Moral Dilemmas and The Mind (the part that's in the brain)

Moral Dilemmas. The fun stuff of life right.

Like if you're working really hard on a project intended to serve the greater community and you wanted to keep it on the LD, and have it be wonderfully "grassroots"-y and possess a certain lovely anonymity -the stuff of that ideal of civil society. And it's all going well, and you find yourself often just you and God (or the Universe, or whatever you believe in that's bigger than yourself) because your conviction drives you to get the job done and help people, even if you sometimes feel that you're 'going it alone' when it comes to organizing and planning and setting the wheels in motion. And you spend hours upon hours and it's a wonderful labour of love and you're getting satisfaction just by doing it really -it doesn't matter if people know it's you or it's not you or it's the wind. You feel happy about it.

But then you hear through the grapevine that someone has decided to play politics with your brainchild. They poach it and claim it as their own and announce it suchly to the world. It's as though these people sit around waiting for people who actually care to do something, just so that they can snap it up like vultures. It's a filthy business. Setting the record straight though, also a yucky business. But we feel compelled to because suddenly you feel violated to your core, insulted, undermined -the spirit and integrity of what the project was meant to be, a beacon of youthful goodwill in a still, stale fog of inaction and apathy, has been dimmed. And it feels deeply moral because if you don't stand up for yourself and what things were meant to be, and what they really represent and that the whole darn thing was born out of love and not out of guilt or a feeling of mere obligation, then they will walk all over you and abuse you for life. And it's not just me, it's not about me at all. But the reality that the youth are capable of getting shit done by themselves without the interference of old bureaucrats -and the youth as a whole should get credit for that. Because then other youth can be inspired to do the same -that youth and youth alone can make a difference, that they are a force with which to reckon, that they are unstoppable, and that they can change the world and make it right.

But the whole point was not to be political remember? So what does one do? Fight for which cause -the object of the action in the first place, or the philosophical, existential cause of the actors and the group of people they represent, and what that means for future change, expanding the base of individuals who feel that it is within their power to act? And is it possible to do both?

It's not just this -it has been a week of moral dilemmas. I've been interviewing various people for the article I'm working on for my community project on health care rights, specifically dealing with the 3-month Delai de Carence that mainly affects new immigrants in Quebec. See, I have mainly often thought that to really change the world, you gotta do it from the 'inside'. But it's hard to really know. Because when you're on the inside trying to make change, you inevitably have to compromise your ideals, and is it really okay to do this just in the name of expediency? I don't know. And a lot of people get sucked in and sell out even though they originally thought they were going in as a 'mole'. It's tricky -really a moral pretzel. I don't know. And when you interview politicians who obviously have little moral conscience, you wonder how they raised their children. Because how can you tell your son or daughter to lead an ethical, moral life, to maintain consistency between thought and action in the name of what's right and just and good and principled when you're off lying, cheating, manipulating and misconstruing in your everyday professional life, for power and profit and that's it. It is not okay. And it's even less okay if you took an oath to do no harm and to serve your fellow human being. It is not okay.

And what about all those people who say the reason that Canada's health care system is failing is because it is a public system and that privatization would solve all the problems? Don't they have any conscience at all about the lot of the poor and disenfranchised? Do they not feel like they are cheating their own minds by this reductionist argument? It is not about throwing money at a weak system. Yes, money is necessary, but not as much as people think. This is what I learned more about today from Michael Rachlis, one of Canada's leading health policy analysts, who came to give a couple of talks here. And it's not about needing to quadruple the number of doctors working in the system even though we should at least try to hold on to the doctors that we train in this country. How about giving them a reason to stay? Innovations in that area called 'Advanced Access' are what's going to save this system. It costs less money in the long run and not trillions even in the short run. It will make the system more efficient, it will make patients happier and healthier, it will decrease mortality and morbidity within the hospitals, it will strengthen the sense of community and common goals of various professionals involved in health care (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, psychologists, nutritionists, etc...) and it will rejuvinate and remotivate tired, disenchanted doctors. The research has already been done. It has been implemented with positive results in a few little towns. It's here now. And yet all those lobbyists for private health care turn a blind eye, all those false 'grassroots' pharmaceutical-sponsored "researchers", they're convincing people that privatization is the only way. It is not the only way. And it is not okay.

Neuro is Amazing.
In other news, we have finished the blood, muscles and bones unit and we're now doing neuro. Coolest so far, especially in anatomy (I held a real human brain! and it sooooo cool!). Also we had the most famous neuropsychologist in the world lecture us over the last couple of days. Dr. Brenda Milner (http://www.mcgill.ca/about/history/pioneers/milner/) -probably the most impressive professor I have ever had, more so because she is so unassuming and down to earth and is so old but still on the cutting edge of research. She comes from that whole generation of passionate scientists who did much of their groundbreaking work in the 1950s-1970s -and really had the 'big picture', that fiery approach where anything is possible in such a real way... like I've never met a scientist of a later generation with that same openness, who brings that higher philosophical, existential passion to scientific endeavour. Like Woody Hastings. Milner is to cognitive neuroscience like what Hastings is to chronobiology. And her lecture was so very engaging -she is still so passionate -and the tales of her experiments and their conclusions were peppered with anecdotes of what it was like to work with Dr. Wilder Penfield (often called the 'father' of neurobiology) at McGill. Anyway, she was very inspiring and has received all the honour that she deserves in Canada, in the U.S. and in the world. Pretty awesome.