I just hope we’re not seeing the start of a shutdown of the North Atlantic current, which is likely what led to the Younger Dryas ice age, which marked a dramatic climate shift and widespread extinction event over just a couple of decades:
The change was relatively sudden, took place over decades, and resulted in a decline of temperatures in Greenland by 4–10 °C (7.2–18 °F), and advances of glaciers and drier conditions over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. A number of theories have been put forward about the cause, and the hypothesis historically most supported by scientists is that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, was interrupted by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America into the Atlantic.
Socrates said books were dumbing down humanity because, since people could just look things up in books they wouldn’t have to memorise information anymore, and that made their brains soft.
Ever since society began, some people have been convinced the next generation’s technology was going to be society’s downfall, whether it was Socrates’ books, the telegraph in the 1800s, radio, the (land line) telephone, dishwashers (women will become lazy and unsuitable wives and mothers), screened windows (society will collapse because you won’t hear your neighbours and pedestrians on the street, we’ll all become hermits and die holed up in our homes), comic books would rot the brains of the youth, then music, then video games… it goes on and on.
So far, those predictions have never been true. Every older generation freaks out when the ones after come of age. It’s like societal growing pains.
Not just in poor schools. My area is pretty affluent, but the school was built in the 1940s, and that’s just how it was back then. I went to that high school for a year (I’m 54) and never saw the boys’, but the girls’ was wide open. I assume the boys’ was too.
He did, though. I currently live less than an hour from his museum in Battle Creek, Michigan, and there are lots of things about him that aren’t widely shared on the internet.
Did you know that one of his biggest accomplishments was a foster home for orphans that was destroyed by fire? Running that foster home was what inspired his obsession with a bland diet and with circumcision. He was very strict with their diet, believing certain grains would purify the soul (first oatmeal) – the original, unadulterated grains that were mentioned in the bible. The boys in his home weren’t accepting of his extreme version of Christianity, and he thought that was mostly because they were corrupting themselves bodily. He thought all boys weren’t receptive to Christianity because they were too into their own desires, and he could fix that. First by diet, and when that didn’t work, by cutting off the part of their penis that distracted them by making them feel good, thus tempting them from god’s word. He was a doctor, so people listened.
This is all Wikipedia dedicates to that part of the story:
Kellogg was outspoken about his views on race and his belief in racial segregation, regardless of the fact that he himself raised several black foster children.
So it’s understandable people are downplaying that part of his life. If you live near here, you know the details the internet has mostly forgotten.
We really need to stop chopping up infant boys based on the ideas of a bigoted religious fundamentalist.
It is. You can always cut something off later, but you can’t just put it back once it’s gone.
Based on this conversation, I actually asked him:
Me: Hey man, so feel free not to answer this if it’s too personal, but I was having a debate about circumcision and another parent challenged me saying I’d made the wrong decision. So yes/no/I don’t want to talk about it cuz that’s weird, do you regret my decision?
Son: I don’t, and none of my partners have, either. I only get thumbs up and compliments. I hope that wasn’t too personal.
Me: Not at all. Thank you for giving me your and your partners’ review!
I was born with a genetic condition affecting my collagen (Ehlers Danlos), which meant my bones were overly soft and, since I was breach til moments before birth, my legs were bowed pretty severely. This was in 1971, and the treatment at that time was the doctors literally bent my legs into position manually and then braced them for my first few years. That’s not how they deal with it nowadays, because they learnt it was horribly painful.
I don’t remember that initial experience, obviously, but my mother tells me several years later when I was a young child and having problems walking, she took me to the doctor and they finally worked out that I was in excruciating pain all the time. They asked why I hadn’t said anything and I told them it was because everyone was always in excruciating pain, but nobody else was complaining about it, so I shouldn’t either. I’d been in pain since birth, and just figured it was normal.
That experience prevented me from getting proper care and made my early childhood hell. I still have emotional trauma from it. So yeah, early pain is not benign.
Oh, I’ve seen that. It’s fascinating. There’s a ball with outer clamps and varying degrees of weights you can add on a dangly bit. You attach the contraption for some number of increasing minutes per day, and it stretches the skin surrounding the glans until it’s long enough to encompass the glans. After a while, the little ball will be encompassed by the new foreskin.
He says it’s not painful and I believe him, but not being the owner of a penis, it looks at least uncomfortable to me. Then again, I’ve never used gauges, either, and as you said, it’s pretty similar to that.
Yes, I’m aware it’s a week of recovery time later. I made the decision not to circumcise my son after talking to my father who had the procedure in his teens after he developed a condition. He told me exactly what it was like. (My father is 88 and was born before circumcision was common.)
You can do almost anything to an infant and they won’t remember the trauma. Infants have been subjected to near-fatal child abuse, including having their femurs broken, and they don’t remember it. That doesn’t make it right.
Having your wisdom teeth removed takes at least a week of recovery and we do that in late teens or early twenties. There are lots of things that take a week to recover from, and having to have your foreskin removed because it’s causing issues is far, far more rare. That’s not a reason to take that choice away.
Like I said, they can always have that procedure later if they want to, but once it’s done, that choice is basically gone.
Also like I said, I’m not trying to make people feel bad for having done it when we didn’t really know better. I’m not shaming anyone. It’s just what we did until recently. Going forward, though, it’s not justified and we shouldn’t be advocating for it now that we know better.
eta: and Kellogg isn’t irrelevant. That’s exactly why the practice has been embedded in American culture, so when we’re talking about why we do it, he’s extremely relevant.
My father had to have his removed for the same reason (I know this because we had a conversation when I was pregnant with my son and said I wasn’t going to have him circumcised). That can happen, and I’m sorry it happened to you.
I still didn’t have my son circumcised, and would make the same decision today because those issues are comparatively rare. It sucks a lot if you have to go through that, but preemptively removing the foreskin seems harsh considering how rare complications are.
Removing the foreskin has real ramifications for not only looks but sexual pleasure (which, by the way, was why it was popularised by puritan Christians in the US – the original point was to stop teenage boys from masturbating by making it less pleasurable).
Cutting off the foreskin at birth takes something from a man that he can’t really restore later, whereas doing nothing gives him the bodily autonomy to make that decision later. You can always remove it if you want, but once it’s gone, you can’t just grow it back.
A baby is at your mercy and has no choice in the matter.