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Gabrielle's avatar

Thanks for this. So needed. Everyday I leave my 12 hour night shift as an RN my head spins because ppl still actually trust the system. We are healing beings. Every moment of every day our bodies are healing and moving toward balance. We’re constantly fucking it up with shitty food (exactly what hospitals feed ppl), shitty thoughts and lack of movement. Most nurses and docs don’t even believe in healing. They imagine the body is a machine. It’s embarrassing. I love being a nurse but it’s a shitshow. I pray I never end up in the system. It’ll likely collapse soon. I’ve only recently discovered that Rockefeller is likely who ruined medicine. A story I need to dig into more. Forces like the AMA mocked naturopathic, chiropractic and homeopathy so that money could be made with pharma. Of course there is a place for surgery, pharmaceuticals etc. but mostly we’re just treating bad lifestyle with toxic remedies. The documentary Escape Fire is worth a watch.

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Paving the Way's avatar

I wrote this in 2010:

One of the aspects of American life that destroys neighborliness is the perpetually expanding giant services sector of our economy, which is the fastest growing segment of our overall economy. This is the central focus of one of my favorite books, John McKnight’s The Careless Society. McKnight makes the astute point that service providers need an ever-increasing supply of clients in order to make a living, and thus we have developed an economic system that goes about clientizing citizens. Instead of seeking healthy lifestyle solutions and neighborly charity from friends we now tend to turn to professionals with the misguided hope they will therapize, medicalize, or social work us to health.

While this idea has been around since Aristotle, in the modern era this critique was most prominently put forward by Ivan Illich, who like McKnight, believed industrialized society was by its very function, causing deviance and illness. Illich lamented the counterproductivity of over-industrialized civilization and believed over-institutionalization was socially and culturally iatrogenic. He believed many institutions had become counterproductive to their original intent. If industrial society was to rediscover healthier living, according to Illich, it would need to deconstruct institutional systems and their reach so man could regain control over his environment. Illich’s words are especially meaningful today as we look at a behemoth health and social services system that is bankrupt and broken while the social, physical, and spiritual health of the population gets continually worse.

This understanding has created a lot of cognitive dissonance for me as a service provider as I have seen the way the American community has evolved toward a less healthy state to make room for our growing profession. The phrase for this phenomenon is social and cultural iatrogenesis – the proposed cure causes the illness. The incidence increase in depression, divorce, unwed parenting, and many other social maladies as the numbers in the services professions have grown, provides correlational evidence for social and cultural iatrogenesis. McNight and Illich are right, that we professionals need clients to expand our monetary bases. This phenomenon presents an awful paradox that our nation needs to face.

Assuredly, efforts to deconstruct this iatrogenic helping system will be met with tremendous opposition from those that have a monetary stake in maintaining or growing the existing system. However, I believe if we were to deconstruct the human services system in America in order to create more simplicity, effectiveness, and efficiency, the health of the nation would improve dramatically.

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