species of friendly bacteria which used to maintain our first-line defences.

Our clothes get washed so much that they last only a short time before being unusable. Once upon a time clothes wore out; now they get washed to pieces. And the effluent from all this washing of us and our clothes is wiping out all the life in the streams of the land around us.

I found, recently that for the first time in my life my scalp appeared to be becoming allergic to something, and it seemed to be the petroleum-based shampoo or the petroleum-based conditioner. I tried different more expensive ones and obtained some relief, but it would have cost too much. Remembering the use of soap when I was young, I decided to try it in place of the shampoo, and continue the conditioner. Worryingly, I still had the allergic response. So, still believing all the crap we are fed from the advertisers I very reluctantly tried using just soap.

The result was astonishing. For the first time in ages my hair was really manageable and felt more full than the flat limp stuff resulting from shampoo+conditioner. It no longer shines like nylon hair on a Barbie doll, but big deal! I found that I had to use real soap -- not the solid detergent that most cakes of "soap" seem to be. Real soap can only be found in the laundry part of supermarkets these days.

I am horrified how brainwashed we have all become on this topic. We all fear that others might detect a whiff of natural odor, and have become hyper-dependent upon petroleum products bottled in plastic petroleum products. How the hell have we let it come to this?

Our society is more than a bit insane.

Comments

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

You know I was just thinking about the very same thing just the other day. You're right, sometimes society does seem to be very insane. One of the insanities I can't stand is that we let our children watch so much violence on TV, and we let them play the most horrendously violent video games, but we get upset if they see a woman's nipple while watching the halftime show of a very violent sport. And we wonder why we have so much violence on the streets! If I had a child I would much rather they saw nudity on TV than all the violence that we now show during prime time.

I found your journal through rpeate. He's on my friends list and I've seen you comment on many of his political entries. I almost always agree with your point of view, so I decided to check out your journal. I hope you don't mind if I put you on my friends list. You're welcome to friend me back if you like, but if not that's okay too. I'm not one of those people who gets ticked off if someone doesn't friend them back, or defriends them at a later time. I've been busy lately getting ready for vacation, so I haven't been doing a lot of posting lately,(just thought I'd let you know incase you're considering friending me back) hopefully that will change when I come back from vacation. I still do read lj almost every day, however, and I'm interested in learning more about you by having you on my friends list.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I must admit I get concerned about violence on TV in movies too, though not the violence itself. What bothers me is the constant message of "if something is wrong, you can fix it easily with violence". It makes it very hard for people to think things through properly. It is bad enough for adults, but becomes almost impossible to convince kids that violence generates more problems when they see their heroes fixing make-believe problems every day by beating the crap out of someone every night on TV, in comic books, in books, newspapers, and the theatre.

I never understood how nudity got to become this big bad. It just leaves me totally dumbfounded how the sight of someone's body can upset people. There was this idiot muslim leader in Melbourne recently (who should have known better, considering all the bad press against muslims lately) who said that western women deserved to be raped the way they dressed in public. I mean, what kind of medieval nightmare did this moron blunder out of? And I wonder how someone can think that way. I lived in the middle of a strongly islamic area in Melbourne for some years and got to know a lot of the people there. Many of them think that westerners are immoral and that the way the women dress is an unconscionable temptation for the men. I always felt like saying that if islamic men were that morally weak that they couldn't handle the sight of free women then maybe there was something desperately wrong with their religion. Western men seem to manage fine.

Thanks for your vote of interest in my views. :) I have been resisting adding people to my friends list lately because it has been growing a little too long. Nevertheless, after looking through your postings I think I need to add you. I'm glad to have met you.

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

Thank you for responding to me, and for adding me to your friends list. I do understand your reluctance to add new people. I myself find it harder and harder to keep up with all my friends. Sometimes I have to go through my list and pare out people who I find myself skipping over when I see their posts come up. In the past it has caused resentment when I've defriended someone, so now I use about three different filters. That way I can still read those people when I have the time, but they won't see that they've been "defriended" and get upset. Anyway, I won't be clogging up your friends list too much in the next few weeks, as I have been very busy lately and haven't had as much time to write as I would like. When I get back from my vacation I will probably write more often. Even then I try not to give too many innane details of my life. When I write in a public forum, (and let's face it lj is a public forum, inless we make all of our posts private) I like to have something to say. Once in a while I will do the update on my life thing, but I don't do a lot of that unless I can combine it with something I think might be of interest to my readers.

