The concept of ‘Bontamination’… Discuss.

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Hi everyone. Just thought I  would revive this thread….

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Hi everyone… When we apply the concept of ‘Bontamination’, we are actually putting in place, a barrier between ourselves, and the concept of contamination. We are putting in place a protection, that, to an extent, carries on around us, all of the time, anyway. If we consider the famous work by H.G. Wells, entitled ‘War of the worlds’, we are shown that, when the invaders came, they were already doomed, because of the smallest things on planet earth, that we have long since gained immunity to. In fact, the invaders succumbed to something we had developed a resistance too, since time itself began… Those bacteria would also have gotten stronger against us, in turn further pushing up our immunity. A continuous process, part of the evolution/creation process. We are pretty resistant to our world environment, and we have gotten stronger over many generations… Here…  In fact, If we get too clean, wouldn’t it be safe to suggest that, over time, our resistance could weaken again? With Covid, we have been wiping out the bad germs, but also, inadvertently, some of the good germs will have been eradicated, and that is maybe not such a good state of affairs. So… Can we allow ourselves to just be ‘reasonably clean’, just as children are when they crawl about on the floor..?  Can we touch our clothing without fear..? After all, Most of the germs around us are not gonna be extremely dangerous… We breathe them all the time… And have done, ever since the day we were born.

Using that as an example then… What about door handles? Are they reasonably safe? Well, Yes… They must be or none of us would be here… Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, linked with Exposure, and Response Prevention, involves us actively defying it all, and thus proving to ourselves how things really are… Doing what most people do all of the time, without thinking, anyway… So, armed with that knowledge, next time we touch a door handle, we don’t need to give a seconds thought to whatever may be there, either before, or after we touch it, so that we can at least pass from room to room, without impedance. Shall we try?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

This idea is an attempt to disarm this idea that we somehow contaminate the world… Everything I touch… Do I really have the power over other people’s health and well-being? Especially when some of those people are unpleasable. I one of my places of employment, I tried to please people, who just wanted more than I could ever give… Fear of being sued… My ‘Best’ was never good enough…  One of my managers had the same problem, with the clients and clients’ relatives. She quit before I did, and all due to stress. In our wold today, we have a growing allergy and asthma problem. It is hardly surprising, the amount of antibacterial vapour we breathe on a day to day basis… Our air is polluted with chemical  cleaners.

Bontamination is when we allow biology to do it’s thing. A lot of drugs are plant based chemicals. Surely we don’t need to be sterile? Sterile air damages our lungs… Our first defence against the bugs in the air. We are natural beings, who actually need to breathe a certain amount of Carbon dioxide, so the gaseous exchange process occurs in our lungs, every time we breathe. In ordinary life, Let’s ‘Bontaminate’ the world with good things, and just be ‘Reasonably’ clean. Sterile, is for surgical procedures.  A final thought… If we get a reputation for suing other people, Can we still expect a GP to treat us?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Okay… ‘Bontamination’.  It is a word made up from two… I’ve taken the ‘Con’ off the front of the word ‘Contamination’, and replaced it with the prefix ‘Bon’, which itself comes from the French language, meaning ‘Good’.  It is only a little change, but it makes a great deal of difference to the meaning. Instead of it being ‘dirty and unclean’, it is now ‘Reasonably clean’. In this context, we are thinking about ordinary touch, ordinary cleanliness, rather than continual washing, and trying to be super clean.  If we sit in a cafe, and surreptitiously watch other people around us, they rub their eyes, pick their noses etc. Then continue eating, with no concern whatsoever. Children touch everything, then grab the burger bun and take mouthfuls, without a care in the world… And let’s be honest here, the only place in the establishment, to wash hands, is the toilets, and we all well know that not everyone washes their hands before coming back into the restaurant properly, pulling on at least two door handles in the process… It’s not every time that we hear the noisy electric hand-driers when the interconnecting doors open. And yet, we don’t hear about food poisoning in the media… So, going on that as evidence, Can we get away with washing our hands a little less?

After all, Other people seem to…

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Well, it has been okay so far… No one appears to have suffered because of me… No phone calls from solicitors… My whole world is bontaminated. Everything I have touched today… But that is how it has been for me, right from the day I was born. My natural defences have been strengthening all my life. Just as they have for all those around me. So the bontamination is acceptable in my little corner of the world. Can it be so, in your little corner of the world too?

