The Best Piece of Advice I’ve Ever Heard

July 15, 2013September 4, 2023 RilalyLeave a comment

“You’ll figure it out,” Rodney Dangerfield informed a young, aspiring standup comedian who sought his counsel on “something in comedy.”^[1]

Prior to this aspiring comedian approaching Rodney Dangerfield, we can guess that just about every comedian sought career advice from him. Not only was he one of the most successful standup comedians of his era, but he failed so miserably that he quit, and he didn’t just quit, regather, and form a comeback. He quit show business for ten years.

“To give you an idea of how well I was doing at the time I quit,” he recalled later, “I was the only one who knew I quit.”

Every comedian but they didn’t know what he figured out in his eventual comeback. They might have wanted to know what he figured out, how they could apply it to their act, or they might have wondered if he thought they should just quit too. The latter might have been the underlying question that no one asks aloud. “Now that you’ve seen my act, what do you think? How can I fix it, is it fixable, or “Should I just quit?”

The unknown, aspiring comedian who approached Dangerfield in this particular scenario was Jerry Seinfeld. We can guess that Dangerfield was probably trying to dismiss Seinfeld, hoping that yet another comedian would just leave him alone with their career-defining questions, or he found the answer to that question to be so loaded with variables, and so time consuming, that he didn’t want to go down that road with yet another aspiring comedian. Whatever the case, we can surmise that Seinfeld was disappointed by Dangerfield’s response, but Rodney probably thought it was the best piece of advice to hand out to anyone aspiring to be anything. We can probably translate his advice to “Hey, I had to figure this thing out for myself, and you do too. If you don’t want to, then you’ll have your answer.”

For all we know, Rodney sat in the audience during that Seinfeld’s act and decided that he didn’t know how to perfect it, fix it, or help Seinfeld personalize it better. We can guess that he didn’t think it was so bad that he didn’t know how to fix it, but that Seinfeld’s act was so unique and different from Rodney’s that that might have been the reason Rodney didn’t know how to fix it. Rodney might have even loved the Seinfeld’s act so much that he couldn’t wait to see how the comedian would fix all of the intricacies of the act. Perhaps he was a fan, and he didn’t want to meddle with another man’s act. Whatever the case actually was, “You’ll figure it out” seems dismissive, but as with all good advice and all perfect strawberries, it becomes tastier the more you chew on it.

Some advice is more immediate and usable. Former Major League pitcher Randy Johnson once talked about the advice fellow pitcher Nolan Ryan gave him. After watching “The Big Unit” pitch, Nolan informed him that the finishing step of his pitching motion should end approximately one inch further to the left. Randy said that that seemingly trivial piece of advice changed his whole career. He stated that he wouldn’t have accomplished half of what he did without it. He even went so far as to say he owed Nolan Ryan a lifelong debt for that career-changing advice. Some of us have received such advice, but for most of us, advice is more oblique and requires personal interpretation.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever heard combines an acknowledgment of the struggle to succeed with a notice that the recipients of such advice must find a unique, individualistic method of applying it. The best advice I’ve ever heard does not involve miracle cures, quick fixes, or the elusive true path to instant success “That can be yours for one low installment of $9.99!” Most of the best nuggets of information I’ve heard, such as “You’ll figure it out,” are so obvious that the recipient thinks they’ve wasted everyone’s time by asking the question.

The underpinning of “You’ll figure it out” suggests that there are no universal methods to achieving true individual success, especially in the arts. A struggling individual can watch a how-to video or read a training manual. They can study the various expert techniques and the experts’ interpretations of those techniques. They can internalize the advice offered by everyone and their brother, but at some point, individuals who hope to achieve true success eventually have to figure it all out for themselves.

Instant success is as rare in the arts as it is in every walk of life, but if an individual is lucky enough to avoid having to figure it out, they’re apt to find the level of success they achieve meaningless when compared to those who experience failure, adjust accordingly, and struggle to carve out their own niche.

In the course of my career in low-paying jobs, I worked with a number of flash-in-the-pan employees who didn’t think they needed to to figure anything out. They considered themselves Tom-Cruise-in-shades naturals. They were the high-energy, fast-talking, glamour types who focus so much energy on their new job that they burst out of the gate to thunderous applause. Trainers and bosses love them. “Look at Bret!” they say, high-fiving Bret in the hall, hoping to inspire everyone within earshot to be more like Bret. The one thing the powers-that-be do not see, or don’t know, is that these high-energy, fast-talking, glamorous, flash-in-the-pan types often burn out after reaching the immediate goals that define them as successful.

