Control Through Clear Thinking

Article #1: Control Through Clear Thinking by A.D. Andrews, Jr.

I have a Master of Science Degree in Health Education. Also I have been certified (for life) by the State of Missouri to teach classes in Health. This presentation of personal achievement is supposed to impress you. It is important that I make a big impression on you at the beginning of this article because I am getting ready to make some highly unusual statements in the very next paragraph and I want you to pay close attention to the statements and to follow the advice which I offer.

If you are going to eat anything besides raw foods, namely fruits, nuts and palatable vegetables, then eat the junkiest foods you can get. Eat canned foods, processed foods. When you cook at home cook out of aluminum utensils. Peel all vegetables and boil them thoroughly. Fry foods in cast iron skillets at high temperatures using saturated fats and oils. Apply salt, pepper and other condiments freely. Pay no attention to combinations. Eat as much as you can stuff down. Have rich desserts and drink liquids with your meals.

Now my earnest advice is for you to eat no cooked foods, only raw foods. However, if and when you “slip” eat all things bad and nothing good. I am completely earnest. Here is why. It will make you quite ill, quite soon and shake you up. It will bring you back to your senses, put you back on the straight and narrow. You may even decide to fast for a day or two to keep your wits about you for an
extended period of time. It will precipitate or stimulate symptoms of acute disease. You will have no difficulty relating cause and effect.

It helps clear thinking if we learn to think through analogies. A number of years ago friends of mine were “busy-busy” working for the enactment of a “humane” slaughter law in the state of Missouri. They were disgruntled that I fought against this bill. (It passed, by the way.) Why did I fight against it? People already are too far removed from the act of slaughter and what it entails. The attractively arranged meat platter with garnish and color seldom is connected with the violence it took initially to bring that pleasing plate to the table. Those appealing prepackaged meats on display in the local supermarket are a far cry from the appalling brutality of the slaughter house. So the very thing that is needed is whatever is at hand to make people see flesh eating for what is really is, a barbarous, gruesome, ugly, cruel practice that destroys human morality as surely as it destroys the animals we kill. Flesh eaters need to see their flesh in stark reality as corpse rather than prime rib, as carcass of a dead animal instead of K.C. steak, as cesspools of putrefaction rather than as sources of complete protein. Already people are mired and bogged in the slough of a vile practice. The last thing they need is further lulling with thoughts that it all has been accomplished “Humanely.” And the long-range effects of any practice that benumbs man’s noble instincts of kindness and concern for creatures less able than himself are more dangerous and devastating to his final demise than the damage done by the pathological effect of meat-eating on his body.

People are rather fooled in their minds with the seriousness of an offense (in any area) in relation to the overall harm that is done. They assume, for example, that arsenic is more “dangerous” than, say, fluorides in public drinking water. They assume this because they see an arsenic victim agonize and die on the spot. The fluoridated water drinker seems to go on day after day and live out his “normal” life.

The truth of the matter is that one man takes arsenic and dies. Many people see the result of this, see it quite clearly. They understand what they saw and no one ever considers taking arsenic purposefully or accidentally. He fears and runs from arsenic, arsenic compounds or anything containing or thought to contain arsenic. One dies; many live.

However, the man who “thinks” it’s a good idea to drink only distilled or filtered or mountain stream water, may, at inconvenient times, get caught thirsty in an office building or a friend’s home or he may just react mechanically as he passes a drinking fountain and take a drink of fluoridated water assuming in his mind that “It won’t kill him.” But when the sum total of all the damage to all life done by drinking and using fluoridated water is considered, it will be recognized that far more damage has been done than was done by the one dose of arsenic from which many learned their lessons. Here, no one learns. To the contrary all are lulled into the acceptance and further practice of something which gradually will leech the health potential of the entire nation. And down, down, down we shall go until we know again the company of the dodo bird!

