SUBTITLE : AN EPIDEMIC OF WELLNESS, the CERTAINTY of DYING, and KILLING OURSELVES TO LIVE LONGER.
Note: Ehrenreich earned a PhD in cellular immunology from Rockefeller University.
So... I loved this book and I happen to agree that people are obsessing over their heath and their upcoming death way more than they used to, way more than it is healthy to. I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich that medical treatment often feels just like a Ritual of Humiliation. (And frankly, conversations that detail recipes and cooking, and medical conditions and treatment are probably my least favorite. But if we are friends and you get sick, I won't dump you over it like a fair weather friend will.) We need to strike a balance between the effort to remain well and allowing ourselves some foibles
In this book she also talks about how certain foods and habits such as smoking, and so on have had socio-cultural assumptions about class tied into them. That is to say fast food, cigarettes, and a lounge chair in front of the T.V. - beer can in hand, is assumed to be low class. Into Wellness? You're rich!
What about doctors who only want rich patients?
What about all those TV shows, celebrities, and their audiences hawking colonoscopies and mammograms? The audience applauds... These people come off as heroic but also as medical treatment sales people and promoters.
Over diagnosis - Over-medicalization - not complying with the wishes of a patient who does not want to be resusitated.
Here are some Excerpts:
THE MADNESS OF MINDFULNESS
page 71) In the struggle between mind and body, perpetually reenacted by fitness-seekers, the mind is almost universally conceived as "the good guy" - the moral overdog that must by all rights prevail. Contemporary fitness culture concedes a certain advisory status to the body" We should "listen" to it, since, after all, the body is capable of doing a great many important things on its own, from healing wounds to incubating fetuses, with no discernible instructions from the conscious mind, So if your hamstrings are squealing with pain it may be time to recalibrate the leg lifts and squats....
Page 72-73) But can the mind be trusted? Surveying today's fitness culture, a mid-twentieth century psychiatrist would no doubt find reasons to suspect a variety of mental disorders ; masochism, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and homoerotic tendencies (which were viewed as pathological until the 1970's) -- any of which could indicate the need for professional intervention. Even the untrained eye can detect the occasional skeletal anorectic in the gym, sweating through hours of cardiovascular training, and start to question the assumed intellectual superiority of the mind. We have come, hesitantly, to respect the 'wisdom of the body' but can we be sure of the wisdom of the mind?
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Page 85) It was Silicon Valley, through, that legitimized mindfulness for the rest of the business world. If mindfulness had first taken root in General Mills, it would never had gained the status it's acquired from Google and Facebook. Baking products just don't have the cachet of digital devices. Silicon Valley, is, after all, the 'innovation center of the universe," according to its boosters, home of the 'best and the brightest," along with the new "masters of the universe" who replaced the old ones after the financial crash that temporarily humbled Wall Street Mindfulness may have roots in an ancient religion, but the Valley's imprimatur established that it was rational, scientific, and forward- looking.
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Quick note. I edited this for errors in spelling that were mine but also the result of auto-"corrects," on November 11, 2022.... I hate auto corrects, especially when what appears to be correct, doesn't show up after one sends. Shocking also to learn well used words that are not in the dictionary.
C 2022 Christine Trzyna