Those who experience a measure of instant success are often the darlings and studs of the training class. They can answer every question, and they often enter the training seminar with quotes on success from the famous and successful. They treat training classes as a competition, as one would an athletic event, and they’re not afraid to do touchdown dances soon after the release of the initial productivity numbers. They wear the clothes and drive the cars to foster the image. They may even go so far as to have someone in authority catch them reading a personal success guide that one of them may read to chapter two. Most of them won’t read that far, however, because most of them aren’t in it for the long-haul.

Bullet-point, large idea minds have no patience for the time it takes to figure out the minutiae the rest of us will pine over in the agonizing trial-and-error process. The instantly successful don’t heed Rodney Dangerfield’s advice to “figure it out,” because they already have it all figured out. Either that or they’ve done so much to foster the image of one who already has that they don’t want to stain that image with new knowledge. They seek the quick-learner perception, and most of what they attain after the flurry-to-impress stage lies in either the knowledge they dismiss as something they already knew or inconsequential minutiae. They just know what they know, and that’s enough for the show.

They are also not good at taking criticism, as most constructive criticism calls for a restart, and they’re much too smart for a restart. To be fair, some of this criticism is bestowed on quick learners by jealous types who enjoy feeling they have greater authority on the subject, but some of that criticism is constructive. It falls upon all of us to figure out whether we are receiving helpful criticisms or competitive insults. Some criticism should make us wonder if we’re deluding ourselves with the belief that we’re as accomplished as we think. Some suggests that to find success in our craft, we should humbly consider doing it like someone else. In some cases, the criticism is correct, for there’s nothing wrong with following a proven path to success. That advice can be right or wrong for us, but that is just something else we have to figure out.

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“Do you have any tips on how to keep writing?” a fellow writer once asked me. My first inclination was to tell him about a book I knew that covers this very topic. I empathized with the idea that writing has few immediate rewards, and I enjoyed the perception of being a writer who knows what he is talking about when it comes to writing. I never read that book about writing, but I was sure it was loaded with all the usual ideas: “Keep Post-it notes on hand, so you don’t miss out on those little inspirations that could turn into great ideas.” Another solid idea they offer is, “Write a story that occurred in your life, for your life is an excellent cavern that can be mined for constant gems.” Then there is the ever-present, “Read, read, and read some more.” I could’ve told that writer about that book I never read, but even if I did take the time to read it and I found it invaluable to me, my recommendation would have been half-hearted. Experience has taught me that true success in writing requires nuanced ingenuity and creativity, and the writer has to figure these elements of the process out for themselves. If they don’t want to go through that time-consuming and laborious process, they should go do something else. That idea would form my addendum to Dangerfield’s quote: “You’ll [either] figure it out … or you won’t, and if you don’t, you might want to consider doing something else, and you’ll need to figure that out too.”

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I’m quite sure Jerry Seinfeld, sought Rodney’s advice, because he knew all about Rodney’s well-documented failures. Seinfeld likely knew that Rodney was so frustrated with his inability to achieve anything in the field of comedy that he just quit, and he didn’t try again for almost ten years. Seinfeld probably thought Dangerfield could give him a shortcut out of his personal cocoon and transform into a bona fide star. “You’ll figure it out!” the answer Rodney Dangerfield offered to the young Seinfeld, alluded to that struggle a butterfly goes through in its efforts to escape its cocoon. Yet, as any nature lover knows, if an outside influence cuts the butterfly’s struggle short, it will not gain the strength necessary to survive in the wild.

On that note, some critics grow frustrated with the amount of self-help charlatans moving from town to town in their Miracle Cure stagecoaches, who promise placebo elixirs to those seeking advice. They should direct these frustrations, instead, at those seeking shortcut exits from personal cocoons. When Seinfeld approached Dangerfield, and the aspiring writer approached me, they sought an alternative to learning from experience and failure, but Rodney’s advice suggests that he never found one. “You’ll figure it out,” might sound dismissive, but it also speaks to learning from experience and failure, and the resultant, almost imperceptible adjustments a craftsman must make to separate their final product from all of the others. The final answer for those seeking a quick fix is that there is no perfect piece of advice that we can give another who is unable or unwilling to display the temerity necessary to endure the necessary elements of failing, learning from that failure, and making all of the frustrating, time-consuming, and tedious little adjustments that must be made along the way. The final answer will be the answer you find. The final answer is that the struggle provides answers. The struggle informs the craftsman whether or not they are capable of fixing what is wrong with their presentation, and if they are desperate enough to do what is necessary to carve out some individual definition of success in their craft, and if they aren’t, they’ll figure that out too.

