Well sure, but did I excuse personal responsibility completely?
I think it is understandable that when addicts for anything from alcohol, drugs, gambling, ect relapse, some of that is hugely on them for not being able to handle temptation and keep better self control. But I think we can all understand how it's much different for a person who's living in Las Vegas to fall back into gambling or someone living in LA to be more easily tempted with drugs than if that same person living in 1970's Salt Lake City.
In my experience a lot of handling self control and responsibility is understanding the importance of building the right environment around you.
In college I found out that I have a temptation to stress eat and when I gained 20 pounds over the course of a semester, I realized that having my kitchen stocked with easy to get snacks and food didn't help. I no longer bought snacks and so made it so that if I wanted to eat anything I would have to make a meal or at the least get up and walk to a store and buy something. I made it a chore and more of an inconvenience to eat food. That simple change made it so that I was back to my healthy skinny weight by the end of the following semester+summer. It worked because food was no longer a momentary snap decision made when I was studying and stressed. It had to be a deliberate action and decision which meant a number of times when I wanted to grasp for the comfort of food I couldn't.
Same thing happened when in the past few years I found myself so easily grabbing my phone anytime things were slow to read some random post, article or book on it. Most of it was meaningless drivel that just helped me pass the time, but wasn't adding to my life and was distracting me more than I liked. When I finally got around to addressing this so that when I wanted to work without distractions and the temptation for a short break I put my phone and it's charger on the other side of the apartment. That way it would require me to get up and walk over to check it. It would have to be a deliberate action which did a lot to cut down on my phone use. Though the biggest help was switching to an iphone se with it's tiny screen which made it a chore to use outside of actual necessity. I would have switched to a dumb phone, but just out of social and work obligation I needed a smartphone and the tiny screen has really helped in cutting down on idle phone use because it's so suboptimal.
Now you could say that yes anyone can do these types of things, but I want to emphasize that I think myself of fairly conscientious and put together and I found it quite hard. It wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy and I'm not saying that I have the greatest cravings for food as well. I think it's completely understandable in a modern society where people are bombarded and stimulated with food ads everywhere, the cheapness of all of this food, the slight extra difficulty that healthy food has versus fast food, it is more than understandable why many cannot handle the difficulty of managing these things on top of the rigors of life. Especially for those living in higher stress lower income environments where they're worried about their next paycheck, having enough to pay for rent, utilities, and food in general. For those people, having the luxury to add on a new thing to stress and watch about might be much more difficult than my incident in college.
I also think you need to factor in support systems into this. When I was trying to lose the weight in the summer back at home, I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to eat healthier and she was more than happy to help me. Replacing less healthy meals with more chicken dinners and such and we cut out having high calorie processed food snacks in the house. My sister grumbled, but she was understanding.
If you have a supportive family structure, something that generally overlaps more with middle and higher classes, the importance of healthy living and being in shape is taken much more seriously. Requests like mine are things that are understood and taken more seriously. Overweight people are generally lower class and often their families are also overweight. If say one of them decides that they want to be healthier, that plan is severely hampered and made more difficult if the people around them who also are probably overweight are unwilling to also join them. It's not impossible, but you can understand that if their families are not on board, chances are that unhealthy high calorie snacks and foods will still dominate their kitchen making it that much more difficult for the person trying to lose weight. It's easier to stick to a diet if you aren't staring the face of bags of potato chips everytime you get up to get water.
One pound of fat is about 3500 calories. 3500 extra calories is pretty easy to gain over the course of few days for most. I'd argue most won't even notice it significantly if they ingest 800 extra calories a day a for week. That's literally two poptarts a day. Weight loss is a slow gradual process that can be achingly slow. Gaining 3500 calories can happen without notice, but losing 3500 calories? Being on constant calorie deficit can be extremely frustrating. The person must deny themselves the food needed to sate their hunger and force their body to burn that fat inside. You can do everything right for a week and be on pace to lose a pound then on Sunday you go out with friends to watch the game at a bar and a few beers and a couple slices of pizza could mean that you've just ingested 2000 calories and much of the progress you made over that entire week is gone.
