A wellness colleague and good friend in Australia wrote me the other day and raised an issue that has been a part of the wellness movement for as long as there has been a wellness movement. Here is what he wrote:

Don - I just had a discussion with a colleague who, until I explained things, had never heard of the wellness movement. I gave him details about the six dimensions of wellness (as outlined by NWI) and several copies of your newsletters where the concept was described. He mentioned a program on television he watched the previous evening about the world food crisis. It highlighted the point you made in a recent blog about the folly of using corn and other food products for running our cars, given world hunger and other poverty situations. He wanted to know what the wellness movement had to say about that. He went on to ask whether the wellness movement only has meaning for those of us who live in a world where we want for nothing and can afford the time and energy to debate such matters.

So Don, what does the wellness movement and its current trends have to say to those who are still grappling with level one of Maslow’s list of needs?

I replied that this issue was the number one topic at wellness conferences in the mid-seventies to early eighties, until we all got weary and discouraged by the obvious answer, namely, that the wellness movement has no relevance to world hunger, war and peace or much else relating to Maslow’s floor of safety and security. However, that is not the same as concluding that wellness enthusiasts seeking better lifestyles for themselves, family, neighbors and so on can’t find endless ways to pursue their passions, including doing one thing or another to try to make the world a somewhat better place. Doing things that entail feeding the hungry, dealing with poverty, promoting peace and/or population control, reducing the toxic influence of religion and so on are best attempted while healthy rather than when sick, so a wellness lifestyle is a partial means to larger ends.

It should go without saying that REAL wellness addresses all these matters or at least encourages those who embrace such an outlook to think critically about as many great issues as one can manage.

My wellness friend in Australia replied as follows:

I fully agree. I don’t think that it is possible to have REAL wellness without consideration, and hopefully some action, on these issues. For some, it could mean VOLUNTEERING to provide assistance in areas of need in the less developed world. As far as “reducing the influence of toxic religion� is concerned, I have no solution. It seems that the more desperate people get, the more they turn to religion. It would be great if we could come up with an alternative. Now, you and I both know that there is an alternative, but selling it to the hungry and illiterate is the challenge.

A matter worth further discussion, I am sure.

Indeed it is. Let’s be sensible about this. Wellness is just a lifestyle, not a global scale endeavor to save or even improve the world. It’s a good thing, even a wonderful thing when viewed in a context of personal excellence married to a concern for others via good works and wise choices.

But, it is not a panacea for what is wrong with the world. Worse, there IS no panacea for that. Let’s hope that more of us do our part in that endeavor in whatever ways we can, little by little and bit by bit over time - while looking after ourselves with wise attitudes, good behaviors and consideration for each other, close to and far from home.

Your thoughts on the scope of wellness in relation to world crises? Comments always welcomed and appreciated.

All the best.

McCain’s so-called plan is not a plan at all — it’s a campaign ad that employs buzzwords to signal insurance company executives that the good times will roll on if he’s elected. Ditto all other non-socialized medicine, private sector fat cats who love the prosperous (for them) Bush years. I confess to thinking about how I might start clinging to guns or religion because I’m so bitter about the sorry choices we have for president, McCain being the worst of the lot by a multiplier of at least ten.

Actually, I like Obama but I’m convinced his former pastor has sunk his candidacy lower than the Titanic - far beyond any hope for rescue at this date. Too many undereducated white folks are simply not going to pass up a chance to reject a black guy with serious baggage, or at least with the appearance of such, however ridiculous the basis of such opposition.

No, I don’t think there is a chance the Democratic Party will give Obama its nomination, since it seems certain that polling data will soon show that he will surely lose big time to Republican McCain. These ghastly people have been given enough thermonuclear power by the Reverend “Whacko EgoManical” Wright that they will annihilate his prospects of being president. It’s over. It’s the god-awful Hillary versus the truly dreadful McCain. Hold your nose and hope that Hillary does not lose; prepare your passport if McCain wins. If we get four more years of a Bush clone, expect a secular, non-supernatural “Rapture of Ruin.” The economy will plunge into a depression — the McCain 100 year war in Iraq will continue (the soldiers at least will not go hungry) and, naturally, the health care non-system will remain as dysfunctional as it is, only it will get worse! In time, it will well serve  even fewer for even more (money) at even less quality. 

Am I horribilizing? Of course. What else should be done when the situation (political and otherwise) is horrible? Pretend all’s well? 

Oh, what the hell - go ahead, whistle, smile and have a nice day - and always look on the bright side of life.

