Why do people out of hand reject alternative healings?
Several observations can be made here. We will here look at two.
Propaganda – belief
Many are true believers. Most of these are not bad people. However good people can be mislead in their belief.
[Do not take what I am saying too far here. I am not making a direct parallel only referencing a grain of truth, showing how effective that was.]
J. Goebbles had a principle that he worked on. Principle – Tell a lie long enough, and it becomes the truth.
I disagree that a lie ever becomes the truth. However it will be believed as the truth, and anything contradicting that propagandized lie will be anathema as evidenced in Nazi Germany.
We have been propagandized through education, and almost all media, that modern medicine/science is were medical answers can be found and every thing else is quackery.
It is quackery now if you do not believe that the only answer is to be found in modern science.
When my mother was dying of cancer, the doctors had told her there was no hope. I suggested try alternatives. Her first response, each time I suggested something, was that she would say I will have to ask the doctor about that. Nothing could work outside that approved by her doctor. She was a true believer in the omniscient medical community.
Everything doctors do now days first started outside mainstream medical practice. Consider Pasture who came up with the crazy idea that rabies could be treated by a series of shots. Today that is standard practice. Then it was quackery.
The medical community dragged kicking and screaming had to admit that he was right.
One reason alternatives are rejected is the propagandized place of science and the ad hominem defaming of alternatives and practitioners of them.
Franz Mesmer was run out of Paris as a quack.
The scientific community admitted that there were many healings that they could not explain. They admitted that it worked, but they could not explain it in their type mind set of science. So he is a quack, get out of here.
The same thing happened with Emile Coue in the 1920’s when he came to the US.
The media describe his method as “Hells bells, I am well”. The fact that many were healed at his clinic in France and healed of problems declared incurable by doctors was irrelevant because his method contradicted science treatment as they believed it. He was run out of the country as a quack.
I am not here arguing that across the board alternatives are effective. I do think some are. What I am saying is that the broad brush condemnation of alternatives and the propagandized elevation of the place of doctors in healing may be a reason for the immediate rejection of alternatives.
Loss denial – emotion
Many are emotionally invested in medical treatment.
Try to tell a woman, who has had a mastectomy as a prophylactic to breast cancer, that there is an alternative. That means that she has lost her breasts for nothing. She has an emotional investment in the standard practice and will reject the possibility of alternatives out of hand.
I told a Christian lady about an alternative treatment for type 2 diabetes. It involved a diet found in the Bible. [I do not give medical advise.]
She lashed out at me. “My doctor is a Christian, and he would have told me if that was true. He has been my doctor for years.”
What does him being her doctor for years have to do with whether the alternative might work? There was no room for considering that it had helped some. She was emotionally invested in her doctor. She could not give up her belief in the doctor. Anything outside her doctor’s advice for this condition could not be true. So, she out of hand rejected the possibility of an alternative.
Many couples have been helped with fertility problems using a particular alternative treatment. I suggested it to a couple. The man said we have spent thousands of dollars with doctors. They rejected the simple alternative out of hand. And it would have cost nothing just to try it.
They could not even consider the possibility that they had spent all that money for nothing. They were emotionally invested in standard medical practice. Anything else had to be quackery.
There are other possibilities to answer the question.
See now my pages please on various healing modalities, because as you can imagine there is more info.
Thank you.
