Is it just me – or are we subjected to a system committed to destroying individuals? Breaking people down, making them feel worthless, and then what? We complain that people are too sensitive these days, and that wasn’t the case in the past?
Many things weren’t the case in the past. I reflect on the Paleo fantasy from time to time. Maybe they ate natural foods, and moved naturally – but you can bet your ass they didn’t diet, and they wouldn’t have shamed people for being fat. I can’t imagine a healthy society where all the time, every day, you’re constantly being told your body is wrong. It’s anathema to health. And then people wonder about low self-esteem? We wonder about the divide between body and mind – about the perceived dichotomy of body being separate from mind. We are split in two in our own perception. What about the (perhaps totally fanciful) time, when it was just I, me – not my mind and my body? Certainly not my mind versus my body – we have become so used to the language – your body is fighting against you! Your body doesn’t want to lose weight – you gotta trick it, dominate it, fuck it up for your own good. To move, or to be still... Seeking stillness in motion, motion in stillness. It’s a tai chi kind of thing. Still the mind by moving the body. Calm a restless mind. Surely you can’t systematically and intentionally exploit people’s fears and insecurities for money, over and over again, and then complain that young people today have become too insecure and sensitive? Resilience, strength – and then? The perversion of discipline? Discipline should not be applied so that you can become the agent of your own oppression. Discipline enables you to protect and care for that which is fragile, and to reject the pressure to hate – even in the name of love.
4 Comments
Saroosh Wattoo
11/20/2013 09:42:04 am
You're not the only one who's been thinking like this. I'm often called a cynic, and these days I feel like the label is really beginning to be true. I hate the system, the society, the paradigm we live in. There's no concept of stillness, of peace, of acceptance. We live in an era of fear and control, an era in which empowering concepts like agency are taken to illogical extremes and become part of a culture that believes in absolute accountability. You're fat? It's your fault! You're black? It's your fault! You're poor? It's your fault! You're gay? It's you're fault? You're a woman? It's your fault?
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Chris
11/21/2013 10:34:06 am
I do believe we live in a weird backwards world. If you're an idealist, and you believe in the possibility of something better, you're called a cynic and a pessimist. And when you tell people that they don't need to strive for that tired old body-hating goal that we are only told to have, and when you encourage people to pursue their own path irrespective of their weight, you're accused of negativity. And when you point out that the pursuit of thinness only serves the body-hating agenda, and there are other ways to actually be good to yourself that don't involve self-harm, people often don't know what to say; they don't think of the pursuit of thinness as an expression of masochism. But to me, it seems that's what it comes down to - that and/or being exploited and exposed to the politics of fear.
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Gidget Commando
11/26/2013 04:05:45 am
"Surely you can’t systematically and intentionally exploit people’s fears and insecurities for money, over and over again, and then complain that young people today have become too insecure and sensitive?"
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Chris
11/26/2013 07:52:55 am
Thanks, Commando! :)
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