Neither, but time to look out for yourself
We live in the best of times; we live in the worst of times.
Believe it or not, things really are getting better, a lot
better. Hundreds of millions more of us live longer, are healthier,better
educated and richer than ever before. And for the foreseeable
future that’s a trend we can expect to continue. So
why is it for so many of us it just doesn’t feel that
way.
Quite a few reasons really, apart from the fact that some
of us are born pessimists. First off, the good news is proportionate.
If millions more us are doing better than ever before, millions
more of us are also dying from wars, disease and malnutrition
than ever before. How so? There’s just a lot more of
us, that’s how. And, we get to hear about it when bad
things happen, whereas a few score years ago if a famine in
China killed a million or more we probably wouldn’t
hear a thing.
Next, there’s the unconscious burden of Spenglerian
angst that Europeans and North Americans all carry around
with them. If the chattering classes of the early 20th Century
agonised over the decline of the West, what about now, when
vast numbers of Chinese and Indians will soon be as rich,
if not richer, than Westerners and the West no longer enjoys
any technological edge? Westerners may still be richer than
before and continue to be so, but they may very well feel
poor in comparison with an Indian middle class professional
enjoying a higher standard of living than they do. That day
is already dawning and as the truth of it sinks in, the shock
will be huge and potentially dangerous. Alas, it’s not
enough to be doing better yourself, it’s necessary to
do better than somebody else. The potent politics of envy.
The West has been up so long it’s gotten used to the
idea and may not take kindly being relegated to the 2nd and
3rd Divisions. I see some nasty times up ahead.
A World of Clutter & Stress
If times are better, that is not to say they are great. Life
can still be pretty rotten for the downtrodden, the unemployed
and the dispossessed, and tragedy can strike anybody, anywhere
at anytime, no matter what their degree. But what is true
for everybody, almost without exception, is that life is more
complicated than it was and getting more complex by the day.
Cast your mind back to the days before you got your first
computer. People did much of their business by mail, the humblest
executive relied on secretaries and typists, you communicated
internationally via a strange machine called a telex. Fax
machines, although invented in the 1930’s didn’t
come into common useage until the 1980’s. How much do
you think your own productivity has increased since then?
Multiply that across the world and all the computer literate
and consider the overall increase in global productivity over
the last 25 years. Consider too, our access to information
via the internet and the fact that we can speak to someone
on the other side of the world for hours free or for pennies.
It’s mind-boggling. But has it made us any happier?
Are our lives easier, do we have more leisure? It doesn’t
feel that way, does it?
We face new challenges, new complexities and new forms of
stress. The toll on our wellbeing and quality of life is high.
Nowhere is the truth of this starker than in the field of
healthcare. Soon the marvels of modern medicine will only
be available to the very rich. Already people in developed
countries queue for years for non-emergency surgical procedures,
unless they can pay privately. Increasingly even the privately
insured are only partially covered, if HMO’s have anything
to do with it. Meanwhile the queues get longer and public
health services are progressively rolled back, if not disintegrating.
God help us all, wherever we are, as we re-enter a world where
common infectious diseases become routine killers and viral
pandemics sweep the globe, while our pharmacological armamentarium
lies bankrupt and bare.
Public Health, on the way out?
In less developed countries they never had more than the rudiments
of a public health anyway. If you think I’m being alarmist,
I hope so. But consider the demographics. So many of us live
longer that within 20 years state pension schemes and medical
entitlements will bankrupt governments of even the richestnations.
Unless we radically overhaul the system, which is unlikely
(too many vested interests), we will simply be forced to cut
back. There just won’t be enough young men and women
working to pay for it all. Advanced socialized medicine will
become a thing of the past, if it is not already.
Today even middle class people in Europe and America struggle
to pay for private medical insurance as employers renege on
their medical plans, medical costs escalate horrendously and
benefits are drastically curtailed. By the time you’re
60 you could be paying US$12,000 a year for half decent cover
and if you make it to 80 probably more like $20,000. And that’s
at today’s prices. Just remember premiums increase at
anything between 5% to 12% p.a. on account of increased medical
costs alone, and that does not include being progressively
swagged every 4 to 5 years as you age. Health premiums in
2030? Scary!
Is it all down hill for most of us from now on in? Maybe,
but not necessarily. It is entirely possible that hi-tech
medicine, gene therapy etc. will, over the next 20 years,
find the answers to cancer and the diseases that kill us today.
Will such cures be available to us all? Given the way we are
headed, I rather doubt it.
Don’t Get Sick, Or Pay!
The real solution lies in our own hands. Don’t get sick
until 2 weeks before you are going to die at the ripe old
age of 98. I’m only half joking. We can’t put
our trust in government, Big Pharma or Techno-Med to look
after us. It’s a bum steer, a blind alley, a dream we
can no longer afford. They may help a bit, but it’s
only a partial solution at best, a safety net. There’s
probably no way even the richest country can afford comprehensive
medical cover for all its citizens.
So let’s take care of the people who really need it
by taking care of ourselves.
Preventative medicine is cheap medicine and it saves far more
lives than interventionist medicine ever could. So don’t
get sick. Pretty soon you won’t be able to afford to
anyway. We need to take responsibility for our own health.
Most of the expensive diseases that kill us today are lifestyle
diseases. Crudely put, they are elective. You don’t
have to get them. They start invisibly in our late teens and
manifest in middle age. That, or they are environmental. Thirty
years of exposure to the toxins that surround us today, and
you wonder why cancer is endemic?
So let’s start here. All of us, including our children,
need to understand things as they are, educate ourselves and
act accordingly, which is to say responsibly. Our environment
must be a healthy one also. It is up to us individually to
do all we can to ensure this, and then collectively require
our governments do what has to be done.
Beware the Health Police....
Does this mean we have to have Health Police and pass laws
compelling naughty feckless folk to live healthily or let
them die of their self-inflicted diseases if they do not,
having hauled them before the Health Courts and found them
wanting? No, of course not. We look after them, just as we
can then afford to look after all the sick and the infirm,
properly and fairly. For that to happen the majority of us
need to look after ourselves and our families, and have a
little bit of awareness of where the world is headed and be
prepared to say and do something about that. That’s
all it takes. Not easy perhaps, given human nature, but definitely
do-able. Knowledge and the honesty to address entrenched habits,
is all. The positive effect on the world would be breathtaking,
the consequences wonderful. Most of us have actually forgotten
what optimum health really feels like, probably because the
last time we were, we were twelve.
