Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was.
Without exception I knew.
But I never took it. You know why?
It was too damn hard.
No, not the one you are probably thinking of. Most likely, that one grows out of this other one.
I am not speaking of climate change. I am speaking of the ongong war between science and religion.
This war has raged on for hundreds of years. There is an entire body of philosophical and logical principles, such as Occam's Razor, that grow out the history of Christian scientists trying to argue "I can too be both religious AND a scientist."
Still, the war rages on and it has split the study of the stars into two fields: Astronomy and astrology. The first it taken seriously as science. The second is something some people believe in and others dismiss as the realm of quacks.
That is only one of many examples. Dream interpretation is another. It was once taken seriously as a means to find our path forward in life but is now viewed by many people as a silly idea, similar to astrology.
To a large degree, the world has decided some things fall under science and other things fall under religion and never the twain shall meet. You cannot take a serious scientific approach to things categorized as religious and you can't take a human approach to anything "scientific."
I feel trapped and beleaguered by this situation. I've done something scientific that the world doesn't wish to see as scientific.
Historically, medicine and health were more the domain of religion. Eat right, exercise, live right. Doctors visited you at home with their little black bag and without having to ask could see a lot of the factors in your life that might impact your health, such as how clean your home was.
And then it became more technological in a manner that treats patients like specimens in a petri dish, as if their medical situation can be concisely separated from the fabric of their life. This is a problem and it's also problematic to try to talk about it.
We increasingly are moving towards a dystopian medical scene where we create cyborgs and then abndon the tech embedded in their flesh or abandon the software that runs it, which is pretty much the same thing, and we do this Frankensteinian thing of pursuing ever more fantastic organ replacement surgeries, and never mind the risk of rejection which can lead to a horrific death and other issues.
When I comment on such on public forums, it typically gets a LOT of pushback. It's not okay for me to say this is dehumanizing, this is not the best kind of care, this is about doctors and scientists chasing eye-catching headlines at the expense of quality of life for patients. Helping people keep their organs isn't as headline-grabbing as grafting part of someone else onto a dying patient after modern medicine has already largely failed them.
The sciency people avidly pursuing organ transplants and being dismissive of me also do NOT want to so much as acknowledge that we have some evidence that in some cases a piece of the soul of the donor may come with the organ.
I've done something incredible. I get no acknowledgement for it and I have no means to "prove" it.
And I often wish I could simply walk away from ..something, I'm not even sure what...because it neither fits with the "science" camp nor the "religion" camp and both camps are equally problematic for me to interact with.