Category culture

Causes and Symptoms

There are still times when doctors are limited to treating symptoms but generally in modern times our doctors seek to treat the underlying cause of a problem rather than the symptoms. We need to do more of that in the healthcare industry - especially as it relates to our most pressing chronic condition in the industry: uncontrolled costs.

Saving Social Security

When I heard Doug Wright say that he was incensed to hear someone characterize Social Security as charity it got me wondering - maybe it would be a good thing if social security were set up more like a charity so that we did not make it available to people who had sufficient assets to support themselves.

The Scary Flu Monster

I won't argue that the flu vaccine is not worth getting but I am confident that it is not effective or important enough to mandate it for the general population.

Political Sacred Cows

Whenever someone assigns one thing as unassailable - whether it's HAFB, the importance of seniority, the idea that all elected officials are crooks who should be replaced, or even the original text of the U.S. Constitution - it eventually leads them to make decisions that are undesirable in the long run.

Meeting Basic Needs

Nothing can compensate for physical needs which are not being met and when they have not been met for a family it is difficult if not impossible to focus on other areas of need in building a healthy family. This is a concern that can be addressed at the level of individual families but also at a community level. Families having difficulty meeting their basic needs should try reducing their expenses first and then increasing their income.

Rediscovering the Forgotten Parent

The crisis of weakened fatherhood was driven home to me a few years ago in reading Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx when he related the realization by Rev. Joe Ehrmann that all the problems of the inner city that he was dealing with in his ministry tied back to a common thread of missing or ineffective fathers in the households. The nature of this problem is such that it will take many years to reverse the causes and effects of a culture that has long dismissed, diminished, and even undermined the role of fatherhood.

A Holistic Approach to Building Families

A proper understanding of family must recognize that families span generations and cannot be fully understood and supported independent of the individuals they are made of and the communities in which they live. Because the family is the fundamental unit of society and because societies can't be stronger than the families within them, I am seeking to find and share information on organizations and tools to help build families, their communities, and the individuals within them and I invite others to join me in this endeavor.