Objective Standards

It’s not the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the strangest of times. A friend of mine, currently heavily involved with the health care system as a consumer, related her experience with one of her ancillary health care providers recently. Ancillary providers, for those lucky enough NOT to be ongoing and active consumers of health care are professionals like exercise physiologists, podiatrists, physiotherapists, psychotherapists, and counsellors. This ancillary health care provider was well indoctrinated into the concept of “patient centred care” and asked my friend what her goals for therapy were. Which sounds really reasonable. Much like a “Voice to Parliament” or “gender affirming care.” Intuitively, it makes sense that better outcomes will prevail if the “consumers” of care choose their own goals. But is intuition right?

As firmly entrenched as society is now in what some call “the post truth era” and others think of as simply delusional, it seems archaic to think that objective standards might result in better outcomes than the pursuit of insubstantial and shifting personal goals. Certainly for my friend, some relevant objective standards such as “can walk one kilometre unaided in 20 minutes,” “is able to get up and down off the floor without assistance,” “can carry two loaded grocery bags for ten minutes” are suitable standards, the attainment of which indicates a capacity for independent living versus dependency. Most people, even those who aren’t quite sure what a woman is, might recognise that the achievement of objective standards such as those described above is a positive outcome.

Ironically, the societal advancement that we all appreciate – from medical care to smart phones – which we accrued using objectively verified evidence – also known as “science” – has now become axiomatically false. An agenda driven by the Critical Theorists but enthusiastically embraced by a vocal, powerful and ever increasing segment of society. I’ll believe it’s all a good idea when the Critical Theorists give up all the accoutrements of our modern society achieved through science. Until then, I am going to hold onto objective standards.