By Paul Goettlich
As each new technological miracle is promoted and supplied en masse to the public, we’re told our lives will be more healthy, wealthy and wise. We experience some benefits. But as each of the perceived advantages fades and cracks, malfunctions appear far sooner than anticipated. Our hopes are dashed, our money disappeared, and our privacy lost.
Each successive incursion of modern technology erodes our natural connection to the Earth. Recovering even a modest comprehension of our earthly connection will be extremely difficult if at all possible. And yet, without it, humans cannot survive.
Just as we’ll never return to precolonial times to eliminate its sociological problems, we’ll not solve the existential issues created by each modern technology. In exploring modern technologies, this article attempts to make sense out of the strange dichotomy in which the vast majority are enthralled by its benefits without relating them to their existential threats playing out in plain sight. Even when forced to look at those existential threats, most think existential isn’t so bad. “Compared to What”?[i]
Paul Simon’s forty-year-old song, Boy in the Bubble on his 1986 Graceland album, offers the disconcerting suggestion that our search is in vain. The image we see isn’t real but delivers a sense of false hope which is discovered far too late.
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
So don’t cry, baby, don’t cry
Don’t cry
It’s a uniquely human trait to search outward for answers to all the wrong questions when the solutions to our difficulties are normally simple, inescapable and the least costly. Those are lifestyle changes which we fail to acknowledge or refuse to act on. We’re deluded into believing that technology reverses the negative effects of our destructive lifestyles. And with each new layer of tech fixes comes its own unique set of negative consequences, unintentional or not, which only delays the inevitable costs.
Corporations purposefully deceive us about their product’s many threats until it’s essentially impossible to give them up, making our decisions counterproductive at best. Instead, we select colors and options, wait for delivery and insert batteries. Preyed upon as nothing more than corporate assets to be tapped in every form imaginable, we’re given no choice to opt out. They get the wealth and tell us to take out the trash.
A recent form of avoidance is the mission to send humans to Mars. But Mars isn’t Simon’s Graceland utopia and we’ll definitely not be graciously received there. If successive generations are born in space, their physical life forces and spirits will be severely weakened by the natural forces outside the protections of earth’s atmosphere and gravity. Astronauts’ personal stories tell us they return to Earth with ravaged bodies.[ii]
Elon Musk, the wealthiest human whose ketamine-powered superego developed in apartheid South Africa, has his sights set on Mars. Since it makes absolutely no sense, that’s where we must go! Like Disney’s Buzz Lightyear, he beckons us:
MARS & BEYOND, THE ROAD TO MAKING HUMANITY MULTIPLANETARY. [iii]
If future workers go to Mars, they’ll mine distant planets as living cannon fodder for the super wealthy in utterly inhospitable conditions that are magnitudes of order more deadly than working for Musk on Earth. The worker injury rate at SpaceX Starbase in 2024 was almost six times the average injury rate of similar space vehicle manufacturing companies, according to government data released in May.[iv] Musk has zero compassion for his workers or consumers of his products.
Exposure to altered gravity causes skeletal changes, which can result in compromised bone strength during and after spaceflight, increasing the risk of fracture.[v] Physiological impacts of the microgravity environment include fluid redistribution and subsequent head congestion.[vi] Exposure to the isolation and confinement of spaceflight can result in decrements in cognitive and behavioral functioning.[vii] An increase in the prevalence of high-power ground-based lasers capable of reaching the ISS, and possibly even the Moon, could cause acute laser exposure damaging hemorrhagic retinal lesions resulting in temporary or permanent damage to vision.[viii]
Human Exceptionalism is the belief that humans are profoundly superior to all other life on Earth because of our language, art and religion. Musk and other technocrats are prime examples of human exceptionalists who don’t see all humans as equal. It’s a tragic belief that’s learned rather than inherited. And most of us accept it, at least in part. A three-year-old child lacks this view but learns it from family, schools and church. Its anthropocentric perspective frees its believers to ravage the ecosystem and powerless people in their path to wealth. It’s made far worse with the layers of dehumanization by religious zealots, white supremacists, xenophobes and homophobes.
Back On Earth
The Green Revolution earned Norman Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his role in fighting global hunger. It was a major technological breakthrough in my lifetime, designed to increase crop outputs. While it turned food scarcity into overabundance, the less fortunate remained unfed and still go hungry. It failed completely to alleviate hunger in conflicts.
While Borlaug’s stated intent was to feed the growing masses, it was more about offsetting overpopulation, allowing its growth to continue. Its synthetic chemical inputs caused endocrine system disruption, many cancers and deaths. It also severed our connection to the earth, telling us that technology is better than natural methods without synthetic chemicals on smaller fields with smaller tools that are less dependent on fossil fuels.
In retrospect, the wrong question was “How do we feed a rapidly expanding world population?” when the right one would have been “How do we control human population to a sustainable level?”
