a world of we

I just finished watching "Sicko," Michael Moore's documentary about the health care system in America. Have you seen this movie? It came out a while ago, but I didn't see it because I so rarely make it to the movie theatre, even though every friend who'd seen it implored the rest of us to go. (But I really would like to see "Mongol" on the big screen -- anybody want to see that one with me?) Zelig even brought it up when we were in the high desert back country on our vision quest last summer.

So, I recently acquired a TV/ DVD player (which I keep tucked behind the couch most of the time, thankyouverymuch) and have signed up for Netflix. I ordered Sicko out of a sense of obligation, really, like it was part of my civic duty to check out this film about health care. How bad could it be, really? The health care situation can't be as bad as, say, the 9/11 situation, or the gun situation (which, incidentally, got a lot worse today, thanks to the Supremes), both of which Moore exposed so masterfully.

I am engaged to an extent with western medicine because of a condition I have, that requires doctor visits and pharmaceuticals and such. I've always had health coverage, and I've always been able to afford the prescriptions. Yes, it's a bummer to shell out a $40 co-pay and $50 at the pharmacist, but in the context of my privileged lifestyle, it isn't a major concern of mine. There has always been a cushion between me and any kind of real, pit-in-the-stomach fear about medical care, so I get to spend my time and resources on things like stopping aerial pesticide spray and transformational workshops. Other than my personal health situation, concerns about healthcare -- mine, or the overall state of the system -- don't really penetrate my reality.

Um, I mean, until I finished watching "Sicko". If you haven't seen it, it's an intense and unflinching expose of our deeply broken health-care system. People suffer debilitating illness for years on end because they can't afford to pay the exorbitant costs for simple treatment that could help them; toddlers die because they are turned away from emergency rooms which don't accept the type of coverage that their parents possess; families go bankrupt because of unexpected health conditions; members of Al Qaeda imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay receive free, highly-advanced medical care while one American man had to choose between having the joint on his fourth finger re-attached for $12,000, or the one on his third finger for $60,000 after an accident with a saw.

The worst part, though, the most embarrassing part of this whole movie was the fact that Moore, as he does, told the story of other nations in order to contextualize the American story. And, as usual, those comparisons end up illustrating just how profoundly alienated, mistrustful, and selfishly-motivated we are here in the U.S. He went to France, Canada, England, and Cuba, all of which have extremely low-cost or free prescription medicines, entirely free medical coverage, and even house-call doctors. All paid for by the government. Moore repeatedly asked people in all of these places: how much did you pay for procedure X or surgery Y or doctor's visit Z? And the answer was always: nothing. With a chuckle! None of the people he spoke to could fathom the possibility of paying out-of-pocket, much less paying the astronomical costs that we pay, for any goods or services related to healthcare.

At the end of the film, Moore took a group of individuals who were ill from exposure to 9/11 chemicals to Cuba, where they not only received medical attention of the highest caliber (just like everyone else in Cuba) for free (just like the Cubans), and where they could purchase medications that cost $120 in the U.S. for $0.05, but where they received friendly and even loving attention from the providers, the pharmacists, and receptionists.

Mind-boggling.

Now, yes, I'm sure that this is an idealized look at things to some extent. If Moore had gone, for example, to the Parisian ghettos where all the Algerian immigrants live, I'm sure that it wouldn't have been as tidy of a picture. But the gist of it is that we in America just do not take care of our own the way that most other places in the world do.

As I was watching this movie I started inquiring into my own stereotypes about caring for others, because they started to enter my thoughts as the movie went on. Things like, poor people and privileged people naturally receive different standards of treatment; that's just the way it is. There are too many people and not enough resources to adequately care for everyone. I started to notice in my head a context of: everyone is basically on their own when it comes to health and well-being. People don't take care of each other, really, and that's just how it is.

And I thought about all the friends I've known over the years who work as social workers, or who run struggling non-profits that do things like provide childcare for low-income women. These friends were all striving to do the basic work of caring for fellow citizens. This is poorly-compensated work, mostly done by women. Government funding for social services is sparse, and lately what has been coming down the pike is being funneled towards religious institutions. (Remember that whole debacle?)

All of this just makes me realize, viscerally, that our ethic in this American society is really "every person for him or her self." Especially people of color, immigrants, poor people, people who are sick or weak or disfigured or otherwise not living out the dream of being wealthy and sexy. Even here, in our bubble of beauty and consciousness which I wouldn't trade for anything -- even here, notice how many people spend years of therapy and go through boxes of tissues in workshops because they (we) don't know how to ask for help? Like asking our friends and community for physical or emotional assistance would be placing this inordinate burden, this inconvenience, on their lives, because everyone's supposed to be just cruising along in their little self-contained unit of I've-already-figured-it-all-out. And yet, for me at least, I can't think of anything that makes me happier than helping people with their life cycle events: birthdays, weddings, births, career transitions.

You know what I mean? What greater joy is there, really, as a human, than building a marriage altar or bringing dinner to new parents or reflecting a friend's beauty and brilliance to them on their birthday?

It is remarkable and tragic how isolated we are from one another and from the earth. And our government encourages that, the print media encourages that, schools encourage that, the workplace encourages that, the legal system certainly encourages that, even our family structures encourage that. Why? I don't know. Because there's profit to be gained from fear-based consumption habits, from ignorance, from hopelessness.

We live in a world of "me," Moore said, and we suffer immensely from it, and the earth suffers. The most frustrating part is that there are nations all around us, right next door to us in fact, who live in a world of "we," and not because they're better humans than us or somehow different, but just because they made a choice to live that way. Somehow the collective wisdom in those other places hewed to the natural human impulse towards community and communal well-being as the highest value. We missed that memo, I guess, or maybe we're still just being swept along mindlessly by the sheer momentum of corporate dominance and its corresponding cultural malaise.

There are so many of us who want a different life. And we haven't yet figured out a way to achieve critical mass towards the radical changes we want to see implemented. What good is the federal government if it's not overseeing a national system of care-taking? But for all our prayer and meditation and cleansing, for all the hard and breathtakingly beautiful work we do here to support personal and planetary transformation, we can't overthrow the government. I mean, have you *met* the federal government? I read an article in SF Chron today about how the Bush administration actually told EPA that if EPA sent the White House documents revealing the truth about climate change, the White House WOULD NOT OPEN THE E-MAIL. Dubya is literally up in there with his fingers stuck in his ears going "la la la, I can't hear you!"

What gives me any hope at all is that all those people in Tuscaloosa and Des Moines and wherever the hell they are, just *waiting* for the hand of God to smite San Francisco and all these unholy homos getting MARRIED, those people actually do go to church, and do bring meatloaf to their ailing neighbors, and do just want to do right by the Lord and their families and stuff. And for them, maybe right now that means driving an SUV to Costco, an SUV that has a yellow ribbon sticker on the back because their 19 year old sons are over there in Sadr City, and hating gays and hating abortion and hating treesitters. But maybe at some point, if gas prices keep ballooning and the rivers keep rising and the sons keep dying, maybe those people too might notice that Something Is Wrong and we need to Come Together if we want to have any chance at all of living out our natural days on this precious planet.

I hope that when that time arrives, we're all ready to meet them with gentleness and kind language, just like the Cuban firefighters received the 9/11 volunteer EMTs, with a salute.