Environmental Medicine And Philosophy Of Environmental Pprotection

Author(s): Julian Aleksandrowicz
Publisher: Julian Aleksandrowicz

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PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION
In the situation that we have created ourselves, changing the natural environment in a manner that destroys ourselves, we more and more often die not of old age, but as the result of diseases, i.e. the damage of the structure and functions of the organs, caused by the waste products of technical civilization.
healthy is especially dangerous, since neurotic people, have difficulties in organizing healthy living conditions.
It is getting more and more difficult to live in this world, which is being shaped by the dynamically developing technical and biological sciences, overwhelming with their magnitude, the values regarding knowledge about a healthy life, carried by the humanities but mainly by ethics and knowledge of inter-human relations.
Efforts made to improve the situation of mankind in the world by supplying a better quality of life are the right and duty of all people and each individual, not only those who belong to the medical profession. Man is not being born with a ready-made and complete moral equipment. Moral norms are the expression of the development of individuals and societies. No vivid imagination is needed to notice the outlines of the system of the moral values of tomorrow, on which the existence of the human species depends.
It would be worth-while to devote to them at least as much effort as mankind devotes to the Olympic Games and the development of the human body. A perfectly well developed, efficient and beautiful body of a human being with the mind of a moron, is worse than a soulless machine, since an ethically under-developed man sometimes can be the initiator of sufferings and the misfortune of millions.
The cultural level of a given society is reflected by its attitude towards nature, which means towards the biophysical environment. Man, perfecting the structure of his body with the help of all kinds of instruments, such as machines, creates technical civilization. During the course of this process he exhausts the natural resources, contaminates the biosphere with the waste products of technical civilization, which means he contaminates himself, too, and is unable to master the population explosion of the Third World.
Among all those who are aware of the danger carried by technics, the purpose of which is to make the life of people easier, the idea is taking shape to cut the links of the chain that is being tightened more and more around us, annihilating mankind with civilizational diseases.
Thus we make efforts to protect the endangered psychosocial environment, i.e. culture, which shapes inter-human relations. It is the latter which, improving the quality of life, favour a subjective feeling of wellbeing, of physical as well as mental and social fitness, which we, followers of Hippocrates, call health, and the disciples of Socrates-happiness.