“Finally, what is it we can leave here with? The country is so wounded, bleeding, and hurt right now. The country needs to be healed—it’s not going to be healed from the top, politically. How are we going to heal? Art. Art is the healing force.”
Robert Redford, 2012 National Arts Policy Roundtable closing remarks at Sundance Resort
Robert Redford is inferring the country is sick, the country is out of balance. He is making an urgent call. You will typically hear the words wounded, bleeding and hurting at the emergency room.
The practitioners of art must see the world and the patient holistically: body, mind, soul and community. Robert Redford is not talking to physicians; he is directing his remarks to art practitioners. There are people from the other sectors, policy makers, but most of the audience is art practitioners.
Medicine is both art and a science. They are interdependent, interchangeable and always go together.
There are three fundamentals principles in the art of healing.
1) The primacy of the patient welfare
2) Patient autonomy
3) Social Justice
These principles applied to individuals, communities and countries.
Imhotep, 2600 BC, Egypt, father of medicine. He was in Egypt about 2,000 year before Hippocrates. Imhotep was a priest, vizier, poet, physician, mathematician, astronomer and architect. He later became the god of wisdom and medicine. Imhotep had many talents but the core of his talent was art. We are following the legacy of Imhotep.
“The country is wounded, bleeding and hurt now. Art is the healing force”. Robert Redford is making an urgent call.
Creative thinking, non-traditional problem solving are typical attributes of the art practitioners. It is the core for healing.
This is a call for action. This is a call to all the art practitioners to use your gifts and heal your country.
https://www.americansforthearts.org/by-topic/arts-and-healing
https://www.wrf.org/ancient-medicine/belief-and-the-healing-arts-of-ancient-civilizations.php
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/328187
http://www.afrikanheritage.com/imhotep-the-true-father-of-medicine/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3190445/
https://www.ancient.eu/imhotep/