One of the seminars that I have to attend this month is about spirituality in medicine. The session didn’t really end up being like what I thought it was going to be. Mostly, stuff about logistics and about making referrals to pastoral care. I think it’s a good session, but I’d like to see a little bit more discussion about the spiritual dimension of things. (Another discussion, another post, another time.)
Part of the seminar is shadowing the people who work in the pastoral care office on their rounds. In the course of the shadowing that I did on the psychiatric unit, I got into a brief discussion with the woman from the pastoral care office that I was shadowing about how more could probably be done for psychiatric patients than just check in on them, provide therapy, give them their meds, feed them, and make sure they don’t harm themselves. I remarked that nursing homes were very similar.
All of that got me thinking about how human interaction has gone haywire and has gotten noticeably more absent.
While cooking dinner, I was thinking about facebook and how I just recently deleted pretty much everything on my account when facebook gloriously announced I was being switched to Timeline. When a friend of mine saw that I had deleted just about everything, he remarked that he had just recently read an article that said that people who delete the contents of their facebook account are more likely to be serial killers…all this from the fact that the shooters of two more recent mass shootings did something to this effect. Excuse me, but I’d like to keep my life private and share my life with the people that actually are taking more than a casual glance at the contents of my life. Is it a crime to actually want real, lasting human interaction?
And going back to our psychiatric and geriatric friends…it is my honest belief that these populations would be helped immensely by being in normalizing social environments where they have to play by the rules of society. The only problem with my theory is that society has gone nutso and anything goes. Take a look at the Internet. If we judge someone or expect a certain standard to be upheld, these days we’re called uptight, out of touch, or crazy. Everything is fair game while still being taboo to talk about in any real way. So, it’s okay that little kids are acting crazy and have no manners even if they are antagonizing others. Nobody is saying anything about that because then you are the crazy one.
People, what the heck happened?!
I realize that it’s harder and harder to keep the family unit intact. That we crave an ungodly amount of stimulation, that distance travel is too easy, and that we’re all about the individual in the US. However, I think there is something to fighting it out and figuring out how to survive your family relationships and figuring out norms to live by. I’m not saying live at home forever, but I’m saying that this whole I’m an individual, screw what everyone else thinks, I’m going to find other people who agree with me and that’ll be that theme seems to be what will hasten the downfall of our society. Not to be a doomsday prophet or anything.
I realize that blogging maybe flies in the face of what I’m saying here, but blogging seems less like a bragging of my life and the beginning of a conversation with other willing participants rather than an advertisement for how great my life is and my photos are going to blow up your news feed type of interaction that facebook fosters. Just saying.
Interestingly enough, other people of the paleo/primal bent have comment and written on similar subjects. Most recently, there was an article on intermittent euphoria over at Mark’s Daily Apple. A lot of our society ills aren’t just one problem, it’s a complex multifaceted problem that we need to address by looking at how we are living our lives in all respects – food, relationships, work, play.
And just to slow you down, I didn’t put any links in this blog post. (Or maybe I’m just being lazy.)
Hope everyone is having a good weekend.
Forks in the Crossroads 