Monday, December 28, 2009

You Can Tell a Lot About a Nation By the Way....

Today is the second to last entry for this America is Lost blog. The last post tomorrow will pertain to what, if anything, can be done to prevent what appears to be this country's inevitable fall. As I wrote in an earlier entry last October,all empires come to an end.America is right in the range of time when the great civilizations of the past have ended.Again, as you may have read in previous posts, this country has the same things going on in its government, as well as its cultural and social systems that other empires had before they fell.
A quote attributed to Gandhi was, "You can tell much about a country by the way they treat their animals." A true statement indeed. One doesn't have to look very far to see the abominable conditions many animals are raised and kept in as they are prepared for our eventual consumption. You don't have to be a member of PETA to recognize that this is not right.However, I am not thinking of animals as it pertains to Gandhi's quote,I have in mind the treatment of the elderly in this country.I read an article recently that in Japan it is not uncommon for family members to fight over who will have the right to take care of their aged parents. I should clarify this by saying that the children want to have their parents looked after by them.In the Asian culture, with being "old" comes respect and a kind of reverence. This is a far cry from what exists in America where the "reverence" is for youth and what is perceived as beauty(six-pack abs and silicone breasts for starters).Too often,people in this country are quick to have their parents sent to an assisted living center or a nursing home as soon as the inevitable signs of aging and diminishing physical abilities begin to appear. Granted,there are times when the health condition of someone necessitates special medical care that can only be obtained from a medical facility but far too often our elderly end up in nursing or similar homes because their children simply don't want to be bothered. This is indicative of a mindset that is dangerously self-centered. Yet it is the norm in this country. Do Americans not realize that they too will eventually become old? The harsh reality is that the overwhelming majority of nursing "homes" are profit,not patient driven. As one who has worked in a nursing "home" the emphasis is on keeping staffing low thus insuring greater profits.This is the NORM for assisted living and nursing facilities. If you doubt what I say then take a visit to a nursing home,any nursing home, and you will see that what I say is true.So what is the real tragedy here? It's not so much with the corporations that run these facilities,they are expected to be looking for the profit first. It's with the people, who for the sake of convenience and not wanting to disrupt their "lifestyle", send their parents to these modern day gulags. Somehow our elderly deserve a better fate.

No comments:

Post a Comment