A Short History of Progress

A History of Progress.

When the NHS was conceived off as an idea, it was assumed that one day it would fulfil all the needs of the people with regard to healthcare.

Historically that day never came, and looks more distant today than it did at it's very creation.

This is relevant because it shows a very real example of an occurrence where the needs of the people were thought to be finite and meet-able.

Utility is a measure of meeting a need and proving to be useful. Modernity can claim to have exponentially grown the needs of the people.

Why? Because the fulfilment of needs appears to be generative of still other needs. In the case of the NHS generative of further expectation. In simplistic terms as our lifespan lengthened, because of our fight against disease, so new diseases became prevalent and our expectation that they be fought with equal vigour grew. This is why the NHS focus has shifted significantly to both health inequalities and managing expectations.

And thus maybe fulfilling needs is the very kernel of progress: to seek to fulfil needs, is generative of still further needs.

For when we started to bring our specialities to the market-place the resultant efficiency in cost, and work saved, created more freedom for people to do other things that were not necessary. Before that time we lived, and still live in some parts of the World, in a hand to mouth existence.

And so unlike our other prior existence the marketplace and our increased efficiency savings allowed us both superfluous wealth and the time to spend it on recreation, on things other than were necessary. And this in turn generated still further industries on which that wealth could be spent, and then other needs that could then be met. A generative cycle that does not look like it can be sated.

And this is the conundrum of Heaven, an impossible place of satiety.

That maybe all of these needs that we fill ourselves with are superfluous; being as it were in addition to ourselves; and therefore can in fact cause us to loose ourselves.

The moral quandaries are two, individually they are the loss of ourselves, subsumed in the consumerism of the market-place.
The solution is not to deny the market place, but "to live in this life as if you are a traveller"(1) and are only passing through.

The second moral quandary is more insidious, and bodes of our collective responsibility one to another. For when the marketplace becomes King and efficiencies met reach a point of equanimity, the market is not moral. In the name of further efficiency savings, and further progress, exploitation becomes rife. And the people exploit the earth, its resources, and then still other people. And that exploitation of others is just slavery by another name; market efficiency and progress.
This is what is seen in the market factories of the developing World; Slavery by another name.

Shafeesthoughts
(1) a saying of the best of all men, Muhammad (saw), the Messenger from GOD, may he forever be blessed.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:NHS