Tag: change

Categories
- Empowerment - Primary Care Health Care Knowledge

Thoughts on Health Care

All too common diseases, the vast majority of which are preventable and becoming more prevalent, are not befitting the inherent nobility of a human being.  The imperative of health care is to empower patients with the knowledge, the insights, the understanding, the will, and the resources to maintain their health and prevent diseases

At the root of the matter, the current poor state of health care is not so dissimilar to the cause of other ailments crippling our communities: a paralysis of human will.  This crisis requires a re-examination of our assumptions of basic human nature.  Instead of treating ourselves and the people around us as problematic, unresponsive, and self-consumed, we must view human beings as noble, intelligent, altruistic, and desiring to contribute to the betterment of the world.  Coupling this understanding of identity with the necessary knowledge and resources will empower an individual to improve his or her own physical health, and other aspects of daily life.

Moving beyond the individual, the culture of a community is something that, if transformed, can effect a profound change in public health.  Smoking is one such example.  For decades, smoking has been one of the leading causes of preventable disease and death in the world.  Knowing that smoking is detrimental for health is necessary to reduce its popularity, but even with that knowledge people will still begin to smoke.  On the other hand, if smoking was not portrayed as “cool” or popular in society, then rates of teens and young adults who start to smoke would decrease drastically.  The same concept of a change in culture applies to exercise and healthy diets, both of which contribute to preventing obesity, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia, which, along with smoking, account for most causes of preventable death.

Across the entire country, and placing a large toll on the cost of the health system, is the culture of receiving primary care in the ER.  Citing one recent study from the University of Virginia, 26% of patients visiting the ER claimed their complaint was something easily able to be treated in a doctor’s office, while another 9% stated that the ER was their only source of medical care.  An additional 30%, not knowing whether they needed the ER or not, would have chosen their primary physician if they had consulted with him or her before choosing the ER.  Once trust is built, education is provided, and encouragement is extended from primary care providers to their patients, each individual’s understanding of health will improve and better treatment and continuity will be provided, changing the culture of health care delivery and directly alleviating the high costs of our burdened system.

The changes in the individual and the changes in the culture of the community need to occur in parallel with each other, as they are complimentary and reinforce each other.  As more diabetics begin to eat more vegetables, then the community will slowly respond by predominating more vegetables.  The development of knowledge and will in an individual, and the mindset that each patient is capable of contributing to his or her well-being along with society’s well-being, go hand in hand with the profound changes of culture reflecting the interactions between these patients and their physician.

 

Community Health

Categories
- Governance - Oppression Justice

Colonial Coercion vs. Corporate Consumerism: Replacing the Stick with the Carrot

About a century ago, in the free world, the ruling classes became aware they couldn’t control the population by force any longer, the spirit of the age was shifting and violence only bred further civil disobedience. Too much freedom had been won by struggles for democracy around the world, and it had altered the collective consciousness. Rulers in every nation began to realize and strangely grew self-conscious about it. This alienation of colonial rulers from their own means of coercion is discussed in their literature. The rulers never gave up their identity however, they just reformed their appearance. The dominant class recognized they had to shift their tactics to control of attitudes and beliefs instead of just through force and coercion. Baha’u’llah writes: “Wherefore do ye wear the guise of shepherds, when inwardly ye have become wolves, intent upon My flock?”

The dominant class didn’t completely dismantle the apparatus of coercion, they just replaced a substantial portion of its function with another system – advertising. Their aim was to control attitudes and beliefs. This period saw the birth of the public relations industry, in the United States and England. These nominally free countries are where physical coercion was replaced by a major industry to control beliefs and attitudes, to induce consumerism, passivity, apathy, and entertaining distractions.

