Nursing, though not generally the ruling force of this type of planning,
certainly is involved in control measures analogous to Plato's. Nurses
do influence who gets the hospital bed and who does not, who gets the
specialized treatment and equipment, who is discharged and when, and
what goes into the education and planning for post-hospital health care.
Also, how do our biases influence our teaching regarding family?
Innuendoes are frequent in the areas of birth control, abortion, and
family size. So nurses can make a difference regarding community
thought, purpose, and action.
Nietzsche put forth a concept of community of a more indefinite nature
than Plato's.[12] Two major themes dominated the nature of community in
his conception: (1) the legitimate purpose of community was the total
support of its elite men and (2) the criterion for determining the elite
was to be based on those who selected their own values with a "will" to
say, "yes" to life. He referred to his elite as supermen. He questioned
the realization of such a community because of the preponderance of
conforming nonquestioning mediocre men. This complacent majority fearful
of the different or strange would subdue the possibility of his
supermen. Nietzsche did not seem to trust man; he spoke of him as
"human, all too human." Unlike Plato, Nietzsche viewed "good" and "evil"
as arising from a common source. Man in his humanness, Nietzsche felt,
denied his animal heritage and animal qualities. Recognition of these,
of one's Dionysian nature, as a source of both "good" and "evil" was
necessary for becoming superman.
To me it is wondrous to ponder my own conscious purposefulness and
unconscious purposelessness, my quality of force as a member of the
nursing and health communities, viewed through the deep extensive
conceptualized thought Nietzsche bequeathed. I offhand consider our
communities as egalitarian, part of a larger egalitarian society. Are
they really? Does the citizen affect the quality of organizational
structure in accordance with his existential needs while in our
commonplace--the health-nursing world? Whose values set and direct on
this stage of life? Do I, nurse, search out the values on which I want
to base my nursing practice? Do I look for direction and values from
others? Did I take on values during my initial nursing experience--values
never to be reexamined?
Within the nursing community are there nurses eagerly noncomplacent and
desirous of looking at, of sharing their explorations, and of
determining and choosing the values that they want to underlie their
nursing practice? {47} Would supernurses be allowed to be the mediocre
many? Who would determine the elite of the nursing community? Could
supernurses survive without approval of their being different? Would
they be strengthened by the fruits of suffering in their struggle within
the profession? Would these fruits of suffering contribute
constructively to the strengthening of the nursing community?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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