From Lisa's Inbox: Part Two -- Lao Tsipher

For my blog entry this week, I wanted to share two letters that I’ve received recently, because both of them have to do with the public aspects of CAN, and I figure that’s your business, all of you, as much as it is mine, and that they belong here, because this is CAN’s public blog. Here is Part Two.

Some of you may remember me saying that ever since I wrote The Remedy, my inbox has attracted some mysterious correspondence. My favorite, at first, were the enigmatically worded job offers from sunny Estonia (no, I’m not kidding; I told Lupine she’d better be nice to me or I’d take Mr. Igorsky up on it) -- but then Lao Tsipher showed up, and I forgot all about Estonia. I picture Lao drifting inscrutably through cyberspace, making sphinxlike pronouncements on the state of the acupuncture profession. I printed a relatively long discourse from Lao in the CAN practitioner forums, titled “An Anonymous History of the Acupuncture Profession”; I noticed later that the same piece showed up in another acupuncture blog, so obviously I’m not the only person Lao communicates with. Anyway, this week I received a cryptic little missive from him (?), saying that he (?) liked the CAN blog, and would like to be a guest contributor every now and then. We never said we wouldn’t accept contributions from disembodied Taoist sages, so I said, sure, you bet. Lao and I don’t agree about everything ( I have some comments on his letter, which I will save for Part Three of my post) but I find him reliably thought-provoking. I hope you do too:

[i]Hello!  I am Lao.
 
I have been reading, with great interest, many ideas and themes posted on this website.  For reasons I will try to make clear below, I believe that this website provides the only hopeful place for persons in this country to discourse about people?s medicine.
 
Excuse me if I use some terms imprecisely, but it is extremely difficult to find alternative words that capture the sense I seek to share with you.  Individual people and organizations that deal with medicine are alike in that they participate in one or another of three types.  These can be recognized and distinguished from one another easily.  Today I am interested in seeing how these types display themselves in institutions, especially those related to acupuncture.
 
Most individuals and institutions are neutral.  They sometimes absorb and they sometimes contribute.  While they may seem, at any given moment, either good or bad, contributing or demanding, their overall effect is neutral.  In our world of acupuncture institutions, many of the schools fall into this category.  On the one hand, they take money.  On the other hand, they provide students with vital information and the credentials necessary to entry into the profession.  You may like the school you have attended, or not, but it has provided you with the means to practice people?s medicine.  It has undoubtedly also provided you with a debt you will pay for some time to come.  It gives and takes, but there is a balance.  These are practical organizations, and amoral ones.
 
Fewer individuals and institutions are consumers.  They drain resources, drain energy, drain every life-filled commodity.  You know the people I mean.  They consume your essence with their negativity and their need.  They give nothing in return.  They simply absorb.  Our national organizations are like that.  Take, for example, the so-called AAAOM, some new organization formed from the merger of the Alliance and the AAOM.  Some people in the old AAOM, a front organization for the insurance company called American Acupuncture Council, have admitted that it just ate the AOM Alliance, took its members and dodged its commitments and responsibilities.  Look at the websites, all run by the staff of the former AAOM (while former Alliance staff were dropped and not even paid back wages!).  Look at the confrontational and abrasive tone of the supposed new organization.  It eats; it absorbs, it consumes energy; and it gives nothing in return.  This organization, pre-eminent among other similar national organization, displays its essential selfish and self-centered personality.
 
The fewest individuals and the fewest organizations are contributors.  They grow the wealth, grow the energy, grow the truth, by contributing or giving or emanating.  You know those rare people who seem to leave you always stronger and better than before you encountered them.  The same is true of a very few organizations.  The one shining light is the rise of the Community Acupuncture Network.  Despite its temptations to think narrowly, it always rises to the needs of the patients and the practitioners.  It seems to exist to help people find access to people?s medicine and help practitioners find a way to make their way by becoming one with the people they serve.  There is nothing here of finding proper status or finding equality with or superiority to other professions.  There is only a devotion to bringing together a dedication to the needs of patient and practitioners alike.  Both are served when either is served.
 
These are three ways, but not all are equally valuable.  This is Lao?s challenge to you.  Members, friends, and readers of the Community Acupuncture Network, please accept my invitation.  Apply the lessons of people?s medicine to this problem.  How do you see the flow of energy in our institutions?  From an enegetic point of view, how does CAN compare to AAAOM, or the others?  How do CA practitioners compare to others, to our colleagues in western medicine?  Is this just a business model, or something more?
 
Lao Tsipher
July 2007[/i]