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Growing old disgracefully.
I live in the UK, and 3 days ago I underwent a fairly minor surgical procedure... So far, it sounds ordinary enough, until I tell you what the procedure was, at which point people, especially male friends, start acting shocked.
I live in the UK, and 3 days ago I underwent a fairly minor surgical procedure, about 2 hours on the table under general anaesthesia.
Because I am in the UK this procedure was entirely free at the point of delivery, thanks to the NHS (National Health Service), including the hospital bed for a couple of hours of recuperation, and the handful of drugs handed out prior to discharge, which included 500 mg Paracetamol, 50 mg diclofenac sodium, 625 mg amoxicillin / clavulanic acid, and chlorhexadine gluconate.
So far, it sounds ordinary enough, until I tell you what the procedure was, at which point people, especially male friends, start acting shocked.
It was a full dental clearance.
A full dental clearance does not mean simply having all your (remaining) teeth pulled out. It is a far more thorough operation, all traces of nerve tissue and so on associated with the teeth are removed, the holes or sockets in the skull and jawbone where the teeth locate are cleaned out, if there are any ridges or protuberances in the skull or jawbone associated with how teeth were held in, these are also removed and dressed up, gums are split and scraped clean, then sutured up.
I had my own reasons for opting for this procedure, and I would not recommend it (or anything else) to anyone else, it was right for me, YMMV.
However,
If George Bush wishes to inspire "shock and awe" into the Iranians, judging by my experience with my friends, all he needs to do is have all his teeth extracted and then tell them what he has done.
Except, George Bush, like myself and my friends, lives in a country where "cosmetics" has become an ever more intrinsic part of "medicine", and the Iranians do not. Iranians will not tremble at the thought of a middle aged man (middle aged hell, I'm still YOUNG I tell you.)with no teeth.
When I grew up you could hardly stand at a bus stop without seeing at least one person with a lump on their neck, a carbuncle, or a mole like a sea anemone... as kids we would stare and point and laugh, but such sights were more common than seeing someone in a wheelchair.
Somewhere along the line, men became.... "pretty", no other way to describe it.
My dad had about 3 heart attacks before he went to see the Doctor, no fuss, just as long as he could go back to work in the afternoon... my grandfather went to the gold rush in Australia and pulled his own teeth in the outback, but nowadays a slightly asymetrical eyebrow line appears to be cause for grave concern and immediate cosmetic surgery.
What I find fascinating about all this, is that cosmetic considerations, and increasingly, not even pure cosmetic, but psychological based upon perceived self body image, considerations are becoming increasingly inextricably intertwined with basic medicine.
Back in the day when a tooth died it was dead, and it got pulled, thus removing a source of toxins from the blood supply to the brain.
Nowadays it appears that various root canals and crowns and other procedures are preferred, to give that sparkly white smile of "confidence" that the toothpaste adverts tell us we all need. The purely medical considerations have been subsumed to the cosmetic considerations.
Perhaps the thing that stunned me most about the responses I got, was that two of the more shocked ones came from a man who has had laser eye surgery, and from a man who has had a vasectomy.
Neither of these were required medically, they were both elective surgery, and yet, such solutions, and the various forms of dental surgery, appear to be becoming so routine that the "elective" part of "elective surgery" is becoming omitted, it is just plain surgery now, routine.
Laser eye surgery makes you look better, no need for spectacles for driving, somehow makes you a better man.
Vasectomy, I dunno, in some politically correct way this is also alleged to make you a better (new) man.
Having your teeth pulled out, oh noes, how could you do that to yourself?
I used to read a lot of Science Fiction, Larry Niven's Louis Wu with his amazing autodoc, yeah, it made him younger, but I do not recall anything about it correcting facial anatomy to make it more pleasing.
It is no wonder that it is next to impossible to find an NHS dentist in the UK, every dentist there is is filling up his schedules with elective cosmetic dentistry procedures, I'm sure similar things are happening in medicine, replacement hips and suchlike have to wait in the queue because all the beds are full of people having rhinoplastys, tummy tucks and their intestines stapled.
Mr Perens when asked to speak about Security, will talk about Security Theater displacing actual security, even though the Security Theater often costs more than true Security, as well as displacing true Security.
I see parallels here, Medical Theater (forgive the pun) displacing true Medical procedures.
Sigmund Freud had a relative called Bernaise, he coined the phrase "Public Relations" because the word "propoganda" had too many negative connotations.
Bernaise was responsible for United Fruit enlisting the CIA to overthrow democratically elected central american governments, and selling it as freedom and democracy in action.
50+ years of PR later, even such fundamental things as what constitutes the psyche of a man have been fundamentally altered by the incessant programming of the PR man.
I can now have a beautiful smile with dentures, and no more dentist bills or dental pain, ever, and this is somehow seen as being vastly inferior to having a mouth full of half a century old teeth that have been reworked more than Terminal 3 at Heathrow, that are basically dead and leeching poisons into my brain via my bloodstream.
Since having had a "full dental clearance" I have been researching it, there is little enough material online, but what there is is fascinating, it has allegedly cured brain lesions, seizures, depression, and a whole host of other things.
I cannot prove it because I have no extensive before and after blood works, but I now (3 days after surgery) sleep soundly, feel more invigorated and alive, have a sharper mind and in many ways a clearer mind and clearer eyesight, in that I notice and rejoice in small things that went unnoticed before, and a calm stomach.
I am utterly convinced that removing my teeth has removed a source of toxins that leeched into my bloodstream and thence into my brain and the rest of my body.
I was never a "New" or "gillette" man anyway, so I have suffered zero impact on my psyche or self esteem, and unlike the men, the women I know have taken it in their stride, barely worthy of comment.
Conclusions.
Clearly, during my lifetime many things that either simply were not possible, or were incredibly expensive, have now become routine.
Whether cosmetic surgery became routine because the technology advanced and made it possible, or because the PR machine made enough people want it that the technology was made to advance, is an exercise for the Technocrats to discuss.
What is clear, whether chicken or egg came first, is that whatever is available will be used, irrespective of purely medical reasons, provided any supposed benefit can be claimed.
DNA engineering of the foetus is still some way off, and it seems clear that surgical alteration will come first to all areas.
Given that this is Technocrat, this means as soon as an embedded into the brain and auditory nerves ipod becomes possible, people will start queueing.
Utopian futures involving cybernetically enhanced supermen are a fantasy.
Dystopian futures involving cybernetically RFID implanted citizens of 1984 are a fantasy.
The reality will be people queuing up to pay their monthly subs to cybermed in order to ensure the have the latest hdtv retinal implants, dolby thx aural implants, apple dildonic implants and of course just pick your desired body form out of a catalogue.
At that point Darwinian evolution will no longer be in the driving seat as far as short term evolutionary processes are concerned, but I predict that pushing Nature aside will just make Nature push back harder in some other area.
Far from a Gattaca type future where only the genetically screened and perfect may breed and be citizens, I feel we may eventually enter an era when only the un-modified mongrels amongst us who retain an unaltered copy of evolution within our genes will be allowed to, or able to, breed.
I'd like to hear other Technocrats opinions on this, and please identify your country of residence, as I feel that the background radiation of PR wherever you live will colour your opinions more than somewhat.