Triangular relationship case

The Buck-Morss diagram illustrates the interaction between the practitioner, patient, and witness, which seems to be a triangulation relationship. The triangular relationship explains how the threefold relationship will play a role in ensuring that the observer will strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. As seen in the diagram, there are three types of relationships. The patient-doctor bond remains between the care practitioner (doctor) and the ill person who seeks treatment at the doctor's office, and the spectators round out the threesome complex. Susan Buck-Morss illustrative diagram from Aesthetics and Anaesthetics presents a perfect illustration of a triangulation relation as explained subsequently.

Triangular relationships refer to those kinds of relationships that attempt to epitomize the overall functioning of a simple family or association. In the triangular relationships, the individual living in isolation is often identified as a mere abstraction consequently bringing about a perfect twosome. Furthermore, in a triangular relationship, the individual identified as the third party will often exert significant influence on the overall dyadic relationships so as to complete the entire simplex of events in such a relationship. For instance, the relationship between the mother and child is not necessarily a complete and exclusive relationship in this regard though it is a twosome. The father often makes such a relationship complete while acting in the background as a third party. The father, in this case, the third party, will provide the mother with the much-needed support and will also complete the twosome relationship between the mother and child.

There may happen several other unfortunate cases where the third party in that relationship becomes a burden on either party. Thus, the term triangulation, often used in the study of the relationship between parties, denotes the whole process through which any given two parties that may be in conflict could invite a third party to side with them. In some cases, the initial parties may unite to fight the third individual or draw them to their conflict or this person may serve as a therapist.

In the Buck-Morss triangulation relationship, the observers could be the individuals that brought the sick person or those that identified the most appropriate doctor to treat the condition of their colleague. “The relationship between doctor and patient is a historical construct that has acquired highly complex features of interdependence over time” (Malatesta 1) All the three parties in this relationship work together to complete the entire process. For instance, when an individual gets sick, as shown in the figure, he/she is taken to the hospital for medical care. The doctor will spend countless hours with the utmost level of skill and expertise to ensure that the patient is helped. Now, since a doctor cannot work on more than one patient at a time, the observers (those that also seek help from the doctor) have to watch the doctors’ door as they wait for their turn. With the observers in place, it will be possible to see that the doctor is done with a given patient and can work on the next one on the que.

Thus, the observers can easily know the most appropriate time to enter the operation room after realizing the doctor has finished working on them. On the other hand, the observers though not necessarily medical personnel, could help provide the doctor with priori medical information about the patient in question for ease of diagnosis and treatment. Some of these observers could be family members with proper historical knowledge about the condition of the patient thus the are well positioned to help the doctor perform the right diagnosis very fast.

Furthermore, the observers will be the one to clear the accrued medical costs once the doctor is done with performing the necessary operations on their colleague. Thus, in this triangulation relationship, all the three parties play roles that are intertwined but leading to the healing of the patient. The observers may be the people that brought the patient for medical help to the doctor; they pay medical fees after the exercise. In case they are knowledgeable about the patient, they can provide a further medical history that would help the doctor in the diagnosis. The doctor in the triangulation provides the specialized help to the patient while the observers wait for their chance to come once the doctor is done with the patient on the bed.

War

War is defined as an armed conflict that may arise between any given societies for one reason or the other. Wars are generally characterized by low to extreme use of aggression, huge loss of life and destruction. Modern wars are often characterized by the use of heavy weaponry and regularly organized thus marked with significant causality figures compared to old wars. Sociologists have come to define warfare as a set of common activities and characteristics. Furthermore, another term, total warfare has often been used to describe warfare that may go beyond known paradigms of non-combatant causalities and massive civilian loss. A series of military writers often prefer confining war to those hostilities in which the contending groups involved are big enough to render the effects of the war very uncertain in regards to time. The several different kinds of wars, the scale of these wars and consequences that result from them mean that it is illogical to claim victory from a humanitarian perspective.