The History of Bloodletting by Mark Twain

February 1, 2013December 24, 2024 Rilaly1 Comment

“The change from reptile to bird was not as tremendous, it just took longer.” –Mark Twain on bloodletting

In 1890, the satirist Mark Twain published an essay called A Majestic Literary Fossil. In it he detailed “public reverence for old ideas and hostility to new ones” as it pertained to a medical procedure called bloodletting. Bloodletting was a medical practice that began in the age of antiquity, in Egypt. The logic behind the practice, then spread to the Greeks and Romans, the Arabs and Asians, and eventually throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and it remained atop prevailing wisdom for the next 3,000 years, until studies, performed in the 19th century showed that bloodletting could have harmful effects. Twain’s A Majestic Literary Fossil, details the life of those trapped in what we could call is one of history’s first medical findings, findings that the most brilliant minds of medicine theorized could cure all that ailed us.

The theory behind bloodletting can be condensed in one succinct sentence: “A body’s “humors” (fluids) have to be in proper balance to sustain health.” That was the initial, old world translation. A modern translation would be that bloodletting involved the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness or disease. That’s pretty much it, all of the theories that followed either supported, or contributed to that theory. Although Galen of Pergamon made some important discoveries regarding blood, he also contributed to this theory with the belief that blood “was created and eventually used up.” Galen did not know that blood circulated in the manner we do today, and as a result, he believed that some blood could stagnate in the extremities and cause ill health. Thus, he believed that the vagaries inherent in humoral balance were the basis for health and illness. He believed that blood was the dominant humor and the one in most need of control. In order to perpetuate this balance of the humors, a physician would have to either remove excess, or stagnant, blood from the patient, or give them an emetic to induce vomiting, or a diuretic to induce urination. A more modern interpretation of the theory, with less jargon, is that they believed there was “bad blood” and “good blood”. Bad blood caused various ailments, and it had to be drained periodically, or proactively, to signal to the body to start creating good blood, or fresh blood. When the body encountered ailments, their theory suggested, it was because the blood hadn’t been let out sufficiently, or proactively, and reactive bloodletting measures were required to address the ailment sufficiently.

We can all laugh at the “brilliant minds” of medicine who developed and enhanced these theories now, Mark Twain included, for believing that bloodletting was ahead of its time as a medical marvel, and a cure for what ails you, in those first 3,000 years of modern medicine. Twain believed it too, however, for much of his life, because he was captive to his era, and a man of letters as opposed to medicine. It was only when his modern medical minds corrected the theories behind bloodletting that Twain saw the light, and began mocking the miracle minds of medicine for taking so long to modernize.

Twain joined hands with those who helped his era see the light on bloodletting, and that’s when he lamented that “The change from reptile to bird was not as tremendous [as the change from bloodletting], it just took longer.” Yet, we might mock Twain’s 1890 definition of “modern medicine” 100 plus years hence, as much as he mocked the archaic practices of his past, and how many future readers will mock our definition 100 plus years from now? Will they be laughing at us for our prolific use of antibiotics to cure so much of what ails us? Will they be looking back at our use of chemotherapy as an archaic treatment of cancer? Are these the best of times in medical knowledge and technology, or will future readers consider our advancements in medicine as laughable as we do those in Twain’s time did with archaic idea of bloodletting as a cure-all?

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Twain’s essay focuses much of its scorn on the bloodletting theories of the prominent physician, surgeon, and philosopher Galen of Pergamon from Rome (circa 129-216 A.D.). Historians considered Galen the father of Humorism, or bloodletting, and he based his theories on dissections of monkeys.

