Friday 28 April 2006

"Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness" or washing and brainwashing

"The remaining noticable characteristic of 'Che' is his filth. He hates to wash and will never do so. He is filthy, even by the rather low standard of cleanliness prevailing among the Castro forces in the Sierra Maestra. Once in a while, "Che" would take some of his men to a stream or pool, in order that they might wash. On those occasions "Che" would never wash either himself or his clothes, but would sit on the bank and watch the others. He is really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty." --slanderous description of Che Guevara from the 1958 C.I.A. dossier

[...]

These days, cleanliness is defined more by corporations selling "sanitation products" than by anyone else. This is important to keep in mind. Certainly, most of these products have an uncanny ability to cut through natural dirt and grime-but does removing natural dirt and grime with synthetic chemicals necessarily constitute the only acceptable form of sanitation? I'm at least as frightened by these manufactured, artificial products as I am of a little dust, mud, or sweat, or (god forbid!) a stain from food or blood on my shirt. At least I know where the dirt/"filth" came from and what it's made of!

The idea that it is worthwhile to use chemicals (whether they be deodorant, detergent, or shampoo) to eradicate organic dirt has some frightening implications, too. First, it supports the old Christian superstition that the biological body is shameful and should be hidden--that our bodies and our existence in the physical world as animals are intrinsically disgusting and sinful. This groundless idea has been used to keep us insecure and ashamed, and thus at the mercy of the priests and other authorities who tell us how to become "pure": once, by submitting to their holy denial of the self, and now, by spending plenty of our money on the various "sanitation" products they want to sell us. Also, as capitalism transforms the entire world from the organic (forests, swamps, deserts, rivers) to the inorganic (cities of concrete and steel, suburbs of asphalt and astroturf, wastelands that have been stripped of all natural resources, garbage dumps) the idea that there is something more worthwhile about synthetic chemicals than natural dirt implies that this transformation might actually be a good thing... and thus implicitly justifies their profit-motivated destruction of our planet.

[...]

Continues on Deoxy.org

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i love it when you talk dirty.

paul x

I.:.S.:. said...

Well well well, as I have often said.

(a bit of food or blood on my clothes - at least I know what that is...)

It's like saying I smoke cause I don't trust air I can't see...

But what is it I have often said? Deodorants, perfumes, cosmetic and hygiene products; encasing modern humans in protective auras of scent... Interfering with natural pheromonal communications and fucking about with nature... I am in a Soho bar and I keep bumping up against invisible force shields... it takes me a while to realise they are olfactory in nature... Blotting out my smell...

I smell of freedom...

Indigobusiness said...

Freedom is without smell, entirely. It damn sure doesn't smell like napalm in the morning.

I found some great pure soap and olive oil shampoo...I bought a boatload. I'm ready for a cleansing, should it become absolutely necessary.

The surfactants they put in everything lately (sodium laurel sulfate) allows nasty particles to slip past the blood-brain barrier by reducing the surface tension of fluids. Aluminum, mercury, etc are grabbed by unstable things like fluoride and can enter the brain this way.

Cleanliness is nigh onto ungodliness in an upside down world. Kids are scrubbed into all sorts of skin pathologies from overcleansing and stripping the benificial bacteria, oils, etc. Eczema is rampant in the good ol' USA.

I'm all jazzed for getting dirty.

Lazy said...

"The surfactants they put in everything lately (sodium laurel sulfate) allows nasty particles to slip past the blood-brain barrier by reducing the surface tension of fluids"

Sodium lauryl sulphate? That's what they coat the morphine pills with that I used to crush and inject. Is that, like, bad?

Indigobusiness said...

Lazy- Sodium lauryl sulfate (I misspelled it the first time)is a caustic facilitator of all sorts of noxious commercial personal products.

The dictionary definition even says you shouldn't swallow it, after mentioning its use in toothpastes. They don't tell you how it provides a portal for fluoride (an unstable salt and waste product of plutonium processing which binds instantly to any metal atom it encounters, like mercury), by slipping the stuff past the brain barrier. So, yes, it's definitely bad.

Sounds like you should either use pure water or get a medical degree and practice in India or somewhere, so you could have ready access to better forms of your dragon.