Former friends of mine got involved in a business venture. The product line was called Melaleuca. Melaleca products were made from tea tree oil—which is found naturally-- from tea trees in Australia. The sales pitch essentially revolved around the idea that naturally occurring products were safer than those chemically produced in a lab. And my former friends gathered their other friends to not only sell the products, but to entice them to also become salespeople.
There is an art to mixing business with friendship. It is often not successfully done. A fine line must be walked. Sometimes friends feel compelled to spend their money on things they ordinarily wouldn’t purchase just not to offend the friends selling their wares. It can make or break the relationship if not done with finesse.
So when these friends approached me to sit down with them to discuss a fabulous new product with monetary opportunity, I felt instant concern. I felt trapped. And when I am trapped or concerned I almost always revive the same game plan—I do research and use the skills I was taught in Dr. Trant’s Logic class. I do my homework.
And I went over to my friends’ home where tea and hot cross buns were served as well as a table full of Mellaleuca products were set up. And the two friends began their pitch. But at some point I interrupted them. First I told them that just because a product was naturally occurring did not mean it was not harmful. Socrates died from drinking hemlock. The hemlock he drank wasn’t manufactured by Eli Lilly and Company. It came from a tree. And I mentioned how my organic chemistry teacher liked to tell the class how even water was fatally toxic if you drank too much.
And I added that I knew all about tea tree oil. I had learned about it in graduate school in one of my biochemistry classes. I told them that tea tree oil was a long chain polyhydrocarbon---it was a terpenine—chemically related to turpentine—which is what gave tea tree oil its distinct smell. And chemically it was not that indistinct from Lysol. It also was highly fat soluble. And once tea tree oil, like all other long chain polyhydrocarbons got absorbed into the fatty tissues of the body, it remained there for life. And I told them that that concept made me uncomfortable. No one knew the long term effects. Its toxicity was untested. So, since I was concerned with the safety of the products that I use, there was no way I could use Melaleuca products.
And the two them had nothing to say after that—their sales pitch was blown. Apparently they didn’t know what a terpenine was---and one of them should have—or did and pitched Melaleuca anyway. In either case, they understood that I wasn’t buying what they were selling.
Not too long ago I got a quasi-pseudo-borderline-highly critical email from someone about the content of one of my blog posts. She thought that I sometimes made people look foolish when I described my experiences—even though they were true--particularly when I recalled things said and done by school administrators. She felt my words were sharp and maybe it was better to leave things unsaid. She felt my journey to reason in effect unnecessarily stirred the pot.
And I thought about it---and this is what I concluded: knowledge is scary business--particularly when you are not in the know. It’s what makes people uncomfortable. People (especially sales people and school administrators) do not enjoy being caught not having done their homework. But once enlightened, we all have a choice—to rejoice in the fact that we have progressed or to resent the truth because it is different than we had first thought. Sometimes a cure for an ill necessitates using a scalpel first—a wound can only be healed once excised or debrided. Words are only as sharp as the thickness of your skin. And if people do not want the pot to be stirred, then they should not keep handing out all the spoons. I cannot make someone look foolish—it is something they do all by themselves. I just provide the mirror for them to look into.
That’s what learning is all about—using facts, logic and new information to do and be better. It’s how I keep unwanted products from cluttering up the back of my cabinets. It is also what keeps me from buying the educational snake oil some school administrators are selling.
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