Twain writes that Galen would’ve been welcomed into his father’s home, but that Galen might have been left waiting, because “our family doctor didn’t allow blood to accumulate in the system.” [Author’s Note: Writings from the era detail that optimum use of bloodletting’s preventative measures required that a proactive doctor bleed his patients at least once a month.] Twain then added, with some spite for Galen and his theories on bloodletting, Whereas, if Galen should appear among us to-day [in the era after bloodletting], he could not stand anybody’s watch; he would inspire no awe; he would be told he was a back number, and it would surprise him to see that that fact counted against him, instead of in his favor. He wouldn’t know our medicines; he wouldn’t know our practice; and the first time he tried to introduce his own, we would hang him.”

The commentary provided in this essay focuses on what Twain knew in his modern age (circa 1890), versus what they thought they knew yesteryear. It focuses some scorn, some objective looks, and some hilarity on the prevailing wisdom of the previous eras. In their “modern era” of medicine, they saw how ridiculous collective wisdom could be, when viewed in the reflective “glare of the open day”. The essay details, without actually stating it, how much deference we offer doctors, their theories, and authority figures in general. The essay also focuses on how scientific theory can appear groundbreaking and miraculous in one era, until the “knowledge of the moderns” reveals the serious flaws of the previous era.

Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer, humorist, satirist, and essayist who critiqued everything from the past to his definition of the present. Before going through the list of Twain’s hilarious documentation of the manner in which bloodletting was alleged to cure everything from the common to the severe, we should note the qualifiers author Thomas Morris added before “gently mocking” the medical cures of a bygone era in his book The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth.

“The methods [doctors] used were consistent with their understanding of how the body worked, and it is not their fault that medical knowledge has advanced considerably since then.”

It’s not their fault, I would add, and it’s wasn’t their doing. The doctors, family practitioners, or ear, nose, and throat specialists of the era were handcuffed by the constraints of knowledge at the time, and as Morris adds they performed admirably under such constraints.

“One thing that these case histories demonstrate,” Morris adds, “is the admirably tenacious, even bloody-minded, determination of doctors to help their patients, in an age when their art left much to be desired.”

Whenever we critique or complain about the constraints of modern medicine, we do so without considering how much time, effort, and concern occurred at every level of the modern medical pyramid. Their goal, no matter what defined their drive, was to redefine what was consider modern medicine for our health and prolonged life. Those at the bottom of this pyramid, our doctors, use that information, technology, and everything at their disposal to treat us. When we look back at what the “most brilliant minds of medicine” and their modern medical pyramid, we just laugh at them for being so foolish without considering how frustrating and agonizing it must’ve been for them to do everything they could, using everything at their disposal, only to lose a patient. They were their patient’s representative of modern technological advancement and knowledge, and when they came up short, their patients blamed them for their failures. How many parents sent their sons and daughters to these “brilliant minds of medicine” desperately seeking a cure, and those doctors desperately sought to satisfy their concerns? The narrative is funny when painted with a broad brush, but when we take a step back, we see the “admirably tenacious, even bloody-minded, determination of doctors to help their patients, in an age when their art left much to be desired.”

No matter what era we live in, our family doctor, or our ear, nose and throat (ENT) family practitioner is our face of modern medicine, and we expect them to know every nugget of information our current modern medicine has at its disposal, and we expect them to have the latest, greatest technological assistance at their disposal, but they sit at the bottom of the medical community’s pyramid. They read the latest medical journals to learn what modern marvels and research might take away the pain, or cure us of what ails us. Yet, they play no role in the research that goes into the articles they read. They read it to help them make determinations on what courses to follow with treatment or prescriptions to write. They also use the technological innovations created by others to pinpoint our ailment, so we could say they are both the beneficiaries and captives of their era’s definition of modern medicine.

Thomas Morris’ qualifiers illustrate that as interesting, informative, and entertaining as Twain’s essay is, it is annoying to read an author assume some level of authority with a hint of intellectual superiority directed at the most brilliant minds of another era without similar qualifiers. It is so easy to criticize the past, and authors like Twain and others, critique past knowledge and technology from the pedestal of modern research, acquired knowledge, and technology as if they had something to do with it. Few of these authors acknowledge that they, like the rest of us, are the beneficiaries of modern advancements, even though they have not personally contributed anything to the difference between the eras.

As low as the ENT sits on the pyramid of modern medicine, the writer and satirist is one step lower, just above us, as the purveyor of such information. Yet, there’s nothing wrong with a skilled satirist, on the level of Mark Twain, ridiculing the past in an entertaining manner, because it cements the George Santayana quote, “Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” We all learn in different ways, some are visual learners, some have brains that need to hear information, but we all know comedy, humor, and mockery. Twain knows this, and he presents his information in an entertaining manner, but he still should’ve added some elements of humility as it pertains to the constraints of his knowledge and expertise in this arena.

