Black Health in America

Edward L Floyd 05/10/05 Black Health in America Problems of the Opposites - Are Too Many Blacks Extroverted? "At every level of income, black folks die sooner than white folks" The above quote appeared in The Carolinian, a local newspaper in Raleigh, N.C. and is attributed to Dr. Adewale Troutman, director of the Metro Louisville Health Department in Kentucky. Dr. Troutman goes on to say, according to The Carolinian, that unless Blacks love themselves enough to be healed, that, some 200 years or so from now people will say, "There used to be a time when there were black folks, but they're all dead now." As noted from the previous quote, the issues about Black health are extremely serious. It is easy to see that these are matters of life and death. The Carolinian stimulates that David R. Williams, a senior research scientist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, reports that Blacks have higher death rates than whites in 11 of the 15 leading causes of death in the United States. In order to understand why the health in Black America, America, and the world in general is in such a sorry state, one has to observe and try to understand nature. One thing that is quite obvious, but is hardly discussed in these times, is the fact that nature employs opposites in its design. Look at time, for instance. Our 24-hour days are divided into days and nights or light and darkness. Things can turn to the right or to the left, clockwise or counterclockwise. Life on earth employs this same principle of the opposites. The human race is divided into male and female. This is also true for most animals and plants. Humans have two eyes, two ears, two feet, two hands, pairs of genes on chromosomes, and, our DNA is in the form of a double-helix. People have both a right brain and a left brain. Our bodies have two branches of the autonomic nervous system - sympathetic branch and parasympathetic branch. According to the renowned code of Hindu law, the Laws of Manu, says that the pairs of opposites were ordained by the world-creator. The Ramayana, a great Sanskrit epic of ancient India, is quoted as saying, "This world must suffer under the pairs of opposites for ever". The Chinese deal with the problems of the opposites in terms of Yin and Yang. So, with opposites, we have choices and in many cases, one choice can be determined as being good, and, the opposite choice can often be determined as being bad. Therefore, the nature of our creation, and indeed that of the world, is the very root of good and evil. The terms Introvert and Extrovert are familiar in America. Carl G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and author of Psychological Types, is credited with creating those terms that describe two versions of the most obvious behavior in human personality. Jung noticed that when he looked at human psychology two differences in personality dealing with the orientation of the individual became especially clear. He termed this personality orientation as either Extroverted or Introverted. What Jung means when he says a person is Introverted, is that that person's fate is usually determined more by the person himself - by his own inner self. In other words, the Introvert is more in charge of his destiny than from influences from the environment. Jung says that the Extrovert, on the other hand has a fate that is more determined by the person's interests - in other words, the objects of one's interest. Jung explains it like this. "The fate of one individual is determined more by the objects of his interest (the Extrovert), while in another it is determined more by his own inner self, by the subject (the Introvert)." Introversion and Extroversion seem to be determined by the fact of whether one is more in charge of his own life, or, if he is in a reaction mode, reacting to object, things and/or stimuli in the world around him. Here is a major problem of the opposites. You cannot be Extroverted (looking outwardly) and reacting to the world around you, and, at the same time, be Introverted (looking inwardly), and being consistently aware of the state and condition of the human body. In describing the Extrovert, Jung says, "The body is not sufficiently objective or "outside", so that the satisfaction of elementary needs which are indispensable to physical well-being is no longer given its due". Jung goes on to say that the Extrovert tends to notice sickness and illness "when abnormal body sensations" announce the presence of illness or disease. Needless to say, by then it may be too late to prevent acute and/or chronic disease. Let's look at another fact that Jung observed in nature that relates to the nature of the Introvert and the Extrovert. Jung noted that nature employs two fundamentally different modes of adaptation that ensure the continued existence of the living organism. He stated that, "The one consists in a high rate of fertility, with low powers of defense and short duration of life for the single individual; the other consists in equipping the individual with numerous means of self-preservation plus a low fertility rate." Certainly, the ability to recognize when the body is ill or diseased has to be attributed to the individual with numerous means of self-preservation - the Introvert. In this day and age, we as humans find ourselves in the mist of epidemics such as that of HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and especially obesity. Yet, our natural ability to deal with them is at an all time low. If there ever were a catch-22's, this would be the mother of catch-22's. And, the irony is that most people will not and cannot recognize it because, as Jung also noted, people tend to understand everything in terms of our own type. It is said that some 75% of the population is Extroverted. If this data about Extroversion applies in a similar fashion to the Black population then we can begin to under the magnitude of the health problem throughout America. One should naturally ask the question, why would so many people become Extroverted? It is beyond the scope of this paper to address that issue at this time.