Death Business

 

 We are sitting in the front row of the theater of destruction, and the play is about us.

At Christmas 2005, when a significant part of the family usually gathered, with all the accumulated tension unspokenly swept under the rug, events unfolded in the usual way. The ancient political opposition of my two grandfathers, the huge arguments between the two brothers years ago, after which they didn't speak to each other for 12 years, and my perfect apathy, the "I'm fed up" and "when will we be over this whole thing" expression on my face – in short, just the usual things that characterize obligatory family visits for everyone. People connected by blood, but nothing else, people who don't seek each other's company on other days of the year, and these are no accidents, because just because we are related doesn't mean we have a common path. Years of repetitive conversations, reminiscing about the past, and stories told for the thousandth time, just so we don't have to talk about real problems. At such an event, there are a few obligatory rounds that must happen like a time code, providing a framework for this whole mess and at least passing the time. Such as grandpa's recitation, listening to old recordings, a game of chess, and my mother, preserving the finest hypochondriac traditions, taking everyone's blood pressure...

Unfortunately, we couldn't avoid it that Christmas either, with the difference that this time it was different from what we were used to. My father was 49 then and never had any problems, so he calmly sat in front of the machine, enduring my mother's stern gaze. 225/140. Holy shit... Everyone dropped under the table, because that's a value where you should call an ambulance. My father's blood pressure was killing him asymptomatically, without any warning, which was surprising then because he had played sports all his life, didn't smoke, except for one thing. He ate everything greasy or sugary without thinking. Dad has been on very strong blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering medication ever since. A little crackling, of course, a little sausage, as there had just been a pig slaughter, and late-night eating, which I didn't pay attention to then, but looking back, some really bloody things were going on here day after day. Examinations for blood pressure, which of course revealed that his cholesterol was also out of control, so now at 55, dad cannot exist without medication, sports background or not. The unwelcome guests due to the bad food eaten now will only arrive years later, but it's another question what they will be called when they do arrive.

 

One day, my dad said that since I'm already dealing with this "Life-thing," I should write him a diet that would get him back in shape a bit because he wants to lose a few pounds. Dad got a 40-day course that wasn't too strenuous but required some sacrifice, with the warning that if he didn't stick to it, he should never come to me again because I wouldn't help him. I told him how to start, what to do, what to buy for it, what he was forbidden to eat, and if possible, to eat only the foods in the diet. The 40 days passed, he lost 7 kilos, but that's completely irrelevant now, because the program had a much more important benefit. Dad's blood pressure dropped significantly after 40 days, close to the normal range, which is a big deal, because even with medication, the blood pressure monitor showed values of 150-160. But let me tell you something else, so I don't just tell an unverifiable, insular story. There's this 21-year-old girl struggling with hyperthyroidism who, after starting the LT diet, also writes a blog about her program. I would like to quote her words now.

"I belong to the camp of overweight people, with a severe thyroid problem, yet I think that people are generally overweight because they are lazy and don't give a damn about life. My doctors told me to come to terms with being like this, not to exercise much, because it would wear out my body, and I'm only 21 years old. But who would want to live at 85 kg at this age? (And yes, this weight accumulated thanks to medication...) Since I started reading the Lifetilt blog, I have followed what is written here 100%, my test results have improved, and voila, I started losing weight AND exercising."

But don't let anyone think this is a self-congratulatory post and that I've found the fountain of life. It's really not about that. I'll tell you the big secret, and why this whole weight loss thing works on this blog. Healthy foods known to everyone, condensed into a single diet, and applied in the correct quantitative proportions for body types, combined with 4 workouts a week. Brutal, right? That's precisely why pharmaceutical companies pour immense amounts of money into ensuring that no initiative receives government support for things that would regulate, or at least limit, the sugar or fat content of foods. The EU is slowly regulating everything in the name of creating a unified Europe, but how interesting it is that they somehow can't regulate the health-damaging values of food. These, of course, are no accidents. Let me give you an example that will easily help you understand what I'm getting at. You sometimes hear that Nissan, Volvo, or any other brand recalls tens of thousands of cars due to a manufacturing defect, adding, of course, that people's safety is paramount and that's all that matters to them. What a load of absolute bullshit. In such cases, they calculate whether the compensation amount resulting from accidents exceeds the cost of the recall or not. If it exceeds that value, they recall the cars, adding a safety marketing message, but if not, they leave the cars on the roads. A few people die, compensation is paid, but the company will still be profitable, and bonuses are paid to economic leaders after another successful quarterly financial report.