I say all of that to simply say that yes, it's doable. Millions of people workout and diet to lose weight and it works. It's a struggle, but it works both historically and the modern day. I did it, you might have at some point, many do it after the holiday season every year and it works out decently well for them.
My point is that I think the idea that the modern day is filled with people who are uniquely bad with self control and temptation out of a individual failing is a lie. Maybe we're worse than people were 80 years ago, but I think you take many of those people from 80 years ago and make them grow up in the modern day, most would struggle similarly. In the past extreme weight gain and obesity was probably more of a personal failing because of yes the environment that might shame them around them, but also just what they could eat to get fat. Advertising and yes human behavior has normalized the huge portions that would be unthinkable previously. The food itself has changed, oatmeal isn't terribly appetizing but honey nut cheerios is.
When the scale is as big as it is in the modern day I'm much more likely to see this as a industrial scaled problem where more of the blame should be on society than individuals. Some of these are people who might have fallen into this behavior, but most are probably people in previous eras would have had an extra piece of pie but would at worse just have slightly chubbier cheeks. I put the blame more on society for fostering a terrible environment where those on the edge to be led astray.
In my opinion obesity is a bigger health crisis than smoking ever was and we should implement the same kind of sin taxes on corporations that push these things. Society pays for obesity through healthcare, mental problems, lower productivity, less polite world, exacerbating class divides, insurance expenses, and a whole lot more. There are so many negative externalities and we should at the least ban advertising for fast food and unhealthy foods like poptarts, ect the same way we banned advertisements for smoking. If people want it then they can get it, but there is great benefit from keeping their messaging from barraging a population that does not need that temptation in front of them constantly. Society would be better for it.
silk
9mo ago
I have no trust in a wonder drug. I simply have trust that this drug with all of its known and potential side affects will still be better than severe obesity is for most humans in this situation. I don't doubt there will be some more widely taught dangerous outcomes, especially if people end up using this long term even after they lose weight as a method to, "keep off" the weight, but again, if you've seen just how terrible obesity is for individuals and society as a whole, it might still end up being worth it.
And again, I still think if we sin taxed the extremely high calorie, nutritiously trash, banned advertising for fast food, ect and made them pay for the negative externalities of their businesses and subsidized healthy foods for humans, that would be a much better outcome. I just have little hope in that happening, so I expect this or future iterations of this drug to be the best we can hope for in the modern world.
Yeah this does seem like the inevitable future.
Honestly it was always felt absolutely absurd to me that people blamed individuals completely for their overweight status. Like yes, a portion of this is always going to come down to personal responsibility, but when the overweight proportion of America and the world so high, maybe there's something more going on.
There have always been poor people, there have always been low class people, there have always been those without personal responsibility and those who have terrible impulse control. But it's only in the recent decades that we've seen such a massive rise of country and international obesity levels. Is there somehow something so unique with modern Americans and modern humanity that we lack that simple impulse control as our ancestors did for millennia?
Maybe to some extent, but to this scale? Probably not.
I think it was always obvious the problem was that we are animals. Animals with genetics and a brain that was meant for a much different environment and world. Modern civilization is an artificial construct we've engaged for a blip in the time scale of our species. The problem was obviously the extremely easily available high calorie, extremely unnutritiousness foods found literally at every corner.
Do we blame the gambling addict completely if we transport them to Las Vegas and tell them to be smart? If they end up gambling, yes it's on them, but it's also partly on us for taking them to Las Vegas in the first place.
I feel like this reality was obvious to us at least by the mid 2000's. If you are a person who believes in sin taxes then we should have supported and pushed for the significant taxing of these foods and used that money to directly subsidize healthier food. If not for the betterment of the individuals in society, than for the fact that society has to face the huge costs of generations of obesity in things like ballooning healthcare costs, part of the contribution to the proliferation of incels, increased insurance liabilities, ect.
