Warning: The Health Food Store is Dangerous...

Warning: The Health Food Store is Dangerous to More than Your Personal Health

Well, not if you just duck in for a shot of pricey soy juice. And, assuming you avoid all the offers of potions will cure everything from diabetes to lumbago.

It’s the new-age anti-science that is dangerous.

Everyone I know is reading Richard Dawkins’ new book. I bought it for Maggie. It came in a chrome wrapper, like a 1957 Buick. Those Buicks had power. I hope it’s good, but does he talk about the health food store? I doubt it.

The future of humankind is on the line in this century. The destruction of the planet is probably going to get up close and personal in this century, possibly even in my short remaining time. As this happens, I fear that we’ll see more wars, genocidal brutality and famines as resources deplete and unequal distribution means many will face hard times or worse.

Salvation, as best I can tell, lies in movements from below that mobilize and inform and empower those with a collective and broad-based interest in addressing not only inequality, but protection of the planet.

But it also depends on a scientific approach. The technology-gone-wild society cannot be tamed by movements or revolutions alone. We need a widely-held appreciation of the problems and the solutions.

In the USA 50% of the population rejects the theory of evolution. Global warming? Who says so, some guy with bad hair from Harvard, or maybe even one with from India.

Another dangerous trend exists, also uniquely American, and it is entering the mainstream. On the plane home recently, the woman next to me read a book called "Qi". I peeked (don’t I always?). It was scary stuff. It says we are permeated by an invisible life force which can guide our society. A full-course individualist political philosophy, served with a side order of green tea.

Want to cure malaria? Send dogwood leaves. Don’t send vaccines: this crowd is actually joining the far right in opting their kids out of vaccinations. Vaccines, social medicine’s greatest victory, are on the hit list. Just like the Birch Society’s 1950s anti-floridation campaign.

Presently it’s a small threat, but it’s growing, and it’s got more 21st century oomph than the old backwoods anti-science. The villain in the Scopes trial was William Jennings Bryan. Bryan is not all over the world wide web like Qi dust.

The new anti-science may blend with the old in a noxious suburban stew. The NY Times magazine recently had an article on this cross-over of new age with the right wing.

Fundamentalism with Evian water instead of holy water. San Francisco and Dallas can meet in Phoenix, which is precisely where the Times piece found the convergence.

It needs to be confronted, with or without a chrome jacket.