Les utopies apparaissent comme bien plus réalisables qu’on ne le croyait autrefois. Et nous nous trouvons actuellement devant une question bien autrement angoissante: Comment éviter leur réalisation définitive? […] Les utopies sont réalisables. La vie marche vers les utopies. Et peut-être un siècle nouveau commence-t-il, un siècle où les intellectuels et la classe cultivée rêveront aux moyens d’éviter les utopies et de retourner à une société non utopique moins “parfaite” et plus libre. (Nicolas Berdiaeff)

Helping and appreciating

When we are suddenly confronted with someone else's accident or illness, we know what we have to do. We should help the person in need by administering first aid and/or call an ambulance. Unless we do that we fail to take proper care of the other. In a society like ours, help for people in need or in an emergency is organized through special services; and sickness and accident are usually covered by health- and accident insurance agencies. Different kinds of technical and organizational elements are involved in helping patients to return as soon as possible to a healthy and active life. This is a domain in which we undoubtedly can speak of real progress, not only in the technical-medical, but also in the organizational sense. It is sufficient to envisage the situation of only a few decades ago to realize this. Today, health care also encompasses prevention, care for the chronically and mentally ill, as well as for more or less helpless elderly people.