But since we successfully convinced everyone that fatness was a unique individual moral failing, jack in the box stays open and everyone and everything pays the huge negative externalities. On top of that we get another point of contention and divide between people in this country where everyone argues with each other and blames each other while those that profit off of this just walk around with the fortunes in their pockets.
Thankfully since that is politically untenable for multiple reasons, the pharma companies have come to the rescue and soon enough massive obesity will be a thing of the past.
I genuinely believe that obesity and the modern health crisis resulting from that have had a hand in a number of the biggest modern societal problems and I think on a much, much, much, much smaller scale we might notice in a decade or two where certain societal problems will have decreased and we might statistically be able to tie it to people no longer being as massively obese in the same way we tie lead in the paint with so many problems. Again, on a hugely smaller scale of course. Just trying to make the point that this is an issue that has an impact on a number of different issues and without it, a lot of affected things will change for the better.
You really don't know how non Asian immigrant parents work, do you?
The increase in "status" does not make up for the loss in culture and religion that parents foresee. For a significant majority of Middle Eastern and Indian parents, especially in America, it is at the least a slight negative to marry a person outside of their group if not an outright disaster. The more progressive ones will care less, but it's not at all considered a status bump by any measure. Bringing home a partner not from their group is something that will result in huge, often irrevocable, rifts between families.
Genuinely thought this would be common knowledge at this point. Even with their sons, these are communities that dislike them marrying white women. Kumail Nanjiani famously made a whole movie about the story about him and his wife getting together and his parents in that movie were probably much nicer in their significant disapproval than they were in real life.
silk
9mo ago
Among Indians, especially Indian mothers, having straight hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, is considered a huge plus.
Okay, what? That is a seemingly absurd characterization. Genuinely, how much interactions with Indians in the west have you had? Or is it with a single particular subgroup of Indians?
Legitimately have no idea how the blue eyes thing is, but it sounds like you're basing this statement off of particular north Indian subgroup where you noticed this and where there are blue eyes in a small portion of them, but as you well know, most of India has nobody with blue eyes outside of a tiny portion of the population amongst a small portion of the northern Indian population near the pakistani border closer to the middle east. Amongst the rest of the population this isn't even a consideration since it's not something seen.
Hair... Like I'm genuinely a bit confused at how you're making such a judgement? Like there are people with straight hair, wavy hair, and curly hair who are considered beautiful men in many of India's film industries. Like if there's a preference for straight hair, it's like the same as the preference for straight hair as a factor in defining a hot white man as defined white women in America, where I'm super unsure about it, but the fact that there are more straight haired white men suggests there is some preference, but it's not significant by any measure. And nowhere near as significant to actually say is a huge factor. Also, like most Indian men have straight hair? All in all super confused tbh.
Most Indians, at least in Indians in America, the majority of whom originated from the Indian tech immigration boom during the 90's and early 00's are fairly religious and still quite traditional. Now if you're speaking about the demographics of Indians in the UK or the ones that immigrated from a different demo prior to if they're Christian instead of Hindu or Muslim then things might be off, but most of the Indians in America are from that tech immigration group. Those were Indians coming from many different class backgrounds, but because of the meritocratic nature of becoming a software engineer meant that this wave included a much larger portion of immigrants from lower classes. Lower classes that tend to be much more religious and traditional than the higher cosmopolitan class of Indians that historically was able to immigrate.
Most immigrant Indian parents, yes, prefer fair skin, but fair skin within the Indian demographic. This isn't a sliding scale where the white skin of white people makes up for the fact that they are not Indian. For most of this demo, bringing home a White partner is not seen as a positive thing. A significant number of mothers and fathers care about religion and culture and with a white partner they, probably rightfully, see as the end of the line for their religions and culture being meaningfully passed on as anything more than just a name and a couple of parties.