Even after placing Twain’s critiques and complaints of a bygone era in what I find proper context, I still find Twain’s drill down to the bloodletting cures of common ailments entertaining.

“[The change from the practice of bloodletting] is the utter reversal, in a couple of generations, of an attitude which had been maintained without challenge or interruption from the earliest antiquity. It amounts to creating man over again on a new plan; he was a canal boat before, he is an ocean greyhound to-day. The change from reptile to bird was not more tremendous, and it took longer.”

Headache: “One could die of a headache in the age of bloodletting,” Twain writes. “For bloodletting was listed as the proper cure of a headache back then. One such victim “seized with a violent pain in the head” required bloodletting in the arms, the application of leeches to the nostrils, the forehead, the temples, and behind the ears.

“Alas,” observed the doctor, named Bonetus, who was focused on this particular patient, “These procedures were not successful, and the patient dy’d (sic). Had the patient not dy’d, and a surgeon skilled in Arteriotomy been present, that procedure would’ve been called upon.” [Author’s note: Arteriotomy, as defined by Twain, “Is the opening of an artery with a view of taking away more blood” when the opening of the veins proved insufficient to cure what ailed the patient.]

“Here was a person being bled from the arms, forehead, nostrils, back, temples, and behind the ears,” Twain adds, “and when none of this worked the celebrated Bonetus was not satisfied, and he wanted to open an artery for a view of the cure. Now that we know what this celebrated Bonetus did to relive a headache, it is no trouble to infer that if he had a patient that suffered a stomachache, he would disembowel him. Bonetus labels his writings as “observations”. They sound more like to confessions to me.”

Frostbite: Twain cites several remedies listed in the 1745 Dictionary of Medicine by Dr. James of London and Samuel Johnson. According to this book, “One can cure frostbite by mixing the ashes of an ass’s hoof with a woman’s milk” and “Milk is bad for the teeth, for it causes them to rot, and loosens the gums.”

Dentures: “They did apparently have false teeth in those days,” Twain writes, “But they were lashed to neighboring teeth with wires or silk threads. Wearers of these teeth were encouraged not to eat with them, or laugh with them, as they usually fell out when not at rest. You could smile with them, but you should not do so without practicing first, or you may run the risk of overdoing it. These false teeth were not for business, just decoration.”

Malaria: The cure for malaria, according to a man named Paracelsus, is a spider, a spider’s web, or water distilled through a spider’s web. As evidence of their homeopathic properties, Paracelsus, notes that when he gave a spider to a monkey for consumption, “That monkey is usually free of the disorders from which they normally suffer.” Paracelsus then backs this up with the case of a dying woman who was bled dozens of times a day without response. When these constant bleedings failed to yield satisfactory results, the desperate doctors forced this woman to swallow several wads of spider web, and the results were immediate. “She straight-way mended,” Paracelsus wrote. “So,” writes Twain, “The sage (Paracelsus) is full of enthusiasm over the miracle cure that the spider web presented while mentioning, in only the most casual way, the discontinuance of the dozens of daily bleedings she had to endure. Paracelsus never suspected that this had anything to do with the cure.”

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Twain’s essay, and all of the more modern books that followed with documented historical references to archaic medical practices of a bygone era, come equipped with two messages: be grateful for the time you live in, and if you ever achieve a method of time travel, make sure you can get back. Be grateful to all of the minds of medicine who have compiled information, through countless hours of testing and research, for giving you better health and a longer life through better medicine, greater technology, and improving the knowledge doctors have to treat us. We can all enjoy looking back at the procedures and prescriptions with a laugh, but don’t forget to be grateful. And if that ingenious mind ever comes along and figures out a way to thwart the seemingly impossible logistics of physics and achieves time travel, they should heed the warning: make sure you can get back.