But proposals of population control collide head-on with human biological capabilities to abstain and religious dogmas[ix] to avoid contraception. It’s acceptable for Western nations to advise birth control to Africans, but totally unacceptable in Western countries themselves, especially with increasing evangelical influence in governments.
Regardless, there’s immense pressure to procreate, making it seemingly impossible to control the population which adds credit to the tech fix pharmaceuticals in our inabilities to control our human desires – synthetic polymers and spermicides. The benefits are far outweighed by the payment. That being ill health, cancers and so on for disrupting the natural flow of hormones in women.
Genetic Engineering, the next technological wonder, keeps promising to feed the poor while repairing the overwhelmingly negative effects of the Green Revolution – synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Instead, it increased pesticide use and is causing even greater problems than the Green Revolution and the world’s poor are even hungrier, the soils are more depleted, and waters are yet more polluted. Genetic engineering left many thousands[x] of poor farmers in India catastrophically indebted because the technology failed with the bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), the target pest of Bt cotton, developed a tolerance to it. Poor farmers felt they had no alternative and committed suicide by drinking pesticides.[xi]
Agricultural genetic engineering is centered on corporate control of seeds and farming inputs while increasing corporate profit without regard to harms. It also had the effect of unraveling the social structure of rural farming communities.[xii] Farmers are made economically captive by corporate contracts which force them to deal exclusively with one corporation. Monsanto “advertise[d] in brochures that if you think your neighbors are growing Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Canola without a license, you should rat or squeal on them.”[xiii] Studies of its profitability are positive, while those of its highly negative effects on land, water and communities are few and far between because they are extinguished by Monsanto.
As it is throughout all tech fields, the biotech industry plays a major role in disseminating false and misleading information that confounds useful discussion. Corporate profits allow them to spend millions on disinformation. In the case of Monsanto (Bayer), they “distort the scientific peer-review process through ghostwriting, to orchestrate campaigns to retract journal articles, and to influence editorial decisions. The firm’s apparent goal was to manipulate the regulatory process so that it could continue selling a product that the firm’s own research indicated might be dangerous.”[xiv]
RoundUp Ready technology is a major tool of genetically engineered crops like corn and soybeans to resist the synthetic pesticide glyphosate. As an endocrine disruptor, glyphosate inhibits the creation of steroids, and is linked to non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma, birth defects, liver disease, kidney disease, and reproductive problems. Its manufacturer settled over 100,000 claims in 2020 with a payout of nearly $11 billion.[xv]
Between 1961 and 2020, global agricultural output increased nearly 4 times while its population grew 2.6 times, creating a 53-percent increase in agricultural output per capita.[xvi] Yet in 2024, more than 295 million people across 53 countries and territories experienced acute levels of hunger – an increase of 13.7 million from 2023.[xvii]
The ability to feed many more people is hindered by politics and their ability to pay for food, which is conveniently called a problem of distribution. And the future doesn’t look good for a more equitable distribution because of the rapidly increasing effects of climate change already causing crop losses. All of it caused by fossil fuels, either as fuel or materials.
Genetically engineered salmon are being farmed in nets in the lochs of the Scottish Highlands. Frequently the nets break and thousand are released into the wild. Being genetically unequipped for life in the wild, most die because they aren’t natural hunters like the wild salmon. They’re also sexually unattractive to the wild salmon. But some live on to breed with the dwindling wild population, thus genetically polluting the natural gene lines to make the progeny weaker.
Again, this technological fix to a dwindling salmon population is depressingly misinformed and strictly profit based. Wild Atlantic salmon were already suffering from multiple anthropogenic threats like climate change, habitat loss, pollution and invasive species. Without alleviating these, nothing can be accomplished to save them.[xviii] But adding genetically engineered salmon to the mix heightens the threat of all others.
How We Got Here
Because of the flawed reductionist logic employed by corporate producers, they’re own research has extremely limited reliability regardless of how large and expensive their research budgets.
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René Descartes, in De homine (1662), claimed that non-human animals could be explained reductively as automata; meaning essentially as more mechanically complex versions of this Digesting Duck. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck#/media/File:Digesting_Duck.jpg
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Western Reductionism is the way science has worked for the last 500 years. It breaks down complex systems into component parts to investigate how each works and then reassembles them back into the whole by adding each component part in a linear routine. Everything is logical with mechanical objects, but the process loses a great deal of its value with living entities because chance plays a key role in biological systems. In combination with corporate deceit, it’s an existential flaw in testing chemical toxicities of plastics, pesticides and genetically engineered crops and animals, as well as microwave and nuclear technologies.
