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My attention has temporarily shifted from fundamental flawsin our society to something equally as fundamental: miracles in nature. Our reliance on science and technology sometimes take us away from some of these fundamental miracles reducing some of the magic through a reductionist approach. The focus becomes narrower and narrower as the specialist industry continues to subdivide and grow.

As humans we become to be seen as a conglomeration of parts rather than the incredible structure that we are or we ignore altogether the marvel that is the body, mind and spirit. 

In something as basic as our call for help from the health care system we are relegated to a single element of our physiology or anatomy.  We are not seen as a complex organism that has moved away from a position of balance and is thus exhibiting dysfunction in a particular area of the body, mind or spirit. As a result attention is focused on that single area rather than the attention being given to the overall functioning of the complex arrangement that we are.

Most of us probably remember the children’s song Dry Bones:

The toe bone connected to the heel bone,

The heel bone connected to the foot bone,

The foot bone connected to the leg bone,

The leg bone connected to the knee bone,

The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,  etc….


Makes sense to me.

From the perspective of the health care system we go from a complex human being who functions within a larger social system of family, friends, community, and society to become a single element: a kidney, a heart, a clinical depression, a malfunctioning knee, a lump that may or may not be cancer, or a whole host of other signs of an unbalanced body, mind and spirit. This may be convenient for health care delivery and organization of resources but perhaps it is too simple an approach for the complexity of a human being within a social environment within a larger environment that is the planet. Or maybe it is too mechanistic in its approach to truly address the human as body, mind and spirit. 

Looking through the predominant economic-political lens reduces us even further just in different directions. We become a potential vote, a wage earner/slave, a consumer etc…



I digress by writing about the value of examining complex systems as complex systems rather than reducing them to unconnected mechanistic parts.

What I really wanted to draw attention to today was that just like the miracle that is a flower, or the miracle that is a tree that has the innate wisdom to heal itself or the magic of water flowing and sustaining us we as humans are also quite miraculous.

You only need look at the marvel of your feet or any other body part or reflect on the body’s ability to keep your nervous system, circulatory system and respiratory system among other things functioning whether we pay attention to them or not. You only need to think about how all these parts and systems magically work together to begin the process of wonder.

Another miracle, perhaps…

Irene McDermott © 2012