Category: Philosophy of Medicine

Authority is received, not taken. You can take control but not authority. Authority is given.

Strength and intelligence may increase the likelihood of winning and retaining authority. They clearly increase power. But they do not guarantee authority. A leader can lose authority before power and retain authority long after losing power.

COVID uncovered a profound weakness in society and in medicine. We have abandoned our basis of authority.

Robert Nisbet, sociologist, wrote “The Twilight of Authority,” in 1975. At first, I thought it meant wet-diaper politics and the loss of consequences: weak sentences for horrific crimes, that sort of thing. But these consequences are just instruments of power. The one who wields them may have no authority in the eyes of those he afflicts.

A prime minister may choose to snorkel or surf on the day he set up for mourning. He can create the holiday and enforce compliance. But he undermines his own authority by ignoring his creation.

Authority Defined

Every system requires authority to function. To what will we bow? What will we never fight against? Continue reading “After Authority, Power”

People used to frown at shouting matches in parliament. Then they began to laugh. Shouting matches are funny, if you ignore manners.

The Jerry Springer Show (1991-2018) won fame for a new kind of nonsense. Guests would shout and attack each other — rip off clothes, punch, cry.

Spectacle became education.

Never knowing true debate, viewers learned that shouting is debate. Many doctors learned the same lesson.

Medicine Needs Debate

You make a statement. I counter with logic and facts. You respond to correct my content with better content.

You do not yell halfway through my counter.

Shouting, crying, or silent protest are appeals to emotion and guarantee failure.

But the age of debate is gone. That of emotion, outrage, and lobbyists has succeeded; and the glory of medicine is extinguished forever. (paraphrase)

The End of Medicine

Senior medical delegates now prefer emotion over logic. They bluster and deplatform those they do not like. They attack, block, and some even sue their colleagues for saying things that offend them. If it offends, it is evil and must be eliminated.

This marks the fall of an institution. Continue reading “Shouting Doctors Shun Debate – Is This the End of Medicine?”

Most of us spent much of 2020 in lament.

We fought an invisible enemy we did not understand. Dread almost drove us mad.

Election rhetoric wafted north and multiplied distress.

A Stage

Radicals mix passion with clear ideas about what is wrong. They pour their potent brew into a bold politics of action. They seek change and threaten revolution.

The rest of us lament. We express our sorrow with intention. We state our case and press our cause. We tell the world why it should care.

But what right do we have to lament?

A lament presupposes that someone will care.

It assumes an audience with shared values. If we can make people listen, they will hear and deliver justice.

Shared Values

Lament becomes noise without an audience who shares your values. Just howling at the moon.

I have spent 7 years blogging (howling) a medicare lament.

What did I assume before starting, without even knowing I assumed it?

All complainers must assume something before they start to whine. They share the same assumptions as radicals and other social activists.

Why Join a Riot?

A radical says he riots precisely because society does not share his moral assumptions.

He is confused. Continue reading “Shared Values – Why Lament Medicare, COVID, EDI, or Anything?”