As a distressing example of the dichotomy of technology, pesticides and synthetic polymers (plastics) are negatively affecting human procreation, necessitating further tech fixes after they cause infertility. Everybody knows families who have required assisted reproductive technologies (ART).[xix] In the United States, about 19% of couples are unable to conceive after one year of unprotected sexual intercourse, indicating a significant prevalence of infertility. Additionally, approximately 13.4% of women aged 15-49 experience difficulties with fertility.[xx]
In a yet more bizarre development, polyethylene bags are being used as artificial womb technology (AWT).[xxi] As a plausible explanation to these events, pesticides and nanoplastics caused fertility issues that are now be assisted by more plastic. Plastic is intrinsically part of the healthcare system and scientific research. In 2003, there was a prominent article on how lab animals died after their plastic cages were washed with a typical cleaner.[xxii] I interviewed the researcher, asking why researchers still used plastic in their labs when it was a well-known fact that all plastics migrate toxins into whatever they contact. Their response was “What are we supposed to do? Glass costs too much.” And guess what material is still being used.
Modern Technology crept up on us, beginning after World War II when more than eight million American military personnel were repatriated to the United States and war manufacturing turned to peacetime profits, redirecting many of those same technologies that caused great destruction and loss of life – nerve gasses, increasingly powerful explosives, computers, radios, radar, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and plastics.
A little later, America was thrust into the future by DARPA: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It began as ARPA in 1958 by President Eisenhower in response to the Soviet Union’s 1957 Sputnik 1 launch. As a young boy I listened to Sputnik’s signals[xxiii] while sitting cross-legged on the school auditorium floor with my fellow classmates, I had no concept of what it meant and wasn’t impressed because it was presented with little explanation. The beatniks who mimicked the name of Sputnik probably had more of an idea of its social ramifications.
DARPA is a collaboration of academia, industry, and government which articulates and implements research and development projects of technology and science. Many of which could be described as futuristic, even bizarre, and far outside the actual needs of the military. The Economist called DARPA “the agency that shaped the modern world”.[xxiv]
Technological advances are now being made in a frenzied state of motion, being developed faster than can be assimilated by businesses and homes. And yet Peter Thiel, believes technology has stagnated for the past 50 years.[xxv] He also believes that those who impede technological advancement such as Greta Thunberg are Antichrists.[xxvi] The far right have taken in some fairly righteous anecdotes to solve their problems. However, rapid advances will definitely not benefit the majority of us. It’s certain they’ll reduce our already dwindling freedoms, adversely affect our health and society in unprecedented ways.
Today, artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the tip of their tongues and in every thought. The air is full of warnings that AI could destroy us that are being ignored. I heard them regularly on the streets of London recently. Politicians don’t comprehend how it works or its risks and only see dollar signs. Playing in the background, I hear Leonard Cohen’s song “Everybody Knows.”[xxvii]
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
One of the unstated purposes of AI is to put more people out of work in order to keep more of the world’s wealth in the hands of technocrats. More computing power means less work for people.
Most everyone has modern digital gadgets that were developed through those initial wartime technologies. Yet with gigabytes of instant communication at our fingertips, we’re highly misinformed as we share the abundant disinformation on anti-social media. We’re obsessed with each new technology, eager to be the first on our block to buy in. In doing so, we subject our lives to being monitored by our cars, cellphones, smart TVs, watches, refrigerators, doorbells and security systems.
How it all works or where all our personal data goes in between us and our monitoring devices is seldom pondered. Simply put, all data runs through all the systems it’s linked to. With AI added into the mix, leaks of our data are unavoidable and nearly untraceable. How are our digital images on Facebook and other apps being misused? Our daily conversations at home are recorded by Alexa and stored on the cloud. Pharmaceutical prescriptions shared through pharmacy and insurance connections. Our browsing histories are collected by Google Chrome. Every item you’ve purchased and every website you visited has been recorded, analyzed and entered in a spreadsheet to be sold off.
We’re being convinced that we need their surveillance in order to have an edge. “You can make your life better by listening to AI. So sorry but the company must have ALL your information, all your data.”
Definition of Sur-veil-lance Cap-i-tal-ism, n.