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Consider this statement…

“When we consider something to be ‘Contaminated’, it is ruined, Yes?”

“But what if, it is reasonably clean? Merely ‘Bontaminated’, What then..?”

And therein is a grain of an idea… A challenge….

It is going on all around us, all of the time, in nature especially, The principle of;

“Bontamination” versus  “Contamination”   Bontamination ultimately wins, Otherwise we would be overwhelmed by nature around us, but we are not, or we would always be desperately ill, or even worse…

Check out the books on Amazon… By ‘Marcus John Kim’.

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Hi again everyone,  The principle is to reduce the threat of something being contaminated, by seeing if it is ‘Bontaminated’ instead… Reasonably clean… Well… Is it?

What if we go to someone else’s house, and sit on their chairs..? What if they should come and sit on ours? Aren’t the minuscule amount of bacteria on both chairs is actually pretty much the same? And has been since we even sat on the floor as children?  Are our hands ever perfectly clean? I mean, from about ten minutes after we have sprayed them, and then picked something up? Tumble dried clothes… We may use antibacterials in the drum, But what happens the moment those laundry items are exposed to air? The air we have been breathing up until right now, and will continue to breathe… Part of letting go of the compulsion to constantly clean our hands, is to disarm the threat of what may, or may not, be there, either on our fingertips, or the object we pick up.  I will be visiting a library soon… I may have to use touch screens… Not everyone cleans their hands… That is a fact, something we know full well… We may have done the same ourselves… Intentionally, or indeed un-intentionally… A lot of people really don’t seem to care what they touch… But if that item isn’t actually coated in something that could overwhelm our natural defences, or at least, at the very worst, stimulate our natural defences to give us better protection and immunity, actually a good thing, Then that would be ‘Bontamination’, wouldn’t it?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Okay… Let’s have another look at this word ‘Bontamination’.

Is it a ‘good’ word?  Well, it’s not exactly a ‘Bad’ word… Because, the verb ‘Bontaminate’, means to add something to something else… Either the fingers put something onto say, a book… And likewise, and simultaneously, the fingers take up something from the book, something as yet unknown…  In small enough quantities, which it indeed is… It will ultimately  improve the situation anyway, by either, not doing any harm at all, or by, at the very most, provide something, as yet unknown, to stimulate and therefore, strengthen, the body’s natural defences, ultimately also leading to no serious harm at all. Years ago, Smallpox was a killer… However Cowpox, made people feel a bit under the weather for a few days, but then they were actually protected from the killer Smallpox.  By that understanding, Cowpox, is a bontaminant, and a good one at that. Even the word ‘Vaccination’ is derived from ‘Vaccu’, from the Latin for cow. And we don’t worry about holiday vaccinations, do we? We just go and have a good time…

So, maybe we are all ‘Bontaminated’, by the world in which we live… Does that make sense?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Well, continuing on from the last entry, maybe ‘Bontamination’ is okay… When we touch that door handle, and therefore ‘expose’ others to our germs(!), Are we really actually doing good? And what about ourselves? Can we honestly say that we have ever been ill, simply by touching a door handle, to exit from a room? There is no way of knowing… If we look back at the official definition of the word ‘Bontamination’, it is not so bad… It is what goes on around us all the time anyway… Everytime we breathe… Our air is really bad these days… But we adapt… When we go on holiday, we drink ‘different’ water… We survive… It ultimately does us good, not to mention the new experiences… In biblical times, only the wine would have been pure… And in the days of Roman baths, they didn’t have antibacterials… At least, not like we have today…

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Hi everyone… As this is my own thread, I can advertise… A good book available on Amazon is, ‘Not in a nutshell. The concept of ‘Bontamination”.  By Marcus John Kim. It is a very interesting read, and isn’t expensive, as textbooks go… I should know, I wrote it…

It has come about as a result of my own journey with contamination and checking OCD…

OCD can indeed be battled… It’s not easy… But it is largely about ‘letting go’ of all the responsibility and misplaced guilt. We are all human and fallible. And that is a good thing… And actually vitally important to our survival.