By the response you've given me I can see that I've made a good choice in adding you. I agree with everything you've said above. I don't expect that we will always agree on everything, but by having noticed some of your comments in Robert's journal I see that when you don't agree with someone you attack their ideas, and not the person. I can't tell you how much I respect that. I wish everyone could be more like that. We have too much hostility toward each other, at least in this country. We really need to try to be much more civil to each other, even when we dissagree, especially when we disagree. I don't think you and I will dissagree too often, but when we do I have a good feeling that we will be civil to each other in our dissagreements.

I lood forward to getting to know you better.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

On agreeing and disagreeing and civility: my feelings exactly.

On friends and topics: although I mostly talk about things that my old girlfriend (still my best friend) calls "boring and pompous", I value friends who talk about things like the shoes they bought at the mall because they keep me grounded. I have a disconcerting tendency to come adrift from the ordinary world, almost like a disembodied mind. I use those peeks into "normal" life to remind me what it is to be human. :)

Sitting at my desk way out here in the country, miles from the nearest town, with barely enough money to pay the bills, it is so easy to look out at the trees, forget everything, and wonder about universal questions.

[slave-driver.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to say I don't occasioanally make trivial updates about what I'm doing in my daily life, because sometimes I do, and sometimes I also like to hear about what other people are up to. But if those are the only kinds of posts a person makes I find I will eventually lose interest. At some point I like to hear how everything fits into their philosophy on life. I like to know what really makes that person tick. I don't always have to agree, but I like to get a little deeper into a person's mind.

I choose my friens carefully. I had been considering adding you for some time based just on some of your comments in Robert's journal. Just before I added you I clicked on your journal and read your post on bathing and soap. It had personal information in it, as well as some scientific facts, and also some speculation about what a strange society we live in. This one post pretty much covered everything I like to read about in a person's journal. That is what made me decide to finally add you to my friends list. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts.

Doesn't take a muslim...

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago, a high-level judge in New Jersey let a rapist off because of the way the victim was dressed...

Yes, we are all insane.

Some authors attribute part of the problem to glare madness. Too much sensory input in our environment from so much technology, couple with increasing exposure to radiation fields man was never evolved to handle before.

Might as well be that.

Re: Doesn't take a muslim...

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yep. When I wrote that I thought that it sounded like I was being particularly critical of muslims, but I'm actually equally critical of all religions, including those who consider science a religion. (I think science gives us all the answers we need, but I hate it when people become bigotted about some current scientific view... like belief in the big-bang for instance.)

Yeah, this tendency to blame women victims because some (rare) men don't feel the need to control themselves is pretty widespread, but gradually diminishing I think.

I think our madness as a species is largely due to the fact that our extraordinary brain appeared on the scene so very recently. We are still stoneage humans, but equipped with incredibly powerful technology. I have a strong feeling that it will end happily ever after, but there are going to be a lot more tears before then. Luckily we are growing up very, very quickly... a very lucky thing considering that we have less than a century to develop a largely sane society or we face some awful results of our childish actions. We just might make it....

Re: Doesn't take a muslim...

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

I'll second your belief about recent evolution...

Our civilization is just a very thin veneer over millions of years of animal nature.

I have a personal theory that you can learn everything you need to know about human group behavior from watching monkeys at the zoo. For example, when a monkey is scared, it runs up the nearest tree looking for safety.

Now, watch every movie/tv show you can with someone being chased in a panic... what happens? they run INTO a building, up the stairs, and out to the roof.

The base monkey behavior is still there, and unconsciously we all identify with it... and the evidence is in the sheer number of times that particular motif alone is repeated in our entertainment media.

Keep watching the monkeys at the zoo, and you will draw many more parallels.

As to whether or not we make it? My benchmark to say "maybe" will be when our first offworld colonies become self-sufficient.

If we don't get off this planet, we won't make it, in my opinion.

Simple

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

When you live in a world where you are blasted with this commercial:
When she sweats, its sexy. (Show girl dancing). When you sweat,
YOU STINK!

The caps are theirs, and the last two words cover the whole screen in bold red. Nice. Great ad technique, insult your customers... sheesh.

Thankfully the whole thing was so offensive I actually blocked on the product or company name.

But that's the message droned into the herd hour after hour all day in all media. This is part of why I despise all forms of commercial advertising, and particularly appreciated the book PATTERN RECOGNITION by William Gibson.

The fashion, clothing, soap (opera), hygiene, etc all make billions making US feel hebephrenic. Thus, as a society we get driven to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I understand where you are coming from here... I grew up in a very poor family way out in the boonies. All we had was soap and HARD water... shampoo was too expensive. Conditioner makes me feel like I am covered in cooking lard or axle grease or something, so I avoid it.