- A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales; 2. A parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modification; 3. A rogue mutation of capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge, and power unprecedented in human history; 4. The foundational framework of a surveillance economy; 5. As significant a threat to human nature in the twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth; 6. the origin of a new instrumentarian power that asserts dominance over society and presents startling challenges to market democracy; 7. A movement that aims to impose a new collective order based on total certainty; 8. An expropriation of critical human rights that is best understood as a coup from above: an overthrow of the people’s sovereignty.[xxviii]
Your personal data get digested by Google; others are consumed by Amazon or Meta, NSA, FBI, or DHS. Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA surveillance and the methods used to collect data without individual warrants. Two days after the US revoked his passport he landed at the Moscow Airport where he was restricted to the airport terminal for over a month. Russia granted him asylum with an initial visa residence of 1 year. Granted permanent residency in Russia in October 2020, he currently lives there with his family. He’s now got a job at an unnamed IT company in Russia.[xxix]
Amazon founded Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002 as a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and application programming interfaces (API) to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis. It accounts for more than $13.5 billion, or 63 percent, of Amazon’s total operating profit for 2020. AWS controls approximately 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market, which means it powers a significant portion of the internet. Additionally, over 23% of the top million websites utilize AWS for their cloud computing services. Of course, Amazon, Google, Facebook and the rest claim to honor our privacy, but knowing their past MO reveals they aren’t trustworthy. For an indication of its MO, Amazon will pay the FTC $2.5 billion to settle allegations it used “deceptive” practices to get people signed up for Prime subscriptions and hinder their ability to cancel the delivery service, marking one of the largest settlements in FTC history.[xxx]
Amazon now owns at least one healthcare system in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2023, it purchased One Medical for $3.9 billion[xxxi], one of its largest acquisitions. From experience it’s known that Amazon will undercut others at a loss to gain market control. And when its losses become too much, it will simply increase prices or drop the service. Amazon already maintains records of our purchases and movies from its website and food from Whole Foods (which is also Amazon), but also your medical records if you join their medical services. While Amazon claims to make life easier for those who use its services, its real reward is in the data it collects and markets, which is your private and personal information. AI will assemble all our personal data into one mother-of-them-all crowd controlling function.
There was a time when technocrats like Bezos, Musk, Thiel and Zuckerberg aired liberal aspirations. But their products have always had a devious animosity toward society. Technocrats now demand fealty and have openly aligned themselves with autocratic governments.
In June 2025, Musk’s DOGE team was given unfettered access by the US Supreme Court to digital information collected by the Social Security Administration[xxxii], data that includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, and family court information. It’s reasonable to assume that Musk and MAGA have our records, making us the only ones who have difficulty obtaining our own data.
Besides the gamut of nefarious uses, data is used in many inhumane and illegal ways such as that reported in June 2025 by Francesca Albenese, UN Special Rapporteur. Her report Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide[xxxiii], states that Technology giants Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Palantir are named as “central’ to Israel’s surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.
For Albanese’s compassion, hard work and truth, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sanctioned[xxxiv] her, for what he calls a “campaign of political and economic warfare.” Labeled as antisemitic and terrorist, she’s now banned from traveling to the US. Her property and assets in America, or its banks may be frozen. The same sanctions may apply to her immediate family members. It’s disturbing how these American MAGA leaders of political and economic warfare turn the phrases of antisemitism and terrorism around like a bully child.
…a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires…
— from the same song by Paul Simon
Israel’s current genocide in Gaza is supposedly in ceasefire, but the deliberate starvation and sniping of Palestinians continues. Civilian children and mothers were being targeted in live time by the IDF using surveillance technologies of those corporations. Isreal’s conflict regarding Palestine dates back more than a century. It has been an ongoing issue in the United Nations since 1947—the longest running issue in the 80-year history of the United Nations.
The Palestinian health ministry announced on 30 Oct 2025 that the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza has reached 68,643, with over 170,000 wounded. Despite a ceasefire agreement, Israeli attacks continue.[xxxv] All that fully condoned and aided by both major political parties of the US. And let us not forget the ethnic cleansing in Sudan. By June 2024, an estimated 150,000 people have been ruthlessly massacred by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which is being supported by UAE with weapons and advanced technology drones. That too is being ignored by Western nations.
If not for American vetoes in the UN General Assembly, there would have been a cease fire in Gaza long ago. The interests of both Zionists and the arms industry prevent the end to arms shipments to Isreal. If America’s present government goes any further off the rails, the surveillance of citizens in America will echo that of Gaza. We’re already being tracked.
In July 2025, Israel and the US announced a partnership with UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait in a “strategic initiative to create a joint science center for artificial intelligence and quantum innovation at an investment of $200 million. The center will serve as a hub to promote technology-driven cooperation and diplomacy with Gulf countries in the realms of AI and quantum science and challenge China in the global race for supremacy of next-generation technologies.” This initiative has nothing to do with making life more productive, peaceful or healthy. Its goal is essentially militaristic, and no doubt includes the American tech bros.[xxxvi]
Don Jr., son of the president, is presently advising a team of defense industry start-ups that envisions a new fleet of miniaturized, unmanned aircraft carriers stuffed with autonomous killer drones, antiaircraft missiles and torpedoes that will take on just about any enemy at sea.[xxxvii]
Dichotomy
While recognizing the illegal, unhealthy sociological and psychological effects of technologies, we rarely consider their harmful physical effects.
Negative Consequences of technologies are both inevitable and highly unpredictable. The most insidious of which are fully known, intentionally ignored, hidden and exploited for fun and profit. The list is endless and encompasses essentially all products we live with on intimate terms around the clock and throughout each year of our lives.
