Who are we?
We are people who want to explore the possibilities that go beyond being told that our length of life and quality of life are largely predetermined by our ancestors and the genetic makeup they passed on to us.
Can a person ‘decide’ to live to be 120 and healthy? Can we turn time into a mountain and then enjoy climbing time like others climb mountains? What principles are important to know? What mistakes are important to avoid? What challenges will we have to navigate? If life is an adventure, can we make it more fun, adventuresome, and meaningful? There are those of us who want to play at this game. That is who we are.
Let’s start with me. I am a man who has learned to think for himself in the face of orthodoxy. From the earliest years of life I recognized that those in Authority didn’t necessarily know what they were talking about. Early instruction in religion proved that ignorant people were posing as knowledgeable instructors. They were promoting superstitions and fears that others had promoted to them.
My mother was a Registered Nurse and my father was a lawyer. I saw or heard, first-hand, the errors, misjudgments, and unfairness in the medical system and legal systems. As a Caucasian, the ‘unlevel playing field’ benefited me. I didn’t have to contend with rules that another person my age, Afro-American or Hispanic, would have.
As a young man I lacked both discipline and coaching, parental and otherwise. I did learn the escapist value of work at 12, though. It got me out of a tumultuous home and produced money.
Pretty much anything coming at me from a person who was trying to maintain a false position of authority over me was rejected. Anyone who needed my obedience to feel better about himself was out-of-luck.
After dropping out or flunking out of a Jesuit-run college and trying government employment for a year, I enlisted in the US Army with the intent to continue virus research in Washington, DC. The Army considered my three years of pharmacy school and one year of virus research with the Plum Island laboratories and concluded that I should carry a rifle!
I was immediately and effectively coached into realizing that the Army wasn’t going to change its plans for me so I would be better off changing my attitude. I listened to that Battalion Commander, threw myself into being the best Infantry soldier possible, and grabbed opportunities that came in front of me.
I joined the Army to get discipline. The Army obliged. The Army wasn’t totally successful with me in that they wouldn’t assign me, a Second Lieutenant, to a Special Forces unit in Viet Nam and I didn’t want to be a part of a regular Infantry unit. After OCS, they offered me Spanish language training and Panama or German language training and Germany. I chose Panama because I always had an affinity for Hispanics even though I was half-German, and I like warm weather.
So I did Officer’s Candidate School, Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, Special Forces Officers’ Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Spanish Language School at Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California and first duty station of Fort Gulick, Canal Zone in the middle of the Republic of Panama.
One thing very appealing about Special Forces (and there were lots of things) was that we were expected to make up our own rules but not get caught. I liked that. I still wasn’t that good at being told what to do even though part of me wanted to be.
I have noticed over the years, especially as it pertains to religious organizations and the medical establishment that people were expected to stop thinking for themselves, adopt a sheep-like attitude, and do exactly what someone else told them to do.
When I look at examples of medical errors and misjudgments that I know about it is difficult to put doctors on pedestals no matter how much they strive for that stature.
When I listen to nonsense coming from people claiming to speak for God I conclude that either God has multiple personality disorders or the ‘spokesmen’ are full of themselves or full of shit or both.
Watching pharmaceutical advertising on television in the US is horrifying. People are being seduced into swallowing poison as a way to ‘get better.’ If those people thought for themselves, they might notice that ‘poison=health’ is absurd.
120andHealthy.com is devoted to thinking about living healthy, happy lives, thinking for oneself, refusing to be a ‘cash cow’ in others’ fields, being made ready to be milked of money, freedom, personal power, and creativity. It also means that we don’t find it necessary to add chemicals for every little twitch that is newly classified as a disease by a pharmaceutical marketer. We think long and deeply about replacing our body parts using the skills of a medical mechanic with a scalpel in his hand.
There has to be much more to life than consuming, acquiring, earning, spending, debt, stress, disease, drugs, medical expenses, and death. We, in 120andHealthy, want to discover these aspects of life that are ‘much more.’
