Triage

Triage is the medical term for assigning degrees of urgency when evaluating a patient. It used to be the societal method for assigning priorities in civic life- what things are more important than other things in order to promote the health and welfare of our particular societal arrangement. Clearly those who control the levers of power, our institutions and agencies, our economic and political structures, our religious and academic institutions have chosen to triage in a way that places more value on things that in the past were either marginal or unimportant to the health of our State and to retard or eliminate those that are crucial for the long term health and success of the body politic.

We can question motives until we are blue in the face and never adequately address the real issue- should we comply with the destruction of our own communities, families and lives in order to facilitate their further expansion and political control, or simply cease to participate.

Going Galt is a difficult decision to make for most people who are even willing to confront the issue. No one wants to give up the multitude of benefits we receive as members of an advanced civilization, such as indoor plumbing, dentistry, automobiles, readily available entertainment, etc. These perks are the carrot on a stick that has been used to get us to accept most of the current outrages that now make up public life in the 21st century and the thought of giving them up either completely or to a degree is more than most people are willing to consider and so they grit their teeth and fume as each brand new miserable outrage is foisted upon our collective consciences.

The fact is that most of those things will not disappear if we choose to walk away. Knowledge of chemistry, structural engineering, electrical production on a small scale, independent economies, food production, etc are readily available if somewhat more time consuming than by purchasing them from specialists. In many cases- such as providing your own nourishment- is much more efficient, better for you and more rewarding in terms of flavor and satisfaction when done outside of the system. My wife may not be able to set my broken arm as satisfactorily as an orthopedic surgeon, but she prepares a better meal than Thomas Keller. And I know because she has done both.

One of the first things we have sacrificed is the right to make choices. We’re told we have more than ever, but clearly that’s a lie. I have a collection of old rakes for use on the farm, none under a hundred years old, no two alike and each in perfect working order. I can travel anywhere in this country and look for a rake at any box store and my choice will be limited to a plastic, Chinese made POS that will not last a season even if handled with extreme delicacy. We have choices we can make, we can quit this sick and bloated corpse of a world and head down the path to a different and far better one if we stop fearing the things we may have to sacrifice. If we make the right kinds of decisions, if we learn to triage our own lives so that we may ultimately save them, we may find that things we thought we couldn’t live without were the very things that were killing us in the first place.

It would have been easy for me to have mocked the poor creatures in the photos on the Hell, Motherf#@%ing Yea thread, but that wouldn’t change a thing in their lives or mine. They are lost to history, their value to our society no more than a sandbag in a trench war. Those who can impact the future know better than to abdicate their lives to sloth and gluttony, want and desires, to be nothing more than a living, breathing appetite instead of a productive and inspirational figure that lights the way into the future wherever it may lead.

The people who are reading this are, for the most part, informed enough to understand that nothing lasts forever, they are also cynical enough to think that nothing they do will alter or change the outcome in any way. Such a belief would be a critical error to make. If ever there were a time when doing the right thing, making the correct choice, deciding which attribute had more value than another were critical to the life of the patient, now would be the time.

Sometimes the only way to win is not to play the game.