Next week, we’ll read chapters 7 and 8. This week, chapters 4, 5 and 6 of Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich.
This week covers a gamut of topics and some really compelling ideas about the value and recency of fitness. For those who read Nickel and Dimed by Ehrenreich, there’s also a bit of a return to form about class and work in here.
So, some things I’d love to hear your views on:
Self help gets a pretty thorough take down, as do the conceit behind employee wellness programs and corporate America’s push to get their workers moving. Have you ever had a positive or negative experience with “wellness” pushed by an employer?
“Mindfulness” goes under the microscope, with Enhrenreich becoming skeptical. “The devices that were supposed to make us smarter and more connected to other humans were instead messing with our minds,” she wrote. What do you make of this?
I thought her bit about biohacking and points about people treating their bodies as if they were machines was interesting. On one hand, I know that the mentality has been helpful for some of my friends when it comes to establishing a positive routine, but on the other hand it there’s certainly a point where it goes too far. What’s your view?
I don’t have a prompt here but her line of “"Every death can now be understood as suicide" was provocative.
Be sure to comment below! Remember, just two chapters next week, one is a bit long.
Insurance is always going to be about the numbers; that is how insurance works. All the more reason to give "healthcare for all" serious consideration. Ehrenreich seems angrier in these three chapters than she was in earlier chapters, and maybe that has to do with her personality, which doesn't cotton well to people telling her how best to live her life. I really don't care how "controlling" any of this wellness stuff is as long as people are thinking seriously about how they treat their bodies, what they put in them, and how they best can avoid addictive behaviors. I enjoy seeing so many people outdoors now doing the jogging, walking, stretching stuff. If someone wants to spend lots of money on "getting fit" and behaving like Kitzweil, ingesting hundreds of pills everyday, that's their business - and problem. As far as every death being a suicide, I now know way too many people who have "contributed" to their demise by stopping eating, drinking excessively, etc., to not see some truth in that statement. And as I am getting older I can imagine myself getting tired of living and sleeping myself away to starvation. Maybe I won't feel so much that way IF Trump does not get re-elected.
Okay, I'm on page 87. And in the first paragraph, she quotes a big study that shows that meditation is no better for you than muscle relaxation, medication, or psychotherapy. That to me isn't really damning of meditation - all of those things that it's "no better than" can cost a lot of money.
But okay, I get the point. What she's saying is "Silicon Valley shills went around telling you meditation is going to be the best thing in the world for you, and it was going to change your life, but there's no evidence for that."
IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH, she then says that even if mediation has a calming effect, so does...a few other things SHE likes to do. And then she says "I personally recommend a few hours a day with small children or babies, who can easily charm anyone into entering their alternative universe."
So she hopped, WITHIN THE SAME paragraph, from saying "Please stop doing this thing that's being shilled on you just because a few people tell you it works" to "instead, do this thing which hasn't been studied, but I'm telling you it works."
I would also just like to add, that as a mom of two, I have spent LOTS of time with babies and children. They do not, indeed, have the calming effect she espouses. They are, in fact, one of the reasons I had to take up meditation.
Eye roll time, where we make very vague non-assertions that increase in technology use = increases in autism. Instead of, I don't know, awareness, expansion of definitions, or a million other reasons. And then we have armchair diagnosing of CHARACTERS ON TV. I
There are so many terrible health-fads/things that come out of Silicon Valley. I remember when I first saw the product Soylent. There are children and adults in this country and around the world who have so much trouble eating that their nutrition suffers and they need to have tubes inserted into their stomach. And the best Silicon Valley could come up with was a liquid fart-machine because it was too difficult for tech bros to figure out how to eat.
I'm sorry if that's a tangent, there are two things that send me off the rails, and that is armchair diagnoses and Soylent.
Enjoyed Chapter 6 a lot more than 4 and 5 - feel like I hear those same points every day.
A lot of the wellness/biohacking/mindfulness trains of thought feel like "different strokes for different folks...". Like Walt says: some people genuinely find it useful and whose to say they shouldn't continue to use the concepts to their benefit.
