Health Care v. Sick Care

Health Care v. Sick Care

This morning, when my wife and me were talking about "the state of things" as we sometimes do, we came to the subject of health care.  Now you should understand that she works in health care so she has some degree of aptitude on the subject.

"If they really cared about us as the hospital, there would be a gym there."

And that really grabbed me.  Because, when you think about it, it's emblematic of the entire health care debate.  In the vaguest of terms, you have business represented.  And on the other hand, you have everyone else.  And that's how the dialogue is set up.  Business represents the supply side.  The people are the greedy consumers demanding things that they can't pay for.

The ugly side of this is that business doesn't care about healthy and sick people.  Business is only going to care about revenue - forever.  Which is, of course, why capitalism is so successful in the US, because we rarely get in the way of something that makes a lot of money.

And money is the dominant player in health care by far.  You can argue semantics over how the health care business operates and the role the government has in making decisions for patients (and I would be interested in your perspective).  What you cannot argue is how badly "sick care" really has declined, and how unhealthy we are as a nation.

Fact is, when we were "healthier" (read thinner), we ate differently and exercised.  But the majority of us no longer live on farms and work ten-hour days.  So we need to be honest with ourselves and at least go back to the ethic of the Kennedy era - that exercise and sports are valuable endeavors - that wellness was a noble pursuit.  And if wellness means promoting exercise, then what's wrong with that?

The problem is that when you consider wellness programs, you are immediately faced with the added expense.  We are told that we ask for too much.  I think it would be an interesting study to see what lawmakers were opposed to increased health care spending.  It would be even more telling to figure out the exact motives.  I propose that it would be one hell of a loss to health care operations - from insurers to hospitals - if you were to keep patients from participating in the industry.  You call selling something for less than what it costs a "loss leader" - a sales curve that could be potentially profitable sometime in the future.  But what do you call the trend where people dramatically decrease their consumption of patent medicines, and dramatically decrease their trips to the hospital?  Why, it would be a bust for an entire industry, a real blight on the business.

It is a surprising lack of creative thinking that has led us into this mess.  And it will take an impressive turn of events to take us out of it.  Frankly, I would argue that we need to start thinking of people as a whole, instead of the sum of their parts.  Why aren't depression, cancer, and heart disease treated with a general focus, early in life?  Why aren't we discusssing these maladies with the same interest we give the Newtown massacre?  Why don't we teach our young people the importance of sleep, water, and nutrition?

I recently read an article about the state of medicine in the UK.  What struck me was that nearly 1 in 4 doctors there are now prescribing exercise (yes, "go outside and walk!") as a method to treat depression.  You can imagine, maybe, the wave in lobbyist traffic to the White House, that such a prescription trend would cause.  The calls of "socialist" would ring for miles around the capital.  Would it be socialist to reject the very thing that American taxpayers work so hard for?  I don't think so, but what we're doing now makes no sense either.

Exercise Log - 2/20/11

After about a 3 month hiatus, I'm back to serious workouts. I guess I just couldn't work it with all those cookies I'd been binging on: if you give me one, I eat 12.

I've worked out a lot last week. I took yesterday - Saturday - off. Today I did 19 reps of push-ups at 20 per set (380), mostly curl style pushes on the p90x bar, but some "super-man" style (not exactly that far out yet). Kid 1 did 4x17 "butterfly" type dead lifts with me. Kid 2 did 6x20. Kid 3 did 64 total. I also did 5 sets of pull-ups at 5 per rep, and 2x15 "lateral" (I think) overhead curls lifting Kid 1 behind me. Maybe tomorrow I will do more handstand push-ups against the wall. Today I did maybe 20, but didn't log it.

The sick thing of it is that my arms aren't tired. I need a weight bench.

Winter Rant

I'm pretty sure there is something about Hell that we have defined in the wrong way. That is, I think Hell is a cold place. I think Hell could be latitudinal. In North America, I think Hell is north of Virginia from the months of October to March. I think the fire in Hell is white, and it rains from the sky in an ugly mess.