To make matters worse, everything has its own smell, and no one has figured out smell THEMES... so public places have become a stench riot. I can barely stand to go in malls, airports, elevators, etc because of the stench from all of the conflicting perfumes put in everything.

Another variation on the scam is all of the antibacterial versions of products. We must wash hands with anti-bacterial ooze, wipe counters with anti-bacterial wipes, etc etc etc. If we don't, we might get exposed to a GERM!

News flash, America: Plain soap is 'anti-bacterial' thats why its worked so well for the past few thousand years! But at least lye and ash are naturally occuring.

One wonders what new breeds of super-germs are getting evolved out there as we dump more and more anti-bacterial waste into the ecosphere.

I know its hard to keep a sense of humor with the doom and gloom, but on this topic, you might want to check out Invader Zim's episode called GERMS... you will never look at another anti-bacterial product the same ever again.

Now, the counterpoint:
I can, sadly, point to a few examples of people I know who need to bathe MORE, not less. And I am sure that there were lots of times someone wished they could tell me to. I wish they had, but telling people their need to bathe more, or use less perfume is also part of the taboo culture around hygiene.

Also, in previous times, there were not NEARLY so many people crowded together as there are now. Infrequent bathing doesn't work well in the era of the subway, carpool, elevator, office cubicles, daycares, etc.

Re: Simple

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yes, the advertising capitalises on ingraining paranoia into the customers.

Oooh! I hadn't heard of that William Gibson book. I'll have to find it. I've read almost all of his.

When I grew up I don't think shampoo had been invented, nor had diswashing detergent.

I had never thought about the "stench riot" in public places. My sense of smell is almost nonexistent so I don't notice it.

Yeah, I get really angry at those ads that brainwash mothers into thinking that all bacteria are dangerous so that they drench their kids' environment in poison. Meanwhile Australia's asthma rates climb higher and higher. When I was a kid I couldn't help noticing that the mother of a couple of asthmatic friends was an obsessive cleanliness freak, and that the mother of some other friends was always too tired after a long hard day's work to clean, so their house was always messy and "dirty". The kids in that second family were the strongest, healthiest specimens of humanity I've ever met. Our Mum was just a bit messy, and we kids were very healthy too.

I love Invader Zim, and delighted in that episode. Great message in it.

On the point of some people needing to bathe, I know what you mean, but I have a theory that this comes largely from washing regularly, both in the smelly and the smellee. People who wash a lot generally don't get much chance to build up a lot of odor, so they become a lot more aware of the slightest deviation in scent. Some people who do heavy work or who simply sweat more build up odor faster than others, or may simply wash less often, say twice a week instead of every day. The sudden explosion of scent-producing bacteria (manufacturing the scents, from our skin oils) would cause large amounts of odor, which might lessen if their human held off bathing for a few more days till the skin ecology stopped wildly oscillating and settled down to healthy, controlled populations.

I get the impression of my reading about some of the old cities that people were jammed very close together. I think we may not be as closely pressed as we tend to believe. We westerners are the heaviest users of soaps and detergents and antibacterials, yet we insist on wide personal spaces. People in other cultures where washing is common, but generally without detergent, and minimal use of soap, are much more happy to press much closer than we do.

Re: Simple

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

Pattern Recognition is easily as good as his best Sprawl work.

I agree over-cleanliness prevents the body from developing a stronger immune system. That's the problem with ALL support technology. The crutches reduce the freedom.

Invader Zim: one of my four favorite TV shows, ever. GERMS... just kills me with the Howard Hughes lampooning and the SPACE MEAT!

What got me noticing the stench riot was when I quit smoking.
While smoking, you could run over a skunk and I woundn't notice it.

Then I quit smoking and as my blocked sense of smell returned, so did the urge to vomit at the complete ASSAULT of perfumes, soaps, and other smells built into clothing soap, hair spray, etc.

Just driving across Houston, the various stenches of the various parts of town still make me queasy.

I didn't miss my sense of smell, and more than once I have considered restarting smoking just to get rid of it again.

As far as cultural closeness... if you have been an outsider in one of those group hugs... ew! The stench can be overwhelming. Just have to buck up and take it, but it can be unpleasant in the extreme.

Then there are the Maasai who, according to one story I heard, laugh at outsiders and call Americans 'ilmeet' which loosely means 'those who confine their farts'.

Cultures can be fun.