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How to solve the rhino horn saga

It being Rhino Day and all...

You think you are living in a modern world, a world where people are finally beginning to understand the way things work. Using science, logic and technological advances to solve problems is the norm.

No it isn't.

Some crazy backward bastards go and ruin everything by believing that a rhinos horn has medicinal value! According to 16th century pharmacists (yes, 16th century!!!) the magical horn is said to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, snake bites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning, libido, being possessed by the devil... but rhino horn does none of these things. These people may as well treat their condition by eating their own hair and nail clippings. Heck they may as well drink a glass of water, it's far more useful medicinally.

Thereafter, a group of even crazier money hungry sods go and harvest horns from live animals to meet the demand. A win win situation? I think not! Armed with aforementioned technological advances, poachers have become devastatingly efficient at harvesting horns. Rhino numbers are declining and so on and so forth...

THE SOLUTION

Okay it's pretty easy and I can't imagine why it hasn't been tried yet. You see the horn has tremendous value, it must have if poachers are able to form well organised armed teams in helicopters (!!!) to harvest a few (dozen maybe) horns a month at the most. Horns are also very scarce which drives their value up, this is logical. So what if...(let me put this into perspective)... what if authorities were to flood the market with fake rhino horn. If it is traditionally dispensed in a powder form simply drown the black market in fake product (it'll be just as effective, medicinally, as the real stuff).

1. Brainless customers will be happy because they could get their product cheaply.
   
2. Poachers would stop hacking rhinos to bits because selling chickens wings on the black market would be far more profitable
3. Rhino extinction probabilities would be reduced significantly
4. Hippies would stop their endless moaning on the subject (they'd find something else but we can be happy in between complaints)
   

The Reiki has landed

Having recently gotten to know someone who is a ‘Reiki doctor’, I felt I needed to look into this practice to see what it was all about.

What is Reiki? After a quick Wiki I managed to gain some fundamental understanding of this form of healing. Spiritual healing to be precise, and if you asked me to define ‘spiritual healing’ in reiki lingo I would fail hopelessly. There is no scientific evidence to support the existence and manipulative healing effects of human ‘ki’. Ki is simply described by those familiar with it as ‘mysterious atmosphere’, ‘spiritual energy’ or ‘life force’. After reading those definitions the scientist in me screamed “ARRRGH! Hippies!!!” After hearing about so many reiki success stories the scientist in me shrugged and said “placebo effect…the dumbasses”.

I read further and came to the conclusion that reiki would theoretically work… it’s basically a method of getting your mind to communicate with your body. Too often in modern society do humans push themselves to the limit, their minds always want to achieve more but their bodies simply can’t cope with these ambitious targets and start degenerating as a consequence. In simple English “Stress can and will kill you”.

My relatively uneducated opinion is that when and if reiki does work, it’s because it manages to get high strung and generally stressed out folk to unwind. Simply telling these people to “chill out and stop stressing” won’t work because they have zilch intention of actually listening to you. Now, bring in a reiki doctor to lay them down on a comfy table and wave hands over them for 90 minutes whilst placing colourful “energy charged” crystals/rocks onto their head, chest, genetalia… add a bucket load of frowning, thinking and intense concentration and something DOES happen. The patient will start to BELIEVE. Once this is achieved the reiki doctor has basically done their job. A change in mindset is often all that is needed to overcome the toughest of obstacles.

Reiki hand positions...

hmmm...

I have no doubt that many people will disagree with my views (…most of them reiki practitioners and their patients). But they have to realise that I’m not slating the reiki business. Quite the opposite in fact, reiki is genius! If you could get someone to overcome their weaknesses and illness without actually doing anything or prescribing any drugs (abandoning he usual expenses, side effects and such) then by all means do so.

Queue analogy:

It’s like watching a good movie, nobody was thinking about how 90% of the battle sequences in The Lord of the Rings were computer generated images while they were watching (if you were, Congratulations! You are officially the biggest party pooper on the planet). If something is done convincingly enough, our minds perceive it to be real (even if for a short while… (Why is Frodo Baggins wearing shades and killing people in Sin City!!! The Ring! He MUST have… Oh… wait… nevermind…)).

Needless to say, when my acquaintance offered to do a quick reiki session on me I thought “Hmmm, what the hell, let’s see what comes of this” before placing my outstretched palm under hers. She frowned and thought for a little while. I really was expecting something profound after seeing those facial expressions… “Your Ki is unhappy, you need to bath under the waterfall of a clear mountain stream…” or “Your midi-chlorian count is low, you need to eat less junk food”. Heck even an uncertain “It’s difficult to say, your spiritual energy is blocking me out…” statement would have done the job.

Nope…

The reply I got surprised even me:

“Hmmm…” she said after a short while “You are not constipated”

(silence)

That’s it!!! Not Constipated!!! I could have told her that! She looked into to my Ki! Invaded my personal mysterious atmosphere! And all she could comment on was the passage of excrement through my anus!

Then I laughed… and brought my first ever reiki session to an abrupt end…