Against Public Health
Oftentimes we see the type of character that enters into the field of public health: Highly optimistic, disgusted by the failure of authority, and having an intense desire to enact change and becoming the force by which the people are saved. Like Siddhartha Gautama, they will go into the world, see evil for the first time, and cannot help but feel as if the veil that obscured life had been lifted. They feel like the frog at the bottom of the well, having realized how small and narrow they were in their ignorance. Not to say that this is the wrong attitude to adopt -- this is still superior to the cynical and disillusioned life of someone who has seen too much. But if one reacts with moralism -- that is, in the language of should and ought , shaping the world to reflect the life at the bottom of the well, instead of with acceptance of the reality of matters and with a grasp of the long history of mankind that is required to be patient ("the long view of history"), then one m...