Anger, Envy, Ambition and other Vices

Sometimes, when i am in a frenzy, I decide to refile everything. Amid the detritus of crumpled financial aid applications from 2001 and neatly enveloped letters from old lovers--i find other sorts of love letters. Like a paper on the foundations of mathematics by Carnap. Or my lovingly annotated Russell commentary on the devastating epistemology of Hume. In another world (twin earth), i would be intellectually stroking myself on the pristine puzzles of metaphysics and logic.

Today i am in the library with a 6 inch pile of papers by economists, ethicists, policy scholars, and disgruntled professors of medicine. The puzzles of international health governance, medicare payment systems, the politics of clean drinking water--are no less convoluted nor deliciously knotted than any logic proof or how we perceive reality. But these puzzles are effused with despair--for some such position is no mere intellectual wanking--it becomes a policy paper, that makes it way to the idealogues or corporate boardroom--it becomes enmeshed in the strands of power--and then a mass of people motherfucking die obscene deaths of want in a world of wealth. And then, rather than disagreeing with Bertrand Russell as a vigorous and exhilerating game of wits, to pit one's own intellect against the mightiest minds of human civilization...one is instead suffused with moral outrage. Yes, the same rigor is required, but the stakes are high, and rather than respect for your brilliant interlocuter, you hate some douche bag of a Princeton economist for their narrowness and foolishness. They are now but the very clever and powerful enemy. And rather than feeling schooled by worthy teachers, you only feel impotent and useless against the wrongs of the world.

But so moved by your righteousness, that maybe you plot in ways in which to amass power, to fight for the forces of good. But what is the danger of power? would you keep the rigor of Carnap and Kant? The pursuit of truth? Would you remember the kindness that moved you first, before the books?

Doctors have certainly squandered the pwoer of healer, but perhaps they never had much right to it.

Patients distrust doctors
"Others say the problem also stems from a grueling training system that removes doctors from the world patients live in. 'By the time you’re done with your training, you feel, in many ways, that you are as far as you could possibly be from the very people you’ve set out to help.'"

Racial schism of American Medicine
In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.

Lawyers and Government?

Justice Department and political nepotism
Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broke Civil Service laws by using politics to guide their hiring decisions, picking less-qualified applicants for important nonpolitical positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility, an internal report concluded on Monday.

RIghteousness is a dangerous vice. But then, so is the lack of moral clarity. So is the lack of balls to call bullshit: bullshit. Bringing a written list of questions for your doctor, my ass.

Sometimes the most sensible thing really is a revolution. And alas, that seems to require a tedium of papers, many many people, and a steady drum beat of truth and clarity for however long it takes.