My computer isn’t going to be perfectly clean… And that is actually a good thing, important to our biology… If we bump off 99.9% of bacteria, won’t we be getting rid of good ones too?  It’s an interesting point… Time to eat some more chocolate biscuits, without washing the wrapper first… After all, the shop checkout operator handles everything… And has done, for several years at least…

More later…

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Sometimes, when we talk about fighting something, it helps to have something there to ‘Fight’, and some sort of ammunition to fight it with… Otherwise we are just ‘Punching’ thin air, with no resistance to our efforts…

This is where ‘Bontamination’ comes in. It suggests that, yes, I agree with you, there almost certainly is something on that door handle, light switch, even our hands… But, it also asks the question ‘Is it really that bad?’ Is there any proof that it is indeed ‘bad’? Or does the evidence back up an idea that, It has been there since were tiny babies crawling about on the floor, strengthening our immune systems… That as long as we are ‘reasonably’ clean, then there is really nothing to fear… We are built up, regulated, and protected by laws of biology… We are natural… And pretty resistant to the world around us… If we weren’t, we would succumb pretty quickly.  We only take very small amounts of medicine, but the results are often absolutely amazing… Trace amounts of vitamins… We are amazing… Bontamination seeks to give us a defence, something ‘concrete’, that could maybe stand up in a court of law… To protect ourselves, not just from physical illness, but the solicitors who people employ so they can get enough money to go on holiday, at the expense of our mental health…

I’m sure glad I took Human Biology to ‘O’ level! To put it bluntly, for every force in a given direction, whether or not is an attack of infection, there is an equal and opposing force holding it back… That is exactly what Bontamination is, when Isaac’s third law is applied to it.  So that, within pretty big parameters, we are pretty safe…  To be honest, we still don’t know for sure exactly what causes allergies… But, it makes sense to say that, If we keep killing off the good guys as well as the bad… We are effectively shooting our own troops from behind, while they are busy trying to protect us from the baddies beyond…

I don’t think that this could be undone overnight… Indeed, it could have taken generations to become part of us…  At least we have antibiotics…

Anyway… Let’s give ‘Bontamination’ a chance to help us.  Taking a risk is what life is all about. Just maybe, that person over there in font of me is made up of the same materials as I am… So, if I’m resistant to stuff, Maybe they are too? Cos they’ve never made Me ill, have they? How could we ever prove it if they had?  And that works in our favour too…

Wannabe

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[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Hi everyone, just had a couple of really busy days…

How many of us have been into a burger restaurant recently? Never mind ourselves, what about the thousands who flock into these places daily? Pizza restaurants… We eat with our fingers, because it is a more convenient way to eat the thing… Now consider the number of people who wash their hands… Bearing in mind, the only place to wash our hands is the toilets washbasins, and the pull doors to return to the main restaurant. And we all have mixed feelings about those… They don’t get shut down, do they? They don’t get on TV news… And they are massive companies…  A fried coated chicken restaurant used to refer to us licking our fingers… And they haven’t been shut down either… We’d soon know about it if there was any trouble. So… The something that is present on the door handles is perhaps, not actually dangerous to everyone who touches them… Maybe some, but certainly not most of us, or the’d have a sink, soap, and towels by the main entrance… Not brilliant for their corporate image…  The concept of ‘Bontamination’ acknowledges that there will sometimes be micro-organisms on our fingers, our door handles, car steering wheels… That some of them may even need to be there… In order to generate a sort of ‘herd’ immunity, where we all share everything, and our bodies develop resistance…  This is biologically important, because we ourselves are made up of micro-organisms, cells, and atomic structures… We are organic.  To take this to a gardening analogy… A rose gardener will tend to have problems with Aphids…. Greenfly to you and me.  The trick is get the little so-n-so’s off the prize roses, without harming the roses… Selectively… But antibacterials kill 99.9% of everything… If we breathe in the ‘Freshness’, it could seriously damage the fragile micro-organisms etc in our lungs… And they need to be there to protect us from the stuff in the air we breathe… They are vital, to protect us from the stuff in the air that we breathe… Our air is nowhere near clean… A beautiful red sunset is made up of pollution deflecting the sun’s rays. And do you remember when we went to the cinema, and looked up into the rays of light from the projection window behind us? It used to be smoke, but now it is dust… And it’s not particularly clean dust…

Bontamination allows this to be so… Our lungs are well adapted to the air we breathe, or were, until we started using ‘biocides’, and that is a technical terms for the sprays we are using in our homes… And we use a lot…

Could this be the reason so many people suffer from Asthma these days?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Okay… What about the petrol filling station? We fuel up, then buy a hot sausage roll… In a paper bag, to eat o

on the go…

Does anyone know someone who has been ill after fuelling up their car?