In each case, the toxicities of chemicals and metals are both ignored, restrained and hidden from the general public for decades with covert assistance from the regulators and politicians. The corporate producers continue to profit wildly as people around the world suffer contaminated air, land and waters, cancers, endocrine disruption, and death.
Environmental and health regulations have never offered much assurance of protection, but the Trump administration demolished the USEPA along with as many other governmental agencies as possible through his DOGE push and firings during the US government shutdown that began on 1 Oct 2025, lasting for 43 days, the longest in U.S. history. The OPM, the federal government’s human resources office, has taken over many of DOGE’s functions since it ostensibly ended. As of 10 Oct 2025, Trump’s government shutdown forced about 40% of the federal workforce, about 750,000 people to be placed on unpaid leave with a high probability that Trump will refuse their backpay.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is still being produced in spite of it being known for many decades that PCBs and dioxins are unavoidable byproducts. [xxxviii] “PVC can be found in an extremely wide range of applications whether transparent or pigmented, such as construction products like window frames, pipes and facade elements, or as products for mechanical or electrical engineering like cable insulation. PVC also has applications in food packaging or consumer goods.”[xxxix]
Nonstick PFAS cookware is still being sold or endorsed by celebrity chefs Rachael Ray and David Chang who oppose a California bill that would phase out PFAS chemicals from a range of cooking-related products, in spite of the it being well known that there are many deleterious effects,[xl] even at extremely low concentrations. PFAS are a class of about 16,000 chemicals most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. The compounds have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.[xli]
Microwave ovens are another miracle technology that became affordable in the 1970s. It’s unknown to most people that microwaves stimulate the development of free radicals[xlii] in cooked foods which lead to oxidative stress resulting in the damage of critical biomolecules like DNA, proteins, and lipids, contributing to the development of various diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and inflammatory diseases.[xliii]
The fact that similar microwave energy is widely used in communication, radar, as well as cooking should give pause to inquisitive people as microwaves from telecommunication technologies cause numerous health effects which have been known since the 1970s.[xliv] Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic energy. Like light waves or radio waves, it occupies a part of the electromagnetic spectrum of energy. In our modern technological age, microwaves are used to relay long distance telephone signals, television programs, and computer information across the earth, or to a satellite in space. [xlv]
Vast investments have been made in modern technologies on the premise that the responses to all those wrong questions will save the world. At the same time, the extraction and use of fossil fuels continues on an upward spiral. The high-tech solutions contrived to limit climate change harm powerless people, permanently damaging their lands while extracting rare earth minerals to power electric vehicles. It’s maddening that they will not effectively reduce CO2 emissions. Greenhouse gasses are increasing rapidly in spite of the array of tech fixes.
Climate change has increased more rapidly than climate scientists predicted, causing massive losses from forest fires, flash floods, landslides. hurricanes, and tornadoes. “We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how wildfires impact society,” said the Australian scientist Dr Calum Cunningham, who led research published in the journal Science. “Climate change sets the stage for these disasters.” The frequency of economically disastrous wildfires increased sharply after 2015. They also found that major disasters coincided with extreme climatic conditions.[xlvi]
The cost of insurance for those events is increasing and coming with more restrictions and exclusions that homeowners sometimes don’t realize. And as always, still more analysis is required before effective action is taken at any level. People fully understand but incredibly deny that the use of fossil fuels is to blame for climate change and we persist in our delusion by increasing their production and use.
Modern Healthcare is widely accessible, but unaffordable for many and ineffective at keeping us healthy and disease free because it ignores diet and exercise as the means to maintain health, instead relying on pharmaceuticals and technological fixes for diseases. The system is however quite adept at bankrupting uninsured families in paying for its false hope. It relies heavily on technology and dangerously minimizes physicians’ hands-on time with patients. Such a system is ripe for iatrogenic errors – physician errors induced unintentionally on a patient.[xlvii] Trump’s campaign against education will decrease the numbers of qualified doctors, especially general practitioners who are already far too limited because of past administrations’ shortsightedness.
In 1980, the Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee (GMENAC) sent a statement titled “Summary Report of The Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee” to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (Patricia Roberts Harris at the time), which “estimates a surplus of 70,000 physicians by 1990”.[xlviii] As we now witness, the surplus rapidly became a severe deficit. In November 2024, the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projected that demand for physicians will be 1,136,490 while supply will be 949,360, nearly a 17% disparity which will grow because of the new federal student loan caps in President Trump’s tax-cut law will make it more expensive for many people to become doctors and could exacerbate physician shortages nationwide.[xlix]
Medical Research asks us to contribute to finding “the cure for cancer”, as if there’s just one mother-of-them-all cancer, a catch-all word for more than 200 types. While survival rates have increased over the decades, there’s never been a cure for cancer, either individually or cumulatively. We’re kept alive but not protected from getting a cancer in the first place. It’s more relevant to track incidence of cancers rather than survival rates as it’s far better to have never had a cancer than to be cured of it.