Passivity is bred by the forces of society today. A desire to be entertained is nurtured from childhood, with increasing efficiency, cultivating generations willing to be led by whoever proves skilful at appealing to superficial emotions. For example, in educational systems students are treated as though they are receptacles designed to receive information, reinforcing a posture towards life accustomed to being told what to do and what to believe.  Regional training institutes around the world are succeeding however in developing a culture which promotes thought, study, and action among diverse collaborators in way that they consider themselves treading a common path of service. Against the dominant culture, the Ruhi system has developed an empowering culture, which constitutes an accomplishment of enormous proportions. Therein lie the dynamics of an irrepressible movement for change.

television

Categories
- Governance - Religion - Three Protagonists Discourse

Double Cure: Eliminate Parties and Campaigning

Partisanship is a bane to effective governance. Identifying with a political party exacerbates a bitter partisan divide that threatens the very fiber of social order and governance. Motivations of civil servants should be only the good of all people and the interests of the common weal. Political parties are artificial fabrications designed to impose a priority on public servants entirely alien to the betterment of the nation and the people.

Campaigning is a bane to institutional integrity and effective governance. Campaigning is not necessary for effective elections. People’s character should be known to the community through their deeds and selfless service. Ballots need only allow voters to write in the name of the desired candidate. A plurality of votes would elect the individual most renowned for her brilliant character, virtuous conduct, mature experience, established service, and achievements on behalf of public welfare. Special interests are able to distort representation by donating to campaign funds. The presence of campaigning requires candidates to raise funds to win elections, which structurally enslaves their will to corporate profits.

It is the combination of partisanship and campaigning which makes political candidates dependent on funding because they need to campaign against proponents from opposing parties.  Without political parties there would be no need to campaign against anyone else, and without campaigning  there would be no funding requirement to drive politicians to seek lobbyist’s endorsement. Partisanship and campaigning are institutional arrangements of  American politics that have distorted its true nature and corrupted it effectiveness.

It is the philosophical position of this forum that steps toward the elimination of political parties as well as the banning of the practice of campaigning would increase the integrity of democracy and the efficacy of governance. We recommend steps toward the structural transformation of national, local, and international politics removing the institutional arrangements of parties and the introduction of legal bans on campaigning. Any person or group operating in a way appearing to constitute overt campaigning will be disqualified from the electoral process. Without need to generate funding for costly campaigns, candidates will be free of lobbyists and donations from special interests. Free from partisan affiliations, government representatives will vote on all issues according only to principles of selfless and academically-informed considerations of public welfare.

holy land

Categories
- Education - Empowerment - Governance - Oppression Development Justice Oneness

Empowerment, Oppression, and Social Order

Extreme socio-economic inequalities of access and opportunity result in privileged vs. oppressed classes. The oppressed, over time, adapt to the structure of domination under which generations languish and become resigned to it. The status quo of the social order is maintained by coercive deterrents and castigating norms. Fear of freedom inhibits the underprivileged from waging a struggle for reform. The task of forging alternatives to the social order requires the rejection of a submissive social role and the adoption of prescriptive autonomy and larger community responsibility. The oppressed, having internalized the image given them by their oppressor accept a self-conception of individualism and dependence prescribed by the social order.

Prescription is the process by which one ideology’s value-allocations are injected into other individuals and communities, transforming the consciousness of persons prescribed to in conformity with the ideals of the oppressor. The behavior of the oppressed follows the guidelines set by the social order. The mindset which afflicts the oppressed will persist until they achieve a self-conception that holds them capable of running the risks of equality. Increasing capacity leads to this state of empowerment.

The oppressed suffer from a duality which has established itself in their self-conception. Without equal opportunities and access they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear its responsibilities. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose social norms they have internalized.

Suppose some among the disadvantaged sought to alter the course of history, to change the social order, and to eliminate the sources of unequal access to social and economic capital. Their struggle for reform threatens not only the social order, but also their own oppressed neighbors who are fearful of still greater extremes of inequality, and indeed punitive measures that loom unspoken above their fragile lives. When they discover within themselves the yearning to be equal and united, they perceive that this yearning can be transformed into reality only when the same indignation is aroused in a critical mass of believers, volunteers, and supporters. While dominated by the fear of freedom they think themselves incapable of teaching or appealing to others, or to listen to the discourse of worthy causes, or even to the pangs originating from within their own consciences. The social order subdues the will to fight with the incessant whisper: “don’t stand out, don’t resist the flow, don’t oppose the flow of the norm.” As a result, the oppressed prefer gregariousness to authentic unity; they prefer the security of conformity to the creative enterprise produced by equality; they prefer boring subsistence over the dangers of ruffled feathers during the activism of social change.

