Syncretism is defined by the American Heritage College Dictionary as “Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief especially with partial success or a heterogeneous result.” If only B.J. or D.D. had coined that term we might have avoided many of the problems that the profession has today. In an issue of the Pivot Review we addressed the term “straight” and how it has come to have a negative meaning and is now all but abandoned by most of the profession. In this issue I’d like to consider the term “mixer.”
The Palmers used the term “mixer” to describe those who fused medical procedures with chiropractic. “Syncretism” would really be appropriate as they create “partial success or a heterogeneous result.” The term “mixer” has a negative connotation. I have never seen a chiropractor advertise herself or himself as a mixer. Syncretistic chiropractic, on the other hand, might be something mixers would be willing to promote especially in light of the fact that the average person would have no idea what it meant. It sounds impressive and important. It supposes you take the best of both worlds. It might absolve the practitioner of being bound by standards, rules, principles or regulations. If it works, use it. It’s like people who say they are not “religious” but they are “spiritual.” What they are saying is that they do not adhere to the standards of the church, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran or anything else. They pick and choose whatever they want to believe and that’s their own self-created religion.
Of course, as we take apart the meaning we see what syncretism really means. It creates “partial success.” That is why those who adhere to a syncretistic model are constantly adding to their chiropractic, continually embracing new modalities, new ideas, new procedures or ones that already have been adopted by medicine, or adopted and now discarded, like traction.
The real danger of syncretistic chiropractic is that it attempts to combine an outside-in world view with an ADIO one. When that happens, what results is no world view, that is, one that people can understand and choose to accept or reject. That’s why it is so important for us to elucidate our world view… so we and, more important, the world, can be free to choose or reject it.
Joseph,
One more reason to have a “Term of acceptance” from the beginning.
You wrote about being free to choose or reject our world view. Indeed it is very important to elucidate our world view. It is called: having integrity… which is to tell people what it is that we and to do what we say we would do. It is choosing to be authentic. Let us understand that freedom is not the capacity to be what we are not, but the capacity to be fully who we already are, to develop our inherent and true nature as much as possible with full expression of our innate intelligence. True freedom will feel more like a discovery than an achievement. We are back to wonderment again.
Freedom is not HAVING to do what I WANT to do. True freedom is WANTING to do what I HAVE to do, which makes me dig deep into my own resources. Then I become who I most deeply and truly am.
This coming of the NEW season of spring is there for us to SEE the obvious…. that ALL things desire to be fully themselves! Let us surrender to this freedom to desire to be authentic.
You actually make it appear really easy with your presentation but I to
find this topic to be actually something that I feel I might never understand.
It kind of feels too complicated and extremely wide for me.
I am having a look ahead in your subsequent publish, I will attempt to get
the hold of it!
A Chiropractor who comprehends the principles of this science will have no use for adjuncts. Just in proportion as he lacks knowledge and
confidence (the two go together) he will use remedies, become a mixer.
The more he mixes the less use he has for Chiropractic. (DD Palmer)
It takes little courage to become a “mixer”. All he has to do is gravitate. (BJ Palmer)
—————————————————————
Here’s one for you Joe, (your brain, the mixer inside)
Reduction in quantity flow of Innate mental impulses, produced
by vertebral subluxation, between Innate brain and educated
brain, is as bad TO THOT FUNCTION of education, as a
reduction in quantity flow of Innate mental impulses is between
Innate brain and organic structure to their functions in any other
part of body. Education then becomes a thot mixer which is equivalent to a Chiropractic-chiropractor prac-tice-mixer, where he tries to mix chiropractic AND medicine, Chiropractic adjustment WITH medical treatments. Neither
MIXES with success in production of either normal thinking or normal function. (BJ Palmer Vol 33)