Rooted in the amazing car crash that is Industrialization, and whatever we call its ugly social, environmental, and economic aftermath, social medicine as a scientific field gradually began in the early 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution. But we didn't know that back in 2020 when we began to talk about it. We have been talking about The Hologram as social medicine, because when you produce a culture of care, where everyone is both giving and receiving support, and stop treating each individual like a lone yacht in the night, entire communities can find stability and move towards some small amount of health (not that health is really a final destination we will ever reach on a burning planet).
Social Medicine
Like you, we know that no one on a burning planet is healthy when other people are suffering. Social Medicine as a field discusses how social determinants of health impact individual and collective health, disease, and the delivery of medical care. For us in The Hologram, that means that no one can be healthy when the people around them are not, which means everyone is sick. It also means that in order to heal ourselves, we need to heal our communities. And in order to do that, we need to abolish the predatory systems like the hierarchical, racist, and profit driven economic systems we rely on most.