Slow Poison

Poisons are not what they used to be.

Back in the day, people would use poison for immediate deaths. For example, infusions of poisonous flowers like aconite, arrows dipped in belladonna or smothered in poison dart frog secretions.. you get the idea.

Now, poisons are very slow, often invisible, inodorous, and tasteless. Which is actually the most dangerous thing about them:

YOU CAN'T FEEL OR NOTICE THEM

Examples include pesticides, herbicides, petroleum-derivatives (PAHs, PCBs) and metals.

But the fact that they're slow-acting makes it more problematic, at least in the social sense:

PEOPLE DON'T CARE IF THEY SURVIVE.

For example, cadmium poisoning. Cadmium is a heavy metal that ends up in groundwater, freshwater, or even seawater, usually from industrial waste water and ends up in the water we drink or the food we eat (through agricultural irrigation). So after long frequent exposure, it causes cancer. The same goes for pesticides, and other toxins that we get through animal fat, due to bio-magnification across the food chain.

But cancer creeps up on you.

It takes its time. And what do people do when they discover they have cancer? Chemo, if they can afford it, which does nothing but destroy the body even more. Or surgery to remove the tumour, so it's all about cut cut cut, stitch stitch stitch. Sure, some people have overcome cancer. They usually are the ones that change their lives completely, drink fruit/veg juices, take natural supplements, etc. Others were lucky to be resilient enough, but their success stories should not still encourage people to continue eating pesticide-ful foods, and consume animal products, or drink from plastic bottles (most contain BPA, a compound that mimics oestrogen in the body and causes hormone disruption thus cancer).

Another example is aluminium. It's in our kitchen foil paper, our medicine boxes, our cans, etc. It's also present in most cosmetics, particularly sunblock. And guess what? Causes Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other nervous diseases. You don't need those products. You only buy them because industries convince you that it's so convenient, but how convenient is it to extract metals from the ground so you can store food in them?!

The list goes on, what we have taken out of this Earth and transformed is most likely to kill us slowly.

We created poison and we created the semi-cure. We created the chemicals, and then we built hospitals.

[I dare one of you to tell me that hospitals are cheerful green spaces that serve yummy food]

Our society has become a sculpture made of poisons, barely pleasing to the human eye, yet convincing people that they will survive.

The question is, do you want to survive, or do you want to live?