there are strong distinctions between the two which i have discussed heatedly with friends late at night many times. but at least i can disagree with someone who is talking my language
it is dawn, yet the sun already singes the sand. it seems to smoke angrily, perhaps just a trick of the shimmering air. there is a thick quietness, save for the gentle sigh of the land as horned lizards burrow into it, drunk on heat. i sip my tea, and think to myself (in fluent darija) how nice it would be in a small garden awash with temperate breeze, looking into an enchanted slab of glass containing conversant phantoms of my friends, on a phantom-container named after an extinct elephant
it was chapter 14. of all the transcendentalists, i think steinbeck really Got It the most
there is a passage in (i think) chapter 11 of the grapes of wrath that talks about emergence on the next layer of abstraction, which i like even more. i’ll try and find it
i don't think doctors are responsible for the current system's brokenness, but i do think they are disempowered to do anything about it without some worker solidarity. not even necessarily marx-style, i'm talking guild-style pride
this slow creep of professional-managerialism into the profession has basically eliminated indpendent practice, visiting doctors, compassionate end-of-life care. they still exist, most are just priced out of it. the true dignity of medicine, being a pillar of a community and having autonomy over care, has been supplanted with the hollow internal logic of capital
oh is it a money thing? compare the median salary of a family physician to what a good contractor can earn. both are basically apprenticed vocations. classically the only difference between a plumber and a physician is that the latter is a “learned vocation”, entailing some degree of humanism and philosophy. given that the current crop of doctors is virtually illiterate, that playing field has also been levelled
depths plumber ॐ