This one practice is only one of many things we do that sap us, drain us. And it is our rationalization of each one’s being only a minor thing. We wrongly see narcotics as being more harmful than candy; alcohol as being more dangerous than white bread. The list could be added to indefinitely. We see the big lie as sinful but the white lie as expedient. We view the robber and the thief with disdain but tell our own children to lie about their ages to enter cinema or ride the bus for less cost. Less cost, my eye! The bombing of a Birmingham church that kills little children is horrible, I agree. But, at least it shakes up and horrifies the total nation and causes it to examine its conscience. And the damage done is nothing when compared to the insiduous moral erosion that takes place day after day, year after year, by individuals collectively and sustainingly thinking, feeling, voicing little hates, biases, prejudices against other human beings for any reason be it race, religion, business or politics.

Why is man forever fooled and deluded by the obvious? Why does he clutch so tenaciously to a dollar bill and look so disdainfully upon a penny? It is recognition of this foible that makes beggars rich! And it doesn’t matter what be the area—food, drink, health, crime, morality, everything. It is not the big, obvious things we have to fear. We know the big things for what they are. We have no trouble relating big things to their results, to the damage they do.

It is a little thing done over and over for a long period of time that does widespread, irreparable harm. It is the variety of little things which when considered in aggregate kill individuals and nations.

Let us work to broaden our picture of the present to include yesterday and tomorrow, yesteryear and the years ahead. Let’s become aware, really aware that an act is the same as the result of an act. Cancer is horrible! It is ugly, painful, frightening, stinking. No one argues this. And if this be so then all things that lead or contribute to cancer are ugly, painful, frightening, stinking! It cannot be otherwise.

So, if you see a single, occasional, sociable cup of coffee, with an old friend as being “nice,” then brother, you are blind! And a blind fool at that…because coffee and stomach cancer are related. They are one and the same. And if you say, “So what, I’ll run the risk for the pleasure of the moment,” then, brother, not only are you a fool, you also are insane!

If a man is sitting in the middle of the floor hitting himself in the head with a hammer you have no trouble adjudging him as nuts. And because he says he enjoys each blow knowing it will finally destroy him makes him no less crazy. There is no difference between him and ourselves except that we have more company.

We will be wise to examine all our practice’s in unemotional, unfettered light without reference to immediacy of pleasure, custom, tradition, conformity, external appearances, likes or dislikes. Examine these practices and determine one by one whether they are good or bad, healthful or harmful, right or wrong. Not just a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. Remember that nothing can be innocuous. Make it clear cut, black or white, no grays. And most important of all! Remember that the less harmful it seems to be the more dangerous it actually is to the greatest number of people over the greatest period of time.

And when you pick out the harmfulness of a practice, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem to be, then relate it to the big damage to which it contributes later on. When you do this you will see the little practice for what it really is. Also, and just as pregnant, you will see the big damage for what it really is. A morally sick society is made up of morally sick, singular persons. A war is but the remote extension of conflict and greed at the level of individuals. Hardened arteries are but the accumulation of many single deviant acts each of which seemed delightful at its moment but none of which can be recalled a day after it has occurred.

It can be no other way. Can it? Do you see the big point I am making? War never caused greed, greed causes war. Hardened arteries never caused a man to eat greasy foods; greasy foods easily can be related to hardening of the arteries. Think about it. Come to understand that any practice, any action or reaction, anything that you do that you can recognize to be against your inner sense of well being, your fitness, your longevity is bad, wicked, sinful, evil and must be seen in that light. To see it in any other light is illusion, delusion, unreal. You don’t have to be a college graduate to understand these things. (In fact, it may hinder your clarity.) All you have to do is to be quiet within yourself and think. Don’t “work” at “think,” just be still within yourself and the message will come through. Try it. You’ll see. Life will be less hectic. “Control” will come easier, because when one really understands, he understands with his whole, entire self—not just with his mind. And when there is understanding, change in behavior comes. You don’t have to “struggle” or “fight.” Just learn to broaden your concept of today to include yesterday and tomorrow, yesteryear and all the years ahead. If you do, there will be more of them. They will be better ones too.

Reprinted from The Health Crusader, September 1979