What Kills Us This Week

There's a new type of lung cancer that's being called 'Guangdong Cancer' because it's only found along the Pearl River Delta and scientists have been investigating and, this week, published their findings. Turns out that several factories are churning out some rare pollutants that contain 28 times the safe level of whatever and they suspect this is the cause.

Naturally, since we in HK get our pollution funneled down from Guangdong, this week all HK is in a tizzy about this, despite the fact that no one in HK has ever got this type of cancer.
But for me, there's something else that's got me not exactly knicker-knotted but rather more "mmmm, interesting!"

This is it: have you noticed how many new TV shows from the US feature "Logical and controlling woman" vs "Intuitive and freewheeling man"? And, yes, the very cute feature film "The Ugly Truth" is on that theme too.

And even cartoons are doing it!

But here's why this causes me concern. This theme is not new. And the three times before in history when this theme became popular and widespread in the arts, the whole thing ended in tears.

The first time was during the tail end of Ancient Greek theatre, just before the Greeks gave up Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, as their God of War and instituted Ares, God of Havoc and Mayhem in her place, and suddenly the Greeks went all stupidly and illogically Militaristic, and wars broke out everyplace and Greece fell ... well, didn't actually fall, but just became very poor and whittled itself down to third world status where it's remained ever since.

The second time was during during the 17th century in Europe when all the theatres and literature and arts adopted 'Logical Female; Intuitive Male" themes, as you can see for yourself with Comedie Francaise and England's Restoration Theatre, and we all know how this period lead to all sorts of civil wars and floundering and beheading of kings, and Puritans and the founding of America and other sorts of generally unacceptable ills.

And the third time was immediately before World War One.

So can we see a pattern emerging here? And what is actually happening to us at a subconscious level that this is what we're thematically producing in the Arts?

I'm thinking it has something to do with men feeling emasculated, which ALWAYS, so history teaches us, leads to a tidal wave of backlash, the rise of Vicious Militaristic-ality, Right Wing Puritanism and the glorifying of Havoc and Mayhem,which leads to the deaths of a great many young men and, worse, a general downgrading of Rights of Women!

So this new crop of US TV series may look all cute and innocent, folks, but it's EVIL I tell you! Downright EVIL! And if history teaches us anything at all, it is that THIS is all going to end in tears!

So that's what I'm choosing this week:

THREATDOWN
Men surrendering the definition
of themselves being "Logical and Controlling"

P.S. Knowing stuff like this, Val, is why we should ALL study history!