All Posts Tagged With: "Culture"
The Cost of Individualism to our Health
Much has been said about healthcare in the last few months. It seems there is nothing more to talk about. I mean come one we’re headed towards National Socialism or Communism (interesting how one policy can lead to wildly divergent political outcomes eh?), we’re going to kill grandma, we’re going to ration healthcare, we’re going to take healthcare decisions out of the hands of patients and put it in the hands of bureaucrats (a dramatic shift, no doubt, from my insurance company denying any and every treatment I’ve ever needed until I called in to bust some balls). Well this post is about absolutely none of those things, so I’d appreciate it if we could avoid such silliness.
No, this post is about the costs to our healthcare that arise from our social isolationism. Okay, so the title is a bit misleading, it says individualism, but I tend to not see a dramatic difference. Individualism encourages us to look to no one but ourselves for our necessities, which when taken to its logical endpoint, means we become more isolated. Semantics aside, my argument is pretty simple: our isolationism is costing us in our healthcare spending – and big time. Read more…
The uber-significance of Obama
Omitted from all the furor of the brownshirt behavior of the right, the rabble, and the Rush is the more important governmental philosophical perspective that Obama made explicit in his quotation from Sen. Kennedy’s letter and his invocation of national character. The prime distinction between the FDR-LBJ era to the Reagan-Shrub era was the shift from a Social Gospel, “I am my brother’s keeper because I am my brother”, “we’re all in this together” v. the Neo-Puritan, every man for himself, social Darwinism. Obama throughout the campaign and in his policy approaches is moving public policy back to the Social Gospel. He made it clear in the speech that his Health care interest is in government as helping those who can’t help themselves and need some assistance. Not the Bush approach of only giving help to those who “deserve” help based upon some, generally, theological moral basis. The book “Hellfire Nation” by James Morone elaborates on these themes, though for a pre-Shrub era.
The Power and Limits of Mythos
Mythos. A mythos is a system or body of myths, folklore, legends that constitute a self-contained system which explains the nature of the world and humanity. At its heart a mythos is a constellation of first principles which serves as the foundation for morality, normative judgment, and explanations for how the world (and people) work. A mythos is composed of two principle characteristics: 1) it is self-evident and 2) it is true. Oh perhaps you don’t believe it, but to those who adhere to that system it is true and needs no further explanation other than itself. that is to say that a mythos appears to be tautalogical to the outside observer.
Improving Urban Transportation
I’m quite literally dropping a very short policy paper on the balance between individual transportation and mass transit alternatives.
Introduction
Urban transportation involves highly complex and interrelated systems which people use as a means to accomplish a variety of ends. Transportation in urban areas can take the form of pedestrian traffic, bicycling, private automobiles, buses, and railways. Each of these forms has its functional purpose as well as limitations. This paper will focus primarily upon the use of private automobiles and mass transit systems (buses and railways) in urban areas as well as their benefits, problems, and potential solutions to those problems.
- A magnetic levitation train
The Year in Film
This was not a year of perfect, universally adored movies. The best films of the year all contain the kinds of quirky appeal that tend to divide audiences, and all of them are flawed. But quirky, flawed movies can often be the most compelling, interesting, and endearing.
The Year in People
A look back on the year’s most influential and newsworthy people in America and around the world.
Nude or Prude?
One thing I learned from living in Europe is that Europeans are much more comfortable with nudity than Americans. You see people in the buff on bus placards, magazines, daytime television, soft-core porn at night, the newspaper, and even at sporting events. What is even more striking is that you regularly see naked people in public parks—and older age or low fitness levels are not reasons to cover up or to be bashful at all. Even more interesting to me as an American who changed into her gym clothes in a stall to avoid showing any skin is the complete ease of being fully nude around family members and friends. I’ll never forget picking up a German friend’s family photo album and seeing her mom, dad, sisters, friends, and neighbors in a group shot with everything, and I mean everything, exposed. Even more shocking was to see my friend’s mom walk around their house without clothes on. Needless to say, I felt uncomfortable at first.
Many Europeans accept nudity as natural. Many Europeans also say that nudity and sex on television is totally okay. Sex is human. Bodies are ordinary—even naked ones. They do not understand Americans preoccupation of censoring all nudity on TV, while Americans allowing so much violence on television. (Child movie censors in Europe censor for violence, not nudity, while in the US, it is often the reverse. The movie “Chronicles of Narnia” in Germany is rated equivalent to the US’s PG13). The European illustration about TV censorship makes sense to me. Why DO we care so much about nudity? Why DO I feel bashful about being in the buff around others? Why wouldn’t I trust my friends and family to see me naked?
I think my shame of being nude stems from our culture. But why is it shameful to be nude in our culture? Why is it in some cases illegal to be nude in our culture? I’m tired of being prude. And I just decided that I will walk from the shower to my room in the morning without clothes or a towel on regardless of what the members of my household think.