Usually, we think of curing an illness or a disease, but we often use the word cure for other problems. We might wish to find a ‘Cure’ for Turkey’s Ills, or claim that Rube Goldberg found the cure for self-isolation boredom or cure the quarantine blues, or Cure Our Wanderlust, or even to cure your desktop audio ills. Or maybe we need to cure our car? Are these really cures?
Now that we have a clear basic concept and definition of cure for elementary illnesses, and a theory of cure that expands those concepts to cover primary, secondary, complex, chronic, and compound medical conditions, we can apply those concepts to the use of cure. We can perfect our usage – and distinguish between only addressing symptoms and curing. We can, at least, understand the difference between a true cure and a bogus cure – even with our cars, our computers, and our social and economic systems. Let’s begin.
Cure System Problems, not Things
In the basic theory of cure, we cure an illness. Is our economy sick? Our computer? Our car? How can we identify things that can be cured?
We cure health problems, illnesses, or medical conditions, in living systems. We might cure a fungus infection in our cherry tree and have the tree heal the injuries. We might cure our dog’s injured leg with healthy care and the natural process of healing. We might cure scurvy with a healthy diet, and cataracts with a healthy surgical procedure. But we don’t cure the tree, the dog, or the person. And we can’t cure dead things. We might break a rock, move a rock, paint a rock, but we can’t cure a rock.
We can generalize cure, from illness to any systemic problem. An illness is an ongoing problem in a living thing, an ongoing problem in a system. Turkey’s economy is a system. We don’t cure the system, just as we don’t cure a person, a dog, or a tree, but we might be able to cure specific problems in the system, which ail, or plague the economic system. The same is true for the desktop audio ills. The desktop computer has an audio system, and if it is judged to be not behaving well, we might need to cure it. But we don’t cure the entire computer, we don’t cure the audio system, we can only cure the problem in the system.
Cure Illnesses not Symptoms
Unfortunately, it’s easy to confuse symptoms with disease – it’s even a problem faced and sometimes failed by medical practitioners. Is a headache a disease? No, it’s a symptom of a problem. But if a severe headache lasts for months, it can be classified as a disease – a migraine headache. Failure to cure makes it a disease.
A simple or elementary illness is the intersection of a cause and the negative consequences of that cause. “An element of illness has three parts: the present cause; the consequences, the signs and symptoms of the illness; and the intersection of cause and consequences, such that we believe the cause results in the consequences.” – A Definition and Exploration of Cure.
The patient with a migraine headache has an illness, but a curable illness is more than the signs and symptoms, it includes the cause. We can treat the signs and symptoms – but those treatments do not cure the illness.
We can’t cure our self-isolation boredom, our quarantine blues, or our wanderlust, unless we can address the cause. We might find very effective treatments for the signs and symptoms, but it won’t cure. The problem might wax and wane over time. The boredom or blues will be cured when the self-isolation or quarantine causes are addressed. The wanderlust? It might need to be accepted as a natural, healthy attribute, not an illness.
The Cure is the found in the Present Cause
An illness is cured when the present cause has been addressed. The clear definition has a few more conditions.
An illness has been cured when: ( A Definition and Exploration of Cure)
- the cause has been successfully addressed (or is gone)
- the signs and symptoms have faded or are gone (directly attributable to the cause)
- damage caused by the illness has been healed (many illnesses do not cause damage, injuries consist only of damage)
- no more medicines are required for the signs and symptom (directly attributable to the cause)
We can apply this same logic to any system problem. If we wish to cure a problem in any system – we need to identify and address the cause. When we believe the cause has been addressed and the problem appears to be gone, when damage created by the problem is repaired, and when no more remedial actions are required to address the ongoing problem. For simple problems, like the audio desktop ills there is no damage to repair and no remedial actions to address. More complex problems, like Turkey’s ailing economy might be cured – but to be cured and know that we caused the cure, requires confidence in the cause(s).
Kepner-Tregoe’s famous books The Rational Manager, and The New Rational Manager, made many references to cause, but missed the concept of present cause. The following quotes from the book The Elements of Cure, provide some expansion of their concepts in brackets make this more clear.
“Problem solving {curing} requires cause and effect thinking” (KT-TNRM)
“A problem {illness} is the visible effect of a {present} cause” “If performance {healthiness} once met the SHOULD and no longer does, then a change has occurred.” “In some cases, however, a negative deviation in performance {signs and symptoms of illness}… has always existed” (KT-TNRM)
Present Cause
A curable problem exists in the present. We cannot cure the problems of yesterday, only their present consequences.
This world and yonder world are incessantly giving birth:
Every cause is a mother, its effect the child.
When the effect is born, it too becomes a cause
and gives birth to wondrous effects.