Wellness is my business. Every day, activities that enhance life get most of my attention. I don’t spend a lot of time fighting fires, dealing with life-threatening emergencies or otherwise struggling to make ends meet. Life is good. I realize it’s not like this for most people around the world - I try to do what I can for others and often think about how fortunate I am. However, a focus on exuberance, the quest for added meaning and purpose and all the rest of a quality of life agenda must be put aside if and when a catastrophe looms. Well, a case can be made for quite a few looming catastrophes (e.g., lunatic terrorists gaining nukes, irrational moves by rogue nations led by religious maniacs as in Iran, and powerful, rich countries grotesquely mismanaged by incompetents as in the USA) these days. One, however, seems more imminent and more resolvable than the others. That looming catastrophe, world hunger on a scale unseen in modern times, is a disaster that can be averted by a simple policy change within the control of our own US Congress, namely, putting a halt to the conversion of crops, particularly corn, into biofuels.

At first, encouraging biofuels seemed like a good idea. After all, we should do all we can to become more energy independent, reduce the dangers of global warming and support our farmers. However, the evidence is now abundant that this experiment has not worked out so well. In fact, we have seen that it was not a good idea to subsidize agricultural interests to convert corn from a human crop to ethanol and other biofuels. This transfer has proven to be a very bad bargain, causing massive increases in the costs of foods which in turn has exacerbated hunger in populations unable to afford the grains that had been staples in their diets. In addition, the conversion of people food into engine fuels has caused environmental degradation, particularly deforestation leading to increases in the rate of climate change. American grain inventories are now depleted, as stockpiles once held for bad times have shrunk due to world demand for the grains used in biofuels.

The costs of basic foodstuffs, particularly wheat, corn and rice have doubled or tripled in the last year or so. This is unpleasant for us, but ruinous for the poor in desperate nations throughout the world. (For more on the chain of problems caused by biofuel subsidies, see Paul Krugman, in an op-ed column entitled, “Grains Gone Wild,� New York Times, April 7, 2008.)

Folks, this is a growing problem we can’t afford to permit to grow worse. Food riots are scary, even if you DO have a well stocked underground retreat somewhere nearby and heavy weapons to defend your groceries - and most of us have no such thing. Even if we did, living in fear of attack from the masses seeking our foodstuffs does not seem very appealing or wellness like.

Earth is my favorite planet, one I’ve called home for almost 70 years. Most of the people who have lived here have passed away. That is, died – and gone to nowhere, from whence they came – and where you and I are going, or not going, as logical precision would have it. (If it’s nowhere, how can you go there?)

Between my home planet and the sun are two other planets, Mercury and Venus, which have their pluses (e.g., no known diseases, no wars and no religions) and minuses (e.g., unhealthy atmospheres, severe temperatures and no life forms – which is rough if you are partial to seafood and vegetables, as I am). Even if one or both planets were veritable paradises, which are very much not the case, we don’t have the technology to get to either one – so the minuses have it. Mars and the other planets going out from the sun are also unattractive for human purposes, so don’t even think about going to any of those. All of which suggests that it’s smart for humans on Earth to be careful how we go about our affairs on this good planet.

One thing we definitely don’t want to do is build a black hole. I’ll tell you why. A black hole is a region of space with an attitude. It has so much concentrated mass (you can’t imagine how much – it’s beyond awesome) within in it that its gravitational pull is inescapable. The other night I attended a lecture in St. Petersburg by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who serves as the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Thanks to Dr. Tyson, I came to fully appreciate the galactic health hazards posed by black holes. The good scientist even wrote a best seller about this phenomenon entitled, “Death By Black Hole.� So, make no mistake - these are mean mothers that will absolutely ruin anyone’s attempt to live a wellness lifestyle. Don’t get anywhere near one and for god’s sake, so to speak, don’t even think about building one!

This may seem obvious, but amazingly enough, some silly scientists could soon discover that they have inadvertently built a black hole, right here on this planet. Now, if they should screw up and do that, their bloody black hole will immediately inhale the planet faster than you can say “Holy shit,� or something like that, as you get sucked in, ripped apart and turned into spaghetti-plasma before vaporizing entirely.

I’m not making this up. It seems that some Frankenstein genius-type physicists in Geneva and around the world have been at work for about 14 years constructing a monstrosity called the “Large Hadron Collider.â€� This $8 billion particle accelerator is designed to smash protons like never before, recreating the kind of energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. The collider will fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together. It will mash gold ions to create what is known as “quark-gluon plasma.â€� Well, that’s how it’s “knownâ€� to somebody, I suppose, but I have no idea what they’re up to. Other things being the same, doing all this wondrous stuff would be really cool, but not if it brings about a tiny black hole in the bargain, which some fear. In a cosmic versus human sense, there really is no such thing as a “tinyâ€� black hole. One of those suckers the size of a nipple would contain enough mass and thus gravitational pull to digest the planet, moon and half a dozen other planetary bodies in our solar system much faster than Hillary Clinton can dodge a sniper’s bullet in Bosnia.

