The Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity - Independent Media Center

commonsense to observe that if there was no immediate and near term benefit of modern
medicine, there'd be no one subscribing to it. That ubiquitous subscription ought not to blind
one to its visible eventual direction however. And that's the agenda of modern medicine – to
continue to blind one to that long-term agenda by its short term benefits. It is the same modus
operandi as the one fueling the “Technetronic Era” for its immediate benefits, but which is also
hurtling the world into the global surveillance society of big Brother and full scientific
dictatorship at breakneck speeds. That same agenda in medicine could not perhaps be
achieved without monopoly control of all health care modalities and research, and of course
without attracting and luring young scientists to work in life sciences and medicine.
The near term benefits we see today in healthcare, the advanced surgical techniques, the
trauma centers and the ER, and what we typically think of as wonders of modern medicine,
does span an entire life-span, or two. It helps millions of people everyday. These benefits to
our good-life in the near term are undeniable, as even David Rockefeller articulated at the UN
Dinner. Just like the wonders of modern science and technologies also benefit the modern
kitchen to modern travel in our “Technetronic Era”. These benefits of a scientific modernity are
part and parcel of the same incentivization modalities to get people to tirelessly work on their
narrow passionate interests in the short term, often in the name of scientific advancement
benefiting humanity, or national security, quite oblivious to their detrimental long-term
outcomes. These self-serving motivations and their cumulative impact on society in creating a
global scientific dictatorship have already been fleshed out in The Fable of the Bees and the
Seduction of Science and Technology.
But modern medicine does love symptomatic treatments even when it is not trying to kill us in
the short term. I cannot recall big-Pharma announcing a cure for any major modern disease –
can you? – from cancer to heart disease to diabetes to AIDS. The best patients are the ones
on illness management drugs for a lifetime. There is much profit in administering a continuous
supply of pharmacological cocktails rather than any holistic cure. And a new disease is as
simple to define as simply calling it a disorder!
As reported by George F. Will in The Washington Post, Handbook suggests that deviations
from 'normality' are disorders, February 28, 2010: 'Today's DSM defines “oppositional
defiant disorder” as a pattern of “negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior
toward authority figures.” Symptoms include “often loses temper,” “often deliberately
annoys people” or “is often touchy.” DSM omits this symptom: “is a teenager.”
The Poor-Man's Guide to Modernity 126 / 334 Zahir Ebrahim