opinion - post: What is wrong with the world

This post has to do with health, stress, emotions, society and the agent-structure debate. It is kind of the same thing I have been writing about before – what responsibilities, possibilities and expectations lie in an individual and which ones are more societal.

More precisely - I’ve been wondering about that if we say obesity is society’s fault and anorexia and other eating disorders are societies fault, then..how does that add up? Society is the same for so many people, but we still have under-, over- and normal weight people. That in itself proves that statement wrong. Or at least only partly true.

I see where these statements are coming from. We do live in a world where food is so readily available and it is easy to manage with very little physical activity. However, as it usually tends to be – the present ideal is the one most difficult to achieve - being skinny. This would demonstrate to other people that you are strong willed and have the time and the money to work out and to look good. 

???

Though (luckily) it seems that the skinny-ideal is changing too. There has been a lot of discussions about too skinny models for example. And hand-in hand with health promotion, the beauty ideal seems to be getting more and more fit. Another factor might also be that fashion industry is melting into the fitness world too -  if some years ago gyms were mostly places for old sweatpants, large t-shirts and sweat, then go take a look into any fitness centre now and you’ll see shiny bright colours, different shoes, tops, shirts, towels, water bottles, watches, socks etcetcetc. It is not even anymore that you go to the gym to train to then look better later, you go to the gym to look pretty while you’re there. Yeah, how ever it is, but it seems to be that the ideal nowadays is not to be just skinny, but to 

be fit.

From a health point of view that should be great, shouldn’t it? Being healthy is becoming an activity in itself, a thing to do. The problem is, that “a picture says more than thousand words” – and health is often judged merely based on looks. Therefore, large people feel bad about not fitting in; the “the more the merrier” type of people develop diseases like exercise dependence and eating disorders, and the “healthy” ones are so much focused on their health and maintaining it, that this might become unhealthy too. And cause stress.

Of course health promotion is necessary. But it seems to be that all the recommendations only reach the group of people who are listening to these kind of things - the ones who already focus on health, but not the ones who really need them. Therefore the unhealthy group is still unhealthy and the healthy ones might do too much.

A big problem is that by focusing so much on health, we see everything else as a disease. The prevalence of different diseases and even the number of diseases “available” is constantly increasing. And there is a pill almost against everything. If you can’t sleep – take a pill, if you can’t stay awake – take another pill. Think about it – medication is taking over our kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms. There are food supplements, vitamins, minerals, headache pills, pills that make your hair grow better, birth control pills, sleeping pills, stress and depression pills etcetcetc. Even normal everyday things and personal characteristics are often seen as diseases now –instead of being shy, one now has “social phobia” for example. And if there is already an “illness” like that, then of course there is a pill against it. Just take one and become everything you ever wanted!

Not surprisingly, all this can be very stressful. Therefore, we talk a lot about stress too. Everyone knows what stress is – even first graders often claim they are “stressed” and courses of how to avoid stress or how to cope with it are available for 6-year olds. Or even for babies! Of course, then it is more directed to the mother of the baby, but the focus is still on preventing your baby becoming stressed. Is that really not stressful in itself?

Whatever things come up in life, they seem to be treated as stressors or some things you have to “go trough”, that can potentially leave you a life-long trauma unless you “deal with it”. When not so long ago counselling was something more private and people seeing a psychiatrist were looked upon strangely, then nowadays nearly everyone gets some kind of counselling during a certain part of their life. This is “normal” now.

What worries me is that instead of seeing things as challenges and possibilities to improve, to achieve something and do what you couldn’t before, they are seen as stressors and possibilities to fail. And that’s where the agent-structure debate becomes important. How much of your life is determined by the society and how much can you actually do about it yourself? I don’t mean to sound mean, but aren’t we focusing too much on “loosers”?

Of course it is bad to lose a job or being left because of another woman for example. But there are also people getting promoted, finding new jobs, falling in love and so on… People who take chances and succeed. People who actually are the “agents” in their lives.
I think we focus too much on diseases and disorders and all challenges = risk of failure and every experience = likely stressor, and see us too much as a part of a structure. And that causes even more stress. Which is unhealthy and might lead to depression and then we get medication against depression and about million other medications for other things we then have, like insomnia and vitamin deficiencies for example.. And people do all this things to “be healthy”.

Of course people get low self-esteem and feel insecure if they are viewed as having so many disorders and diseases AND living in a world so full of different “threats”. And low self-esteem is obviously not helping the quality of life. And is a risk factor for developing real health issues like eating disorders or emotional eating. When people feel lack of control over other parts of their life, they often start controlling themselves, for example in eating or in training too much, just to feel that in some part of their life they still have control.
So in a way, I think, how we as society look upon certain things makes these things problems. Instead of dealing with problems, we are creating them.

And that was what was worrying me and now I got to write it down here. That was all I wanted to do and now my little stressor is gone.

:D.

Thanks and have fun J