Me neither…

Bontamination is good… proven yet ?

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

The book ‘Not in a nutshell, The Concept of ‘Bontamination’ is out now on Amazon. It gives a unique insight into how the term ‘bontamination’ can be used on ordinary life, to help us challenge the intrusive thoughts, about whether things are clean enough or not…

I was listening to a CD on the stereo tonight… Music that I haven’t heard for at least 15 years… Yes, it did momentarily take me back to the last time I heard it, but now it is filled with today’s memories… Happy ones… I will sleep with music on tonight… That way I get to hear the latest tracks for me to play on the keyboards.  Whilst I’m thinking about CD’s, are they ever clean? Gramophone records… Sure, they got dusty… But they weren’t ever cleaned…  Okay, now it is time for me to lay my head on the same pillow as all week, at least… If we apply the concept of Bontamination to a pillow, then sleep on it… And wake up refreshed after a great night’s sleep, then we will more than likely be fine, the more we repeat the process. What about inside the refrigerator?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Today I had cause to listen to someone talking about infection… They thought they might have contracted something, so were gonna see how they felt on returning home… I stated that surely we need to be exposed to some things in order to build up a resistance. Bontamination suggests that this happens in ‘reasonable size amounts…

Remember the definition… ‘If whatever I have put on that for instance door knob, or indeed picked up from it, is insufficient to overwhelm our natural defences, and in the course of doing so, the worst it can do is ultimately make me stronger, a good thing, then that is ‘Bontamination’, isn’t it?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Let’s be honest… We all need to have ‘Bontamination’ around us… We do, don’t we? Contamination is a very heavy word… Everything we come into contact with has something in, on, or around it. This has been the case since before we were even born. Our birth parents would have been exposed to the atmosphere and the physical world. Some of their natural resistance will have been passed to us via the umbilical cord…  Some good, some not so good. Then there’s genetics. We are natural beings, affected by our own natural biology. We are permanently linked to it. But we don’t need to fear it… It is what makes us so strong… And we are… You and I are well designed and built. The world is attacking us from every angle… Radio waves, pollution, all the stuff that exists in and around us…

But that is okay…

We are fantastic…

So… The next time you touch a door handle, or light switch… Or take a breath… Or eat something tasty… Disregard the intrusive thoughts… That’s all they are… Just thoughts… No physical power… Unlike the massive natural defences that protect us from our normal environment… ‘Bontamination’ is going on all of the time… It is our protector… We are adapting all the time, just as nature around us is… And that is okay…  We actually need to let it happen…

That is the Concept of ‘Bontamination’.

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

This is where this thread now comes to a gentle conclusion, ready for another thread of some sort… The books are now available on Amazon.   Google ‘Marcus John Kim’, or even ‘Bontamination’, and you’ll find it. We now have a little piece of evidence we can now place in our armoury of asserting ourselves against the Ocd bully. It has been a very  long and difficult  journey, and I’m still on it, maybe for ever… But when I cannot get a word in edgeways in conversation, I turn to writing. On my desktop, I have a folder called ‘The Angry Files’, and I’m able to say my piece, without interruption or heckling. It is a great way to shout back at the intrusive thoughts… In fact ‘Assertiveness training’, sounds like a really brill idea, so I can stand firm and tell my ocd, to keep it’s distance, or words to that effect!  Anyone else done assertiveness training?

Wannabe

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

I just thought of a little more to add… When life seems like it is turning into some sort of joke… The person who can then treat it like one, and inwardly laugh at the joke, will preserve their mental health… Sometimes life is indeed like a scene from a ‘Carry on’ film… I have learnt from the characters played by Sid James… A giggle is good for the soul… Don’t let anything get under your skin…  I allow everything to go over my head. If I can allow others the right to get it wrong or mess up sometimes, then, I have the right to do so myself. I do, cos I am no less than anyone else… We all have strengths and weaknesses… I reckon there is a very good reason for that… It is so that we can interact with others around us. Our strengths can compensate for anothers weaknesses, our weaknesses give space for another person to use their strengths to help us. That way we all have purpose. If we were good at absolutely everything ourselves, then other people would feel useless. We would, Wouldn’t we, if it was to be the other way around? As a species, we all need to feel needed, so that we can then experience the joy of helping someone else achieve something too. We all need each other, and that is a good thing, not a weakness. So… Let’s give ourselves the same rights we give everyone else, let’s all mess up sometimes… If it’s okay for others, then it is okay for ourselves…  Rant over…