And technology won’t find a cure to cancer(s). The cure is readily found by inward reflection that logically states that one must remove the cancer-causing agents. Only by halting the production of cancer-causing chemicals, materials and systems will there be a reduction in cancers. It’s important to realize that some cancers are hereditarily passed onto us from parents and their ancestors because of their exposures. Zero tolerance is what’s required to halt cancers.
The Precautionary Principal[l] urges caution prior to careening headlong into unproven technologies that have potential for harm. Producers argue that it’s nonrational and impedes progress, while Silicon Valley technocrats like Peter Thiel, whose net worth is $26.1 billion as of 26 September 2025 according to Forbes[li], rant on about the turnout of new technologies being far too slow with far too many regulations holding them back.[lii] The progress they seek has led corporate wealth to expand while leading the rest of us into oblivion. His company Palantir Technologies is one that provides AI tools to the IDF specifically for their war in Gaza.
We all know there’s something wrong but can’t quite put a finger on it. But what can we do?
What troubles me the most is that not one of us presently has a choice to abstain from these ubiquitous modern technologies. One can avoid buying into many technologies on a personal, ad-hoc basis. But by their present ubiquity, we’re all exposed to a broad sampling of the many toxic technologies, regardless of having them or not. Regardless of refusing them or even knowing about them, they have become anthropogenic embellishments to our bodies which are permanent with highly negative multigenerational presences.
A common misconception is that living off-grid allows one to avoid technologies and their effects. It’s a gross fallacy illustrated by the fact that regardless of where we live, the air we breathe and the water we drink is inevitably laced with a wide range of industrial chemicals. Relying on safe regulatory levels in testing water is quite far from reassuring.
Finding a place that isn’t penetrated by microwaves is also a futile task. The food we eat, regardless of it being USDA Certified Organic or home grown on a farm hundreds or thousands of miles from civilization, contains measurable levels of nanoplastics, heavy metals and a wide range of other synthetic chemicals.
Nanoplastics are now known to be taken up by vegetables, fruits and meat, regardless of how or where they are grown. No area is free of nanoplastics. Take note of all this as you’re scraping the bottom of a plastic organic yogurt container or mulching your off-grid garden with black plastic sheeting.
By Opting Out, one voluntarily chooses to discontinue their involvement or participation. However, our opportunity to opt out of modern technologies passed away unceremoniously many decades ago. We have no choice.
Regulations currently in place fail completely to protect us from the effects of extremely low concentrations of many synthetic chemicals, heavy metals, electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) and nuclear radiation. Trump is removing even those failed regulations as well as the enforcement of the remainder. Through antisocial media, a great majority disbelieves actual science in favor of corporate science and AI hype.
I have no grand scheme on how we reclaim life from these corporate technocrats when literally everything is made of or coated with plastic; food is grown in and on plastics with toxic synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, then highly processed and preserved before being wrapped in more plastic; and every bit of it contains nanoplastics before it’s even harvested.
Most people don’t realize how severe, how existential the problem of every modern technology is. And most don’t want to think about them and don’t see our lack of choice as a problem, let alone the ongoing destruction and upheaval it’s creating on all levels.
While we have no choice and can’t realistically opt out at any level, we still have a voice.
This article is dedicated to a dear old, departed friend, Tom Brown, who was an ordained Buddhist monk and practitioner of Zen Buddhism in South Bend, Indiana. In an interview many years ago, he said that “classical Buddhism is entirely dedicated and focused on curing an illness. And the illness that all humans share is having a desire for things beyond what we need… We don’t know when enough is enough.”[liii]
[i] Song by Gene McDaniels (1966).
https://youtu.be/QdDZXKe9QPA
[ii] The ravaging effects of space on the human body revealed as astronauts touch down after 286 days.
