There are countless health"advocates" everywhere these days claiming that by following their advice it will save or extend your life.
Doing things like,not eating meat,not smoking,not eating fast food ,not being sedentary, or whatever else that is 'good for you 'today.....that you MUST DO.Because it is claimed RISKY not to go along with it.
But there is one little problem with imposing that prohibition of risk ..We all will die anyway. So what is so wrong with enjoying the time you have here? If you like to eat, why feel shame for liking what you are eating? .Why does this urge to control other people's lifestyle choices some find un-aesthetic or not productive or 'unhealthy' justify use of the state or bullying to control other people's choices,risks and habits that are not impacting your safety directly?
What about our culture got us into policing each others choices to the point we want to limit what risks others can choose to take with their own bodies?
When did we learn to stop owning our bodies and start attempting to choose what other people can or cannot do with their bodies??
Any social engineer can advocate or influence public opinions or even change the choices some make, but once you use the state or some other institution to bully to control what other people can or cannot eat,ingest, speak, and how they choose to live their own lives ,seeking to limit which risks that effect themselves,as in what they are permitted to choose for themselves,it means as a society we have just moved closer to fascism.Really.
The kind of corporate state,run by a few oligarchs, kinda like how America is currently ,sees people as units of production/profit.So for the wealthiest and most control hungry it's no wonder the corporate structure that supports the CEO and State wants to use as much of other people's lives and labor as is possible. Our happiness,satisfaction, or joy..means NOTHING to the efficient minded. It's just like the greedy pork producer said from Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle," the company uses every part of the pig except the squeal."This kind of mentality is what the state beholden to corporations really wants from us,to use us up,take our labor, use our lives our bodies and use them as efficiently and for as long as possible without having to pay for upkeep of said laboring body..(Corporations think by controlling how we eat,dress,what we ingest,etc.Manipulating our lifestyles by social engineering they can maximize the labor output of each person.)
Like the greedy pork producer,The corporate state wants to silence our cries of anger at social injustices,make us risk aversive, make us forget abuses of power and tolerate income disparity. Because our suffering and outrage ,to the owner class is useless to them, like the pig's squeal is to the pork producer,useless for efficiency, production & profits.
So be wary of what you will tolerate being done to others or options taken away in the name of "your own good".
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If there is a thread that runs through all these volumes, it is the harmony of murder and modernization. Aly and his collaborators paint a picture of a ruthlessly rationalized "Final Solution of the Social Question" (Endldsung der Sozialfrage), engineered by physicians and diplomats, police theorists and Gestapo agents, economists and anthropologists. Sometimes I wonder, though, what the term modernization really means.
The Nazis supported science-based technology, cost-effective social policy, preventive medicine, electroshock and work therapy, and large-scale demographic planning. Germany under Hitler saw the development of synthetic rubber, the rocket- propelled bomb, television, nuclear fission, the world's first computers, and a host of other inventions. As Mark Walker has recently shown, Nazi leaders abandoned the idiotic, Aryan supremacist German Physics in 1940, in order to guarantee a competent supply of physicists to work on an atom bomb.52 Fortunately for Europe and the world, they failed.
If these things are modern, then so were the Nazis. But presumably so were Einstein and Kafka, the architects of the Bauhaus, the planners of the TVA, the commissars of Stalin's Russia, and so on. Nets as loose as these may capture very little. How is it of interest that fascists were proponents of reform? What is the value of a term that encompasses both Auschwitz and the Bauhaus, Franz Boas and Adolf Hitler? Perhaps all that is meant is that Nazi crimes were perpetrated as part of a larger program of rationalizing economic production consistent with economic growth. But rationalizing production was only one of several Nazi goals. The Nazis also sought a more "organic" - that is, biological - way of living, one that would be in harmony with presumed natural and racially specific laws. We should recall that Nazi authorities banished white bread as a chemical product, scorned DDT, revived midwifery, and banned smoking in public buildings. Dachau produced organic honey; the SS controlled most German mineral baths and waters. There is a curious mix of enlightenment and romance in the Nazi view of the world....
I don't think it was the tirades of Julius Streicher in Der Stürmer that attracted their interest, but rather the promises of Nazi leaders to solve Germany's problems medically, surgically. The Nazi state was supposed to be a hygienic state; Nazism was supposed to be "applied biology" ...
