Oil Spills and Healthcare
The dialogue concerning the crisis situation in energy and healthcare has steadily ramped up in the U.S. for nearly a decade. The tone of that dialogue is also becoming more impatient with seeing real change delivered on a global scale. While everyone insists that a revolution must come, very few are willing to recognize the number one hindrance to that end.
It may not, on the surface, seem that oil pumping and healthcare have a single common denominator, but they do. It is the consumer. Both industries are completely consumer driven.
While researching many of the topics in The Sage Age, I had to follow their trail back in time to gain historical context. In doing so, I came across several stories that forever altered my perspective on such things as the healthcare industry. One such instance came while researching the study of light. It involved the invention of the X-ray as a diagnostic tool.
Consumers were so enamored with the novelty of being able to see inside their body that they insisted they be given an X-ray even if they only had a cold. If the doctor refused, then the patient would simply seek a doctor who would comply with their wishes. In other words, money walked out the door and was spent elsewhere if the doctor didn’t follow the patient’s orders. This trend remained undaunted until reports began surfacing of the possibility of X-ray radiation poisoning from over-exposure.
Today, that trend of consumers dictating the standards of healthcare is still with us. Everyday there are countless TV commercials showing a person in their late 20s or early 30s advocating a pain reliever that lets them run another 10 miles. Translation – give me whatever I want so I don’t have to disrupt my life or be inconvenienced with the underlying cause I want to put on ignore.
It’s easy to argue that the pharmaceutical industry is creating the above scenario. The fact is, the consumer is creating it. No industry can sell a product for which there is no demand.
The industry follows the consumer. Case in point. When over a billion dollars a year began flowing out of consumer pockets into the alternative medicine arena, hospitals began offering Complimentary Alternative Therapies (CAM) and insurance companies began covering some of those services. Healing the underlying causes of illness takes time. That fact is the one that consumers are just beginning to wake up to.
Everyone in the U.S. is currently up in arms about the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and demanding that off-shore drilling be stopped. While public pressure may indeed bring about that very result, the fact is that the consumption of oil will not simultaneously decrease. In other words, the oil will simply be drilled somewhere else and likely cost more.
Want a real solution? Stop using all petroleum-based products. How easily pacified we are to buy a battery driven car not realizing that most everything from the dashboard to the exterior paint is made from oil.
The total amount of oil spilled in one month from the BP disaster is equal to what U.S. consumers use in one hour and gasoline is only a fraction of that total.
It’s so easy to blame the government, the pharmaceutical companies, and the oil industry. What’s not so easy is to make the real sacrifice necessary in consumption and to face the consequences of that change. When we stop using all of those products, all of the factories that make them shut down. All of the industries that make machines and supplies for those factories shut down. And, we begin to over-consume other natural resources to take the place of everything made of plastic. The same consequences are true in the healthcare industry.
Will real change come by continuing to raise our irritated voices in blaming big government and big industry? Probably not. Are we willing to look at the bigger picture and make the sacrifices needed for real change? We’ll see.
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Interview Included in Beyond the Matrix by Patricia Cori
In November 2008, I was a guest on the BBS radio show Beyond the Matrix, which is based in Rome. The host, Patricia Cori, later informed me that she was writing a new book of transcriptions from several of her shows with renowned thinkers such as New York Times best-selling author and theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku; the sixth man on the moon, and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Edgar Mitchell; and Paradigm Research Group director, Stephen Bassett. Ms. Cori informed me of her plans because she wanted to include her interview with me in the book. Of course, I agreed.
Earlier this week, she emailed to say that the book is now available and she is sending me a copy. The title is Beyond the Matrix: Daring Conversations with the Brilliant Minds of Our Times
I remember most of our conversation, but I’ll be interested to see how it was edited for the book. If you read it, please feel free to leave a comment here on the blog. I’m sure Ms. Cori will be interested in knowing what you think of the book too.
Because this interview was sequestered for the book, there is no archive link for that show on The Sage Age site’s OnTour page, but there are links to several other radio interviews, as well as links to other text interviews. Plus you’ll find links to the blog tour, which includes more interviews plus reviews.
Birthdays and Buddhism
Do you know the date of your birth? How do you know this?
Recently I listened to the Dalai Lama teach on three ways that we come to know things. The first is perceptual knowledge that comes to us through our senses. The second is experiential knowledge. Even though we may be able to convey the knowledge we gained, the experience of obtaining it may remain mostly ineffable.
The third way of knowing is information we accept on faith as completely true. The analogy the Dalai Lama used to demonstrate this point is how you know your birthday. You were told. You have no perceptive, and likely, no intuitive way to conjure the date on your own with absolute accuracy. However, you may have a way of discerning how you feel about what you were told.
The further point He made about this third way of knowing was that until you reach the stage of enlightenment yourself, you will need to accept on faith what other enlightened humans tell you about it and how to attain it. Now, He didn’t say that faith needed to be blind. In fact, He encouraged using discernment to consider the teacher’s character and to see if they had any reason to lie to you.
It has never occurred to me to question my mother, or any member of my family, about the date of my birth. And, the whole analogy He used may seem trivial and useful only because it’s common to all. But, I found it quite profound.
Think about it. Your date of birth is one of the most important identification markers in your life. If you believe in astrology charts, your birthday has everything to do with how you relate to your world for the entire time you are here. Recall how many legal documents you’ve filled out that required both your name and your birthday. In fact, your birthday is a more stable I.D. than your name, which could be legally changed. Or, you could prefer to be addressed by a nickname or alias.
Considering that the date of our birth is so intimate and so important to our identity, it’s amazing that we accept this information about ourselves on pure faith and have no way to independently verify it within ourselves as absolutely true. Every fact we encounter about it depends entirely on someone telling someone.
The key to Buddhism is that the Buddha was a human being who attained enlightenment. We have no way to independently verify this statement. If those who are inclined to this teaching cannot accept it on faith, then they cannot practice Buddhism. Otherwise, it would be striving for a fairy tale.
Until I attain enlightenment, the best I can do is place myself among teachers that I believe to be telling me the truth in so far as they can speak the ineffable, and in so far as they know the truth of ultimate reality. It is up to me to discern what I can about what I am told and about what I experience. The rest I take on faith until I have a way to know directly.