Narrative Medicine is after-postmodern efficiency in healthcare

In the postmodern period of history, the advances in technology became the main way and objective in healthcare. So, anamnesis and physical examination were more and more let aside and almost ignored. It is important to recognize several achievements of that kind of thing. But, in human history, many times when we gain something, we lose something. That was the “trade” then in healthcare…

Nevertheless, in after-postmodern times, those efficiencies don’t work anymore. It is impossible to provide indifferently to everybody all kind of test without looking singularly to each person. It is not economically sustainable. Another thing is that when we look too much for the tests we lose the human contingencies or the human being as a whole. So, even the improvement of lifetime did not avoid the complaining of patients and health professionals about dehumanization in medicine. It seems that something is wrong, or something is missing…

Narrative Medicine is a way to recover something almost lost in health care, and beyond that it is a new paradigm. But, it is a paradigm inserted in Complex Thinking, Transdisciplinarity and the Singularity of Guattari. It is not an imposed paradigm, but a dialogical paradigm open to listening and discussion. It doesn’t deny the scientific advances but it situates them into the human context. 

After-postmodern was not predictable

A hundred years ago no one could expect, or predict, what could be the 21^st century in its very first decades.

Optimistic people dreamt about a great future with solutions for everything.

Eschatological predictions thought that could be foresighted apocalyptical events.

But the after-postmodern period seem to be something in between…

The Cybernetic development is beyond science fiction, but the picture that is in front of us is also beyond, but “beyond modern” and “beyond postmodern”… it is “post post-modern”…

A hundred years ago, modern people in modern times thought that “modernity” was something invincible, because it has the progress as a strong tool. But today we see that progress is a relative word that does not explain all reality. 

No doubt, we are in the After-Postmodern Era

The so called “efficiency of globalization” cannot do anything for the solution of the huge problem of refugees. We are not saying that none is doing anything, but that the “dream” of the end of the 20^th century, a efficiently global market leading to peace, does not work anymore. A Macro Shift is on the way…  

Post-Economy of 21st Century

Since the beginning of the 21^st century the world is in a transition, a macro-shift to a new period of history, a new era, after the postmodern period corresponding to the second half of 20^th century. An economic crisis started in 2008 and it is still not over, although with ups and downs sometimes it seems that there are several crises, but in true it is the same only one crisis yet, with different faces…

It is so because what is in crisis is the postmodern system. One can ask why something that worked very well did not work anymore. We do not know the wright answer but what we know is that history is like this, history changes anyway, despite human efforts to keep the path the was useful for decades. Paradigms do not stay strong permanently. What happens in biological, physical or chemical level that are all time changing happens also in human, social, anthropological, world, although there are physical, chemical and biological laws… And all happens in cycles also…

Anyway, now that pragmatic economic directions are not working anymore despite people try “to keep in the game…” Economy is not something only rational. The subjective side of economy emerges from time to time and maybe now is one of those moments. The market is nervous, non-confident, etc. So, numbers are not enough.

We do not know what is going to be the new economy. Maybe this kind of “post-economy” is under construction with new factors that are still arising…   

Still the same old crisis...

From time to time since 2008 it seems that a new global crisis arrives, after and before a calm period. But, if we look more carefully, we can see that it is the same crisis since those days.

Some continuity is going through the ups and downs and it is difficult to understand and read it by “economy lenses”. Maybe it happens because this kind of crisis probably is a historical crisis, a cultural crisis, a “macro shift moment” between two eras: postmodern times are ending and after-postmodern are coming. The system, that was useful once, doesn’t work anymore as it worked before. That system was truly efficient and efficiency was a capital quality of it… But that efficiency does not give answer to the new questions or solution to the new problems. It is time to find a new paradigm to bring meaning to the signals seen in day by day, or in science, or in culture. Economic problems are not alone separated from other human factors. So, maybe it is necessary to use creativity and find new languages to understand and describe the differences among economies that are trying to find some common ground to them, that are trying to find a new Ariadne’s thread to go in and out of the labyrinth…     

Migration, after-postmodern and the ship of fools

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance the stultifera navis or the ship of fools was an allegoric image of people, or maybe a society, navigating without course and without captain or guide. This symbol was used in several forms of art to usually express something more in ironic than in a dramatic way. Nowadays, in after-postmodern times, what was just a symbolic and ironic image before, now became a very sad reality in the middle of nowhere and no-country. The efficiency of frontiers as a meaning for home in postmodern times ended, and was replaced by distant hopes for not so distant lands, although very far from reaching…      

Post-antibiotic era in After-postmodern

The World Health Organization publicized information about a new report named “Worldwide country situation analysis: Response to antimicrobial resistance”. The most part of countries in the world have no measures to diminish that cited resistance in what was called “post-antibiotic era”. The postmodern era in the second half of the 20^th century was the “kingdom of antibiotics”. After penicillin, and other drugs, it was an enthusiasm about ending the major part of infectious diseases in a time of efficiency and pragmatism. In the sixties, Science established supposed years to decay of tuberculosis, malaria, et cetera, because it was success against smallpox, syphilis, and some diseases of childhood.  But in the end of the century, after HIV infections and no controlled use of antibiotics, among other factors, that certitude changed and now it is necessary to find new ways to deal with resistant bacteria and other microbial agents. So, it is one more evidence of the transition to an after-postmodern era…