It's the same with cigarettes and unhealthy foods. Arguments pro and con. Cigarette manufacturing cannot be banned because hundreds of billions of forints flow into the state budget annually from tobacco product taxes, and from the contributions paid by the people employed by the industry. The counter-argument is that due to the harmful effects of smoking, the state puts the revenue from taxes back into healthcare to treat various diseases, thus rendering the tax money collected there meaningless. However, the reality is that the money paid by large tobacco companies is still significantly higher per capita than the cost of treating a person who falls ill due to smoking. The formula is simple. A person smokes for an average of 20 years until they get a fatal disease. The treatment of cancer and its complications drags on for 2-3 years; in a better case, this time does not even exceed 1 year. They have calculated that, on average, 20 years of smoking versus the treatment of diseases tilts the balance towards it still being much more profitable for the state to allow the sale of tobacco products; therefore, it is not in its interest to ban smoking. The situation is the same with food and its complications, and at the very end of the pyramid of death stands the biggest mafia after the state, which we call pharmaceutical manufacturers. They are the true leaders of the real death business, because all threads lead to them, and they reap all the glory.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers, explicitly and implicitly, live off sick people. They are no longer treating a symptom, nor are they producing enough medicine to supply existing diseases; rather, they are producing patients and supporting the sale of products that cause illness. The machinery employed by pharmaceutical manufacturers is particularly nasty and utterly foul, and by the way, it works perfectly. As I mentioned, for them, every person is a potentially targeted consumer, and if they are healthy, they can't do anything with that. Or rather, they can. They produce vitamins that are useless, that don't protect against anything, and don't strengthen your immune system. They offer ineffective preparations for the unhealthy processes of everyday life, so that you believe you are doing something to protect your health, but their only goal is to accelerate your illness so they can then stuff you full of medicines. Perhaps it boosts your sense of security that you are taking "vitamins," but beyond that, it has no other positive effect because what they produce is useless garbage. When I spoke out against the vitamin preparations currently available in pharmacies, this is exactly what I was talking about. It's not in their interest to protect your health because the real big money comes from medicines. Medicines that the health insurance fund finances to hell, and preferably the consumer takes for the rest of their life because that is a reliable and calculable source of income. Do you really not feel an incredible cynicism in the fact that pharmaceutical manufacturers want to preserve people's health? That's like arms manufacturers starting peace movements and joining the biggest anti-war leagues. This whole machinery works in perfect harmony, from food manufacturing companies, through tobacco factories, all the way to governments, who will never do anything to raise a healthier nation. Simply because the budget figures are fundamentally determined by the companies and their products listed above, in the form of paid VAT and other contributions. Alongside the legal money from chocolates, crisps, and cigarettes, the indirectly collected amounts from drugs and prostitution now fundamentally determine the budgets of countries, because the black economy also generates immense amounts of money, which they simply cannot ban or permanently destroy because too much money is already moving within it. As long as the tax revenue generated by products that cause fatal diseases – and it doesn't matter from what – is greater than the cost of treating them, nothing will change here. Healthcare is in ruins, which has been ignored for years, and no money is put into it. Of course, they don't, because the more money they save on healthcare systems, the greater the revenue balance on the other side. What do you think, if the state has to decide, will it build hospitals and renovate equipment with billions of investments, or will it lure the factories of British American Tobacco with brutal tax breaks? You don't need a degree in rocket science to see the answer clearly. We have to come to terms with this because it's impossible to change. There are such huge sums of money at stake that no single civil movement can fight against it, and never will be able to.

 

Speaking of hospitals. Have you been to a local doctor lately? Your throat hurts a little, you cough, you go to the local clinic, and what do they do? They shine a light into your mouth, then without thinking or further questions, they prescribe an antibiotic for even the slightest cold. You don't even notice this anymore because people take antibiotics as naturally as they brush their teeth in the morning. Taking medicine has become part of our lives; a significant portion of TV commercials is now made up of painkillers and various pharmaceutical products. They get people used to medication, and it has imperceptibly become part of our lives, like fabric softener for washing or mineral water in the fridge. Do you think this is normal? Taking super-strong doses of antibiotics indiscriminately for everything, which, by the way, seriously messes up your body. Using a cannon to kill an ant, damn it, continuously… Back in the day, households used to have a box of aspirin and a fever reducer. Now, literally, drawers are filled with all sorts of crap. NeoCitran instead of lemon tea for a cold, Algoflex instead of coffee and quitting smoking for a headache. This is where we are now, and we're here without even realizing what we're stuffing ourselves with day after day, in addition to all the bad food and countless additives, of course.

This whole thing is ridiculous, and soon we'll be at a point where people will take medication even if their hair doesn't grow fast enough. We are a cursed generation, a herd of unconscious masses, who are deceived and misled day by day, but no one even notices it anymore. People are constantly being dumbed down until they eventually become brainwashed puppets, easily herded consumers based on simple stimuli, nothing more. From the first minute of our lives until the hour of our death, for every age group and every social stratum, the object they can buy is already prepared, and right next to it is the ideology and lifestyle that will make you want to buy that crap. At our birth, Pampers diapers are already waiting for us, and after our death, funeral homes offer coffin-built TVs to our relatives as we lie on the bier. I have no illusions and I don't harbor world-changing dreams either. Those times are long gone when ordinary civilians could change anything. Along with the Woodstock generation, every civil initiative against big corporations and products that threaten our lives and eventually cause our death is slowly dying out. All the fire has died out in us by now, and everything that used to be referred to as civil control has been taken away from us. We no longer rebel, we do nothing, even though we know perfectly well that the system we live in is a malfunctioning machine heading in the wrong direction. We shrug, light a cigarette, buy discounted sweets, and go vote every 4 years, even though we know that nothing will change, only the sign on the parliament's doors will be replaced. What could we, average people, achieve today in 2011 anywhere in the world, no matter how justified and well-founded our grievances are? The institution of democracy and our self-determination have long been dead, or at least dying. There are no longer people, only consumers. There are no longer individuals, only statistical data, metrics for advertisers broken down by age group. By now, we not only don't have names, but we don't even have numbers; we have become a block-grouped entity, targeted by companies, advertisers, and pawns of political dilettantism.

 

Bloggers, and a few Don Quixotes, are all that's left in public life. If they want to change something, and they declare it's crap and you shouldn't do it, then companies come with their hundreds of millions in backing and their lawyers, threatening you with lawsuits, and they overwhelm and stifle you. The LifeTilt blog is the best example of this, but as long as I can, as long as they let me, I'll keep writing, and then one day I'll give up too, and who knows, maybe I'll even find use for that TV down there underground...