The Loss of Intelligence
My friend JR Atwood posted a great TED talk by Liz Coleman, regarding the nature of education in our day and age.
I’m more concerned with something more foundational – the use of common sense.
My father is in the hospital. He’s been in before – most seriously, when he underwent emergency surgery to replace his aorta with a gortex tube, four years ago.
He’s been having some issues, and went back in recently. The doctors have him on so many medications, it’s hard to tell what’s causing what.
And that’s my problem.
The doctors have no faith in the human body to heal itself.
In days of old, before “internal medicine” (which is anything but “internal” – consisting as it does, mostly of “external” items leveraged against the internal state), the body was regarded as a delicate and powerful system. To attain health, one usually only needed to do things (or do fewer things) to return that system to balance…
Called “homeostasis” – the balance of activity within the body.
What’s Up, Doc?
Where did the faith go? Where is the faith in the human body to heal itself? Only in “alternative” medicines? Even there, many alternative practitioners have taken on the cultural values of US culture, and peddle pills and external “cures.”
Doctoring the Evidence
Another faith disappeared around the same time as the faith in the human body – faith in the healing power of the Earth. I don’t want to get too crazy with this (you’ll be calling me a “hippie” in a minute if I’m not careful, boxing me in), but the point is salient.
As the values of “science” (the “expertism” that Liz Coleman mentions in her talk) overtook common sense, it killed any other thought process or options.
When society realized that this expertise-value could be used to sell more products, it took the reins. As people have become more and more inculcated in the idea of “the expert,” other options disappear.
And so does common sense.
Doctor My Doctor
Now we’ve reached a point where it has become commonsense to refer to “experts” for our opinions – for our common sense.
My father lies in a hospital bed tonight. The doctors have not healed him at all. They can’t figure out what’s wrong. Because they’re incapable of asking questions.
The foundational of all common sense is found in a single question:
Why?
Josh, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad and I’ll keep him and your family in my thoughts. During such an emotionally exhausting experience, I imagine it is terribly frustrating that the very people who have the greatest access, training, and expertise to help and heal our bodies are at a tragic loss for answers when it comes to the investigation of what’s wrong. One of my friends recently had a frightening medical scare, and the scariest part was that no expert was able to provide him with an answer for why his body freakishly shut down. Test after test after test… Nothing. Even the most thoughtful and kind physicians and specialists could only take an oral history, provide some medicine to manage the pain, and rule out the worst case situation—but they could never provide an actual diagnosis for what was wrong. Why, indeed. Your faith in your dad’s body to heal is, fortunately, not compromised by whatever the doctors may be doing. Keep the faith.
I’m sorry about your father, Josh.
If it helps to rile you up, read past history of how [male] “physicians” started ‘helping’ mothers give birth. Their unwashed hands and ’schooled’ practices (They hadn’t yet started to even dissect humans yet to see how they worked) also started decreasing the birthrate… whereas before these “schooled” people came in, [female] midwives had been birthing babies for hundreds – a thousand- years, with less damage to babies. Why? because midwives knew about the body from a natural-healing point of view. (Note: when physicians came in, midwifery became illegal).
That being said, science/modern-living has done so much to help save lives. It has also done much to create an unnatural lifestyle (poor food products, Xbox, etc) that needs to be saved. I think sometimes the fault doesn’t lie in “science” itself, but in the lack of ability to know how to solve the real problems. That’s the ‘common sense’: “what can we discern about the root of this problem?” Most people don’t look at the root. They look at the symptoms. They’ve forgotten the radical (“root”) solutions, the radical questions.
I wish your father well… and peace to your frustration.
Thanks!
Sorry to hear about that Josh. My thoughts and well wishes go out to you and your father.
This loss of intelligence is interesting and I completely agree. I think we can try as hard as we may and in some cases we should, but to truly understand life in it’s entirety will always be just beyond our capacity.
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