The oppressors are also incentivized to maintain the social order as it exists, for it represents the source and foundation of their inordinate privilege. Although they may donate charitable contributions to the oppressed class they can never instigate revolution, not because they are unwilling, but because their soul’s lack the spirit of selflessness that suffering engenders. They give a pittance of charity to redeem their guilty conscience of the disproportionate gain they enjoy unearned, and squander indulgently. In order to maintain the flow of their conscience-clearing donations to charity, the oppressors require the perpetuation of the system of injustice, upon which their disproportionate privilege depends. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of their false generosity, which is nourished by popular squalor, poverty, and global despair.

Enduring change to the social order, ironically, consists in fighting to eliminate the causes which make charity possible. It is the good conscience of the oppressive social order that stifles the will to change, and drinks thirstily the nectar of complacency that only the fount of pride could furnish. Charity is the origin of that clean conscience.

Charity induces the disadvantaged and subdued masses to extend their trembling hands in supplication before the power and wealth of the socially successful. It is not in supplication but in co-equal creator-ship that these hands become worthy hands, belonging to valuable peoples, and creators of peace and prosperity for all. True generosity lies in striving so that men’s hands need not be extended any longer in supplication, but become increasingly the hands of creators which when raised up, embody the confidence of empowered hands. With a definite sense of power and increasing skill these hands transform our world and revolutionize the human condition.

Categories
- Religion Human Nature

Ideology, Service, Change: Is Peace Possible Without Sacrifice?

People say they want an end to violence. What they mean is, they want their opposing party to yield in deference to their will. Everyone wishes for world peace, but so many who wish continue to exacerbate conflict and contention. What they really mean is, they wish to use the language of peace to subdue their opponent to give in and capitulate. There are those who would invoke the name of peace, high ideals, and religion to achieve their own corrupt ends. There are those who would use religion to deceive the masses. The sign of true faith is selflessness. It is difficult to say something is faith if it benefits oneself. The touchstone of true faith is that someone sacrifices for it.

The sign of love is fortitude under the fire of Divine decree. Under the banner of Divine principles it is not easy to say that a thing is an act of faith, and yet have it violate the spirit of the principle. Always, if something is to be identified positively as faith it must entail sacrifice of the self, subjugation of the promptings of the ego, and pain. This does not mean that a thing that does not involve pain, cannot be an act of faith as well. It just means that it cannot be positively identified as such, it may be veiled or unknown or unclear to the eyes of the observer. If too much time passes in this grey, middle ground of things being done that do not involve sacrifice or pain, it may lead to a creeping suspicion that one is not actually abiding by the provisions of faith. How could you know if this were not the case? Unless, some or all of your deeds were sacrificial and obviously faithful? Ultimately, it remains for the conscience of each person to determine what proportion of their lives and opinions derive from dedication to principle and entail sacrifice. If one suspects that there may not be enough selflessness manifest obviously, to make the argument clear that his or her behavior is principle-based or sacrificial, the question ought to be asked, “are we sure we are making every effort we can to work for the world and for the Cause of truth?”

Sacrifice and selflessness manifest themselves as servitude at all times and to all wills surrounding you in life. Servitude emerges from the healthy expression of faith in an ideal. An ideal is postulated and people believe in it. Those who sacrifice to achieve its ends and accommodate their desires and will to its imperatives and needs become the faithful. Only by sacrificing of our selves can we really alter the course of how things turn out. When mankind continues in its selfish ways, the disintegration of the social fabric continues on pace with how it has been in the recent past. When individuals commit themselves to a new ideal, and sacrifice their inclinations and drives in favor of its beautiful and productive principles, society progresses as a whole, as a result of their cumulative contributions and achievements summed.

Ideology provides the ideal. Faith links the believer from the ideal to the practical expression of sacrificing his or her own will in favor of humanity’s betterment through the principles enunciated by the ideal. This is servitude. Cumulatively, individuals contribute to the process of change, and ultimately to enduring transformation, in themselves and society.

Ideology is the object of faith. Service is its expression. Change is the social result.