Asher McShane / LBC 19 Mar 2025.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/shocking-photos-nasa-spacex-touch-down-florida-nine-months-space-5Hjd2d4_2/
[iii] SpaceX website 4 Oct 2025
https://www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/mars 21sep25
[iv] Inside SpaceX Starbase’s Worker Injury Surge. Anochie Esther / Tech Story July 19, 2025
https://techstory.in/inside-spacex-starbases-worker-injury-surge/ 21sep25
[v] Risk of Bone Fracture due to Spaceflight-induced Changes to Bone
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/hhp/risk-of-bone-fracture-due-to-spaceflight-induced-changes-to-bone/
[vi] Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes and Decrements in Performance due to Inflight Medical Conditions
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/hhp/risk-of-adverse-health-outcomes-and-decrements-in-performance-due-to-inflight-medical-conditions/
[vii] Risk of Adverse Cognitive or Behavioral Changes and Psychiatric Disorders Leading to In-mission Health and Performance and Long-term Health Effects (Behavioral Health Risk)
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/hhp/behavioral-health-risk/
[viii] Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes and Performance Decrements resulting from Non-Ionizing Radiation (NIR) during Spaceflight (Non-Ionizing Radiation Risk)
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/hhp/non-ionizing-radiation-risk/
[ix] Is Contraception a Gravely Sinful Matter? Fr Lino Ciccone, C.M. Catholic News Agency 27 Oct 2025
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/55268/is-contraception-sinful-by-fr-lino-ciccone-cm
[x] Bt Cotton Directly Linked to Indian Farmer Suicides (many references)
https://www.i-sis.org.uk/Bt_Cotton_Directly_Linked_to_Indian_Farmer_Suicides.php 27sep25
[xi] Ministry Blames Bt Cotton for Farmer Suicides – Hindustan Times 2012
https://www.hindustantimes.com/business/ministry-blames-bt-cotton-for-farmer-suicides/story-cvCcs3SwWJsyu0qGsrDCpK.html 27sep2025
[xii] Social Impacts of GM Crops in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review. Sustainability 11 May 2015. K. Fischer, et al.
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/7/8598
[xiii] Monsanto Attacks! A Canadian Canola Farmer Takes on a Seed Giant. Chris Womack / Texas Observer 9 Nov 2001 (Interview of Percy Schmeiser)
https://www.texasobserver.org/477-monsanto-attacks-a-canadian-canola-farmer-takes-on-a-seed-giant/
[xiv] Suborning science for profit: Monsanto, glyphosate, and private science research misconduct. L. Glenna, A. Bruce. Research Policy Volume 50, Issue 7, September 2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104290
[xv] Roundup Lawsuit – October 2025 Update. King Law website
https://www.robertkinglawfirm.com/personal-injury/roundup-lawsuit/
[xvi] Global Changes in Agricultural Production, Productivity, and Resource Use Over Six Decades. Keith Fuglie, et al Economic Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture. 30 Sep 2024
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2024/september/global-changes-in-agricultural-production-productivity-and-resource-use-over-six-decades
[xvii] Global Report on Food Crises 2025 September Update. Food Security Information Network (FSIN); Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC) 2025
https://doi.org/10.71958/wfp131041
[xviii] Almost 75,000 farmed salmon in Scotland escaped into the wild after Storm Amy. William Perry/The Conversation 14 Oct 2025
https://theconversation.com/almost-75-000-farmed-salmon-in-scotland-escaped-into-the-wild-after-storm-amy-why-this-may-cause-lasting-damage-267354
[xix] Assisted Reproductive Technology: A Ray of Hope for Infertility. R. Tenchov, et al. ACS Omega 23 May 2025. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.5c01643
[xx] Infertility: Frequently Asked Questions For Everyone. CDC 15 May 2024
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductive-health/infertility-faq/index.html
[xxi] Khulbe Y, et al. Artificial womb: opportunities and challenges for public health. Int J Surg. 2023 Mar 1;109(3):618-619. doi: 10.1097/JS9.0000000000000208. PMID: 36912561; PMCID: PMC10389474.
[xxii] Bisphenol A is released from used polycarbonate animal cages into water at room temperature. Kembra L Howdeshell, et al, Environ Health Perspect. 2003 Jul;111(9):1180–1187. doi: 10.1289/ehp.5993 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1241572/
[xxiii] Sputnik 1 Satellite-1 Radio Signal (YouTube)
https://youtu.be/lfnfNe31fmY
[xxiv] A Growing Number of Governments Hope to Clone America’s DARPA. The Economist. Vol. 439, no. 9248. June 5, 2021. pp. 67–68. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
[xxv] Technology Stalled in 1970. MIT Technology Review. 18 Sep 2014
https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/09/18/171322/technology-stalled-in-1970/
[xxvi] When billionaires speak of Antichrist. Devdutt Pattanaik, The Economic Times 24 Oct 2025
and:
Explained: Why Peter Thiel thinks Greta Thunberg is the ‘Antichrist’; and could pave the way of a ‘one-world government’ TOI World Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM 11 Oct 2025 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/explained-why-peter-thiel-thinks-greta-thunberg-is-the-antichrist-and-could-pave-the-way-of-a-one-world-government/articleshow/124470032.cms
