An Ounce of Prevention

The old saying goes "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Traditionally, that observation is applied to the world of health care. We recognize that if we avoid a health problem in the first place, we're saving ourselves a lot of pain and suffering down the road. Dress warmly when it's cold and you won't catch a cold. Eat a proper diet and your body will get what it needs. Brush your teeth and you won't wear dentures.

The rising costs of health care is a popular subject of debate these days. It's really expensive to go from being sick to being well, whether it's a visit to the doctor, dentist, therapist or pharmacy. The more advanced the malady, the more expensive the cure. And that, of course, is the source of the saying; the farther into a disease we get, the more difficult it is to get out again.

This pattern is true of many other areas of our lives, of course. Get a company on the wrong track and it's a mighty difficult thing to get it back on course. Ignore maintenance on your car and it's going to break down, requiring costly repairs. Raise a child the wrong way and it's going to cost the resulting man or woman a lifetime of pain.

It's that last one that I want to underscore. That is, the realization that it really matters how children are raised. After all, they become the adults of tomorrow. Think of adults that you admire and ponder how they were raised. Think of adults that you make you cringe at their antics and ponder their childhoods as well.

Those antics often take individuals into unexplored or ill-defined legal areas. Society's cure for this is to create new laws, to tell people that it's bad to go into those areas. Sarbanes-Oxley is an example of this. Men running a major corporation didn't feel obliged to run their company in a responsible way. They took advantage of the financial situation that they were in, and it resulted in a disaster for everyone involved. Sarbanes-Oxley is legislation that was created in an effort to stop those who would be tempted into repeating something like that. It is one pound of cure.

Another simple example that comes to mind for me is Airsoft. Airsoft is an activity that involves what are referred to as "replica firearms". They look just like real weapons, but are actually spring-powered devices that fire plastic pellets the size of a pea. Mind you, they can sting if you're hit by a pellet, and certainly they can blind you if you're hit in an eye. They're serious, but in no way lethal.

Why does Airsoft come up? Because children and young adults don't have the sense to understand the significance of showing such a replica in public. Taking what looks like an AK47 battle rifle to a high school to show it to friends is just a really bad idea. Running around the neighborhood shooting at each other with what look like real 9mm pistols is crazy. These acts are going to cause people to call the police. The police are going to show up and assume that the replicas are real. They're certainly being brandished as though they were. One boy died and there have been a number of scares.

Society's answer? Outlaw Airsoft. It would seem a simple solution, but it's another pound of cure for us all. Airsoft is also used by countless responsible young adults and adults to play war games. If you're male and you're an American, you played wargames at some point in your life. You probably used sticks as your guns and died inventive deaths, but you played wargames. Airsoft is used to play at a higher level. There's really no reason to outlaw the things - except that some people are fools, scaring other people.

Ultimately, we live in a society where we respond to problems by creating new laws to fence people into an ever-tighter area. Don't do 'this' and don't do 'that' because an irresponsible few among the population went far beyond 'this' and 'that' and produced some intolerable situation as a result. We simply cannot continue to outlaw every action, substance and location to ensure that our society will work. As with anti-biotics, the disease tends to adapt to the cure, making it less and less effective. Disease has a way of finding the gaps, just as the criminally-minded find the loopholes in the law.

It's time for an ounce of prevention. Returning to the Anarchy is Best premise, America needs to focus on training our children to want healthy things and to reject unhealthy things. A big part of that is focusing on altruism. Someone who is concerning themselves with the well-being of the rest of the community - their neighbors - is going to think before they do pretty much anything new.

Before getting into a position of corporate governance, people would consider the merits of the path they were starting down, remaining focused on how their new position would benefit the society around them instead of how it would benefit just them or them and their family. An ever-widening scope of inclusion of others in our thinking will produce the very best from us.

Before buying that Airsoft replica weapon, people would consider how other people are going to react to seeing something that looks like a lethal weapon. They won't stay focused on just their own thrills and joys, but will temper that enthusiasm with a need to respect the concerns of those around them.

How is that done? By putting in a curriculum of philosophy, logic and ethics into the schools. By returning to the days of discipline in the schools, instilling respect for others in the children. The ounce of prevention is simply to place the developing minds of children into an environment that causes them to view the world as a place to contribute to, not get something out of. If parents were doing that, there would be no call for it in the schools, but it's clear that just letting things take a natural course isn't going to do the trick.

John F. Kennedy once inspired this nation with one simple statement: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." That is our ounce of prevention. The law books are far too heavy with pound upon pound of cure.