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Hi everyone. I’ve just been away for a few days! I’ve managed to Bontaminate everything in some way. I was at a motorway service station , using a loo, then washed hands, looking up into the big mirrored sink splashbacks. The number of people not stopping to wash their hands was amazing! Most, by a long way, don’t wash their hands. Well dressed, scruffy, anything, they just stroll past me, zipping up their trousers. I finished drying my hands under the jet engine dryer, then wandered back into the food court. All the food is now ordered off touch screens, and payment made by card. Are they anywhere near clean? They are touched by upwards of a hundred people per hour. I know that, when I hear the chefs calling out the order numbers. But we don’t become ill… Food is eaten with the fingers… And we don’t become ill… Well we don’t, do we? So… The concept of ‘Bontamination’ is alive and well, and now, as it is in a couple of published books, well and truly into the English language. I just need to submit it to the Oxford English Dictionary, now. So… What do you think? It’s a good idea, isn’t it? Inspired by Poirot the french detective, played brilliantly by David Suchet…

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Isn’t this we do all of the time?

When we breathe out on a cold winters day, droplets of moisture appear like steam… This happens, even when it is not cold, we just don’t see it… But it is always there… When we notice the pleasant smell of tobacco being smoked, that will contain a certain amount of exhaled breath from someone else… This has been the case for many decades… And yet, we are alive. Can it be suggested that, the people on planet earth who are the healthiest of all, are in fact, not the cleanest of all, but the ones who have the strongest immunity to our surroundings… And if so, where does that immunity come from?  Being surgically clean provides no surface on which healthy germs can develop, by fighting off the bad ones? Things need to be reasonably clean, yes, but we need to each of us develop our own individual immunity to our surroundings. In ordinary life, We each of us are organic creatures, adapting and evolving all of the time, to the ever-changing conditions in our atmosphere and surroundings. It is mainly automatic, our temperature is regulated within certain parameters, Our breathing and heart-rate are changing all of the time… Constantly keeping pace with our lifestyles.

A measure of just how fantastic these usually things are, is found when they go wrong, in say, the diabetic Person. A situation where the blood sugar control has to be taken over by the use of blood tests and insulin injections. It is a constant balancing act, and actually incredibly difficult to master. But when working it is okay, and our pancreas is functioning as it should, the process is undetectable in us.

In normal life, we have systems in place to protect us. Acid in our stomachs, Helpful bacteria in our lungs, weak acid on our skin, and so on. These are developed from a young age… Without them, we would be doomed, helpless against the forces of nature, the air, our food, everything we touch etc… This process can be called ‘Bontamination’, because, in measured quantities, it is for our own good. As natural as we are. We cannot escape the fact that we are made up of living tissue and bacteria etc.  It is what makes us so adaptable and resistant to our normal environment. And that is absolutely vital for our continued survival…

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Whenever I make a cheese sandwich, I just wash my hands once before I start… Doesn’t everyone?

Just consider the possible implications here… There are quite a few, and yet, And yet…

We survive unscathed…

Why is that? Is that the result of ‘Bontamination’?

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Today it was considering the humble mobile phone…

We don’t clean them before making or taking a call… The case of mine is threadbare… It hasn’t made me, or, as far as I know, anyone else ill… Why ever not? Honestly, Why ever not? Do we actually have some sort of inbuilt defence?

The whole world is bontaminated… Always has been, and always will be… And I propose the idea that that is definitely a good thing… Important even.

Discuss…

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

Today has been a lazy day… My back hurts, so I  must give it time to recover from the events of the last few days. I’ve been curled up on the settee today… Where people sit…

Come to think of it, why is it that, in catering kitchens,  people actually sit on the worktops? Well, they do, don’t they?

What about hygiene on holiday?  Are other people really all that careful?

Or do they just expect it of me?

Wannabe

[wannabefreeParticipantParticipant]

I’ve noticed that, people no longer pause at entrances to sanitise their hands…

Wannabe

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