A less term, pacification and military expedition has often been adopted to describe a conflict between very powerful military powers against relatively small and weak military powers. Furthermore, wars between the strong military powers and minuscule states defined using another term called reprisals. Those that exist within factions in the country are called rebellions. Despite the fact that war is often characterized by a heavy loss of life and property, some wars do not result into direct loss of life and property to the adversaries involved in the conflict. For instance, the cold war between the former Soviet Union and the US did not necessarily result in a confrontation between the US and Soviet armies. It was rather a battle of political and social ideologies that consequently led to a defragmentation of the Soviet Union.

In fact, modern warfare is currently driven by desire for supremacy and global dominance just like the cold war. Countries like the US gained global dominance and control simply because they have the ability to protect of even attack any foreign adversaries with ease unimpeded. Due to a desire to gain global dominance, “In the past hundred years, the United States has sent more than 39 million Americans to fight in wars” (Biddle 1). Such perceived dominance has elevated the US to such a level that it can strike any part of the world without reproof. For that reason, other nations like North Korea that also need to gain regional dominance are also getting pulling the strings of conflict anticipating that they can also gain global dominance due to their military might and successful maneuvers. That explains the reason as to why North Korea is relentlessly launching and testing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads so that they can hit the US, its greatest adversary. Thus, modern warfare is now rated on the ability to develop nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

Other wars involve several military powers fighting on several fronts resulting in a wide-scale conflict, for instance, WWI and WWII. Such wide-scale conflicts arise when massive alliances are formed between military powers in different parts of the world. Although most wars often end in the defeat of one of the adversaries leading to a win-lose situation, some wars did not necessarily end in an apparent defeat to any of the parties involved.

For instance, the US-Vietnam war did not lead to a precise identification of the winner. Although the US may claim victory over the war due to the lower levels of causalities that they registered compared to the Vietnamese, the Americans had to de-escalate and leave Vietnam before the Vietnamese surrendered. Nevertheless, despite the causes and nature of wars, the effects associated with them are far-reaching and clearly, crowd off the advantages if there exists any. To make matters even worse, “a war will last until either one side has emerged victorious, or the situation has changed so that the costs of continued conflict have become overwhelmingly high for all sides.” (Morelli 3). For instance, WWII resulted in the use of weapons of mass destruction when the US and England developed a nuclear bomb that was dropped on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki leading to an end of WWII.

Up to now, the effects of these nuclear weapons are still felt. For instance, many children are born with deformities, the areas where the bomb was dropped cannot allow any crops to grow. Thus, historically, WWII is referred to as the largest widescale war associated with the greatest number of causalities. For instance, official figures indicate that WWI led to the demise of 60 million people accounting for 3% of the 1940 world population. Thus, although the allied forces led by US and Britain emerged as the winners, this war is often referred to as a senseless war due to such a huge number of causalities associated with the war. Besides a massive loss of life and property, wars are known to have a significant effect on the economies and way of living. For instance, the US invasion of Iraqi, Afghanistan and Libya created a sense of insecurity in those countries.

The economies of these countries have practically broken down and the social body politic hugely affected. The war created despicable political instability in those countries and destroyed the once vibrant economies in such states. Furthermore, the aftermath of such wars led to a widescale growth of extremism and terrorism, for instance, ISIS, a major terrorist group worldwide. Furthermore, wars have resulted in a split of societies and countries that were once one. For example, the Korean war led to the split of North and South Korea, Sudan and South Sudan, and several other countries. Thus, war is the worst form of disaster that can be created by man; its negative effects outweigh the positive and the significant loss of life means that it is illogical to claim victory.

Works cited

Biddle, Craig. "The Causes of War and Those of Peace: Foreign Policy & Defense, Philosophy." The Objective Standard:Reason, Egoism and Capitalism 2 October 2014. .

Malatesta, Maria. Doctors and patients : history, representation, communication from Antiquity to the present. San Francisco: San Francisco, CA : University of California medical humanities Press, 2015, cop. 2015., 2015. Print.

Morelli, Matthew O. Jackson and Massimo. The Reasons for Wars – an Updated Survey. Elgar Publishing, 2009. Online. .