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395193http://www.pierrelemieux.org/artproctor.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every person who smokes, is going to die
Every person who never smokes, is going to die
Every person who is "overweight", is going to die
Every person who is never "overweight", is going to die
Every person who uses illicit drugs, is going to die
Every person who never uses illicit drugs, is going to die
Every person who drinks alcohol, is going to die
Every person who never drinks alcohol, is going to die
Every person who fails to heed the advice of health advocates, is going to die
Every person who devotedly follows all the advice of health advocates, is going to die
Now the question comes - since we are all going to die, no matter what precautions we may take - is it justifiable for health advocates to force people to conform to certain lifestyles which those advocates claim will maximize the length of a person's life?
http://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/deathisinevitable/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What this all boils down to I think,is it is hard to accept in this world we all suffer,youth fades the good health goes, and the joys in life are fleeting.We don't want to grow old, feeble,weak,sick and die.And we don't want to see the ones we love suffer and die either.
We want the good things to last. But they don't.We want someone to fix it, to make things better,or to cure this human condition,but there is no final solutions.
We can lie to ourselves, invent things like "karma" to explain injustices away.We can make claims that this world is a big 'school' and we chose before birth to suffer here for"lessons",We can pretend the world is just.We can pretend a savior will come and take us away from all this shit one day.We can pin our hopes on a leader or await a miracle medicine, or long for a hero on a big white horse. We can fight against this condition in a billion ways but we will die anyway.
And we can in our zeal to fix the world for it's own good we can even use the state to control how everyone lives,(social engineering) and so we can become risk aversive,fearing uncertainty as fascists do. But in the end no one escapes reality and this human condition alive.(in this world does not apply to just humans alone.).
And to me my thought is...Why not just live, love,explore, and be free,enjoy what you enjoy while you can? Protect what is precious to you,your own and others happiness.You can be very healthy but feel suicidal if you are not feeling alive and have something in your life that gives you enough joy to stick around.. .It isn't all about having a perfect body,a great career,a perfect lawn, or a non smoking policy, or the systemic elimination of meat eating and fast food.
It is the life you have at this moment and what you want to do with it.Do you live in the future and make now a burden or do you live in the past to avoid deciding things now,or do you just live and let others live,enjoy and let others enjoy, love and let others love? Why be a controller to those who are not seeking to control,abuse or harm you?
For in this world anyone's life could end at any time no matter what precautions they take, or don't take.
Is it so threatening to radically rethink priorities in the face of uncertainty sometimes?
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Which values and ideologies exist within the Western culture and dominate on the different social levels and form and direct social life, including the social activities of science and the establishment of knowledge? The sociologist Bourdieu (1998) concludes categorically with regard to the situation of ideology in contemporary Western society: "... it is taken for granted that maximum growth, and therefore productivity and competitiveness, are the ultimate and sole goal of human actions; or that economic forces cannot be resisted." (p.30-1). And Bourdieu (1998) states that the dissemination of this value in the Western world today is great: "Everywhere we hear it said, all day long - and this is what gives the dominant discourse its strength - that there is nothing to put forward in opposition to the neo-liberal view, that it has succeeded in presenting itself as self-evident, that there is no alternative." (p.29). Probably then the neo-liberal view contributes more and more to the strengthening within psychology and the social sciences of this idea of humankind as basically an egoistic and self-interested individuality.
http://www.radpsynet.org/journal/vol3-1/HildeEileenNafstad.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Control and imposing control on others choices because of your own aesthetic wants is just selfish. Controlling others based on popularized beliefs about health ,fast food or whatever else that is seen as the latest lifestyle choice that is being demonized, will not add a day of happiness to anyone's life.
Control games really DO take happiness in life away from others whom are subjected to the oppression created when "authorities"' or the state starts taking away the freedom to choose, to risk,to direct for oneself the way one lives," for their own good".
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Trivial uncertainty is defined uncertainty which makes it -psychologically speaking – safe. Radical uncertainty, on the other hand, is completely undefined, and so it is not psychologically ‘safe’ (i.e. it is ‘unreliable’ and so we can’t afford to relax and get comfortable about it).
LIFE IS ‘RADICALLY UNCERTAIN’
http://www.radicaluncertainty.com/nwilliamsdocs/radicalrisk.htm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~