Wellness programs, on the other hand, can be a different story. I can't think of the last time a coworker I know even casually tried to participate in one. I've never really seen the benefit for workers - only the company/insurance provider - and I'm not sure I'll ever be comfortable with the idea of handing over any sort of medical data to either party voluntarily.
Employee wellness programs can support developing healthy habits in my experience. My company rewarded consistent exercise such as walking which caused me to develop a habit of daily exercise. Not sure this will protect me from cancer or getting hit by a truck but it has helped my health over the years.
This author’s got me! It’s either in stoking my dormant cynicism, as discussed earlier, or riling me up w incredulity. A terrific example of former is when she calls fad dieting to the mat, then drops the hammer citing the specific failures of the low fat craze and closes the loop by pointing out that sugar and complex carbs are in the crosshairs these days. But like the slow tick/tock of a metronome with the weighty part up high, after a few pages of what feels like below the table high fiving for putting it back in the face of ‘the man!’ I’m roiling w incredulity over the smoking bit. Even the notion that vilifying smoking is worth a look ‘from another side.’ has got to be insane at best, criminal at worst! I am roiling w rage, I tell you! It’s great.
Mony Mony! Nickel & Dimed really hit home, but I'm finding this book to have more misfires than hits. A couple of things that did stand out to me was the stat that the average adult's attention span had dropped from 12 seconds to eight and her section The Great White Die-Off. In addition the author is correct about Wendy's being a top fast food joint. Their 4 for $4 is wonderful and the Dave's Cherry Cream Soda is one of the best cream sodas on the planet.
From am insurance or healthcare perspective, treating the body as a machine is no doubt a seductive concept. It simplifies things down, and gives an illusion of control: if we just control the inputs rigidly enough (diet, exercise, weight, etc), then we can control the outputs (lifespan and overall quality of life). But, as Ehrenreich pointed out, this ultimately fails: for one, we just don't understand the relationship between lifestyle and health enough to say which foods are healthful and which aren't, beyond some broad-strokes advice like reducing red meat and carbs.
Personally I think treating the body as a machine that can be 'hacked' can lead to some downright dangerous thinking: for one, it makes us think our health is under our control, leading to Ehrenreich's line about every death being a suicide. But we don't know if this is the case: we can't know if Steve Jobs' diet contributed to his cancer, or if he would have gotten pancreatic cancer anyways.
It also overstates the level of control and understanding we have over our bodies. Our bodies are fantastically complex, the product of billions of years of evolution and cooperation between thousands of species. We're nowhere near understanding this magnificent complexity, and I think our healthcare and our actual health would be well served to acknowledge the limits of our abilities, and to know when to step back and admit that sometimes, our health is out of our control.
Insurance is always going to be about the numbers; that is how insurance works. All the more reason to give "healthcare for all" serious consideration. Ehrenreich seems angrier in these three chapters than she was in earlier chapters, and maybe that has to do with her personality, which doesn't cotton well to people telling her how best to live her life. I really don't care how "controlling" any of this wellness stuff is as long as people are thinking seriously about how they treat their bodies, what they put in them, and how they best can avoid addictive behaviors. I enjoy seeing so many people outdoors now doing the jogging, walking, stretching stuff. If someone wants to spend lots of money on "getting fit" and behaving like Kitzweil, ingesting hundreds of pills everyday, that's their business - and problem. As far as every death being a suicide, I now know way too many people who have "contributed" to their demise by stopping eating, drinking excessively, etc., to not see some truth in that statement. And as I am getting older I can imagine myself getting tired of living and sleeping myself away to starvation. Maybe I won't feel so much that way IF Trump does not get re-elected.
Okay, I'm on page 87. And in the first paragraph, she quotes a big study that shows that meditation is no better for you than muscle relaxation, medication, or psychotherapy. That to me isn't really damning of meditation - all of those things that it's "no better than" can cost a lot of money.
But okay, I get the point. What she's saying is "Silicon Valley shills went around telling you meditation is going to be the best thing in the world for you, and it was going to change your life, but there's no evidence for that."
IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH, she then says that even if mediation has a calming effect, so does...a few other things SHE likes to do. And then she says "I personally recommend a few hours a day with small children or babies, who can easily charm anyone into entering their alternative universe."
