In these days I stumbled , reading a book , in a interesting statement about bureaucracy and its thinkers…and how it changed in the last thousands of years; and I found interesting similitude between bureaucracy and the market of dental opinion leaders , courses and congresses.
But let’s start from the beginning..in the past prominent people were risk takers. And they took risk more than ordinary citizens. Roman emperor Julian the apostate died on the battlefield fighting against Persian empire . Also his predecessor Valerian did the same end. The last Byzantine emperor , Constantine XI also found his death fighting against turkish troops. Costantine had been offered a deal in the event of a surrender but he refused a deal for its self respect.
In brief , statistics give us the information that less than one third of roman emperor had the luck to die in their bed being old, most of them died either to a coup or a battle.
Prominent people deserve its status usually thanks to their risk taking ability . Still nowaday there are some reminiscence of this old social contract…in the Flakland war of 1982 the british royal family put their prince Andrew in the first line with his helicopter to awake people’s respect toward monarchy.
Prominent people in the past were people with the ability to decide what do do and to pay , eventually , the consequences of their actions.
Not today…today the so called prominent people make decisions staying far from the result of their actions.Just Think about people in the closed rooms that decided about the iraq invasion of 2003 , the removal of Gheddafi in Libya in 2011…the same people that decided to create al qaeda with “moderate rebels “ in order to fight soviet troops loosing control on them till the famous attack to the towers in New york on 11 sept 2011.
Already greeks more than 2000 years ago talked about Pathemata mathemata ….guide your learning through pain . The knowledge we get by tinkering , via trail and error , experience , and the workings time , in other words , contact with the real life , is vastly SUPERIOR to that obtained through reasoning , something self serving institutions have been very busy hiding from them.
Modern elite make decisions without paying downside , continuing they practice in the comfort of their thermally regulated suburban house with a two car garage , a dog , and a small play area with pesticide free grass for his overprotected two children . Others will pay the price of their ideas.
We see something similar in dentistry.. some days ago I had a nice talk with a talented palestinian dentist , Areen Abdelbaqi. She is a very talented and motivated dentist , for sure above average of dental category ( and when I talk about category I don’t talk about palestinian but the whole “world”category) . She told me something that astonished me , and I immediately realized what si wrong with most of dental education. Areen wrote me :
“ I will be honest with you
Before Tomorrow tooth I was lost and dissapointed
I cant belong mentally to any modern school such as XXXX (equipment ,ability,photos,patients, I felt the patients of doctor just belong to Mars and Venus to Earth especially the gum of these patient and oral hygiene )
But when I see Tomorrow tooth patients from the first I told to myself as my patient , as any one in the Earth ..your expectations and your treatment plan more close to reality …at this moment I belong to this familt emotionally and mentally without any force …just attractive force to reality “
People like Areen immediately recognized when she see people the really can help her and immediately feel wrong when she have to deal with people that , like Stevan Kopanja love to say , are clownicians .
How many people do you see in dental congresses sharing a small % of their work ?of course their best of the best work? how many people do we see in dental education that spend the biggest part of their time doing courses and congresses and not working on real patients?
Like modern elite in government also in dentistry is happening the same : we see always more and more people dedicated more to teach than to work. People that lose the contact with the real world , doing this they forgot the reality of the things and they start to idealize everything .
They forget about patient with limited opening of their mouth , with anxiety , fear of dental procedures , people with limited financial possibilities , people with bad oral hygiene , people diseased …they forgot what people really is …
Like modern elite they start to tell people what to do but they won’t pay in case of failure….and on the other hand is very easy standing on the top to blame people experiencing failures that probably they haven’t been good enough following the “protocol”!
We have to go back to ancient time probably…we have to go back to follow people that daily works and share their work and their failures, people that daily pay the price of their mistakes .
How is possible to see “famous” dental opinion leaders write every day on social network and post very few cases in a year ? What do they do in the remaining time?
Because only who pays his mistakes has the right to learn .
Pathemata Mathemata.
