#640 The Value of One Human Being

     Bedazzlement with "science", but most powerfully, the pervasive intrusion of multinational business, has reduced our respect for individual human beings.
     Anyone should be able to reproduce a scientific experiment and obtain identical results - technique & technology rule, individuals are unimportant, interchangeable to science. 
     It's "good for business" to shut down factories at home, putting countless people out of work, and move production to third world countries where slave-labor conditions are standard - neither our unemployed nor the newly-employed have any value at all to big business. It's all about production & profit. The individual person's quality of life (QoL) is of no concern to business.
     Most shocking, we ourselves are ignoring the value, the meaning, of our own individual life. If you doubt this, review your own self-care habits:
     • do I eat a healthy diet?
     • do I exercise regularly?
     • do I get enough quality sleep?
     • do I spend enough quality time with family & close friends? 
     • do I lead a healthy, balanced life? 
     Chances are you're ignoring self-care because you too prioritize production & profit over the value, the QoL of the individual - yourself! 
     Yet our own individual QoL is intimately linked with & thus critical to the QoL of all other humans. Each individual is as profoundly interconnected with & important to the rest of humanity as any one cell in our body is interconnected with & vital to all other cells in our body.

     We must prioritize recovering our profound respect for our own, and each other's dignity as magnificent mysterious evolving vitally important individual human beings.

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2015/02/the-wise-caring-clinician.html

#483 Awareness, Choice & Beyond

     "Being mindful presupposes that individuals whose awareness is not impaired do have a choice in what phenomena they attend to and how they act."

        Hirst IS. Perspectives of mindfulness. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 2003; 10: 359–366. 

     Through practicing mindfulness, one approaches "direct & constant mindfulness of the body . . . consciousness of every movement, breath, feeling & thought—‘a consciousness alive to the present reality’.

     This is in direct contrast to how the majority of us live our lives — not usually paying attention to what we are doing or saying, distracted by our thoughts or lamenting the past or fearing the future; not fully present and barely aware of eating when we are eating or sleeping when we are sleeping or walking when we are walking. 

     ‘In its developed form, mindfulness . . . brings about a highly refined sensitivity to everything that happens, however minute, in one’s immediate vicinity and in one’s mind.’" 

       Lynn R. Mindfulness in social work education. Social Work Education 2010; 29(3): 289–304. 
 

     "During the past two decades, meditation and other contemplative practices are being applied to a growing number of professional fields:
     In healthcare, the number of hospitals and medical clinics that provide Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training for patients grew from 80 in 1993 to 250 in 2003.  

     In higher education, 100 professors have received a Contemplative Fellowship to assist them in integrating these practices into their university and college class curriculum, and 32 educational institutions were identified as integrating these practices at the program and department level.  

     In the business & nonprofit sector, at least 135 companies, nonprofit organizations, & government agencies have offered their employees classes in some form of meditation and/or yoga."

       Duerr M. A Powerful Silence. The Role of Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices In American Life and Work. Report on the Contemplative Net Project The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Northampton, MA, 2004. 

aoc46    www.dpreview.com