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THE GODDESS TRANSFORMATION

Question:

(Nathan Torkington) writes:

Hi….are you guys discussing Dr. Helen Caldicott??? Marcel

Response:

Caldicott is such a remarkable women.

She certainly is.  You’d think that someone who wrote 1157 lines on this subject could easily and quickly determine whether Caldicott was one woman or many women.  Such ambiguity in personal appearance is *most* remarkable. Yours in pedantry, Nat :-) (yes, yes, spelling flames are passe, but after reading a couple of paragraphs of boring post, I’m willing to cease upon the tiniest infraction of literary law to make some interest)

Response:

        DOCTRESS NEUTOPIA AND THE GODDESS TRANSFORMATION                            April 1992                         289 Triangle St.                   Amherst, Massachusetts 01002      Dr. Helen Caldicott, the renowned anti-nuclear physician, spoke the other night at the auditorium at the School of Business. She had become much more radical in her delivery since her last lecture some years ago at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She plainly diagramed on the blackboard the impending death of our planet bound to result from the hole in the ozone and the subsequent global warming.  But, in her newly-published book, _If You Love This Planet_, she calls the toxins in the environment "The Witches’ Cauldron." Was she blaming women on the environmental pollution?  This is the same metaphor Carl Sagan uses in his book, _A Path Where No Man Thought_, to describe the fallout of nuclear winter accept he calls it "The Witches’ Brew." Why are these recognized leading scientists using like metaphors reflecting female use of the occult to describe the worst manmade products of the planet?      Caldicott is such a remarkable women.  Maybe she is the most dynamic woman I have ever met. She is certainly the most influencial voice among those who began to put an end to the superpower nuclear arms race. In her speech, she spoke about the immorality of business. She equated land developer with world destroyer. Caldicott called it evil what these business people are doing to the planet for personal profits as students sit back apathetically and watch stupid TV shows.  She declared that we all know deep in our hearts what is going on, but we hide the truth by false smiles, acting polite, by saying everything is alright even though we really know everything is on the verge of total destruction.        Caldicott had come to realize that teachers of truth play a more important role than even medical doctors in the survival of our species. Her prognosis was that the planet had eight more years left before the environmental holocaust was uncurable. She said that during an interview with Barbara Walters, Walters called her a zealot. But what she is trying desperately to express is an intense concern for the future of humankind. She told us that some people have called her insane because she is  profoundly committed to the Truth.      During the lecture she asked the audience questions, so Phyllis, the archetypal crone, who was sitting in the front row spoke up. Caldicott told her not to speak until the end because she was interrupting her thought process.   Caldicott said her problem is that she is losing her freedom of speech. Even she, who had been granted a private visit in the White House with President Reagan to discuss the effects of nuclear war, is having difficulty gaining media coverage. After the Today Show read her book criticizing General Electric, they canceled her appearance on the show since the network is owned by GE. Even the UMASS student paper the, Collegian, is guilty of not taking her message seriously.  The day after her UMass address, the basketball coach was on the front cover, as well as James Tate who received the Pulitzer poetry prize for mediocre verse that does not challenge the Establishment. Caldicott merited only a short article and a poor photograph on the third page.      She states in _If You Love This Planet_ that love is the answer to the world’s problems, the cure to our illness, however from her talk, it was unclear if she understood the unifying force of love. At one point in her lecture, she urged us to write and call our Congress people about environmental issues. She believed the American people had the freedom to change the system by democratic action and revolutionary thought.  She believed if we elected the right people who opposed the corporate control of government only then we could save America…and therefore, the planet.      In the question period, I called out that the university was a dictatorship controlled by the wealthy, not a community of academic thinkers working together to solve the global problems. From a previous question someone had asked her about why human beings are so greedy, her response made me feel she did not have all the pieces to the global puzzle of how to liberate humanity.      Then she asked me what I was going to do about the dictatorship. So I became a revolutionary and walked on stage with her, went to the blackboard, erased her formulas, and drew the nuclear family and the single detached house.  