Critics of this project worry that the accelerator scientists might accidentally create that feared black hole and “poof,â€� we’re gone. According to some variants of string theory, a black hole could appear at the collider. Probably not, but some say we don’t know it won’t, for sure. Or, maybe the result will be only a “strangeletâ€� that would “turn the Earth into a shrunken dense dead lump of something else called ‘strange matter.’” (See Dennis Overbee, “Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More,â€� New York Times, March 29, 2008.)

So these are the risks – a black hole, a strangelet or strange matter! None of these is good. Until more is known, I say, “Don’t turn that Frankenstein machine on, please. At least not until I’ve made my exit from this planet.� I’d also be grateful if my kids and grandkids had some time, too. Well, now that I think about it, since they will have kids and grandkids, maybe extending the deadline for turning that accelerator on is not the solution. Just say no to linear accelerator experiments, please. At least let’s insist upon an environmental impact report! However, I don’t need Neil deGrasse Tyson to further explain to me the effects of a black hole on Earth, or the unpleasantries associated with strangelets and strange matter, either.

I’ve often wondered what it would feel like to be an ignorant fanatical nutcase, like the crazed Muslims who blow themselves up for virgins in Paradise or Christian lunatics closer to home who rant about gay marriage, stem cell experiments and so on.

This little exercise ranting on about something I barely understand has given me a deeper appreciation of how tempting it is to be full of passionate certitude about something half understood. Its kind of fun, it gives one meaning and it allows one to feel holier than thou. Of course, like black holes, it’s really not good for you, so I don’t want to make it a habit. In fact, I recommend avoiding such excesses, despite the short-term rewards. Instead, try to be sensible. And one more thing — always take lunatic rants by others with a grain of salt. You never know when some nutcase might just be having you on.

Last week, Obama gave an important speech designed to douse the flames on a controversy sparked by his pastor, a loose cannon, bible-thumper whose sermons, replayed endlessly on YouTube, inflamed the riff raff of both parties all over the land. The minister, one Jeremiah Wright, Jr., said things that were in turn unpatriotic, ignorant, racist and somewhat true. The tempest reignited smoldering racial tensions in America and imperiled Obama’s run for the presidency.

All this was ridiculous. Neither Obama nor anyone else should be held responsible for what OTHERS say, no matter what their relationship, even if that relationship is as close as spouse, parent, call girl or yes, minister. But, in the nasty business of politics, nothing is sacred, so to speak.

Except for the Republican-oriented commentators, the speech Obama gave got mostly excellent reviews. I read at least a dozen editorials and an equal number of commentaries on the speech. Most were quite positive. However, with the exception of Sam Harris, no commentator addressed the elephant in the room, religion itself. Thus, I offer here what I think are valuable observations that should be recognized and discussed - Sam Harris’ key observations.

• Religion makes political discourse in this country “scandalously stupid.â€� For example, religion led John McCain, to embrace Pastor John Hagee. If you think Obama’s pastor is a looney, listen to Hagee. Hagee welcomes WW III as a way to hasten The Rapture. The Rapture, in case you haven’t heard, involves the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and scenes worthy of Hieronymous Bosch—which delight and enthrall fundamentalists like Hagee. No editorials or commentaries or YouTube videos seemed to feature Hagee on The Rapture, or McCain’s relationship with Hagee.
• Governor Mitt Romney wore consecrated Mormon underpants on the campaign trail, and to the debates. These undies have, according to Romney’s belief system, powers of protection. Did you read any columns about this? Why not? Are we ready for a president with magic underpants?
• The faithful in this country believe that without religion, we’d all be plundering and pillaging and acting very badly. Harriis noted that Obama could have talked about the source of ethics, and noted that godless countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark get better results than we do. For instance, all these countries do better than the USA in “education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality.â€� Like America “under God,â€� they also look after the poor, feed the hungry and care for the sick. Despite little or no religion! Isn’t that amazing? Apparently, there are good reasons to do such things that, in Harris’ words, “are not manifestly delusional.â€� Yes, we can be good, fair, just and honest with each other “without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now listening to our thoughts.â€�
• The worst part of Reverend Wright’s sermons went unreported, namely, “his appeals to the empty hopes and baseless fears of his parishioners–people who could surely find better ways of advancing their interests in this world, if only they could banish the fiction of a world to come. Religion’s effect on our society, and on the black community especially, has been destructive–and where it has seemed constructive it has generally taken the place of better things. Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century. The truth is, despite the toothsomeness of his campaign slogan, we are not yet the people we have been waiting for. And if we don’t start talking sense to our children, they won’t be the ones we are waiting for either.â€� 

“While Obama’s election in November really would be a triumph of hope, on another level his candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?â€�

For the entirely of Sam Harris’ commentary,  read ”What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say” in the March 21, 2008 edition of the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/what-barack-obama-could-n_b_92771.html.

Be well.