The eventual creator of the time machine should read all of these stories on archaic medical practices and procedures very carefully, and they should note that getting back might be just as important, if not more important than getting there. Before setting the world on fire with your physics defying version of the DeLorean, you might want to delay your incredible adventure a year or two to check and recheck your ability to get back. Going back to Ford’s Theater to see Abe and Mary Todd might be everything you hoped it would be, as everyone on the planet and presumably everyone in the history of man, will know your name as the one who cracked the code, but if you can’t get back, you could be subject to everything Twain, Morris, and others detail in their narratives about the relative definitions of modern medicine. If you are so brilliant that you’ve conquered the final block of physics preventing time travel, and you are able to visit your great grandfather, make sure you have enough gas, electrical power (through atomic fusion), or whatever elements, chemicals, or variations of energy you need to get back, because if you get stuck in his era, and if you’re not immune to everything they have traveling around in their sphere, you might fall prey to a doctor who knows that all they need to do is properly balance your humors.

Humors of the body were broken down to four basic components by Galen: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. “The theory of the four humors arose out of a Hellenic philosophy that attempted to relate all things to universal laws.” Another component of the theory was that bloodletting could produce beneficial and countering effects on the body that was subjected to deleterious effects incurred as a result of the effects changing seasons could have on humors, how a person’s dietary habits could affect these fluids, the zodiac, a person’s age, and even the compass directions’ effects. The theory held that any, and all, of these exterior forces could shake up a body’s humors and cause a body to produce more of one humor (fluid) than was necessary in that body. By releasing the blood from the body, the body could then re-regulate the humors better in regeneration.

Twain also takes some other cracks at the “home remedy” market of his day. He cites “Alexander’s Golden Antidote” that contains over one hundred ingredients, some of them common, others too complicated to mention, or attain over the counter. Twain concludes the lengthy description of this antidote, “Serve with a shovel,” but, he corrects, “We are only to take an amount that is the quantity of a hazelnut” according to the instruction on the listing. He then mocks the “Aqua Limacum” antidote that lists the “homeopathic” qualities of the garden snail when properly prepared by washing in beer, baked in fires contained in a cleaned chimney until “they make a noise”. “And with a knife and a coarse cloth to wipe away any green froth that develops; then combining those snails with a quart of saline scoured earthworms; which should then be laid on a bed of herbs and combined with two handfuls of goose dung, and two handfuls of sheep dung, then put in three gallons of strong ale, and fixed on the head and refrigeratory until distilled according to art.”

“The book does not say whether this is to be taken in one dose,” Twain writes, “or if you should split it and take a second shot at it … in case you live through the first one. The book does not specify what ailment this concoction is good for,” Twain continues, “But I have found that it is a formidable nostrum for raising good flatulencies from the stomach. It appears as though the advocates of this antidote sought to empty a sewer down the throats of those with malady so as to expel it. It is equivalent to dislodging larva from cheese with artillery fire.”

Most readers of this essay, yours truly included, would infer that Twain stood tall against homeopathy as a cure for anything, but he credits homeopathy for helping advance modern medicine beyond bloodletting and other archaic forms of medicine. He states, “When you reflect upon the fact that your father had to take such medicines as those listed above, and that you would be taking them today yourself but for the introduction of homeopathy, which forced the old-school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business, you may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the mainstream medical proponents to destroy it, even though you may never employ any homeopath but a mainstream medical proponent in your life.”

The takeaway from this essay, as I see it, harkens back to the Dickens’ quote: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…” Are we living in the best of times in regards to medical technology and advancement, or have we “advanced” to the worst of times where we run the risks of foregoing the natural, homeopathic, and organic cures of our forebears?

Twain writes that the collective brains of modern medicine might still be bleeding us if it hadn’t been for homeopaths injecting some sense into the conversation, but such a statement leads us to a confusing fork in the road that asks whether we should continue to follow homeopathy or the advancements in modern medicine, or as Twain seems to suggest a healthy combination of the two?

In our more modern era, there is a move toward advancements in modern medicine that is just as strong, in some quarters, as the movement against it. There is a common sentiment, among those against, that states that proponents of modern medicine are relatively neglectful of the consequences of modernity. An old biology teacher of mine captured this when he said, “Any time you put a foreign substance into your body; there will be other ramifications.” When a patient puts something foreign in their body, this theory states, something else might fall out as a result. When the patient repeatedly takes a foreign, synthetic substance to solve an ailment of the left eye, it might deplete the stomach of bile, or they might not be able to hear out of their right ear in a year. We’ve all read the research, heard the disclaimers, and experienced horror stories, but which side of medical knowledge do we trust more? Did the relative scarcity of medicinal techniques force our forebears to brilliantly, if simplistically, derive more natural –and in some opinions more effective– methods of survival in their age? Does our suspicion of advancement and technology cause us to reference old world, home remedies, and those remedies used by Native Americans, the Ancients, or any of those generations who preceded us, because they were forced to be more attuned to natural, more organic, and thus healthier cures?