I've seen families go ballistic where huge rifts were created when children brought home and introduced their parents to non Hindu partners that were still Indian. I know a guy introduce his parents to his ivy league college sweetheart, a beautiful White woman who was great in both character and background. Was all around a standout person, worked as a lawyer and came from a semi-wealthy family. None of that mattered. The family only started speaking somewhat more recently after they had a kid, and still despite that speaking with the guy he says his relationship with his parents is irrevocably broken. It'll get better, but they aren't ever really going to forgive him. I've seen similar things with women who brought home both White and Asian men.
I mean even if you bring home a partner that's Indian and the same religion, that might cause problems. It's not a simple situation. People love grouping India as this single large diverse country, but it's basically like taking the European Union and saying that everyone is European. In some ways the most recent period under Mughal and then British rule did make Indians closer and more unified because of the single external enemy, but that period was nowhere nearly long enough, nor are organized enough to break down those regional divisions and differences fully. Historically India was not united with a huge empire for most of the subcontinent's history. Similar to Europe where outside of brief periods India was a region divided into dozens of separate kingdoms with different languages, cultures and history. Much of India speaks different languages and there are broad strokes of cultural similarities like how Europeans are similar to each other, but there are huge swathes of differences. People from different regions speak different languages, they interpret cultural traditions often radically differently, have different ways they practice religion, ect.
In the modern day this factor matters less and the first gen immigrants have resigned themselves to that their child does not have the same care for regional differences, caste differences as much, ect that their generation learnt and grew up with, but there is still a decent implied assumption amongst most Indians that their kids will bring home an Indian of some sort. If they don't, most will not look on that with a great view. Even if that person is taller, more beautiful, more successful, ect than an Indian person, the Indian partner is preferable. Now of course it's not like parents prefer a loser Indian to a great non Indian, but what I'm trying to convey is that the non Indian person has to be significantly better for people to accept them and even then to some level they will never be as welcomed.
Sidenote: I'd say that fair skin is something that Indian parents prefer and care about a lot more. Those that were born and grew up in the West probably also carry some a fair skin preference, but it's nowhere near as large. The demo that grew up in the West grew up without the same level of cultural baggage and was very explicitly raised in a more diverse environment that I can see has made them much less as intense about that factor. It's something people care about yes, but it's not as big as many of the other factors in attractiveness like height, attractive facial features, charm, bmi, career, ect.
Pretty sure if you went back a hundred years ago when Irish immigrants were coming to the country through Ellis Island, there were probably numerous speeches given by congressmen and government officials at places like Tammany Hall that both were about how that particular Irish leader was looking out for the Irish constituents in America but also making sure that that the USA relationship with Ireland would only grow stronger and they promised that their home island would be subject to less bullying from England because of their American leverage.
I would put huge money on that any wasp republican from that time period would say the same exact thing as you regarding those Irish and Italians. That they are foreigners, have no respect for this nation and its culture and have no real desire to assimilate.
To a large extent you're true. I think first gen immigrants have a strong attachment to their country of origin and will always be like this. You can see it in other groups like how Indians Americans were in full force when Narendra Modi visited America, ect.
I think you're overestimating though how that makes any difference in the light of time. Children who grow up in America are mostly Americanized completely. Few younger Indian Americans care much about Indian politics, I know many Ethiopians who grew up here and though they are saddened by their recent civil war, they didn't shed tears like their parents did because their attachment to Ethiopia is more of a general vague identity and cultural traditions. Not the land or even its people. My Brazilian origin ex visits her grandparents and extended family in Brazil every couple of years and has somewhat strong ties to Brazil visiting it fairly often as a child, but she isn't Brazilian. She knows Portuguese, and loves the food of her country, follows some traditions and is culturally catholic, but she's American. She's not religious, dates people from every ethnic background, her favorite cuisine is Korean and lives to watch trashy american reality tv.
America is America and people are much too busy to care that much when its not a firsthand direct connection. Now, will my exes potential grandchild go to a liberal arts college one day and become a super woke identiterian using her latino and brazilian heritage as a crutch to not have or develop a real personality? Quite possibly, but that's also a uniquely American thing too.
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