Cautionary tale

The "unhealthy lifestyles" idea pathologizes people and their lives. Creating an artificial divide, as if living-which is what "lifestyle" more or less caricatures- is somehow separate from ones being. Like choosing a brand of washing powder or toothpaste.

It has taken the place of saying someone's life and usually they are "sinful". Instead it euphemizes it into you are living an "unhealthy" one. A form of displacement.

This is where I'm in disagreement with atheists who think all you have to do is get rid of religion to enter a new age of rationality. This overlooks our need to to keep repeating and rehearsing our moral beliefs. Finding ways to put them into practice over and again. Having a central locus set in a background where they are all gathered. Like a well we can dip into at any time.

It's one of the attractions of soap operas. Role playing games or making cults out of art-both popular and fine.

We need to see and feel what we think is good and bad, played out in front of us endlessly.

Fat people =bad people is part of that impulse. It has travelled through medicine and science and they are the equivalent in a secular society to religion in a theocracy. A powerful source of unquestioned influence where there's opportunity to bypass critical faculties.

Note that a lot of secularists, who see themselves as guided by science, though they'll hate me saying it, they do use it the way religious people use tracts from their 'good books'. Scientists themselves often dismiss lay folk's attempts to understand and absorb science.

Stating it must be left only to those qualified, i.e. them. Don't get above yourself, know your place. Yet if a person does not try to pass studies and their conclusions through whatever critical faculties they have. An even more abject state of reverence than that of many religious people can ensue.

I was kept in line by the so called scientific cals in/out in a way I never would've been by religious doctrines.  Or should I say the reputation of doctors and scientists who said, keep dieting, keep trying, don't stop your diets.

I saw logical flaws, but it took me a long time to have the confidence to accept the real life, real time findings of that particular experiment. The harm this has done to me is greater than I can perceive from growing up in a religious home.

It's a cautionary tale.