Most of us are not students in the field of medicine, and we don’t understand how some guy in a lab can synthetically create some substance that makes our body work better, and what we don’t understand, we don’t trust. We’d much rather put our trust in the time-honored tradition of homeopathic remedies. Or, as my Biology teacher alluded, we’d much rather not introduce foreign, synthetic substances into our biology if we can avoid it, for fear of something else falling out. What if, as the idiot states, the cure is worse than the disease? What if it works? What if the medical marvel procures a cure with acceptable side effects? Will we trust it, or do we prefer nature’s natural products, because that just makes more sense than taking something, some egghead developed in a chemistry lab?

How many of us have watched those commercials promising cures that are so laced with disclaimers that the disclaimers take up the majority of the commercial. It’s almost laughable. It’s so ridiculous that we might want to put out a call on the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to up the average twelve to twenty-four years of testing on medicinal drugs before they hit our shelves. “I don’t trust them,” we say when the Big Pharmaceutical Company puts another drug on the market, and we resort to the antidote that calls for snails, worms, goose dung, and lamb dung for a cure. “I just prefer the natural cures that we’re learning so much about nowadays,” we say, and that does sound more intelligent than those who seek modern, Western advancements in medical technology. “They’re only in it for profit.” Fair enough, but if one of those Big Pharmaceutical puts a drug on the market that leads to negative nationwide headlines, the effect those stories can have on the company stock, and the resultant effect on their quarterly profit statements are such that they want to do everything in their power to prevent it. They may not care about their customers in the sense that they only care about their stock price, their profit margin, and their corporate bottom line, but the results are often the same.

Bottom line for those who look back to a more natural, less synthetic era for their cures may want to consider the science that informed bloodletting and other cures and preventative measures that they considered sound science. Much of the science that informed those more traditional cures led to a 42.5 life expectancy, whereas modern science and medicine have our current life expectancy at 78.7. For every Eastern, homeopathic remedy that worked in Twain’s era, and could work now, there are also about one hundred, bloodletting type cures listed in the 1745 Dictionary of Medicine by Dr. James of London and Samuel Johnson that did not. Or, as the old saying goes, be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.

Turning the Other Cheek

October 4, 2012September 26, 2021 RilalyLeave a comment

“If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek,” is one of the most powerful, most ubiquitous quotes from Jesus of Nazareth. It has been quoted, paraphrased, and interpreted throughout my life, and for thousands of years prior to that. To say that the quote has been misinterpreted may be a misnomer, for as with all brilliant philosophical quotes of this nature, it’s open to subjective interpretation, relative to the person, time, and place.

“What does it mean?” a young child asked his teacher. The teacher provided an answer that aligned with the interpretations of the day’s pacifist’s ideals. The child enjoyed that interpretation. He wanted peace. He wanted peace throughout the world, especially on the playground. He wanted to play the role of messenger for this interpretation to spread the word, but he knew his bullies. He knew that they were irrationally prone to violence in ways that a peacenik, like his teacher, either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. He knew, as later crystallized in the movie The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to see things burn.” Asking bullies for peace, in such a manner, was simply unrealistic in the child’s world.

The young child didn’t call his teacher out. He assumed his teacher knew more than he did, and he also didn’t want to be disrespectful. He was just frustrated that he didn’t think he could apply this answer to his situation. He thought she was smarter than him, and if she were in a similar situation, she would find a way to make it apply, but he couldn’t. He thought he wasn’t strong enough or confident enough. He also knew that providing her further detail of the situation, and the urgency he had for greater meaning, would result in a “If that continues, you come talk to me,” reply from the teacher. He didn’t want to hear that, because he knew that that would only result in more abuse at the hands of the bully, and scorn, and a possible ruination of his reputation.

To add to his frustration, the child would see his teacher’s interpretation of the quote work on TV, and in the movies. He would read it in fairy tales and other books, but he knew that their solutions were all theoretical before he even knew what theoretical meant. Their theory was based on the idea that all kids were truly good kids, and that every bully was so reasonable they were open to reason.

