45,000 years ago, a Neanderthal man experienced a crushing blow to the head that left him partially paralyzed for life, but his bones healed and he lived into his 30s or 40s, something only conceivably possible with the help of his community.
45,000 years ago.
But let’s pretend that 45,000 years later, we “can’t afford” universal healthcare.
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1
It’s important to understand that people—not even Homo sapiens!—living at what must have been the subsistence margin, without states or written language or metal tools or electricity or antibiotics, managed to keep this person alive. They devoted resources to his care and survival. He lived for years, possibly decades, with a severe disability at a time when his community would have been doing things like fighting off literal cave bears.
Our society has inconceivably more material, social, and technological resources to bring to bear to help each other. We have no excuse.
@HeavenlyPossum I'm gonna very gently disagree about the subsistence margin part, but there's no doubt that we have orders of magnitude more resources at our disposal.
Plus the literal cave bears part is no joke.
Technically, no society lives at the subsistence margin, but I lack a pithier way of conveying how tenuous their survival would have been.
HeavenlyPossum
darcher 🦋