"It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary 
depends upon his not understanding it"
Upton Sinclair

This line was quoted in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" which I just 
saw with my family this weekend. While the most disturbing aspect of 
the movie is that the facts presented are something we should all be 
aware of and then terrfied by and finally motivated by--the second most 
disturbing is that I thought about breastfeeding through the entire 
film.

It's exactly the same thing--every powerful truth for us a human 
species seems to be first amd foremost debated from an economic 
perspective and secondly from a convenience perspective (couched of 
course in the concept of protecting innocents from guilt or some other 
imagine harm were the truth told) as if that matters in any way at 
all!!! As if the truth is dependent, as Gore says, on whether or not it 
is convenient to accept it as such. While policy-makers and the media 
spend time debating whether or not such issues really matter kids get 
addicted to nicotine, women give birth drugged and absent from 
themselves and their babies, human infants are artifically-fed and the 
planet is decimated. These are all issues upon which there is no 
legitimate scientific debate, yet we sit here stunned by blatant 
inaction or the undermining of effective action or even outright attack 
on those who themselves seek to act or even to tell the truth.

I am really thinking a lot today about the way we think about ourselves 
in this world and what it is within us that allows us to be so 
intentionally ignorant, even stupid. (Lest anyone think I am beating up 
on mothers, BTW--I am primarily referring to policy-makers, and those 
in the media who have easy access to accurate information.). I cannot 
see how we will affect change in breastfeeding policy and behaviours 
unless we literally evolve out ability to think and conceptualize, our 
potential to think beyond ourselves and our own immediate desire to 
avoid discomfort. In all of these issues, the long-term consequences 
(measured in only decades for the most part) are far more uncomfortable 
than the truth or even the action required once we accept the truth.

Anthony Robbins teaches that human beings are more motivated to move 
away from pain than toward pleasure. If that is the case, then the only 
solution to any of these issues is making the pain very obvious. 
Personally, I think it will take something more--something akin to a 
hundreth monkey response--a tipping point if you will. The thing about 
a tipping point is that you can't really see it coming, so I remain 
optimistic that raising consciousness is the most effective means to 
that end.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA


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