The young child took his dilemma to his mother, and his mother felt sorry for him. She offered him solutions, but as every boy knew most female advice doesn’t work on the playground. She knew it too, so she asked the father for advice, and the father said: “You walk up to him and punch him in the mouth!” The mother was aghast. She said, “He’s little. That kid’s probably twice his size.” The dad then muttered something about the rules of the jungle and said, “If you want to end it, you have to end it. If you don’t want to do that, don’t ask. Stay away from the kid … I don’t know.”

Here, the young child stood at a crossroads in life. He was all alone in a defining moment, and he knew it. He favored the turn the other cheek philosophy for one reason: It would be less painful and less confrontational. Plus, in some ways, it appealed to the manner in which he thought the world should work. The world should be one that rejected violence. Violence never solved anything. That’s what they said on TV, in movies, and in all the fairy tales he had read throughout his life. Jesus said something along those lines, and so did Gandhi, but they didn’t say it where it mattered most in his world, and on the playground, in the jungle, as his dad put it.

This kid tried everything at one point. He tried reasoning with the bully. He tried trading comments. He used every piece of advice he could gather, and at some point, it proved pointless.

In the midst of these exchanges, the kid proved to be quick on his feet, intellectually, and he got the better of the bully. It was a shining moment for the boy, and he was proud, probably too proud. He wore his pride well, and contrary to the advice the kid sought, this infuriated the bully.

His bully finally punched him, and it didn’t hurt as bad as the kid thought it would. The kid didn’t think at all, as a matter of fact, he struck back. Prior to this incident, he dreamed that when he finally struck the bully, it would be the haymaker heard throughout his world. It wasn’t. He wasn’t schooled in the art of fighting. He had never been in a fight before. His punch was ugly, sloppy, and ineffective.

He heard the idea that most bullies don’t want to fight, they just want to bully, and the minute you stand up to them they’ll back down. They might even respect you more. They might pump an eyebrow at the subject of their ridicule and say, “Nice punch kid!” and walk away. That’s the way it worked in the ABC After School Specials, but that wasn’t the way it worked in his reality.

The young child was called upon to engage in a protracted tussle that extended far beyond the single, exclamatory punch. It turned out to be this kid’s personal Karate Kid/Tom Cruise moment, except for the fact that he lost the fight. The bully, the kid knew, had two older brothers who loved to fight. They punched him all the time. The bully probably fought his brothers every day, and in the course of those daily bouts he developed a love of fighting.

After his humiliating defeat, however, a funny thing happened. Even though the bully thoroughly enjoyed torturing the kid every day, and he obviously enjoyed beating on him in the bathroom that day would prove to be the last time the bully ever picked on him. The bully never said anything about the matter, and he never said anything regarding a new found respect for the kid. He just chose another antelope limping at the back of the pack.

The kid expected some kind of renewed, progressive torture that centered around a comment such as, “How’s your face kid?” He expected some comments about the cuts on his face, the bruises, and a recount of that day’s activities. It came from all other quarters, but the bully did not join them. The abuse just ended without comment or further incidents.

Did the kid learn that turn the other cheek was wrong, no, but he did learn one important lesson, you have to teach people how to treat you.

The moment the kid shared with his bully might have been his Karate Kid/Tom Cruise moment, but it was not a Karate Kid/Tom Cruise movie. As if by baton, others took the bully’s lead, and the kid learned other rules of the jungle: confrontation is a constant, confrontation is relative, and confrontation is ever-changing. The kid had this notion that that one punch would be the punch heard ’round his world. He thought every other kid would hear of his exploits and realize you don’t mess around with him. He had this notion that once he faced down this, his greatest confrontation, he would be forever capable of handling future confrontations. It wasn’t true of course. Bolstered with confidence, he would face down some confrontations, but he would walk away from others. He would learn to regret those latter moments, for none of these confrontations ever ended until he dealt with them properly. All of the lessons learned from successes, and failures, would eventually culminate into an adult who could handle confrontations, but in his particular case, he never gained much by turning the other cheek

The crucial point is that this child’s actions, and the lessons learned, are not a direct refutation of Jesus of Nazareth’s quote, but the interpretations and paraphrasing those teachers and intellectuals have spread in the centuries that followed. Another interpretation of this quote, that would’ve been quite helpful to this young man, is the following:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” – Matthew 5:38-42

“At the time of Jesus’ teachings, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. The other alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, they argue, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect demanding equality.”{1}

{1}http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071209121037AARdG0I