When We’re Vulnerable, We Need Support. Our Systems Exploit Us Instead.
The Predatory Principle, or How Our Systems Take Advantage of Us at the Precise Moments in Life We Need Support Most
There’s a weird, gruesome pattern I’ve noticed, at the heart of dystopian American life. To explain it, consider a shocking statistic. Half of all cancer patients in America…lose their life savings. Half. Maybe that’s unsurprising — but it should still be disturbing.
What would you say the most vulnerable moments in a person’s life are? Birth, youth, education, illness, joblessness, aging — that would be my list. And yet it’s at precisely these moments that our institutions and systems prey on us, pull the rug out from under us, don’t just fail us, but work against us — the exact instants, the great turning points in a life, when they should be supporting us. That’s the grim, consistent, predictable pattern of life now.
That’s what I’ve come to call the predatory principle. Institutions and systems prey on us at the precise instants we’re most vulnerable — when we need the most support. But instead of supporting us — they take advantage of us. Our frailty, our circumstances, our misfortunes, our missteps. They knock us down, instead of lifting us up. Whether our healthcare…