The Miranda Syndrome... or...

...we did it to ourselves.  I'm speaking about the ever increasing realization that a great many things that came into the common reality with the best of intentions have turned out to be subtle demons plaguing the human condition.

Miranda... she won't kill you,
not right away anyhow...*

A great many folks, myself one of them as often as not, hear some new panic tainted doomsday rant and dismiss the thought as just another group of californicated fruit-loops trying to make a name for themselves. C'mon, really. There's already fifty thousand possible ways for our world to come to a very bad end, do we really need another?

The answer is no, and yes, all in the same breath. No, we don't need any more panic mongering, we don't need anymore fragmentation, we don't need anymore "superiority-by-reason-of-avoidance" types deforming  all of reality trying to twist some single point into an explanation for all the world's woes. What we do need is a much better understanding of our  environment regardless if that environment is the one nature arranged or the one we arranged for starting from what nature provided.

The panic mongers often sabotage not only their own case but the case for human survival by painting everything in single point perspectives. No single point of anything is responsible for everything, not if it was of human origin or otherwise. As a matter of historical fact it is very difficult to say "this single point caused this deformation" because it is exceedingly rare for any single point to be the only new factor entering the environment at any given point in time. As history and science co-operate to provide a measure of truth it often turns out these alterations to the environment tend to counteract each other. Not that they are good things, nor even acceptable things, far from it, but rather that the badness they introduce is oriented in different manners such that the one tends to limit the impact of the other.

For a fairly simple example of this? Consider the conundrum of burning fossil fuels. It took over a century, but the relationship is clear: the so-called "greenhouse" gases are indeed an insulating factor on the environment, shifting weather patterns, warming the ocean waters that spawn the huge storms, elevating sea levels even while melting ice packs dilute the ocean's salt waters and threaten the foundations of the planetary food chain. Yet, having set this chain in motion a hundred some years ago, another fact presents: where the greenhouse gases are an insulator the soot and smoke particles produced in the same combustion tend to reflect sunlight and reduce the energy reaching the surface of the earth. Do they reflect enough to bring the energy system to balance? No, of course not, but without them the consequences of the insulation would have gone full critical well before the relationship was ever perceived. The soot rains out in fairly short order, a couple of years, but the CO2 is there until we figure out how to get it back. If we stop burning the coal and diesel before we figure out a way to actually reduce the greenhouse gasses we've just made the situation worse.

The point is that the contamination of our environment MUST be reversed in essentially the same order it was polluted in the first place if the effort is to succeed. Otherwise we're solidly trapped in the second order consequences that might well be just as detrimental if not even more damaging, second and third order consequences where we have only the most marginal of understandings. And gentle reader? This is a (relatively) simple example.

How is this a simple example? It is simple because it only deals with the physical environment, the environment external to the human creature itself. What of the contaminants which impact on the internal environment of the human? What of those which have the potential to fundamentally change humanity itself?

Such contaminants do exist, you know. Consider a semi-balancing pair of contaminants that have been around long enough for history and science to have produced  decent resolution concerning their consequences: the offsetting pair of tetra-ethyl lead and fluoridated drinking water.

The former, tetra-ethyl lead from days of high octane leaded motor fuels, was a valve lubricant introduced to allow the early automobile engines a marketable degree of longevity. The metallurgy in the early days just was not up to making exhaust valves that lasted much over 10,000 miles, the evaporating lead carried away enough heat for them to go 75 to 100,000 miles before they had to be replaced. By the time the science of metallurgy caught up to the application economics took over: why spend the money to change what is obviously working?

Back then no one noticed that the increase of aggressive and  violent behavior mirrored the increased concentrations of lead in the air: highest in the cities where the pollution was the worst, less in the countryside where the levels never reached the truly dangerous concentrations seen in the cities. Back then everyone blamed the violence on everything from overcrowding to a communist plot, the environmental factor of leaded air just wasn't on anyone's horizon. It wasn't until several decades after the auto and petroleum industries had mastered the challenge of producing high endurance mobile power-plants that didn't depend on a leaded fuel that someone noticed damn! look at that: the degree of urban violence is falling in exact proportion to the reduction of vaporized lead in the atmosphere! Who knew? No one.

Now, had it not been for the other element in play the socio-political situation of the 1960's might have been exponentially worse than it was. The revolution might have really gotten going big time resulting in the destruction of the United States as a free society.

Say what??!!??

It was in 1945 the first major city began fluoridating their municipal water supply to promote healthy teeth. The experiment produced outstanding results, a decade later fluoridated drinking water was the defacto national standard. The per-capita rise of those drinking fluoridated water was a very close match for the rise of lead in the air, and again, most concentrated in the big cities. Ok, so how did healthy teeth minimize urban violence leading to society destroying revolution?

It took science another thirty years to reveal the mechanism in play. As it turns out that while fluoridated drinking water does wonderful things for preventing tooth decay it equally does horrible things for brain health, in particular the health of the totally critical pineal gland (the brain's primary power regulator, the thermostat if you will influencing everything from memory to the efficiency of cognitive processes). Fluoridation promotes the accumulation of calcium (fluorine's natural enemy) in the pineal gland, and as the gland becomes more calcified it loses its' ability to efficiently control the internal functioning of the brain.

Net result? People become slower, duller, more susceptible to irrational suggestions, ever more unsure of uncertain memories. Not to mention shedding IQ points like autumn leaves in the first freeze. They have great teeth, and pretty much all they're inclined to do is watch (fill in your least favorite totally brain dead TV propaganda show-- I'd say FOX news, but that's just me) while.using those teeth to chew potato chips. They just flat do not have enough mental energy to be all that aggressive, much less stage a viable revolution without some  degree of lead in their ass (to bastardize an old saying favored by the country boys).

When you pull back far enough to put the big picture in one frame what you find is the net effect of those two totally separate and otherwise unrelated environmental factors from history make a perfect example of how mitigating one factor, without considering how it might be balancing another and equally dangerous second factor, creates second level consequences just as dangerous to the health of society as the first scenario.

To bring this ramble into the present day? Leaded gasoline went away in the 1970's, gone by 1980. But fluoridating drinking water is still in major play in the United States (but not in modern Europe... hmmmm) and still debilitating the mental capacity of the American people.

What changes observed as the one faded and the other continued might shed light on the full scope of the situation? Might the explosion of mental health issues be related to an ever more complex society hosting ever less competent individuals? Might that be an area to investigate?  Might the addictive and propaganda laden properties of the social media attempting to control the public mindset be harvesting benefit from the dulling of America, and effectively destroying a functional democracy in the process be a good place to look? Is the overall and undeniable drop of objective academic competence seen across the last four decades of American history perhaps a warning tell-tale flashing red in some obscure corner of some hypothetical dashboard?

I'll leave you to form your own opinions, but I will assert that these are the sort of observations leading to questions leading to full scientific investigation that must, MUST be mounted as the effort to restore our environment goes forward lest we, with all well meaning ignorance, finally and fully light the fuses of Armageddon in the United States.

Oh, and why is this little essay titled "The Miranda Syndrome?" The title comes from the sci-fi movie "Serenity" where "Miranda" was the name of the planet where they tried for a perfect utopia via better living through chemistry, and only succeeded in producing the ultimate human villain's to be found: the Reavers. If you know the Firefly universe I need say no more. Thank you for your time, and thank you for thinking about the situation while still we have time to think.

*(I never post any photo to the internet I didn't find on the internet... if you recognize your work and would like it removed just drop a note in the comment box... thanks)