Last week I told you about a British Medical Journal article on the benefits of barriatric surgery over behavior mod, the current operations of preference are Roux en Y with gastric reduction (one helluva surgery), sleeves (simpler) and such.
Theodore Dalrymple (real name Anthony Daniels) is my favorite essayist, by far, on social/psych issues. He is a knowledgeable and intelligent, sensible psychiatrist and prolific writer of essays and books. A learned man.
I know you’re laughing at me–but there really are some fine psychiatrists–I have been pleased to know some and they taught me a lot.
However, there is more to discuss about this obesity problem–which is really in front of you if, you, like I, shop at the Walmart for example.
The problem is morbid obesity. Sure lots of people in America are fat, but we also are leading the world in REAAAAALLLLY FAT.
Dalrymple takes the opportunity to discuss and goes the question of how everyone wants to medicalize abnormal behavior and bad choices. Kind of like adopting Marxian determinism as the default for vice and misconduct and self destructive behavior–give everything a diagnosis.
Here’s my sage Dalrymple analyzing:
Why, then, is the element of individual choice generally avoided in discussions of such social problems as obesity? (I disregard the unconventional wisdom that obesity is not a problem; conventional wisdom is sometimes right.) I think there are three main reasons. The first is that those who emphasize poor choices as an explanation often do forget the circumstances in which choices are made, and therefore underestimate their importance. Where individual choice is emphasized to the exclusion of all else, it can blunt human sympathy and betray an unfeeling and unattractive censoriousness.
Second, the element of personal choice suggests that we can never have a society so perfect that good behavior or self-control will no longer be necessary. Thus, the scope of politics and role of bureaucracy necessarily have limits, and this is not flattering to the self-esteem or self-importance of the providential class—those people who feel that, without their detailed guidance and legislative direction, society is doomed to permanent ignorance, sickness, vice, and disorder. And this is a serious loss for an educated cohort for whom politics has replaced religion or culture as the source of personal meaning and significance.
Third, and most important, is the false and sentimental belief that, in taxing people with even partial responsibility for their downfall, you must thereby be withdrawing all sympathy from them. To tell a drug addict, for example, that he is not ill but rather is behaving foolishly or badly, is on this view to deny him understanding or assistance. This does not in the least follow, however; though the type of understanding and assistance you will give him will be different from what you would give if you regarded him as solely a victim—say, a dweller of a coastal area devastated by a tsunami.
It is sentimental—and, in the last anal
NOW, HAVE I CONVINCED YOU–THE GUY CAN THINK AND WRITE.
Here is the whole essay:
http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_2_obesity.html
I sincerely appreciate that Dr. Dalrymple/Daniels admits to his biases up front: “(I disregard the unconventional wisdom that obesity is not a problem; conventional wisdom is sometimes right.)” He has announced up front what his assumption was, and that his arguments proceed from that point. One can then either choose to join him in debate upon the ground he has chosen (doing so at one’s own risk, hehe), or simply concede his points and see what can be said factually about whether his assumptions are correct, or at the least put him somewhere near an appropriate starting point for his chain of reasoning.
I would have a whole lot more patience for most of the current-pseudo science crowd if they did the same thing. Like, ever, even once. Issues such as CAGW, chemophobia, medical/nutritional guidelines, “enironmentalism” in general, and so forth all proceed from logical starting points which are loaded with many (and highly variable) assumptions. (Make no mistake: contrary positions do the same.) If the figures promoting these various viewpoints were to acknowledge the simple fact that assumptions have been made in order to arrive their positions, then I could believe that science truly did have a place in the discussion.
The fact that they refuse to admit anything other than Absolute Truth as a basis for their arguments reveals them for the pied-pipers, false prophets &/or mindless drones they truly are.
We have a solution to end all obesity in the works. It’s called Obama’s economic and environmental policies, (starvation).