You don’t need modern medicine to be healthy.
Here is the sixth text in the series by Mark Boyle, author of The Way Home: Tales from a Life Without Technology (2019), where he shares his experience of living without industrial technology. In the following article, he addresses the topic of health and accurately describes the hostage-taking of humanity by the techno-industrial system, « an organization which provides the antidote as it distills the poison. » (Jacques Ellul[1]).
One small critique of Boyle’s writing is his use of “we” when he writes, “we create stressful, toxic, and unhealthy lifestyles.” “We” didn’t create any of this—the industrial revolution and technological progress were never subject to a democratic vote. Our grandparents, parents, and ourselves were never asked for our opinion about the introduction of new technology into society. It is the technocracy and its elites, including all left- and right-wing parties, that impose this suicidal policy on all of humanity in an authoritarian manner.
You can read the other texts by Mark Boyle here:
1. Technology destroys people and places. I’m rejecting it
2. Lessons of living like a prince outside cyberia
3. Bored? No way. Ditching technology makes life complicated and beautiful
4. Environmentalism used to be about defending the wild – not any more
5. Living without technology taught me about life in society;
6. You don’t need modern medicine to be healthy;
7. Living without technology is not romantic;
8. We must resist, revolt, and rewild ourselves;
9. Disconnecting from the industrial world helped me discover what reality really is.
__________
I live a healthier life now I’m free of the trappings of modernity
When people learn of my decision to reject modern complex technology in favour of older, slower, forgotten ways, their first line of inquiry usually involves healthcare. [...]
Industrial civilisation, itself only 200 years old, is already causing the sixth mass extinction of species of the last half billion years. What’s that got to do with an ambulance? Well, both nothing and everything. The ambulance itself undoubtedly saves lives (including my dad’s). Yet deconstruct a single ambulance – with its plastics, oils, fluids, copper, acids, glass, rubber, PVC, minerals and steel – and I’ll show you how to lay waste to the very thing all our lives depend upon: the planet.
Big picture aside, most of what afflicts us today – cancer, obesity, mental illness, diabetes, stress, auto-immune disorders, heart disease, along with those slow killers: meaninglessness, clock-watching and loneliness – are industrial ailments. We create stressful, toxic, unhealthy lifestyles fuelled by sugar, caffeine, tobacco, antidepressants, adrenaline, discontent, energy drinks and fast food, and then defend the political ideology that got us hooked on these things in the first place. Our sedentary jobs further deplete our physical, emotional and mental wellbeing, but instead of honestly addressing the root cause of the illness we exert ever more effort, energy, genius and money trying to treat the symptoms and contain the epidemics.
We’ve developed Stockholm syndrome, sympathising with the very system that has economically held us hostage since the 18th century. Industrialism, along with its partner in crime, capitalism, has even persuaded us that, in order to save ourselves and loved ones from the horrors of disease we should spray every surface with chemicals, keep children’s hands out of the dirt and muck, and try to sterilise our entire world. With our immune systems compromised as a result, multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies then sell us products to fend off what our bodies should be able to fight off naturally.
Read the full version:
Footnote [1] — Jacques Ellul, La Technique ou l’Enjeu du siècle, 1954.
Join the resistance.
ATR is constantly welcoming and training new recruits determined to combat the technological system.