By Philip Shepherd
Guest Writer for Wake Up World

A well-known neurological phenomenon is expressed in a catchy maxim: “What fires together wires together.” This phrase tells us that if two distinct neural pathways habitually fire together, they eventually lose their distinctiveness. The brain starts to treat them as one, because it’s more economical. As an illustration of this, researchers taped two fingers of a hapless monkey together for a period of time [rather cruel]; and when the tape was finally removed, the two fingers straightened together and bent together. Their neural pathways had been forced to ‘fire’ together, so they had ‘wired’ together.

There are many ways in which our neural pathways practice such economy in our daily lives, but the effect often remains hidden to us because the ‘wiring’ so often belongs to the culture that shapes us.

By Sayer Ji

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“I believe that if screening had been a drug, it would have been withdrawn from the market long ago.” ~ Peter C Gøtzsche (physician, medical researcher and author of Mammography Screening: Truth, Lies and Controversy.)

With Breast Cancer Awareness Month upon us again, a new study promises to undermine the multi-billion dollar cause-marketing campaign that shepherds millions of women in to have their breasts scanned for cancer with x-rays that themselves are known to contribute to breast cancer.

GFP: I enjoy this message because it's about taking what could create suffering and using it for growth, but be careful you don't only mature through hardship. You'll attract lots of unnecessary hardship into your life that way.

“I want to be wise. And you know how you get wise? By screwing up.”
— Myra McEntire

My mother always told me, “With age comes wisdom.” While she had a point, she should have also said, “With hardship comes even more wisdom.”

Maybe the two are intertwined. Maybe hardship happens because of age, and wisdom follows. Either way, it’s important to note that no one matures without a hefty amount of psychological scarring.

Whether it’s a breakup that almost killed you, an experience that almost broke you or a lifelong struggle that threw you over and over again, all of those hardships carried meaning.

The things that almost destroyed you made you into who you are today. If you’ve been through hell, you’ve also seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

A soft, corporate dictatorship with financial, academic, and regulatory reach has kept the revolutionary spirt of the population at bay through a false narrative to label genetically modified food. The People have voted to stop chemical pesticide and herbicide testing in their communities only to be ignored, while at the local level, agrochemical products are destroying farmers and families. Hospitals are turning a blind eye and most doctors are clueless about the signs and symptoms of pesticide and herbicide exposure.

Perhaps labels were never the answer for a corporate monopoly whose intent is to patent life. As communities are invaded by chemical companies cloaked as agricultural progress, is it wise to use vital revolutionary energy still attempting to attach a label onto their known toxic products? While looking the other way, our children are slowly poisoned by chemicals we are still arguing to name and categorize. At what point does this new threat to communities be seen for what it is?