Blog #5 SOC 490

            Since the dawn of time and the arrival of humans there has been a common obsession that still remains until this day. Even through all the different cultures there is always one common factor that continues to elude mankind, a common obsession that will never be obtained, control. Within all sectors of reality all humans lust to have some sort of control over any and everything possible. Time, nature, or in this case health, in Gaudium it is discussed that men are always working to create better circumstances for life. “Throughout the course of the centuries, men have labored to better the circumstances of their lives through a monumental amount of individual and collective effort.”  The quote in a nutshell shows that as humans it is a collective goal to get to a point of “better control” of their life. You seem to have more control in the better circumstance you create. If we can’t achieve control I believe as humans we will specify certain things, to give the allusion of control. In reality we still have no control of the situation. This is why there is such a huge conflict over universal health care in the United States. Everybody wants the healthcare they feel gives them the best control over their health, people need to have the feeling of control when it comes to their health.

            We say things to convince ourselves we have a grip on the situation like it will “lower or higher your risk” of certain diseases. Notice that nothing is ever said with complete and undeniable certainty that you will cause or prevent something. I do not think humans have any control over health as much as we would like this to be true, it just cannot be done. For example cancer, if you smoke a lot you have a greater chance of getting cancer. There is a chance as well that you may never get and Vis versa. A person that never smokes can get cancer and took all the nessecary precautions to avoid the disease; some are even be born with it. There are many diseases and physical handicaps that are hereditary, completely out of one’s control. The only counter argument that I can think of is if someone were to eat a lot, then  gain weight and possibly get diabetes. Which is a strong possibility but what about the people who have always ate healthy but still manage to get some type of diabetes maybe it just ran in their family. It shows the lack of control that we have humans really have. We can take as many steps to avoid negative health situations as we can but there are just unffortunalty things in this world we have no control over. You still have to look at things like car accidents, natural disasters and acts of violence. Unexpected events happen every day that in a matter of moments could put the healthiest person in the world in critical condition or dead.

            To say that humans could possibly control health is just wishful thinking, almost mythical in my eyes. We create these statistics and add these percent’s, because as humans we need this to ease our minds, to reassure ourselves we have control. If we believe we have some sort of control over what happens or can happen to us it subsides the fear in each person’s head, that the true chaos, which is how the earth operates, cannot be implied to you because you have control. Nobody wants to think today could be medically life changing for me and there is nothing I could do about it. The present determines the future, but the approximate present does not determine the approximate future. What you are doing doesn’t determine what the end result will be. You do things to possibly get the result that you want but many times that is not the case. My grandmother who passed away in 94 had never drank, never smoke, ate well and the hereditary genes in my family are good. At the age of 48 she was randomly was diagnosed with a fatal heart disease that slows the heart beat until it ceases to beat completely. She was a healthy person and heart disease had never ran in the family. Unfortunate events like this happen every day to people all over the world with no explanation. When things like this happen, how can the idea of health control ever be solidified?