Love cannot be commanded; it must be invited. War cannot be threatened into ceasing; it must concede in the wake of sacrifice and pain. Conflict ends not when the spirit of shamelessness has lost its willingness to fight over petty wounds; conflict ends when entire peoples pursue disarmament as unilaterally as principle and not as a strategic expedient while peace talks allow restocking of ammunition supplies. Conflict ends when the aggressor loses the moral stomach to continue to slaughter hapless millions after those millions have decided to disarm and demilitarize themselves with complete willingness to endure whatever casualties may be incurred as a consequence. So far, disarmament has never resulted in the loss of life. So far, ironically, arms have never protected a people from injury or harm. All that arms have done is exacerbate and draw forth the blood lust of one’s opponents. All bloodshed has resulted from the response to aggression across national borders.

We cannot overlook the fact that the existence of weaponry, small arms or military grade, have always been correlated with the shedding of blood and the loss of life, whether it be on the social level of armed felonies or the multi-national level of  war and armed conflict. Large militaries are the greatest instigator of war and destruction. Demilitarization and disarmament are the single most influential correlant with peace and harmony. It devolves upon us to determine the course best fit for our moral destinies based on these facts.

No arms are necessary beyond what is required for the maintenance of a nation’s internal security and order. These are wielded by the police force. Civilians should not require them. The police are regulated by governmental over site and internal affairs agencies, and given a mandate and a budget by the state. Confident control over their actions is intrinsic to participation in the social order itself.

Internationally speaking, no more arms are needed than a global government would need to resist the invasion of one of the most powerful nation’s military’s into another state. Whatever the strongest armed nation’s military might may be, this defines the standard of the minimal armaments required of a global peace keeping force under the command of global government authority. If demilitarization could be achieved unanimously and completely, the amount of peace keeping force needed to be maintained by a global government would be minimal, including only what is necessary for intervention in the case of an emergency of a hidden national force showing aggression against another nation unexpectedly. The tighter the web of international communication and informed and consensual disarmament, the less likely such a possibility, and the less the total amount of military force needed by the global government for maintenance of order.

War is the result of our own weapons and the fetish for power that they symbolize. The result is the suffering of all mankind. The aggressor deprives himself of international support. Hiding behind his nukes, his people starve under embargo’s imposed by unanimous international sanctions. Aggression deprives both sides of prosperity. Insecurity drives the production and acquisition of weaponry. With 5 inch heels and 1000’s of nuclear warheads, Kim Jong Il reaps the reward of a watery grave and the disgust of countless millions.  Ahmadinejad earns the embarrassment and rebellion of young Persians all over the world.

Peace is the result of sacrifice, not nationalism.

Categories
- Religion Discourse

A New Discourse on Religion

From agencyandchange.com

http://agencyandchange.com/2012/10/19/discourse-on-religion/

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Categories
Development Discourse Human Nature Justice Knowledge Oneness

Conscious Choice

Beyond the highly propagated fragmentation of science and religion in current thought, and the resistance to reconceptualize these complementary systems of knowledge and practice, there are, in general, voices that resist change, especially at the level of principle.  They refuse to believe that the assumptions they hold dear are not useful.  Yet, civilization is in crisis.  The fruits of outworn assumptions have gone rotten.  If long-cherished social assumptions are no longer bearing the much needed fruit, and are no longer promoting the betterment of the world, then what is stopping us from simply discarding these assumptions and adopting new ones to operationalize?  After all, the value and validity of assumptions lie in the results garnered from applying them to social reality – assumptions are all equal until they are tested through application.  Let us apply science in the realm of civilization-building itself; let us be evidence-based.  If assumptions no longer serve humanity’s developing requirements, then they are no longer valuable or valid; and new assumptions need to replace them.  Change is an immutable law of our reality.  What is the harm in adopting the assumption that humanity is one?  That science and religion are complementary?  That human beings are noble?  That beauty directs our purpose?  That individual and social well-being are inextricably linked?  That a world civilization beckons humanity, one that will be governed by justice, one that will achieve a dynamic coherence between the material and spiritual requirements of life, one that will be rich with knowledge from all people?

Tell, which do you prefer: the assumptions that led to our current crisis of civilization, or those listed above?