[xxvii] “Everybody Knows” released on Cohen’s album I’m Your Man, February 1988 https://youtu.be/59sFfjA2Nmg
[xxviii] The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Shoshana Zuboff, Hachette Book Group (2019)
[xxix] Where is Edward Snowden now? Callum Murray / The Review Geek 9 Jan 2024
https://www.thereviewgeek.com/where-is-edward-snowden-now/
[xxx] Amazon Reaches Record $2.5 Billion Settlement With FTC Over ‘Deceptive’ Prime Tactics Antonio Pequeño IV, Forbes 25 Sep 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/09/25/amazon-reaches-record-25-billion-settlement-with-ftc-over-deceptive-prime-tactics/
[xxxi] Why Amazon Wanted To Buy This Company For $3.9 Billion. Shep Hyken / Forbes 18 May 2025 https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2025/05/18/why-amazon-wanted-to-buy-this-company-for-39-billion/
[xxxii] Supreme Court allows DOGE team to access Social Security systems with data on millions of Americans – Lindsay Whitehurst / AP 7 June2025
https://apnews.com/article/doge-social-security-trump-elon-musk-99f3f281154fe0f91e6a6e612bf8e9ba
[xxxiii] Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese
https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/59/23
https://static.mediapart.fr/files/2025/07/03/from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-1.pdf
[xxxiv] Sanctioning Lawfare that Targets U.S. and Israeli Persons. Press Statement, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State 9 July 2025
https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/07/sanctioning-lawfare-that-targets-u-s-and-israeli-persons/
[xxxv] Gaza Death Toll Surpasses 68,000 Amid Ongoing Israeli Assault. AhlulBayt News Agency 30 Oct 2025
https://en.abna24.com/news/1744537/Gaza-Death-Toll-Surpasses-68-000-Amid-Ongoing-Israeli-Assault
[xxxvi] Israel and US to forge $200m tech hub for AI and quantum science development. Sharon Wrobel, Times Of Israel 6 July 2025
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-and-us-to-forge-200m-tech-hub-for-ai-and-quantum-science-development/
[xxxvii] Trump’s Son Is Poised to Profit From Pentagon Drone Proposal Eric Lipton / NY Times 24 Oct 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/us/politics/trump-drones-pentagon.html 25 Oct 2025
[xxxviii] PVC: A Primary Contributor to the U.S. Dioxin Burden (1995) Pat Costner, et al
On local disc: file:///Users/Paul/Documents/Dell%20Laptop%202020/mindfully/Plastic/PVC-Primary-Contributor-Dioxin.htm#3
[xxxix] Vinyl chloride (VCM) and Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) Plastics Europe / The European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers (ECVM), Eco-profiles and Environmental Product Declarations of the European Plastics Manufacturers. Revised June 2023
https://pvc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/230628_Eco-profile-PVC_june23.pdf
[xl] PFAS exposure during pregnancy: Implications for placental health and functioning
Sadia Khan, et al. Environment International March 2025
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412025000595
[xli] California governor under pressure over bill to ban cookware made with Pfas.
Tom Perkins The Guardian 3 October 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/03/california-governor-gavin-newsom-pfas-cookware-bill
[xlii] Insight into the incredible effects of microwave heating: Driving changes in the structure, properties and functions of macromolecular nutrients in novel food. Xuan Deng, et al. Frontiers in Nutrition 13 Oct 2022
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9607893/pdf/fnut-09-941527.pdf
[xliii] Free radicals and their impact on health and antioxidant defenses: a review. Nisansala Chandimali, et al. Cell Death Discovery 24 Jan 2025
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11760946/pdf/41420_2024_Article_2278.pdf
[xliv] Microwave radiofrequencies, 5G, 6G, graphene nanomaterials: Technologies used in neurological warfare.
Review Article by Fabien Deruelle. Surgical Neurology International 29 Nov 2024
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11618680/pdf/SNI-15-439.pdf
[xlv] Quercus. Radiation Ovens – The Proven Dangers Of Microwaves.
https://quercus.pt/2021/03/11/radiation-ovens-the-proven-dangers-of-microwaves/ (cited 5 Oct 2025)
[xlvi] Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires. Cunningham et al. Science 2 Oct 2025. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr5127
[xlvii] Medical Nemesis, Ivan Illich (1976)
https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/MedicalNemesis.pdf
[xlviii] Summary Report Of The Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee To The Secretary, Department Of Health And Human Services September 30,1980
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED210990.pdf
[xlix] Many fear federal loan caps will deter aspiring doctors and worsen MD shortage. Bernard J. Wolfson, Los Angeles Times 28 Oct 2025
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-10-28/many-fear-federal-loan-caps-will-deter-aspiring-doctors-and-worsen-md-shortage
[l] https://www.healthandenvironment.org/resources/resource-library/eh-history/precautionary-principle-the-wingspread-statement
[lii] Peter Thiel Profile. Forbes 10 Apr 2025
https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel/ 26sep25
[liii] Buddhism Offers Freedom from Cycles of Rebirth, Desire. Martin DeAgonstino / South Bend Tribune 25 Sept 1998 (article on file locally)
.