Transmutations of this sort are natural in certain species, as with a type of fish in which the largest female of a group where there is no male will simply become male. Certain lizards can manage the same feat. How interesting. But the Potomac fish are a different kettle of, um, fish. The females are normal. Eighty percent of the smallmouth bass males, however, produce eggs instead of sperm.
At this same time, there is a sharp rise in reported cases on college campuses all along the Potomac of impotence and a lack of sexual interest by males. The Potomac is full of feminizing chemical endocrinal disruptors.
The soft female-like boys of this latest generation, however, cluster not only along the Potomac. We find them everywhere. Throughout the continental USA, in England, in Greenland, in Japan. All over. As for our human females, many of them are enjoying an early puberty, starting around age eight.
Well? Male alligators in Florida are turning up with shriveled testicles and high female-hormone counts. The phenomenon has been linked to phthalates, which are used in clear plastic drinking bottles -- water, Coke, Pepsi and so on. The specific actor is polyethylene terephthalate, PET. When the bottle gets a bit heated, as in a hot car, and the liquid has a plastic taste, that’s PET. All those plastic bottles from Disney World end up in the watershed and affect the alligators. PETs act like female hormones. Girls testing as having high PET levels tend to enter puberty early. Six times higher levels means eight-year-olds with developed breasts.
Elementary school teachers notice the phenomenon. Little boys, and a handful of ten year old girls with fully developed breasts. In olden days the boys were behind the girls by months, rather than years. By thirteen the girls where through puberty and the boys were entering. Now the lag time is three or four years. It’s not just PETs. It’s a lot of chemicals. Endosulfan, for example -- a major commercial pesticide -- was shown in 2003 to disrupt the onset of puberty in boys, by blocking the effects of testosterone and other androgens.
The actions of these industrial chemicals are overwhelmingly feminizing, hastening puberty in girls, delaying and distorting masculine development in boys. Seems like a problem. The plastic in baby bottles, for example, has been shown actually to damage male neonate animal brains, specifically in memory and motivation functions focused in the nucleus accumbens. The same damage does not occur in females. The males demonstrate less curiosity about their environments, and their activity profile strongly resembles that of control females. Strangely, females exposed to the same plastic demonstrate heightened activity, environmental curiosity, and learning ability. Again, the only relevant variable here is the plastic.
Increased ADHD in boys. Decreased testosterone and semen levels than in previous generations, lower sperm count, and endemic infertility. Genital malformations are up by three times; pregnant mothers who drink phthalates are ten times more likely to have boys with undescended testicles, or subaverage penis-size, or hypospadias (misplaced urethra terminus).
From these specifics we might derive any number of insights, environmental, political, sociological, ethnographic. We won’t bother to flesh it out. We could talk about planting the seeds of our own destruction, for all that there are fewer and fewer seeds. Why bother. Everyone talks about history, but nobody does anything about it. Is there a solution? Well, first, is there a problem? Maybe it’s a good thing? We become extinct and save the planet from our pollution and global warming? We remove our unclean presence and leave the world to the purity of the encroaching desert? What after all has freedom and free will given us? Melting icecaps and mutant fish. Yin yields to yang.
On the other hand, we might choose not to use clear plastics to drink from. We might wash our vegetables (alas, animal flesh stores such chemicals at an even higher density). It starts with being aware of the problem. After that one can choose to care, or not. If biologically generated motivation from out of a healthy nucleus accumbens is insufficient to make us care, perhaps ethics and a commitment to some intellectual ideal might do it. How are we to know what will move us to responsible action? Sociological movements are not planned.
But that’s why we should eat healthfully. Health matters for so many reasons.
Does the title here, "The Age of Aquarius," seem impenetrable to you? We did not know what the New Age would bring. The triumph of hippie values is brought about by the very thing they rebelled against. Corporate chemicals -- as opposed to hallucinogenic ones. Their feminine-leaning ethos triumphs against its masculine counterpart at the cost of infertility. The New Age is bringing not love, love, love, but sterility, deformity and extinction. What is the point of saving the planet, if we fail to save the human baby boys?
Grand theories about saving the planet are all very fine and good. How laudable it is, to be so ethereally idealistic. Yes, smoking should be banned. Just like alcohol should be banned. Oh. Wait. Um, well, let's rethink this. Smoking should be banned in our own lives. We ourselves should take responsibility for us ourselves. Before we take responsibility for anyone else, we should take responsibility for ourselves. Yes, that sounds more sensible.
We'll start with our own bodies, our own health, the composition of our own flesh, its ratio of muscle to fat. That way we won't be metaphysical theoreticians, like Marxists making predictions about how capitalism will fade away into a worker's paradise -- we'll have some credibility. Our own house will be in order. We'll start by having a sensible diet, engaging in sensible exercise, excluding the obvious poisons from our lives, and as they become apparent, the more subtle ones. That way we won't be loudmouth hypocrites or soapbox saviors. We'll be effective realists, admirable examples who make a difference by the excellence of our own lives.
Preachy? Yes. Not soapbox though. Realistic. It's about personal excellence. Everything else is theories about politics. How boring.
Be excellent.
Here: CrossFitBurbank.com
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