But I guess we had Hell in the Old Country too. I'm pretty sure this was called "Siberia." Maybe you got sentenced to Siberia for taking too many olives, oranges, and almonds for yourself... I don't know why you had to go there really. But I'm pretty damn sure that Hell is universal. I guess if you were a Polynesian or indigenous or whatever and you were a bad guy, then they just tied you to the mast and sailed you due North. Follow that star baby. One became a sort of living Hindu pyre. The boats weren't burned to assure everyone that the evil spirits were going further away.

So this explains why England became so powerful: the island collected too many criminals from the happier places on Earth, and they all haunted the tiny place, wreaking havoc on each other until they got sick enough to take their sorry selves somewhere new. Funny how they landed where they did.

/Rant

Vultures

I work a job where most of the time I'm cleaning. Sometimes, we find other things to clean that are more... intensive cleaning. Sometimes it's an evicted tenant that leaves a poo in their toilet, or sometimes a mentally handicapped guy who doesn't know how to wash, or do his dishes for a few years. Sometimes you get the awesome job of cleaning up at the aviary.

I know what you're thinking: so this Patrick, he gets to clean up bird shit. And let me tell you, in a February day in the middle of the snow, it's not the best thing going in the whole wide world.

However, the pay is pretty nice, and I like the guy that I work for.

The aviary in Pittsburgh has this little nook where they take care of sick birds. Apparently, no one has cleaned the cage for a while, so that's where we came in today. And it just so happened that the sick bird area is precisely next to the vulture habitat.

Let me tell you that these fuckers are straight up aggressive. They followed me around for a good 10 minutes trying to bite my finger through the cyclone fence.

And they got me to thinking about vegan stuff, as is my wont.

Now let me tell you this: if I saw any of these bastards in the desert, I would not hesitate to hit them squarely in the head with a club.

But I have to fall back on that statement with a minor caveat, which is that I would have no trouble with obligate carnivores of all shapes and sizes disappearing from the face of the earth. Who in their right mind would want to keep a lion, or a polar bear, or a vulture, as a pet? No one.

So with that, I leave you with some fashion advice, something that I've noticed.

The "fur trim" look is very similar to the "flesh-maggot-eating bird-of-prey" look.

Not very classy really.



















Unless of course, you're looking for someone like this guy.

Vegan Abolitionism

There's always a special place in my heart that I reserve for theoretical arguments. I suppose there better had be a place there, given the name of my blog, but I don't know if it's really more of a character flaw. That is to say that my pedantry drives everyone around me completely insane.

Anyway, when I debate the virtues of a particular movement, or social theory, it takes me years and years to incorporate that theory into my understanding of the world. I've always been the type of person that thinks it their civic duty when they debate the ins and outs of any religious structure, philosophy, etc.

So it kind of strikes me as odd that I accept vegan abolitionism so easily. So far I've concluded that it's likable because it has a particular mission - explicitly, to end our use of animals. However, I think that abolitionism as a political method needs some explanation.

1) The most common argument against abolitionist veganism uses a method of attacking the means: they argue that our current involvement with animals isn't one of abolition. I think it's important to remember that even though some (most?) of us abolitionist vegans still drive cars and that interacts with wildlife, and our computers may run on electricity that affects animals, the end of animal use is what we are striving for. We believe that veganism starts at the mouth, but it definitely doesn't end there. Therefore, abolition is the end point which we strive for, and veganism is the means of the educational process which will take us there.

2) Veganism is a concrete moral philosophy. Where Peter Singer characterizes the fair treatment of animals within ethical boundaries, he doesn't narrow his framework to individual morality. Therefore, his methodology is utilitarian, and does not personally criticize those who exploit animals - but instead he criticizes the wider social culture. I think it's because of his opinion of the wider social culture that Peter Singer finds vegan advocacy "extreme" and allows for "the luxury of meat" within his philosophy. On the other hand: Gary Francione has consistently - and correctly - attacked Singer's point of view as antithetical to veganism, time and again explaining the moral duty of humans towards animals. We no longer need to address Singer's concerns regarding animal issues, because his concerns are grossly polemic. And by polemic, I mean that Singer does this to the point of ad nauseum, and to no intelligible point. Francione's arguments are succinct, clear, and consistent. So again, I say that veganism is a concrete moral philosophy. Abolition is our goal, and the negation of mistreatment is our method.

