The reader I refer to has a site definitely worth visiting: www.blog4brains.com.

   I guess that’s what it takes. We are simply humans and it seems that once we get into a rut we tend stay there. It is the easy way out. Someone needs to poke us with a stick.

   Anyway, the reader mentioned that we have a neglected freedom, the freedom to fail.

  Our present American culture has become very–I won’t call it success oriented–but ‘anti-failure’ oriented.

  I first experienced this in 1968 when I had moved into a new neighborhood and a neighbor invited me to his home for a visit.

   The basement had been made into a very impressive game room and while touring the house his young son challenged me to a game of table tennis.

   The boy was very good but I managed to win a very close game.

   Both the kid and the father significantly cooled and the visit ended fairly quickly.

   When we went outside, the father said angrily, “You were supposed to let him win!”

   Having been a Boy Scout, an Assistant Scoutmaster, an Explorer Advisor and a Cub Scout Committee Chairman I was very surprised by that attitude.

  During my entire life I had been conditioned to survive and one only survives by giving everything in you to every task. The concept of intentional failure was beyond my comprehension.

   Since then we have seen the system of survival replaced by the system of ‘preservation of self-esteem’

  School children are not permitted to fail. No matter how poor their performance they still graduate from high school barely able to read, write a meaningful sentence or give you back the correct change.

  We do have the ‘freedom to fail’. If you manage your personal finances or your business in a manner in which you cannot survive then it is necessary that you fail.

  I am fairly certain that if you cannot compete in business or in the academic fields in China, India or Russia then you have the freedom to fail.

  No one will bail you out if you are a proven loser.

  Why should they?

   If we continue to place a higher value on  self-esteem than on performance, we, as a country, can expect to fail. It is, after all, one of our freedoms.

I have just read an article that appeared January 22nd, on NEWSMAX HEALTH.

I feel that it is important to spread this information because many home remedies from Latin American countries and India use incredibly high levels of lead in their preparation.
The CDC reported 12 cases of lead poisoning in 2004 from using ayurvedic remedies in Texas, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and California.

High levels of lead have been found in ayurvedic medicines, which are used in India and in South Asian immigrant communities in New York, Chicago and Houston. These medicines include ghasard, a brown powder given to relieve constipation in babies, and mahayogaraj gugullu, for high blood pressure.

Lead poisoning can cause lethargy, confusion, learning problems and convulsions. Too much lead can cause irreversible brain damage and death.

The article stated:
“Traditional medicines may account for up to 30 percent of all childhood lead poisoning cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 240,000 U.S. children were diagnosed with high blood lead levels in 2004 to 2006.”

“Mexican remedies such as greta, azarcon and rueda – powders that are given to treat constipation in children and contain as much as 90 percent lead. In New York City and Rhode Island, high lead levels in the blood have been tied to litargirio, a powder containing up to 79 percent lead. It is used by Dominican immigrants for such ills as foot fungus and body odor.”

“In Harris County, which includes Houston, traditional medicines are blamed for nearly one-fifth of all cases in which children were found to have high levels of lead. In Arizona, home remedies account for one-fourth of childhood lead poisoning cases.”

How many high lead level cases are not reported if the child doesn’t become ill enough for the parents to become aware that it is their home medication that is causing problems?
If there are minute traces of lead in paint on toys, I wondered when I wrote the previous article, how many toys that have minute traces of lead in their paint must a child eat to cause the levels of lead absorbed and detected?
My point is that before we make drastic and costly decisions we should not make assumptions. The scientific approach of ‘cause and effect’ seems to have been forgotten recently. Opinion and emotion seems to prevail over solid scientific fact.

My interest is in the trends that have shaped our thinking and consequently our actions.

Last night we had friends over for dinner and afterward, we as most people are doing today, were discussing what is going wrong with our society. Our friend is a retired teacher and she talked about the difficulty in actually getting today’s youth interested in what they need to learn simply to survive in today’s society.

We discussed the permissiveness that is rampant in our society here in the US. Not having lived in other countries we do not know if this is a global trend.

I am going to keep this posting short but I will follow this with several articles that I think will cover the causes of where society has stumbled.

It is my opinion that the problem started with Dr. Benjamin Spock in the 1950’s and I will elaborate upon this in the next posting.