Order v’s Chaos: The Politics of Detoxification

The World & It’s Chemistry

To a chemist the whole world is chemistry, and you see a fantastic and diverse array of chemistry when you look around the planet. The sky, the ocean, all the plastic and metal gadgets you have lying around your home, and most importantly your own body. However when we take in all the different arrangements of chemistry that make the diversity we see, the entirety of the periodic table and everything not yet on that table, we find that all chemistry can be divided into two sides.

Again we see the duality of nature and in the case of chemistry we call this dualistic pair acid and alkaline. The acid side of chemistry is the male side, the yang side and it is the corrosive side of chemistry. Acids loves to take things to pieces and they play a very important role in nature because everything at some point needs to be broken down and recycled. Acids perform this role so that everything that needs to be taken apart is done so, so that something new can be created out of those atoms.

Yin & Yang: Finding Balance

The alkaline side of chemistry is of course the female side, the yin side. This is the soothing, cooling, anti-inflammatory, hydrating side of chemistry and it may be surprising to know that is this alkaline side makes up the predominant chemistry of the planet. For example, your blood is predominantly made up of alkaline chemistry at a ratio of around 80 parts alkaline chemistry to 20 parts acid chemistry. We find the same ratio in clean seawater with the predominance on the side of alkaline chemistry and again when we pick good quality, tree-ripened fruit we find around 25% acid chemistry and 75% alkaline chemistry.

This is the same balance of chemistry that we used to have in the air before industrialisation and therefore we can see that this is the natural balance of homeostasis that the earth achieved in order to give life to human beings. Given that we as a species were birthed out of and into this delicate balance with the female side of chemistry being dominant, we could easily assume that it is this balance that life best thrives in. The difficulties that we now face are directly due to the fact that we live on a predominantly female planet that has been overrun with acids. This is at the very core of the difficulties we have in our health, in our environment, and in our governance and corporate decision-making.

Order v’s Chaos

At this point we would benefit by taking a detour into what is meant by male and female in this context. The first point to mention is that these terms in no way refer to the specific genders of men and women except in that men tend towards expressing more of the male, or yang energies while women tend to express more of the female, or yin energies. You can certainly have very masculine women, just as you can have very feminine men and we all have a different balance of these two energies within us at all times.

In essence, masculine energy is the energy of action while feminine energy provides the creativity upon which action must be based. It is the balance of these two sides that allows creation to occur such that one can cut down a tree with an axe using the action-driven masculine energy, and then carve it into a beautiful bowl using the more feminine, creative side of life. One element without the other results in imbalance as creation requires some point of action to become realised, and action without a creative purpose is only destructive.

Once again however, we see that at the social level we have become highly oriented towards the action side of this balance, and that as we know creates unbalance. In current society action is valued so highly that it is going on continually with little concern being given to the repercussions. Buildings are going up, trees are being pulled down, oil is being pumped, money is being printed and yet little attention is given to the truth upon which these actions are being performed. Too often it is act first and consider the consequences later and that is to put the female principle behind the male. When we see the alkaline or female side of chemistry being predominant in the natural world, it suggests that this predominance is also the point of balance in other spheres such as our own lives and our social decision-making.

Some people may find this rather off-putting if they are self-identifying strongly with the masculine side of nature, and others may claim that if we all sat around being creative all day then nothing would be accomplished. However, the opposite is true. What we really want is a balance in which the majority of our energies, both individually and socially, are spent on going within and finding what is truth – whether this is in a business setting, a technological setting, or even a relationship setting. When we really go into the heart of the matter and discover exactly what the need is, what point of action needs to be taken, then at that moment the correct action will require little effort and be extremely effective.

Without going within to find the true creativity required, we are simply acting out of reactivity and as anyone who has been in a reactive personal exchange with someone will know, this is always destructive. We can see this clearly in our current environmental situation where pollution is being created to the point at which we as human beings are becoming sick, other animals are dying off, and many areas of the world are becoming unable to accommodate life. This is all due to the unbalance of action over deep consideration and of reactive psychology that is always a very narrowly focused way of being. There is of course a long list of area in which the imbalance of acid principles have created difficulties for us whether in environmental management, social governance, business relationships and certainly our own physical health. But what we really need to understand is simply that each one of these settings is really just the playing out of love/un-love, and to be successful in any of these ventures requires not only action, but also vision.

‘Love is having the vision to see the need and having the courage to fulfil it’

Acids, Nappies & The Burn

The acidity/alkalinity of chemistry is measured on what is called the pH scale that ranges from 0 – 14 where 0pH is the most pure hydrochloric acid you can find (read ‘melt the skin off your bones’), 7pH is neutral, and anything above is alkaline. This is what is called a logarithmic scale which simply means that each increment of 1 means that it has multiplied by ten. Thus 3pH is 10 times more acidic 4pH, and 5pH is 100 times more acidic that 7pH. As I mentioned earlier, the blood and the clean ocean sit on the alkaline side of the equation, on the pH scale that is around 7.4pH.

Now, back to babies and their nappies. I mentioned earlier that no matter how good the food is that you are feeding a baby, if their nappies are not being changed regularly things go downhill fast. This is because when a baby goes without having its nappies changed it starts to burn rather badly. Even the most loving and attentive parents cannot avoid some burning of their child from its own wastes. This burning of the baby’s bottom is what we call ‘nappy rash’ and it is caused by the tender skin of the baby’s bottom being in direct contact with the acidic waste of baby poop. Acidic burning can happen fast depending on what the child is eating, and the longer it goes without being cleaned the worst the burning becomes. This burning you see is simply the nature of acids, and we see here a very clear example of how acids act on the body when they are not being removed in a very prompt manner.

Is it important to understand the reason behind why babies eliminate this waste in the first place? It is very simple. In order for any of us to produce any action of the muscles or nerves it is required to consume energy in the form of food, and whenever something is consumed it must also be eliminated. This is true in the life of a human being and it is just as true in the lives of each one of the cells that make up your body. As we discussed, your entire body whether it be your skin, bones, liver, heart, nerves, brains, or toe nails is made up simply of cells – around 100 trillion of them. In order for these cells to function and produce either the gross muscle movement that allows you to walk, or the activities of the glands and organs within the body, each one of those cells must consume energy.

The blood therefore brings that energy to the cells in the form of sugars, oxygen, and other nutrition. But just as it is the case with a baby, so it is with each one of your cells in that whenever they consume they must also eliminate waste. Each one of your cells therefore eliminates a waste of around 3pH – this is approximately the same acidity as Coca-Cola and if any of you have put a tooth in a glass of Coca-Cola overnight you will understand how serious this is. In fact you can experience the strong acidity of 3pH just by holding some Coca-Cola inside your mouth for a minute or two. Very quickly you will begin to feel the burn, and this my friends is an acid burn.