So she hopped, WITHIN THE SAME paragraph, from saying "Please stop doing this thing that's being shilled on you just because a few people tell you it works" to "instead, do this thing which hasn't been studied, but I'm telling you it works."
I would also just like to add, that as a mom of two, I have spent LOTS of time with babies and children. They do not, indeed, have the calming effect she espouses. They are, in fact, one of the reasons I had to take up meditation.
Eye roll time, where we make very vague non-assertions that increase in technology use = increases in autism. Instead of, I don't know, awareness, expansion of definitions, or a million other reasons. And then we have armchair diagnosing of CHARACTERS ON TV. I
There are so many terrible health-fads/things that come out of Silicon Valley. I remember when I first saw the product Soylent. There are children and adults in this country and around the world who have so much trouble eating that their nutrition suffers and they need to have tubes inserted into their stomach. And the best Silicon Valley could come up with was a liquid fart-machine because it was too difficult for tech bros to figure out how to eat.
I'm sorry if that's a tangent, there are two things that send me off the rails, and that is armchair diagnoses and Soylent.
Enjoyed Chapter 6 a lot more than 4 and 5 - feel like I hear those same points every day.
A lot of the wellness/biohacking/mindfulness trains of thought feel like "different strokes for different folks...". Like Walt says: some people genuinely find it useful and whose to say they shouldn't continue to use the concepts to their benefit.
Wellness programs, on the other hand, can be a different story. I can't think of the last time a coworker I know even casually tried to participate in one. I've never really seen the benefit for workers - only the company/insurance provider - and I'm not sure I'll ever be comfortable with the idea of handing over any sort of medical data to either party voluntarily.
Employee wellness programs can support developing healthy habits in my experience. My company rewarded consistent exercise such as walking which caused me to develop a habit of daily exercise. Not sure this will protect me from cancer or getting hit by a truck but it has helped my health over the years.
This author’s got me! It’s either in stoking my dormant cynicism, as discussed earlier, or riling me up w incredulity. A terrific example of former is when she calls fad dieting to the mat, then drops the hammer citing the specific failures of the low fat craze and closes the loop by pointing out that sugar and complex carbs are in the crosshairs these days. But like the slow tick/tock of a metronome with the weighty part up high, after a few pages of what feels like below the table high fiving for putting it back in the face of ‘the man!’ I’m roiling w incredulity over the smoking bit. Even the notion that vilifying smoking is worth a look ‘from another side.’ has got to be insane at best, criminal at worst! I am roiling w rage, I tell you! It’s great.
Mony Mony! Nickel & Dimed really hit home, but I'm finding this book to have more misfires than hits. A couple of things that did stand out to me was the stat that the average adult's attention span had dropped from 12 seconds to eight and her section The Great White Die-Off. In addition the author is correct about Wendy's being a top fast food joint. Their 4 for $4 is wonderful and the Dave's Cherry Cream Soda is one of the best cream sodas on the planet.
From am insurance or healthcare perspective, treating the body as a machine is no doubt a seductive concept. It simplifies things down, and gives an illusion of control: if we just control the inputs rigidly enough (diet, exercise, weight, etc), then we can control the outputs (lifespan and overall quality of life). But, as Ehrenreich pointed out, this ultimately fails: for one, we just don't understand the relationship between lifestyle and health enough to say which foods are healthful and which aren't, beyond some broad-strokes advice like reducing red meat and carbs.
Personally I think treating the body as a machine that can be 'hacked' can lead to some downright dangerous thinking: for one, it makes us think our health is under our control, leading to Ehrenreich's line about every death being a suicide. But we don't know if this is the case: we can't know if Steve Jobs' diet contributed to his cancer, or if he would have gotten pancreatic cancer anyways.
It also overstates the level of control and understanding we have over our bodies. Our bodies are fantastically complex, the product of billions of years of evolution and cooperation between thousands of species. We're nowhere near understanding this magnificent complexity, and I think our healthcare and our actual health would be well served to acknowledge the limits of our abilities, and to know when to step back and admit that sometimes, our health is out of our control.