your body’s a traitor. it’s chattering away nonstop—gurgling guts, pounding heart, that twitch in your eyelid you pretend isn’t there—but nobody, not even you, knows what the hell it’s saying. we’ve built whole empires of knowledge, stethoscopes pressed to chests and charts scribbled with jargon, just to pretend we’ve cracked the code. but what if there is no code? what if all this noise—your migraines, your cousin’s ulcers, that ache in your balls—is just chaos farting in our faces, and we’re the suckers trying to call it poetry?
medicine, that smug bastard, struts around like it’s got the keys to the kingdom. it’s the translator, the priest, the middleman between your flesh and some grand meaning. but strip it down, and it’s just a guy with a clipboard guessing at shadows. we’re not talking about hippocrates here, some toga-wearing sage sniffing herbs. no, this is a machine born in the 19th century, a hulking beast of observation and dissection that decided some noises matter and others don’t. your cough? signal. your childhood trauma spilling out in a rant? noise—until some freudian hotshot says otherwise. it’s a game of pick-and-choose, a playlist curated by power, not truth. so why do we swallow it whole?
think of your phone for a sec. it’s buzzing with notifications—texts, emails, that dick pic you didn’t ask for. you don’t read every ping as a sacred missive from the universe. you swipe away the bullshit and focus on what fits your day. medicine’s doing the same, but with your body. it’s not hearing you; it’s hearing what it’s trained to hear. that rash? it’s got a name, a slot, a pill. but the way your voice cracks when you talk about your dead mom? eh, that’s just static—unless the system decides it’s worth tuning in. who gets to turn the dial? not you, that’s for damn sure.
noise isn’t a message—it’s a middle finger
here’s the kicker: we love the idea of messages. we’re obsessed with meaning. your boss sends you a cryptic email—“let’s chat tomorrow”—and you’re up all night decoding it like it’s the fucking rosetta stone. is it a raise? a firing? a booty call? we can’t stand the idea that it might just be noise, a random blip in the void. same goes for your body. that fever spiking at 3 a.m., that knot in your gut when you see your ex—it’s gotta mean something, right? wrong. maybe it’s just there, flipping you off, refusing to play by our rules.
this is where the medical racket gets shaky. it’s built on the lie that every creak and groan can be sorted into a neat little box—diagnosis, prognosis, prescription, repeat. but what if the body’s not sending postcards? what if it’s just screaming into a void, and we’re the ones slapping subtitles on it? imagine you’re at a punk show, right? the band’s thrashing, the crowd’s moshing, and some asshole in a suit walks up with a notepad, muttering, “hm, yes, this riff indicates repressed anger, and that scream suggests a vitamin deficiency.” you’d laugh him out of the pit. yet that’s medicine in a nutshell—standing in the chaos, pretending it’s a lecture hall.
the system doesn’t just listen; it invents. it takes the raw, messy static of your existence and spins it into something it can control. over the last hundred-odd years, it’s carved up the noise into “traits”—little Lego bricks of meaning. your wheezing lungs? asthma. your racing thoughts? anxiety. but what gets left behind? the shit that doesn’t fit. the murmurs no one’s named yet. the stuff we call “psychosomatic” because it’s too slippery to pin down. (side note: isn’t it wild how “psychosomatic” is just a fancy way of saying “we don’t fucking know”?) medicine’s not discovering truth—it’s building a cage and calling it reality.
the doctor’s ear: a filter, not a fucking oracle
let’s zoom in on the guy in the white coat. he’s not your buddy, your confessor, or your mom. he’s a technician, a sound engineer fiddling with knobs, trying to cut through the static. he’s not there for your soul or your sob story—he’s there for the signal. picture him like a bouncer at a club: he’s got a list, and if your symptoms ain’t on it, you’re not getting in. that twinge in your side? could be appendicitis, could be gas, could be you’re just horny and stressed. he’s not waiting for the full story—he’s guessing, fast, because the clock’s ticking and the next schmuck’s already coughing in the waiting room.
this isn’t some touchy-feely dance. the doctor’s not “interpreting” you like you’re a goddamn haiku. he’s sorting noise, tossing out what doesn’t match the script. ever try explaining something weird to a doc—like how you feel “off” in a way you can’t name—and watch his eyes glaze over? that’s the filter kicking in. he’s not hearing you; he’s hearing the checklist. and here’s the dirty secret: he can’t wait for the end of the song. he’s not sticking around for your grand finale—recovery or the grave. he’s gotta cut in mid-verse and call it. diagnosis isn’t truth; it’s a gamble with a stethoscope.
