Baraka_Guru

There are certainly some interesting sentiments rising out of this. I think making the logical step from class stratification to a kind of murder is a difficult one if you don't spend the time to examine the idea. I will always stand by the belief that rampant capitalism without regulation is an amoral system enabled by immoral powers. If we look at class purely from its outcome rather than its causes, then we can see this as a more direct problem. The poor don't live as long as the rich, if the statistics are valid. Why is this? I heard there was a documentary on PBS that looked at some of the poorest regions in the U.S. There was some organization that wanted to provide some basic health care to these people and so they loaded up buses and turned them into a kind of mobile hospital and pharmacy. They trucked out to these regions and the response was appalling. People would group up with a variety of conditions, several of which these mobile hospitals couldn't treat with any sort of drug or other treatment the health professionals were prepared to conduct. These people had to be turned away, taking their serious (and essentially untreatable) health problems with them. It was a sad thing to watch, apparently. I wish I remembered the name of the thing, as I'd like to watch it myself.

I find it quite disturbing that a nation with the wealth of America can have this sort of thing going on--the abject sick distributed in pockets throughout the country and having nothing done about it.

I don't know if I'd call this sort of thing a slow form of murder, but I would call it ignorant, immoral, and completely unacceptable.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot