If, like me, you follow Ones and Tooze, you will know that Adam recently had heart surgery.
It was a big deal. Luckily, America has some of the best surgeons in the world, to whom only a small handful of Americans have access – but Adam Tooze is one of them. In the episode dedicated to the expensive American healthcare system/Adam’s heart surgery, he talks with great (and deserved) admiration about ‘his team’, the ones who will do the surgery.
We really want these surgeons to be good at what they do. The considerable advances in medicine, medical technologies and surgical techniques is what will (we trust) Save Adam’s life, as indeed they did. We want experts.
But we don’t want them to be dickheads about their expertise – meaning, we’d like them to be ‘our team’ who work with us, acknowledging our agency. And not arrogant, bossy, or taking control of our lives.
See, Adam is not only among America’s privileged (as he acknowledges), but he is also a member of the same professional class as his surgical team. As we all know, this doesn’t guarantee an absence of dickheads.
However, chances are higher that we can see other professionals as members of ‘our team’. By recognizing one another as members of the same class, encountering other members of the PMC helps confirm one’s own values and expertise.
What this also shows is that it is possible to be a niche expert but honour other people’s self-determination, our ability to make choices about our own lives.