3) Abolitionist veganism transcends cultural barriers. The genius of Donald Watson's creation of the Vegan Society is that it was mutually inclusive, irrespective of all faith and language. That is to say, the Vegan Society is a scientific extension of a moral belief. Hence, vegan abolitionists take the scientific extension of a moral belief to a practical end.

4) While abolitionism is the most useful description we have found so far, there will always be people looking to take the movement of rights toward animals and compare it to the abolition of human slavery. It's important to keep in mind that the term "speciesism" is an "ism" which wasn't defined by Singer. It was in fact coined by Richard D. Ryder after his experience as an animal experimenter. Therefore, the fundamental definition of vegan abolitionism - to end speciesism - has nothing to do with the lexical framework of Singer, who conflates his "isms" without tangible conclusions. Let us not get entangled in theoretical debates which lose moral focus. Let us stay focused on the animal rights movement as a unified single issue.

I think these are important points to consider when discussing what is invariably called "animal rights," "animal liberation," and so on. We need to remember that nearly all of this discussion is taking place on the internet, so it is very difficult to keep our opinions quiet enough to see where other people are coming from. Indeed, I didn't know that Ryder coined the term "speciesism" until I sat down to write this essay.

Secondly, I think it is important to remember that to a religious fundamentalist (I was raised as one) any discussion of rights is going to logically fall back onto individual freedoms. For me, hearing the term "rights" used to conjure images of being arrested, or I would picture a serf trying to read the Magna Carta. Really, what most people mean by rights or "what is right" is the complete fulfillment of base needs, and not some extended explanation of individual vice or virtue. As English speakers, I think we tend to have a cultural myopia that ignores cross-cultural viewpoints.

At its core, this understanding of what abolitionist vegans mean by veganism - the abolition of animal use - is what will separate us from the people yelling and screaming on the sidewalk, and the difference between us and those who are threating to do violence to others: we are radical enough to talk rationally and critically, and practical enough to let our actions validate our speech.

Rare Earth Bubble of Doom

We live in a world where we can just take everything we want as though it were on a shelf. If you haven't noticed, we no longer have to go to the store to buy things, or go to the library to read things. So in a sense, it appears that we're becoming slightly telepathic. In a way.

And in yet another way, we're becoming completely backward in our methods for dealing with each other. There is no formal standard for bedtime, no sense of a physical community.

But overall, I have hope for the future when it comes to American interaction with the rest of the world. We just have to start remembering that we can't find all of the answers exclusively in the King James Bible or in On the Origin of Species. But as I've seen it, there is no middle ground for bringing other cultures - their ideas and products (artifacts) into the American mainstream.

So it's my sincere hope that the Natural News is just being speculative with their story Global supply of rare earth elements could be wiped out by 2012, because that coupled with the imminent threat to our water supply might be devastating. But then again, maybe I'm giving middle America too much credit, and their love of cheap TVs and cheeseburgers is going to kill us all.

Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

You live thirty years and you figure out a thing or two about how it works. Life, and all the nonsense drivel that comes with having a set pattern of behaviors. Then you learn how to stand on your head and survive, and all of that comes to a screeching halt.. like your significance in the larger working of humanity, for example.

Then I come to the conclusion that we don't really need a larger place - the concept of life widens into US owing THEM. Which of course, logically speaking, relegates US to a point of obsolescence or at least owing THEM some kind of apology.

I was listening to an NPR interview on Fresh Air with Garry Wills, author of Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. link

And some thoughts occurred to me regarding the military state and how massive an enterprise the whole thing really is. If the US was able to establish the whole Manhattan Project, with multiple sites and thousands of scientific participants (and it was); and it was able to maintain multiple secret testing sites for military activity (and it does), then how does that affect the person who is elected as "free leader" of this country.

Wills makes an excellent point in this podcast, saying that President Obama was quite idealistic going into the first year of his term, and now he is quite subdued with his political status. Here you have someone who was iconoclast when it came to foreign and domestic policy, and now he is quiet about all the things he was running for in the first place.

Guantanamo Bay, as one example.