These causes are generation on generation,
but it needs a very well lighted eye
to see the links in their chain. – RUMI
Maybe you noticed the distinction, present cause. It’s important. Any ailment has present and past causes. Past causes are in the past and cannot be addressed. They are gone, useful for prevention, not for curing. When an ailment can be cured, it can only be cured by addressing a present cause.
There are two basic types of causes, responsible for both illness and healthiness: processes and attributes. – A Theory of Cure. We can view them as verb causes and noun causes – verbs and nouns together creating a system. A verb cause is an ongoing process (or absence of process) that causes an illness. An noun cause is a thing, or the absence of a thing, that causes illness. Verb caused problems – causal problems – are cured by adding, removing, or changing an ongoing process. Noun caused problems – attribute problems – are cured by adding, removing, or changing the thing causing the problem.
Causal problems have ongoing causes and ongoing cures. Scurvy is not cured with Vitamin C, it is only truly cured when the diet is healthed.
Attribute problems are cured by single actions, or sets of actions that transform the attribute. Once the cause is addressed, the problem is gone.
Damage is a problem that exists after the cause has gone – it is actually a type of attribute problem.
There is no clear distinction between problem elements, until the problem is resolved, or cured.
The successful resolution proves the cause and the type of cause. If the problem was not cured – the guess was wrong.
Processes of body, mind, spirit, community, and environment enable and facilitate life, healthiness, and illness.
– A Theory of Cure
There is variation in disease naming, some are named by cause, others by consequences. In living entities we might find the cure cause of an illness element in the diet, the body, the mind, the spirit, the community or the environment of the patient. In systems the list of sources is larger, including non-living systems.
Proof of Cause
The cure proves the cause and the type of cause. Each individual cure element proves an elementary cause. Until there is a cure – we can speculate about the cause, gather statistics about causes, but in each individual case, only a cure can prove the cause.
When addressing a cause does not cure an illness element, then either:
– the cause was not successfully addressed, or
– the cause addressed was not in the causal chain of the illness being addressed.
A Definition and Exploration of Cure
A not cure does not prove a not cause. If we address the wrong cause, we might cure the A different problem, create a problem, or cause something completely different. If a problem has several independent causes, addressing a single cause might not make an observable difference, even though it cures a single problem element.
Each elementary problem can only be resolved once. We cannot test multiple cure alternatives unless we can re-create the problem.
Every true cure is a single case, an anecdote – there are no statistical cures.
Remission?
Cures don’t have remissions. A problem cured is cured. Of course, if the cause recurs, a new – identical problem – might occur. Remission is about the signs and symptoms of a problem, not a cure. When we only address signs and symptoms and ignore cause, we can create remission, but not cure.
Elementary Problems
A single element of illness has a single present cause – A Definition and Exploration of Cure.
An elementary problem has a single present cause. Complex and compound problems have multiple present causes, and therefore require multiple cures. It is likely that the Turkish economic problems are very complex – even though political leaders might wish to resolve them with simple actions. The desktop audio problem, on the other hand, might have a single cause, and a single cure. The complexity of a problem is defined by the cure. If a single action or set of actions produces a cure, the problem was elementary. If several independent actions are needed, each producing only a partial cure, the problem was complex or compound.
Present Chains of Cause
Every causal process is part of a present chain, where a causes b, b causes c, c causes d, and so on. We can often break the causal chain down into smaller and smaller elements. For any true element in a causal chain – addressing that element addresses the process cause and cures the problem.
We rarely think of present attributes (or their absence) as part of a chain, however – this might be the case for any problem. When two or more components in a process are interacting poorly, creating a problem – a change to either might cure the problem. We might also find that a process change cures – proving the cause to be a process, not an attribute.
As noted above, the proof of cause is found in the cure.
Complex Problems
A complex illness exists when a present illness is the present cause of another illness – A Theory of Cure
We often don’t notice, or even actively ignore a problem until it causes damage. However, once damage is caused – there are two problems to cure. Sometimes – an accident causes an injury, a single illness. In other cases injuries might be caused by an infection or an ongoing causal problem like scurvy. If the initial problem still exists, it must be resolved and the damage must be repaired. Two cures. Curing the primary problem might allow the secondary to self-resolve, but curing the secondary problem only buys time until the primary problem creates it again.
Compound Problems
A compound problem has two or more independent causes. A cure is required for each illness element, for each cause. We can study and understand more and more problems and their causes as we practice curing.
A Calculus of Curing
The books The Elements of Cure and A Calculus of Curing explore causes and cures in more detail and arrive at a simple, perhaps obvious conclusion:
Health is whole, slow and steady, honest and true.
Health is the best cure, the only true cure
– the Healthicine Creed
The best cures come from health.
The same will be true of curing system problems. We cure the problem by healthing the system. However, judging healthiness of life entities is not trivial, and judging healthiness of systems is more challenging. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure – and the best system for one person or community might be worst for a different person or community.
to your health, tracy
Founder: Healthicine
Author:
