The Public, Private, and “Stepping on Toes” in Healthcare

Abstract

What is public and what is private? Systems can be seen as exchanges and feedbacks of energies. Those energies certainly may be heat. They may be kinetic. They might be based on discourse. The energies could perhaps manifest as the directives and choices made by individuals in the public. Public health as a mission seeks to save collective lives from often avoidable premature mortality and morbidity. And those private “lives” that we wish to affect can then be collected together as the “population” of interest, or a public. We let the words, public health, roll off our tongues with ease. But how often do we take time to understand the ontological meaning of “public?” Discovering “publics” would be quite at home with Aristotle. But how often do health professionals take a moment to give the philosophical less than a fleeting thought. This chapter supports a deeper discussion of the political and ethical implications of private illness and public health.

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at The Complex Systems Advanced Academic Workshop (CSAAW) at the Second Michigan Complexity Mini-Conference, University of Michigan- Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS), on May 13, 2013.