Health Conservationists Unite!

The Center for Disease Control has as its primary focus, the eradication or control of disease. Hundreds of health related entities promote the fight against various forms of disease or ailments. Scores of Foundations and Medical Societies approach their task from the distinctive standpoint of treating and curing diseases.
I would suggest that there is yet to be a significant and prolonged focus upon the stewardship of health. While wellness is discussed and in some cases promoted to a degree bordering on religious, we discover a promotion of behaviors but seldom a real focus upon conservation of health from either a societal or community basis.
How is it that we adopt as culturally acceptable the detriment of minor’s health by their parents? Is there not some potential for activating a social unacceptability for adults to confine a young infant to an automobile where two people are smoking? Who gives irresponsible “health-wise” persons the right to harm others. We do -- the society that says nothing or calls for nothing sufficient to change behaviors. Am I talking about some sort of strange control laws? No. I’m talking about intelligent, honest, hard-working, common sense kinds of people stepping up to say we will not ignore common sense. I’m talking about honest to goodness, kind hearted, good natured, positively powerful, caring individuals who have the consistency of character and will to transform the social norms of our time to say…it is unacceptable to harm the health of others by irresponsible behavior. I am not suggesting “thought police;” I am suggesting good thinking. I am suggesting the public mind being a responsible body of thinking individuals. Why has chaos won the day? It is because of the craziness of our public silence in the face of dysfunction, disease, and distastefulness. We will not change the norms until we live responsibly, act reasonably, and pursue the debate toward health with a passion.
I have always had a soft spot in my heart for public health nurses. They have the big view so frequently. They see what needs fixing and go far to do what they can to make a real difference. Where is that kind of spirit in the way the general public might pursue health conservation? To think of smokers…putting 7 minutes of their lives into the grave with every cigarette? Can’t the sense of something better be considered worthy of their time? I understand addictions are real. And they deserve no more of the control they exercise than the minds of those who fall victim to their influence. Health conservation would dictate an exploration of addiction, but not looking for a cure to the disease by some quick and easy means, but by the prevention of the addiction in the first place. Why do we play Russian roulette with addiction? Why do we as a society act to promote with socially accepted promotions and advertisement, the pursuit of behaviors that are addictive, disruptive, and destructive to the general health of the nation, the specific health of individuals and families, and the overall well-being of the public? Why are we so enamored with distraction over against the realities. Why do we accept the lies at the risk of being socially ostracized? Why is not the behavior acted upon in the reverse. Why is it not unacceptable to be publically intoxicated? Why is it not unacceptable to have drive-by alcohol sales? Liquor stores should reasonable be located at least a 20 minute walk from any source of transportation. In the old days of mountain moonshine stills that was the way it was. And people who drank, drank a lot less frequently as a result. Why is it not socially unacceptable to give drivers licenses at all to people who use alcohol as a beverage and drive? Why is it acceptable to allow binge drinking in fraternities on college campuses filled with underage persons? Why not shut them down? Why not throw them in jail? Why not punish those who sold the alcohol to them in the first place before we see another round of dead freshmen lying in a pool of their own vomit and discovered the next day after the party-goers sober up? Why do we have such zeal for preventing the abortion of an unborn child, and do nothing in the first place to educate young teens regarding the consequences and obligations of early pregnancy? Where are the men involved when it comes to consequences? And where are the laws to protect the unwanted children from the abuse that so frequently becomes their experience after they are born into a household with no father, no caring parent, no responsible adult in their lives? Is it any wonder the street gangs are so common. People look for family, for relationship, for being a part…somewhere…and somewhere is wherever there is somebody who will include them. So the terrorists of this generation…wherever the geography, run roughshod over the communities in which they roam. The nature of the economies they support and are a part of are no different from the larger connections of the “civilized” economy, only much less successful. In other words…sell illegal drugs for a living, and you wind up with the same beans you could make legally working at Mickey D’s. The only difference, you might live a little longer and not wind up in jail.
We taxpayers however seem to prefer spending $30-40,000 per year on keeping a person behind bars rather than putting up $3-4,000 in funds per person for better teachers, books for schools, and decent housing options for working families. Health conservation lies in taking the long view for the benefit of the future, and taking the short view of fixing today what can be fixed and improved. Time can’t and won’t stand still. Consequences likewise, don’t wait til later…they are a moving target for our action today. Similarly, always being in reaction mode has become the order of the day, rather than looking for ways to preempt the crises with good measures of health conservation in the first place.
