Letter from Slim Wolfe
Health – May 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
“To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action…”
So much has changed in the 2400 years since Thucydides wrote these words that he would probably see today’s humans as malevolent godlings hurling thunderbolts of depleted uranium and riding on fearsome chariots, but his assessment of humans seems to hold true.
Fear of losing face or playing second fiddle drives us to war and presumptive consumption. The parallels between America and ancient Athens are there for the reader to interpret, but it’s notable that the Greek infantries were largely composed of the sons of the well-to-do since they were required to buy their own armor, weapons, and transport, which seems only fair, since then as now the leading families stood to gain the most wealth and power from victory, and had the most to lose.
Today we brazenly export the freedom to march out of step with the laws of planetary nature. None shall interfere with our right to get and spend, though hell and high water (global warming and the lack of fuel) are already upon us. Our talking heads jabber away about the prospects for democracy in Kirghizia, forgetting that the very boundaries which define all these Middle Eastern and Central Asian states were drawn by western colonial powers (or the Russians) and that without our centuries of meddling they would never have posed any threat. Left-leaning governments are accused of being “nanny states” though it’s hard to imagine any more nanny-dependent people than we Americans whose information and sustenance comes straight from corporate feeding tubes.
So what does all this have to do with Ed Quillen’s editorial about relocating Salida’s hospital? Just that the location is irrelevant to many of us who can’t afford 1960s care, much less millennial care at millennial prices. We learn to watch our own health and make do with herbs, Tylenol, and first-aid tape, which is, for us, sustainable health care. If we do require a surgeon it just jacks up the rates of our blue-collar neighbors whose insurance is supposed to be a perk of employment. Half the personal bankruptcies in the U.S. have to do with medical costs and many of those were people who carried coverage.
If you need an MRI, it’s simpler and almost cheaper to fly yourself to India and walk yourself into a hospital as a total stranger.
But Ed gets credit for considering different sides of the hospital issue and seeing the greater picture of health care. Maybe, like the Greeks, we should grow healing herbs and be trained to use them as a matter of course, and maybe instead of presuming to consume high-end technologies in the vain hope of immortality, we should humbly see illness and death as a natural part of human attrition which leaves a bit more breathing room for the fellow-travelers here on a small planet.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
