Heroes Not Zombies

4 years ago today, I wrote and published my very first post, having spent a few weeks before that researching various blogging platforms, learning how to use them, and creating a name and a design for mine.

I chose the name heroes not zombies because I believe we humans have a tendency to slip into autopilot and drift through life zombie fashion. I also think that society is ordered to make people that way. Commodification and command and control seem to be the order of the day. People are reduced to units.

I think we need to reclaim what it is to be human and we can do that through telling stories. We create a sense of self through the narratives we create around our experience, and we communicate our inner, subjective reality through telling others stories and through dialogue. We have the opportunity to become present and aware and in so doing to become the heroes of our own stories (hero, in the literary sense of the lead character).

But I had other motives for starting this blog too. I wanted to share my passion and my enthusiasm for life. This seems a good place to do that.

I also want to stimulate people to think differently about health and health care, so it pleases me greatly to see that the most visited post, by a long, long way, is the one about the Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (click on “person sized medicine vs molecule sized medicine” in the top posts on the right). I really love that painting. I think it completely captures the shift in emphasis away from seeing illness as a contextually bound experiential phenomenon, to seeing it as a reified disease. What I mean is that through autopsies we began to see illness as a thing. As technology developed we delved deeper and deeper into the human body, examining smaller and smaller parts. That progress has enormously expanded our understanding of the body and of pathology. But too often, the downside is we forget that it’s human beings who experience illness and that disease is only a part of the problem.

I want to make the case for understanding and emphasising health and healing. Healing shouldn’t be just what you hope happens as a side effect of managing disease. It should be something we explicitly address, deepen our understanding of, and actively trying to deliver. After all, a healthy person is more likely to self-repair, self-regulate, and so, effectively deal with disease and pathology than an unhealthy one.

So, if this is your first time here, welcome, please take your time and browse around. I hope you find some things to stimulate you, to enlighten you, to delight you. And if you’re one of the folk who has been here with me back and forth over the last four years, thank you. It’s been great to make your acquaintance and I look forward to sharing much more with you in the years to come.

Here’s to great stories! Here’s to life! Here’s to wonder and awe at the amazing diversity and creativity of the everyday. Here’s to you!