“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
Something to wonder about…
Today’s most formidable health concerns are the prophetic sentinel species of the ending of human culture:
- Heart disease
- For a world that has numbed itself to the inherent impact of its existence and developed an immediate and impulsive distaste to pain and discomfort. In doing so, we have anesthetized our trepidation for grief, mystery, and brokenheartedness through the indomitable panacea of “less-heart”.
- Driven by a philosophy that deadens the deep-rooted longing that rattles the bones of the ancestral chain and rings in a buried sense that “something just ain’t right”. A fierce belonging that calls for action yet so many feel disconnected from even where to begin.
- Cancer
- For a world that doesn’t believe in limits or endings. Amassing in the urban and suburban cultures of civilization, replicating and consuming at malignant rates with little thought of consequence or reciprocity.
- A mythically and poetically devoid culture that reveres the religions of growth, hope, and positivity above all others.
- ADHD
- For an anthropocene society that “dreams” beyond its means and bears the weight of responsibility on a troubled and immature generation raised by still infantile and uninitiated middle-aged adults.
- Anxiety and agitation are an expected consequence of “be all you can be”.
- Alzheimer’s Disease (and other neurodegenerative diseases)
- For a world that lives void of the existence of elders and has long forgotten the value and reverence for aging.
- By way of a youthfully enamored ethos that wishes to forget the possibility that growing older (and all its attributes) will ever befall anyone and walls away the aged in the warehouse of amnesia.
- Born from an addiction to competence and a fear of anything that may precipitate its decline.
It is not surprising that these concerns rise to the top. However, I present these not as problems simply to be solved or issues to be fixed. We often rush for solutions only to create more destruction in the wake of our compulsive savior complex. In a world consumed by fixing the problems it creates, perhaps the appropriate question is not “What should I do?” but… “How did things come to be this way?”
