Illness and Disease

Because of the primacy which we give to all things human, the fact that we can even coin the phrase 'the sanctity of human life,' and our concomitant fear and loathing of death, we have no real mythological basis in this culture for the balance of life.

We cannot separate our attitudes toward illness and disease from our attitudes toward death.  Our complete lack of a mythology of balance of life, allows us to destroy anything that seems to threaten human life.  Of course, various civilizations within this larger civilization, of which this culture represents the overarching principle, has defined human life in ways that were convenient for the continued existence and perceived dominance of its own human group.

But that aside, overall we have given ourselves absolute permission to destroy anything that seems in contradiction to the sanctity of human life meme.

"Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Lord Jesus, come in glory." (cf. 1 Cor 16:22).  Paul of Tarsus certainly captured this meme epitomologically.  He definitely drove that nail home, too, with this:  "The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Cor 15:26).  Then we find almost this exact same phrase used by J. K. Rawlings in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, "The last enemy to be conquered is death," as the inscription on the headstone of Harry's parents.

If death is the ultimate enemy, then illness and disease, death's henchmen, are certainly not our friends.

I'm not anywhere near suggesting that the suffering caused by illness and disease and the loss of beloved friends and family by death is anything other than that--suffering, pain.  But I am saying that that is all that it is.

We inflict an almost unimaginable suffering on millions of other living forms on this planet every moment of every day. . . and (collectively) we don't even wince.

Earlier this week, there was a campus-wide email sent from the campus student health service alerting everyone that a child, who had recently participated an an event held on campus, had the chicken pox.  It was warning everyone who might possibly have been in the vicinity of this child, who had not been vaccinated for chicken pox, to take steps to protect themselves.

So, what's odd about that?  Certainly seems like good, responsible behavior on everyone's part:  the reporting of the illness, the sending of the email, the heeding of the email's warnings.  We can't have something like chicken pox, which we had almost eradicated in this country via the systematic immunization of our children, being allowed to spread unchecked amongst us.

Here's my point.  As a mythology-bound group, we are trying to hard to keep ourselves alive!