Cancers Symbolism

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Think about it, and i partially mean enviroment, the pesticides, and cars and plants and the dupont utopia of better living thru chemistry, but something deeper as well.
here and now inwe reward growth, fast growth and permanant growth, we think it is a good thing when things ge bigger, when mergers happen, when something istaken over.
is there more cancer now then there was, and if there is, is it b/c it is our disease, the disease that marks us more redaily as citizens of a new age ?

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I once read a quote from a capitalism skeptic (paraphrased, forgot the name) -- "Growth for growth's sake is the paradigm of cancer."

I don't know if there are quantitatively more cancers per capita in the present generation compared to previous ones. Some factors affecting the numbers:

1) Before vaccines, improved sanitation, better industrial safety, and safer childbirth people often died at younger ages; in some cases they didn't live long enough to develop diagnosible cancers.

2) In some previous generations there seems to have been a taboo on discussing cancer. It's possible that some number of people without the cause of death being specifically disclosed, and the average person's awareness of cancer might not have been as acute.

3) High-tech detection and increased preventive medicine undoubtedly means that more people are diagnosed now than in previous generations.

― j.lu (j.lu), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:53 (twenty-two years ago)

be very careful here

― pulpo, Friday, 7 February 2003 16:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Why? It's a good and valid question.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Friday, 7 February 2003 16:56 (twenty-two years ago)

it is a very elegant and clever formulation, yes, but "towards a poetics of cancer" should be handled very carefully if it's not going to look like a piece of offensive frippery.

Actually maybe I am being a boor - I just won't check this thread again.

― pulpo, Friday, 7 February 2003 18:59 (twenty-two years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.