Paul Goodman Quotes
There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison.
Goodman, Paul. Five Years: Thoughts During a Useless Time. Brussel & Brussel, 1966.
This quotation illustrates one of the contemporary problems that Muslims face. The problem of overeating and especially obesity are now known to be serious health problems. The Prophet had called attention to this while the majority of the world, afraid of starvation, considered obesity and overeating as a sign of affluence and health. In that sense the Prophet provided sound medical advice. However, for those Muslims who take the words of the Prophet literally, they take the statement literally and therefore pay little or no attention to immunization, water pollution, sanitation other than specified by the Prophet. To them, there are no other causes of disease because Muhammed said so. The wisdom from Aristotle to Einstein typically moved knowledge and mankind ahead with new and critical insights and revelations but all were wrong in some respects and future science has determined that. But for the fundamentalist Muslim, there can be no error in the word of the Prophet, just as for the fundamentalist Christian or Jew, there can be no error in their Bibles. Although valid for Muslims, the Hadith is less well known than the Koran which is recited by all good Muslims.
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American author and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Goodman was raised by his aunts and sister and attended City College of New York. As an aspiring writer, he wrote and published poems and fiction before attending graduate school in Chicago. He returned to writing in New York City and took sporadic magazine writing and teaching jobs, many of which he lost for his outward bisexuality and World War II draft resistance. Goodman discovered anarchism and wrote for libertarian journals. He became one of the founders of gestalt therapy and took patients through the 1950s while continuing to write prolifically. His 1960 book of social criticism, Growing Up Absurd, established his importance as a mainstream cultural theorist. Goodman became known as "the philosopher of the New Left" and his anarchistic disposition was influential in 1960s counterculture and the free school movement. His celebrity did not endure far beyond his life, but Goodman is remembered for his principles, outré proposals, and vision of human potential.
