As a nation, we don’t only outsource and “leave to the other guy” basic life-saving services, like the ones that would have saved those dozen dead miners — as the NY Times reports:
This devastating timeline is at the core of a detailed report by Ken Ward Jr., a reporter for The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, that questions whether some of the 12 fatalities might have been prevented by a faster, better-organized rescue effort…..
As individuals, we outsource the care of our children, our elderly, our homes, even our meals. And, with this outsourcing comes a detachment from all of those connections to people and actions that, until these days, have been at the core of what being a human being living on this planet is.
We idolize the machines and mechanisms that disconnect us from the limitations of our human bodies. We outsource the capcities of our own minds to the machinations of those various entertainment and physical labor saving machines.
No, I don’t want to back to the dark ages, and obviously, as I sit here at one of those machines, I’m not anti-technology — especially technology that saves lives and makes physical work easier.
But as I watch how much my ailing mom needs to be with family, needs to have a sense of being truly cared for — as I do the physical things for her that I could outsource — as, last night, I watched a tv commercial that ends with “Good Night, John Boy” — and as I read the Times article about how those men would have been saved had there been less corporate penny pinching and more human consideration — I got to thinking that this outsourcing phenomena is leeching us of our connections of what is important about living in these bodies.
Which is all why I didn’t outsource my mother.
But I’m thinking that, when I’m her age, having lived so long in a society based on outsourcing, I will not think it odd or dehumanizing to use that outsourcing service myself.
Times change. Not always for the better.