Turning to the audience, I pointed out, "This is the cause of the greed and corruption of the university. Children throughout the world are indoctrinated with the American dream." Then I turned to her as I drew a circle within a circle that represented the world and said, "The only thing that will save us is a Just World, a vision of the world where technology used to solve our problems enacts the wisdom of the natural aristocracy. Democracy is not about the group, but about the creative individual’s responsibility to guide the group to a Cosmic Vision."      I could tell by her expression that she was not absorbing what I was saying.  It was arrogance that was stopping her from seeing my function within the peace movement.  Again, in a hostile way, she asked me what I was going to do about it. So I said I had written a letter to the Chancellor and the Dean of the School of Education.  She said, "What are you going to do if the Chancellor doesn’t read your letter?"  I informed her I was an unpublished poetess who wrote about love and peace and asked her if she could help me find a publisher.  But she said she could not help me.  I had to help myself and she suggested I invite the Chancellor out to lunch.  I knew that would be futile because the only thing he wanted to discuss was the basketball team making it to the finals. All the powerful connections she has, and she could not help me, she could not even give me time to explain my theory of peace to her.  I guess she thought I was too insignificant for her to listen to me since she was going to speak at the United Nations the next day.      Well, it seemed like I could not find the way to self- empowerment. I couldn’t get my letter to the Dean of Education, criticizing their new oligarchic plan for bureaucratic governance that eliminated holding school wide public forums, printed in any of the campus papers. Even the Earth Day Committee on campus refused my offer to be one of the speakers at the rally on Earth Day.  They were having problems with the administration who would not give them permission to hold an outside rally with electric microphones. Their reason was the noise might disturb classes. What was happening to freedom of assembly on campus?  Five years ago when I helped organized an Earth Day rally there had been no administrative policy against using outside amplification.      It seems as though I could not get my word out in any way.  My only recourse was to give the editor of the _Campus Chronicle_ my piece of mind when I went to his office to inquire why he had not printed my letter.  He had this good-old-boy smile on this face when I asked him why he would not empower me.  He said the Dean of Education refused to respond to my letter, and he thought my letter was not of general interest to the university campus.  I said, "Are you telling me the governance structure at the School of Education is not of public concern when the School of Education is responsible for the transmission of thought to the public schools?" With those words, he just continued to smile. So I continued, "This is but another example of the way women are not taken seriously and treated with disrespect which is a cardinal crime since women teachers of love. You, Editor, now have a dark spot on your soul for deciding not to print my letter about the lack of democracy at this campus.  On your death bed, my letter will reappear in our mind and haunt you throughout eternal time."      I asked him for the letter back.  He searched through his files as I informed him the dark spot on his soul was an oil slick for he had sold himself to the corporations who were wrecking the world.  "Why don’t you look in your file of censored letters?" I asked.        He responded, "There is no law saying I have to print all letters that come across my desk."      "That’s right," I said, "there is no democratic forum at this university. Thomas Jefferson believed controversy is the essence of democracy. If only you had the courage to be a true person who supports the freedom of ideas in the press;  if only you had the fortitude to be a true man!"  He continued to smile that golf-ball- guy smile as I walked out of his office.      It hurts so much to be oppressed.  Sometimes I feel as if I will go into hysteria for not having the freedom to affect the culture in healing ways. The "educational" establishment has figuratively cut out my tongue since I am unable to publish my ideas on campus.  The only thing they could do to be me now is to murder my body.  But the Establishment wants to keep that alive as long as possible so that I will continue to be an all-American consumer.  Besides, their food is slowly poisoning me with the pesticides and herbicides agribusiness sprays on the vegetables. Their diabolical plot is to give me some form of terminal cancer so that I will have an expensive death, needing chemotherapy, nuclear medicine, and long-term hospitalization.        Now that I think of it, maybe hysteria is not a female disease, but the way women behave after they wake up to their isolation and oppression.  I could now understand why some angry revolutionary who believed in the violent overthrow of the corporate state, might buy a small machine gun and point it at a editor’s head and say, "Print this letter and poetry or I will shoot tiny holes in your … read more »

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