Oh man

[ebonlock]

This story is just heartbreaking. Anyone who's been a caregiver for a sick or disabled loved one or friend, be prepared to be disgusted. How could anyone with a soul deny this poor girl care? I just don't get it.

Comments

You tell me if I get it.

[ebongreen.livejournal.com]

You may kick me in the ass for saying this, but cases like this remind me of why I'm not principally opposed to the death penalty.

As I see it, part of government's job is mediating society's choices over who dies and who lives. In the absence of government we're back to Hobbes' "nasty, brutish, and short" existence of anarchy and inter-human predation. Health care, anti-poverty programs, even the existence of traffic signals are all about not having us constantly at one another's throats.

Nonetheless, not everyone can be saved - the preservation of any and all human life everywhere at any cost is not the sine qua non of values, before which all others must fall and tremble. Not everyone can have as many offspring as they might wish, or have the biological capability to produce. Liver transplants for everyone who might need one may not be affordable, even if the organs were available. Choices must be made, and someone - some human - must make them.

This isn't to say that the people making this choice in Alabama are making the "right" decision, or the "wrong" decision. I'd like to think that with some revisions to national and local social priorities, the people of this country would have the sense to take better care of themselves and one another. (Alabama, however, is not likely to be a leader in this, since they have one of the most fucked-up constitutional governments on the planet - see www.constitutionalreform.org for more information.) However, even in an ideal world, someone will still have to make choices about how taxes are spent and on what - and every dollar allocated to one thing and not another seems to mean that someone's going to feel slighted and abused, or that someone's life is metaphorically or literally finished.

Suppose that ten people's lives can be maintained or saved by the Alabama Medicare office choosing not to fund that little girl's care and funding the other people's care instead. Does that make the choice any more just?

Though some utilitarian rationalists might say yes, it doesn't to me. It just makes it another choice about who lives and who dies - that's part of what government does. Among other things, the government allows us-the-people to feel we're not responsible for killing other humans - government as a form of psychological projection and compensation, if you will. We tend to hate in others what we hate in ourselves, and we're generally taught early on that killing other humans is bad. We have other people appointed or elected to kill and make these choices on our behalf, so we don't have to feel guilty about our complicit participation. It's a meta-task, and one that makes it easy for people to hate government and government officials - bureaucrats are literally scapegoats.

Before anyone thinks that I'm a closet anarchist, let me state clearly I'm not. I appreciate the presence of government, and I'm in favor of a better world through spiritual evolution and "social engineering". But please be clear - government, even a Super-UN with world-wide sovereignity and humanity's budget at its disposal, can't and couldn't save the metabolic lives of everyone everywhere. These choices, like the administration of the death penalty in criminal cases, can be made with varying degrees of bias or fairness or justice or what-have-you. But just as "the only certain things in life are death and taxes", government is a social vehicle for administering both, and the personal responsibility for that administration is borne by every citizen in a "democracy".

I feel for you, Ellie, and I feel for Lauren Rainey and her parents and her nurse and her community. But I'm not going to blame or damn or curse Mary McIntyre for being a Valkyrie, because that's her job, literally and metaphorically. Perhaps I trust too much, but I hope and trust that Ms. McIntyre will have her place in Heaven too, and that Lauren may greet her kindly when she arrives.

Re: You tell me if I get it.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

I'm generally not inclined to kick anyone in the ass for expressing a considered opinion coherently, calmly, and politely. If more of us could respond to differences in opinion with such consideration this world would be a much more pleasant place to live.

I don't entirely disagree with your argument, and I do understand the points you're trying to make. In the grand scheme of things I believe that there are only so many resources available and that triage-style thinking is not an evil in and of itself. However, what I came away with regarding this piece was less a grand discussion of the value of human life than a rather narrow minded beaurocrat who seems disinclined to reconsider what might have been a poor judgement call.

