Thinking about power

I recently read Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer. Working to provide health care in places where poverty is rife, he has often found decisions made based on "practical" considerations, that were often unfair. For example, you could deciding against treating certain populations because they are unlikely to be compliant with the regimen, making it a judgment on their character, despite it often being more of a matter of resources.

It is hard for a large family in a small two room dwelling to isolate the sick from the well. If treatment requires clean water and adequate nutrition when there is access to neither, it is unlikely to be successful.

On one level, a compassionate person might feel bad about that and throw up their hands, or they might try and find a way to improve water sanitation and food donations.

On another level, you can look at the causes. In one of the cases, many people had been surviving as farmers, not rich but doing all right. Then a dam was built to generate electricity, and it flooded their land, sending some to worse land and others to the cities looking for menial jobs where they were at a high risk for different diseases, that they would then have trouble treating.

Someone made money off of their displacement. That was probably someone who already had money.

I'd like to think that hydroelectric power doesn't have to be evil, but it has a tendency to displace people a lot, and take away their sources of sustenance and income, except it is only for some people. We are good at deciding that some people have to sacrifice for the greater good.

Sacrificing for good is a reasonable concept, but we should look carefully at the balance of sacrifice and benefit. Are the people who will suffer being compensated? Beyond that, are they being cared for in a way that they are not permanently set behind? Is it all being done to consolidate the riches of someone who already has them?

The book focused on disease a lot, but as much as doctors look at the pathologies of the diseases, actual solutions requires looking at the pathology of society: the pathologies of power.

I mention the compliance issue because if the greed of the powerful is a disease, then the key to weakening our immune systems has been a focus on deciding that rich people have worked hard and poor people are lazy, and they all deserve what they have.

It works well, so apparently it is logical, but it has never and never will be Christian.

No follower of Christ should ever fall for it.