# A Societal Checklist By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2023-06-30 Healthy people routinely go to the doctor for a checkup. Blood pressure is taken, height and weight, blood work is examined, breathing, skin health, mobility, and basic cognitive functions might be checked. It is often beneficial for people to get such checkups. It would be beneficial if we had a societal checkup. How is our society doing? If there were a suite of diagnostics for societal health, I would imagine the United States isn’t doing so well. Maybe this is why we don’t do the societal checkup; nobody wants the answer. What’s interesting is that what we do instead is arbitrarily divide our societal body into two regions and act as if the disease in the “other half” of the body doesn’t affect us. If only it were so easy. Our society isn’t doing well. We need to address our collective ailments in solidarity with each other. We don’t have Republican problems or Democrat problems; we have national problems. These are getting worse. Our society is increasingly fragmented, fearful, and angry. Politicians seem unable or unwilling to address persistent, underlying issues within our society. Analytics can help understand the problem and potentially identify workable solutions. Doing more than that will require an educated, informed, critical, and collaborative society. #### Related Items [[Society]] [[Progress]] [[Health]] [[American]] [[Politics]] [[Analytics]]