Perhaps I was reading it with my own personal biases in place and missed something in Ms. McIntyre's words, it's certainly possible. Having dealt with similar types of people in the past within the medical profession, I've encountered the mindset far too often. Is she "just doing her job"? Certainly. I wonder, though, if she were forced to justify her decision while looking in that little girl's eyes, if she would be quite so certain she was doing the right thing.

Re: You tell me if I get it.

[ebongreen.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to be heard, and I do my best to listen. There are "fundie liberal pro-lifers" who would rip me up one side and down the other for those sentiments, and I appreciate that you're not.

Ms. McIntyre may be acting in a less-than-enlightened fashion - for all I know, which is nothing, she might be a moral coward - but I'd say that bias is inherent in the telling of the story: the degree that it's her actions and the degree that it's the presentation is hard to untangle. When was the last time you saw a story outside of the Onion with a headline like "Official Saves Lives by Withholding Expensive Medical Care from A Few"? That's not a resonant story - heck, that story's never even written. "Government Official Threatens Life of Child" is a story to which we're conditioned to react, an attention-grabber, a button-pusher.

In my own spiritual life and practice, that kind of story is a crisis story - a story with both danger and opportunity. The danger to me is that I'll berate that evil woman for threatening the life of that innocent child, which buys into about forty different layers and levels on this planet and is going to keep me reincarnating until I learn to keep my spiritual judgementalism in check. The opportunity is, "How have I felt like that woman or that child in the past? Has anyone ever done that to me, and have I reached a point where I can forgive them for that?" As I understand it, practicing forgiveness is one of the requirements for a ticket out of Here, and I try to practice towards that goal.

Think about how the story would be (told) different(ly) if the perceived race of the participants were different, or if their genders were different, or their age were different. Those stories are probably happening somewhere right now - why aren't those stories seeing the light of day? The point was raised by various communities here in the Midwest in the wake of the Dru Sjodin killing that the only reasons that story made regional and then national news is because she was pretty, young, and white. Black and Hispanice and Native women disappear regularly and it doesn't make the news. Why is Lauren's story making news, rather than (say) that of a dying HIV-positive adult gay black man?

And on another mythic level, should Justice be required to look its victims in the eye, or should Justice be blind? There's a large set of cultural constructs there too, waiting for examination. It certainly does seem that Ms. McIntyre wishes to avoid scrutiny for her decision, but how much scrutiny does her decision deserve? If we want blind Justice, then she's absolutely right to not seek out those who her decisions will affect; if we give up the idea of blind Justice, then we as a society need to deal with the idea that everyone has biases that affect how they decide and act, and the idea of an unbiased society a different cherished myth/goal which many would fight fiercely to preserve as sacred.

Ain't watching culture fun? /B-, All kinds of opportunities for introspection.

Re: You tell me if I get it.

[ebonlock.livejournal.com]

Again, I do see your points and I spend a good deal of time trying to avoid falling into "fundamentalist" mindsets myself. I do wonder, though, when introspection of this kind leads to a path of rationalization and from there, a lovely excuse to exempt oneself from taking action. While in some ways I love the concept of a Zen outlook to life, at the same time I tend to turn away from it as it negates the more visceral experience of life. This may be, in great part, why I was drawn to Wicca rather than Buddhism :)

Yes it may be true that in helping this girl the state would not have sufficient funds to aid someone else. If that is the case then I feel very sorry for Ms. McIntyre being placed in a position to make those kinds of decisions. On the other hand, she could have expressed sympathy and concern for the girl and her family, tried to work with them to find a way to maintain her necessary level of care, but it seems pretty clear that she hasn't done so.

And while, yes, I do see that the reporter in this case was playing up sympathies in order to make a better story. But I think you'll admit that a parent put into this position by a state organization has precious little recourse but to get their story out and hope that public response will aid them. Were I the girl's mother I'd sure as hell be doing the same thing.

I try very hard not to judge the individuals in this situation, rather the instituions and laws in place that have created it in the first place.