compare that to, say, your group chat blowing up. someone’s bitching about their day, someone’s memeing, someone’s drunk-texting gibberish. you don’t sit there analyzing every word like a linguist—you skim, you react, you move on. the doc’s doing the same, but with higher stakes and worse bedside manner. he’s not decoding your essence; he’s matching your noise to a model he’s got in his head. and those models? they’re not universal keys—they’re shortcuts, guesses, hacks. some are tight, like a specialist saying, “yep, that’s lupus.” others are loose as hell, like your gp shrugging, “uh, maybe it’s stress, try yoga.” either way, it’s not about you—it’s about the playbook.
models: the mixtape of meaning
speaking of models, let’s unpack that shit. medicine runs on templates—pre-recorded tracks it overlays on your noise. think of it like spotify’s algorithm: it’s got playlists for “chill vibes,” “angry breakup,” “horny friday night.” your symptoms get dropped into a category—psyche, organs, whatever—and then matched to a disease profile. it’s pattern recognition with a prescription pad. but here’s the rub: those patterns aren’t infinite. they’re finite as fuck, built from what’s already been heard, named, tamed.
there’s two flavors here. first, the “grammatical” model—big-picture sorting. is this noise a head thing, a gut thing, a dick thing? it’s like tagging your porn collection—rough, soft, weird—so you know where to file it. then there’s the “translation” model, where the doc risks a call: “this rash plus fever equals measles.” it’s a bet, not a revelation. specialists play it safe—they’ve got a short list of suspects, like a dj with a tight setlist. general practitioners? they’re winging it, picking the most likely hit because the possibilities are endless and they’ve got ten minutes before the next patient.
ever play that game where you guess the movie from three clues? “explosions, bad one-liners, arnold.” boom, terminator. that’s the specialist. now try it with “uh, someone’s sad, there’s a dog, maybe it rains.” good luck—that’s the gp, drowning in maybes. the models work until they don’t, and when they fail, it’s back to square one. but here’s the heresy: what if the noise doesn’t fit any model? what if it’s just noise, full stop? medicine can’t handle that. it’s got no room for the untranslatable.
the freud flip: when noise gets a mic
let’s throw a curveball. sometimes the system rewrites the rules. take freud—yeah, the coke-snorting cigar guy. back in the day, if you were ranting about demons or fucking your mom in your sleep, docs heard noise. just lunatics babbling. freud strolls in and says, “hold up, that’s a message.” suddenly, the madhouse chatter’s got subtitles—repression, libido, all that jazz. the static gets a beat, and now every shrink’s nodding along like it’s a banger.
this isn’t progress; it’s a hijack. the noise didn’t change—the lens did. what was trash became treasure because someone built a new code. and codes shift. one day it’s freud, the next it’s pills, then it’s brain scans. each time, more noise gets scooped up, but never all of it. there’s always leftovers, scraps the system can’t digest. (side note: ever notice how every new therapy claims it’s the fix, like a tech bro hyping the latest app?) the body keeps howling, and we keep cherry-picking what we wanna hear.
imagine you’re scrolling x, right? some dude’s tweeting about his alien abduction, and you’re like, “lol, nutjob.” then a scientist says, “wait, that’s data,” and now it’s a study. same noise, different frame. medicine’s been doing that since it ditched leeches for microscopes. but here’s the question: who decides what’s signal and what’s static? why’s your panic attack a “disorder” but your boss’s rage just “leadership”? power, baby. it’s always power.
rethinking the game: language, not gospel
so where does this leave us? maybe it’s time to ditch the fairy tale that medicine’s some holy oracle pulling truth from your veins. it’s closer to a language—rules, codes, guesses—not a gospel. think of it like slang: it works until it doesn’t, evolves when it has to, leaves shit out when it feels like it. your body’s not a book to be read; it’s a riot to be wrestled with. and medicine? it’s just one wrestler in the ring, not the ref.
why not drag in the language nerds, the data freaks, the semiotics geeks? picture a mashup—docs and linguists, theorists and coders, all hashing out what this noise shit means. not to “solve” it, but to wrestle it, poke it, flip it upside down. because the second we think we’ve got it figured out, we’re back to square one: pretending chaos is a bedtime story. your body’s not whispering secrets—it’s blasting noise. the real question is, who’s brave enough to stop translating and just listen?
coda: your noise, your rules
here’s the closer: your body’s a punk song, not a symphony. it’s messy, loud, unscripted. medicine’s trying to remix it into elevator music, but it doesn’t have to win. next time your knee pops or your head spins, don’t rush to decode it. sit with the noise. feel it. fuck the subtitles. maybe it’s not saying anything at all—and that’s the most honest thing it’ll ever tell you.
