Dopa-Money, Dissected (full video): common cause of back pain, physician burnout & healthcare crisis

There's an antidote in Plato's cave: Emancipation through Truth and Love.

Spine surgeon tells the whole truth about back pain, disc degeneration, and spine surgery.
Concerned citizen exposes societal fault lines that cause most contemporary pain, suffering, and death.
Using installation art, scientist postulates that humanistic reasoning can make medicine great again.
This is a story about coming out a second time - now about bigger skeletons in ALL our closets - and Truth and Love are again the answer.

Live an answer to these questions:
What is freedom? Is happiness real? Are they possible?
What constitutes respect? Do we really care about each other?
Why don’t we tell – and live – the whole truth?
Knowing we’ll face darkness, why come to work tomorrow?

Many spinal fusions are unnecessary and result in failed back surgery syndrome. Why is this allowed to flourish? Dopa-money runs this country because we harbor thin, pathologic conceptions of freedom, respect, success, and happiness. These societal ills poison citizens' bodies and minds, turning them into patients who seek a "fix" that is often impossible rather than healing which is necessary. Most cases of back pain can be prevented or helped simply by changing what be put in our mouths (nicotine and unhealthy, excessive food) or learning to live around the pain (because some degree of pain is a NORMAL part of life). Instead, greedy, narcissistic doctors go on to exploit them them for their own ends, and ultimately the the patient gets USED by healthcare!! How can you and I respond?

Chemical escapes, bourgeois trappings, and saccharine propaganda CANNOT relieve the daily darkness we experience in healthcare - they only ensnare us further. Nothingness is the origin and destination of our material world, but not the prescription for our existence, which is post-material, electric, fleeting. The answer a dark, uncertain, and meaningless world is not to retreat, but to re-engage it with a better version of yourself. Nihilism might be the right description, but it is the wrong prescription. Laugh at absurdity occasionally, but generally live a better answer to it. Even if free will is impossible (which is probably the truth given what we know in neuroscience), how can we not LIVE THE FLOW and PLAY A ROLE? We'll have plenty of time to let go after we die.

All are welcome in my club, and come as you are. Belong to only one club: Team Humanity. The uniforms we wear, viewpoints we hold, and identities we bear ENABLE our participation; they don't replace it. As such the particular aspects of our individual existences ought to unite rather than divide us. They are nearly as arbitrary as the transient whims we feel and circumstances we face and thus have little moral worth. Let the light shine on what really matters: an always-evolving and reflective equilibrium between now (is) and tomorrow (ought), vigorously but respectfully debated within and amongst ourselves to emancipate our world from suffering every moment. Anything less is ... slavery.

Ideas: Risk factor modification, non-operative care, consumption, dopamine, DDD, patient as customer, adjacent segment disease, tobacco industry, obesity, for-profit healthcare insurance companies, consumerism, commodification, degenerative, pleasure circuit, dopamine, cyberpunk nightmare, dystopia, censorship, medical ethics, moral injury, patient satisfaction, materialism, doctor, chauvinism, narcissism, prior authorization, organized greed, ethical investing, apathy, bad medicine, wounded healer, psychosocial disease, is-ought problem, pain body behavior mind society, mindfulness, dilemma, social contract, inalienable rights, philosophy, morality, hippocratic oath, hypocrisy, trolley problem, sociology, psychology, neurosurgery, interdisciplinary, harvard dexter gate, monetization, advocacy, hidden cost of money, economic externalities, conflict of interest, drug, work-life balance, technocratic hubris, group-think, tainted science, medical humanities, alienation, grievance narrative, alarmists, neurosis, identity politics, technology, physician suicide, overstimulation, burnout, dehumanization, scientism, existential threat, existence, perception, reality, gay coming out, LGBT, humanistic reasoning, restlessness of reason, continuous improvement, purpose, responsibility, motivation, vigilance, dialogue, grit, fault / fix vs growth / healing mindset, perfectionism, human rights, duty, justice, education, self, false dichotomy, veil of ignorance, existentialism, optimistic nihilism, carpe diem, golden rule, flow, stoicism, faith, humanism, finding common ground in divided society. Merry Christmas from a non-religious person: What would Jesus do? Be Santa: Live the answer to the problems you see (to do that, you must tell the truth and love each other).

Only by striving for a more coherent vision of our own lives can we possibly form a more perfect union as a people. Turn off the disease switch!