If Education Was…

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” The profundity of this thought reflects upon the significance of knowledge and self-expression. For centuries, education has been an uplifting attribute of self-awareness. Education leverages one’s personality, character, and moral consciousness. As a spearhead to extricate the self from dogmas and nuances of fear, education has been the handbook of insight that edifies positive behavior, indoctrinates intellectual expression, and stimulates self-exploration. But what happens when education is no more than a paper qualification? Or when an educated mind is stormed by pseudo effect that supersedes logic by bigotry and narrow-mindedness? Most people identify education with know-how and erudition, a mechanism that benefits them with employability and professional development. However, education is rarely taken as a supplement to enlightenment, open-mindedness, and refinement of the self. Had education been the core of mastery in life, man would have been much wiser and content than he is today. Negative thoughts, sulking behavior, greed, jealousy, anger and betrayal would thus have been replaced by joy, good nature, and peace of mind.

Moreover, violence, carnage, and abuse would have been infinitesimal currents in the life’s oceanic expanse had education been the force behind life’s flow. But the truth is that it is not. Perhaps it is one reason why many educated professionals live a duplicitous life where they perpetually craft ill means to put down others. For instance, many cases of dowry harassment and assault in India involve in-laws who are educated professionals, but have still made their daughter-in law’s life a living hell. Being educated and belonging to respectful families, these in-laws forget to be loving and respectful to their son’s or brother’s wife. They apparently forget that education does not teach them to suppress someone’s belief system, curtail their aspirations, or command their life. In such unfortunate and indeed unexpected circumstances, delicate relationships go haywire. Education also does not preach double standards where there are contradictory principles set for family members, such as privileges for the daughter and boundaries for the daughter in-law. The situation worsens in cases where an educated sister-in-law (who is a year younger to the daughter in law) acts as the second mother-in-law with her list of pretentious demands. The relationship decays when the same sister-in-law (aka junior mother-in-law) with her obsessive personality meddles in the day-to-day affairs of the married couple. The sister-in-law’s excessive intrusion of the married couple’s privacy puts the couple’s life on the edge. What then is the purpose of being educated if we do not learn to be progressive in our thoughts, or learn to be less self-indulgent and give time to new relationships? It’s like bringing a budding flower from someone else’s garden to replant it in your soil and expecting it to grow without any nurturance. The same flower may survive thinly for a couple of days in your garden, but without love and open air it would ultimately perish. Having the depth to understand such sensitivities in relationships is not just a matter of degree, but a matter of maturity and mindset. 

Copyright (c) 2011 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot

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Care or Cure: International Day of Compassion

Famous ethicist John Rawls believed that in order to promote fairness and equality, coming out of the ‘veil of ignorance’ is imperative. He idealized a society where there was no social status or labeling associated to individuals and everyone could be entitled to same social rights.  Perhaps John Rawls envisioned a social model based on morality, ethicality, and virtues. His ideology seems similar to that of Dr. Patch Adams who intends to design a society based on ‘care systems’.  Dr Adams philosophy of holistic care integrates cause with compassion and is a consciousness raising effort of utmost importance in healthcare system today. Historically, health has been analogous to medicine and ‘bedside manner’ has therefore been a critical part of Doctors’ diagnosis and care relationship with their patients. However, over the years this contemporary facet of medical ethics has been slowly replaced by tyrannical pathology and health technology. Hence, the medical model with its many inventions may have reduced the pain. But it has been unable to eliminate the suffering in the absence of human feeling and compassion.  

In the United States, the efficacy of medical fraternity with its interdisciplinary team of health professionals indeed has been commendable in conquering many chronic ailments. Their toil coupled with ongoing innovations in clinical practice has led to scientific, yet sometimes impersonal approach to patient health. The ascending cost of care at the medical practitioner’s end and the out of pocket expenses at the patient’s end have perhaps made healthcare a big-ticket item, especially for the ones indigent and vulnerable. On the other hand, a culture of individualism in the society has made compassionate healthcare a remote possibility. In the midst of an existing sympathetic model of medical care, Dr Adams has conceived empathetic care with his astounding fun and play therapy. His new age healing integrates health of the individual with that of the family and community. His model of health does not believe in fixing the patient, but stabilizing their wounded emotions through love, joy, and humor. Dr Adams creative and famous care through joy of clowning helps restore and rehabilitate patient’s health with difference.  His benevolent intervention and humanitarian approach to the practice of medicine is a much needed component in the healthcare system today. Imagine if compassion would have been the cornerstone of healthcare, we would not have been indulging in the business of antidepressants! Or relying too much and too often on sedatives and tranquilizers leading to prescription drug abuse. Moreover, had compassionate care and not just ‘cure’ been one of the precepts of healthcare, health insurance would not have been a booming business in the United States.  

