Serious Grown Ups - An Introduction
What am I doing here?
Once upon a time, I decided that anyone offering me a bumper-sticker, or in the current culture maybe we’d refer to it as a Tweet, philosophy was just being intellectually lazy.
But then I forgot about that and went back to writing pithy takes about technology instead of really diving into issues around politics, religion, spirituality, relationships, etc. Writing about that stuff is hard work. It requires really thinking about an issue instead of taking a side and digging in my heels.
Sadly, I think that is where we’ve gone a bit wrong in our society. We’ve taken sides and have simply stopped having serious conversations about issues, any issue. And yet, I don’t think we get anywhere in terms of finding solutions to many of these issues without having serious, grown-up, conversations about them.
Case in point, one of the most frustrating political topics in recent years for me has been around universal health care in the United States.
On one side we have those who would tell you that is the solution for all of our medical, and many of our financial, woes. Not making it available makes us horrible and mean-spirited Capitalists.
On the other, we hear about “death panels” and resource shortages.
Yet the facts would tell us that neither of those sides are exactly right, and neither is exactly wrong.
Yes, the US Health Care system has become a disaster for far too many people and we should find a solution to that. You might even say that I am, tentatively, in favor of universal healthcare. The serious grown-up version of that conversation, however, includes the fact that a single-payer system will have to, at some point, decide how to allocate limited resources because there is no world where it will have unlimited resources. It will also include conversations around what it means for society if healthcare is disconnected from employment in terms of attracting and fairly compensating workers, and what we are going to do about the thousands upon thousands of people currently employed in the private health insurance industry who would be left without a job. (Not to mention the millions of people who either own stock, or who have a retirement account that holds stock, in those insurance companies.)
Health care is one of those areas where making a massive change winds up having very far reaching consequences that we simply aren’t talking about when we entrench ourselves in to simple positions. It’s so much more than the Federal Government offering “free” medical care.
That’s what I hope to do here. Think deeply about these things, discuss them with other folks who want to think deeply about these things, and avoid taking a position just because it’s what my “side” says I should.
If you’re interested in thinking deeper, and getting out of the habits that make us intellectually lazy, I hope you’ll consider subscribing, following, and maybe even commenting.
I won’t promise you that I have answers for you, but I hope to at least challenge you to consider things that maybe you haven’t thought about before.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Mike