Easier To Spot Someone Else’s Big Problems

Dear Ms. James: What is it about people who, when polled, are more negative about subjects that are more remote from them? One poll suggests Americans favor tougher school standards but feel that their local schools rate “good” to “excellent.” The same pattern is reflected when people are asked to rate Congress as opposed to their own representative.

Broad-scale change is difficult when people feel that it is a problem for others, but not themselves. Is it that people know more about things that are closer to them? Perhaps the sweeping generalizations of the media make an impression. Or is there a form of denial operating here?

- Mark

Dear Mark: All of the above.

Most people want to believe they are better than they probably are - and that goes for everything around them, especially if they have a part in creating or maintaining it. Few citizens want to believe their schools are bad or that their leader is a crook. If they admit that something is wrong, then they are supposed to try to correct it. It is easier to pretend nothing needs to change. There is an implied guilt to community problems.

Many people want to keep things the way they remember them from their past, or to not want to invest in someone else’s future, especially in children whom they don’t care about. Sometimes denial means they can vote for a politician who promises to lower taxes or change policy regardless of the long-term effect on the community.

Perhaps the most powerful influence is the knee-jerk exaggerations of the national media. Sometimes it seems that for every story they blow out of proportion there is a much bigger story they ignore. Most of us do not live the lives that national headlines describe, so it is hard to believe even our more accurate local news.

Whatever the reasons, as you point out, we end up making important decisions with suspect information and skewed belief systems until it finally catches up to reality and we have a crisis.

We spend our resources on the symptoms and not the causes of our problems. Somehow the news media and our leaders must stop creating misleading headlines and dishonest campaign sound bites at the expense of the reality that we live.

- Jennifer

Jennifer: I have been helping a healer. He is able to facilitate spontaneous remissions (as medical science refers to them), or miracles (as we spiritually refer to them). He has presented his work to medical doctors, some of whom have used it with their patients. He teaches others how to do his healing which is based on the nature of man.

I am not interested in convincing anyone of his abilities, but I am concerned with the resistance of medical science to alternative methods of healing. We’ve become so dependent upon others for our most basic need - our personal health. I can barely imagine the fear that will dissipate when people empower themselves to take care of their own physical, mental, emotional and sensual aspects.

You have a voice that is heard by many and you appear to have an open mind. Blessings of peace and love, dear lady.

- Ben

Dear Ben: Thank you! I taught in a medical school for many years and I met physicians open to alternative healing and a medical establishment closed to anything but its own expertise. Since then, much of what was then experimental has become mainstream (nutrition, meditation, biofeedback, vitamin therapy, naturopathy, patient pain management, acupuncture, etc.). Many patients are now choosing to take control of their health problems with the physician as teacher and coach, not commander.

Like many other professions, physicians find themselves drawn into a lodge. Once they have joined “the group,” they may find their minds closed through hazing and bonding processes. Lodges do that; they wear matching outfits, they create rituals and keep secrets. Even when a lodge is formed with lofty goals, time tends to create a belief that it is more special than others.

The expanding system of managed health care may force us to take better care of our health and pay more when we don’t. We cannot afford to ignore our own maintenance and then call on high-priced physician mechanics to put us back together. I hope we’ll develop a partnership that combines the best of the brilliance and quality of Western medicine with the consciousness and responsibility of each patient. Then, if the scientists could stay open to all the ways we can heal our bodies, we can work on a little mental wisdom.

- Jennifer