Dr Adams healthcare model seems applicable in severe trauma cases, such as war victims, war veterans, and children besides patients in institutionalized care and hospice. By sharing charismatic and colorful touch, Dr Adams and his team express the ability to uplift depressed emotions and infuse positive energies among those dejected and disconnected from the mainstream. Such phenomenon certainly is deeper than the acumen of medical science. Also, Dr Adams’ radical ideas can be elemental in bringing progressive change in our lives, community health, and society at large. Encouraging such altruistic initiatives and learning from them can be helpful in uncovering a benign emotion named compassion that each of us is blessed with.

Gesundheit! (wishing good health to all)   

Copyright (c) 2010 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot

Photo Courtesy:  elblogalternativo

Social Conscience, The Bedrock for Universal Healthcare

As the CEO of a nation that vividly embraces multiform, President Obama and his cabinet’s egalitarian march on universal healthcare has been grandeur for the common man. The healthcare summit, which was an apex of emotions throughout United States, has been a spectacle of leadership led by conscience. A universal healthcare plan indeed has affirmed the capability of morality in governance amid excessive political maneuvers in the Congress. At macro level this impugning against social conscience in senate has redefined healthcare as radical social issue and a resolution in the pursuit of Americanism.

Obamacare undoubtedly has been palliative to the main street where health insurance has always been a catch-22. A comprehensive health care reform for the first time ever has given Jane Doe and John Doe living down the street a taste of triumph amid troubles and an inspiration to succeed and soar high to their dreams. It has given them a right as fundamental as the right to elect a president whose leadership exalts the moral consciousness of this nation and whose presidency has been percipient to change. Critics may still try their best to write off this metamorphosis that America shall witness in the form of affordability by questioning its economics. But should change always be measure of economic indicators, an only might that a county could postulate? If so, then shrewd capitalists and power hankering politicians should carry on with their gross manipulations and narcissistic manifestations. But if your opinion is otherwise then average American should be accredited to his rights and given the opportunity to sweep the benefits of fair play and justice.      

Obama administration’s universal health care is not a pandemonium like it is still made to believe by few. The  health care law rather is a circumspect of the oligopoly created by health insurers over the past decades. It is  a conscientious intention to pull out the common man from the insurer’s reticent pang of penalty, price hikes and audacious regulations. Refusing to cover pre-existing conditions or chronic illnesses is a mute sin that has been tyrannical for the overwhelmed and the devastated to be racked simply because of a business norm. How ethical is such business practice that is more like a silent harassment? Thankfully whoever advocated for universal health care has certainly earned themselves a memento of unflagging social conscience along with the President and his team in the white house. A health care law essentially is making our future generations wealthy through virtues by exercising conscious wealth maximization, business ethics and morality in politics. It is saving our future from being bankrupt of scruples by means of sharing wealth and wisdom of prosperity.  

As a poignant political, economic and social campaign of 21st century America, health care law’s liberal and unprejudiced approach seems equivalent to President Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation. More than political motivation, the proclamation became a social transformation that conquered the hearts of the oppressed and identified liberation as instrumental in propagating equal rights. Similar to this social amalgamation of the past, health care overhaul is conspicuous to economically uplift the under-privileged and the vulnerable to make health insurance not opportunity but dire amenity. Setting an embargo on the current Cadillac plans is a decision in such light.

Implementing the health care law unquestionably shall relieve an average American of mental stress and material crisis to redeem the benefits of an optimal and unobstructed social change. Getting insurance affordable would mean a more secured future for everybody, meager chances of risking a healthy lifestyle, patient optimism and assurance for chronic care, lesser emotional stress, depression and anxiety among families and communities hit hardest by the recent economic recession. Overall it would mean social and moral improvement as a nation. Besides, it would revolutionize health care sector with higher competitiveness in quality, service efficiency, health center expansions and cost benefits in the near future. Prevention is better than cure framework of the law would certainly infuse fresh blood into health care transforming it from its current medical model to a new age physical, mental and emotional wellness initiative. In a constitutional sense, it would mean grappling a social impediment through shared responsibility and facilitating democratic treatment not just by charter but by the dictates of conscience. For the critics however, it’s time to bid farewell to their political resurgence against America’s opportunity for a wholesome Change. The most important step now is to execute the law without a hiatus. This shall certainly mean rising above legislative contests for November elections, personal inhibitions and prejudices to touch base with a sense of prudence as one distinct and discreet nation. 

Copyright (c) 2009 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot