Health and the Environment

Last year, during the training of the Community Program for the accompaniment of children with projectable capacities, we had the opportunity to participate in an presentation by our brother Alfredo Mires on an extremely important topic: Health and the environment.

Alfredo supported the importance of the emotional, cultural and social roots in the health of each person and opened paths for us to live healthier and in a healthier environment.

We share with you some of the ideas worked on:

We have become accustomed to identifying health with medicine and hospitals, and we tend to forget that health and illness are fundamentally ecological and social phenomena.

Some 2,450 years ago, in his book "The Republic", the philosopher Plato said that "a city with many hospitals is mainly a poorly governed city."

That more hospitals are built does not mean that we are of better health. This is like believing that we are moving forward because large and comfortable cemeteries have been built.

It is necessary to understand the connections of what we do with the whole universe of experiences, processes and perspectives that concern and intersect between all people and cultures.

The break with nature (which could also be called 'the denaturalization of humans') occupies a subjective and objective level implicit in any ailment.

The vital anguish that a misfortune produces is an issue that affects the whole community.

The misfortunes also arise with the sociocultural and ecological changes that affect biodiversity, that is, when what we know and can digest is affected. Today, with the extension of the market economy, dietary habits are usually the most affected.

Health is linked to sensitivity. Our internal processes usually affect our external behaviour.