Mirage of Health

"According to Lao-tzu and Taoist followers, joy and bliss were possible only in a world of primitive simplicity. Men could achieve health and happiness only by merging themselves with their environment and living in accord with the laws of the four seasons, by participating with other living creatures in the mysterious equality and thus forget themselves in the Tao," (258-259). A philosophy of health began as the Taoist people backed away from conflict and lived their lives concerned about the physical and social environment. A shift from focusing life on conflicts to concentrating on prevention is what I believe is important in health education today. Throughout the Mirage of Health, Rene Dubos discusses the past of homo sapiens or man as he calls us, regarding our adaptation, struggles, diseases, and utopias. Before reading this book, life to me was the ability to live and breathe; it was a process of events that shaped an individual into what they ought to be in order take part in society. After Dubos elucidated the history of how man came about, he explained how the word "life" is a personal and individual term that is viewed differently throughout the world. "Life, is now taught, must be preserved at all cost, whatever the burden that its preservation imposes on the community and on the individual concerned," (260). With this in mind, as a future health educator, I feel that it will be important to emphasize the ability for humans to adapt, discuss the Hygeia versus Asclepius, and implement man's need for change. One approach of defining life is stating that it is something that is added to matter but free from it. A way that I, as a health educator, could expand on that is to teach to complete understanding that the life in matter can change into many forms of life. In order to have an understanding of this, my students would have be able to visualize the evolution of living things from their origin as they gradually adapt themselves from one environment to