Hindsight is always better than foresight we say. I say, we close our eyes and we stumble. It is high time we looked at the path we are taking and bothered to look down the road we are on. The roadsigns are clear enough, the warning signs seem to be somewhat visible…why don’t we exercise the public will to do what will bring benefit to all, at least when it comes to health? Is there a cost…a shift in economic systems and protocols? -- absolutely. Is it a reasonable action to take? If so, why do we hesitate?
Social control is not my suggestion…social exercise…social pressure…social action…and personal will are the necessity… for the conservation of health. Will there still be illness, death, disease? -- undoubtedly. Will there be those who operate to eliminate disease? -- of course. Will we have to spend so much of our effort wasting resources? -- hopefully not. Health conservation will mandate improvements in industry, agriculture, medicine, education, economics, international trade, and world safety and health. The state of our nation’s health is weak… we have fallen to the same patterns of the Romans…the pursuit of pleasures (without regard for health and well-being of others) , games (frivolous pastimes that do not ultimately entertain, satisfy, or bring about any personal benefit.) and free bread ( the widely dispersed opinion that work is not a requirement for food, shelter, and clothing). Able individuals should be required to work …or there should be no outlay for their “upkeep.” If they go to jail…put them to work. No labor…no food. Healthy prisoners can do more work. Keep them that way. … Healthy and working. Someday it could catch on. No road should have trash waiting to be picked up. It should be so unacceptable to trash the roadways, that anyone seeing it happen would report it and have the ability to mandate a fine so severe that the perpetrators would pay dearly or be engaged in picking up trash for days as a recompense. Where is the public will? Are we pleased with trash on every corner,cigarette butts at every intersection, beer cans in front of every churchyard after Saturday night?
They only thing we are doing in America today is depriving honest hard-working people of the rewards of their labors and instead requiring them to subsidize those who don’t care to act responsibly, don’t want to work, don’t have the education or willingness to earn it in order to work, and the sick, disabled, and lifetime poor who haven’t understood there is something worth striving for in the first place after the communities they live in turn their backs, raise their noses, and pretend they are not around except to allocate them to the backroads, backwoods, back alleys, and back hallways of sub-standard caregivers. Where is the will for something better? Where is the leadership, the public debate? Where is the power of the mind and heart and spirit of those who have been given by God a voice and the body for acting…doing…speaking the truth?
Does the reality of our sinful human nature compel us to “tolerate” anything and everything? Are we so patronized by the celebrities and powerful of our generation that we have convinced ourselves that they really should be our heroes…because they hit more homeruns, made more points on a basketball court, earned more money from their vulgar record album than anyone thought they could? Do these values circumvent or supercede the lifetimes that diligent teachers commit to making hundreds of children more capable and competent? Where are our priorities? When will the winner of the Heisman trophy for athleticism be replaced with a recognition of achievement in positively affecting humanity for good. We need new measures of what should be valued and why. Our priorities are totally scrambled in a world of lost values, lost hopes, and lost expectations. Call in the health conservationists. Let us begin the diligent and exciting work of rebuilding integrity toward the common good. Let us escalate the value of health to the extent that we are willing to take steps toward it in daily choices. Playing at health is no substitute for being healthy. Why do we need hundreds of people bouncing around trying to lose the ton or two tons or million pound challenge, while we refuse to curb parts of the food industry that precipitate overindulgence in unhealthy foodsources as central to the community routine. Why do we ignore the capability we have to help people walk daily to work, schools, and homes, if we simply escalated the commitment to safe traffic patterns, public sidewalks, and common forms of cooperative transportation? Its time to set the bar high..to conserve health or at least get out of the way of those attempting to.
Its time to tell the gambling crowds to put their money on improving the world, not causing it to suffer greater harm. Tell the energy providers to curtail the destructive effects of their products via the engineering of more efficient and cleaner sources of energy. Its time to take on the money grabbing, revenue wasting, lying, cheating, stealing, waylaying thieves of our brave new world and demand a new order for the day. We have to ask in order to receive. We have to seek in order to find. We have to knock in order to have the door opened to us. It is time for us to believe that we are responsible.