Ebony and Ivory, Together in perfect harmony

[uriel1972]

I have to vent. I had lunch with my friends I met whilst in a mental health outpatients facility and someone brought up the natural versus chemicals thing and I went a bit gaga. "Everything is made up of chemicals.", I started. Then I went on about the false dichotomy of natural and unnatural and how the idea of "natural" as being better than artificial permeates society. In the end it was decided that modern medicine and alternative/complementary medicine should work together as a team. At this point I bit my tongue "One is based on evidence and works and the other is snake-oil bullshit." I wanted to scream. However I kept silent and let it slide. I did this out of a desire to keep my friendship with these wonderful people. Does this make me a bad person?

[semillama]

1. No, it makes you a good person

since you weighed the value you get from your friendship with these people versus attempting to correct their beliefs about alternative medicine in a way that would have been unproductive. You did what any reasonable person would do.