Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Personal responsibility & Compassion
Invincible_summer
Heavy Metal DhammaWe(s)t coast, Canada Veteran
To what extent are people responsible for their own happiness? To what extent are we responsible to make others happy?
I ask this because lately, I've had quite a few friends talk about/post on FB about body image issues - not their own (at least not overtly), but within the context of the fashion industry and the overabundance of skinny models, etc.
It got me thinking - it's so easy to blame the transnational corporations for "brainwashing" people and "making" them feel bad about their bodies. But surely we have a responsibility to ourselves to be compassionate and accepting of ourselves... how much does that come into play? Is it reasonable to put a majority of the blame on the global, faceless "Other," as they are the ones promoting these standards of beauty? Or are we mainly to blame for buying into it?
In my opinion, it's somewhere in between (big surprise there
). Of course marketers shouldn't be consciously promoting a certain standard of beauty that has been shown to be psychologically harmful, but we also need to guard ourselves from these messages. We shouldn't feel the need to have our bodies approved by Abercrombie & Fitch to feel good about ourselves... but is it unskillful to actually say this to someone?
Just a bit of rambling, but something that comes up quite a bit for me actually. I want to know your thoughts!
I ask this because lately, I've had quite a few friends talk about/post on FB about body image issues - not their own (at least not overtly), but within the context of the fashion industry and the overabundance of skinny models, etc.
It got me thinking - it's so easy to blame the transnational corporations for "brainwashing" people and "making" them feel bad about their bodies. But surely we have a responsibility to ourselves to be compassionate and accepting of ourselves... how much does that come into play? Is it reasonable to put a majority of the blame on the global, faceless "Other," as they are the ones promoting these standards of beauty? Or are we mainly to blame for buying into it?
In my opinion, it's somewhere in between (big surprise there
). Of course marketers shouldn't be consciously promoting a certain standard of beauty that has been shown to be psychologically harmful, but we also need to guard ourselves from these messages. We shouldn't feel the need to have our bodies approved by Abercrombie & Fitch to feel good about ourselves... but is it unskillful to actually say this to someone?Just a bit of rambling, but something that comes up quite a bit for me actually. I want to know your thoughts!
1
Comments
Applies to everything, really.
Now if you were to say "To what extent are we responsible to be kind and helpful to others"
100%! Not necessarily, IMO. It depends on whether or not it would be helpful to them to say that.
It is up to us to protect ourselves, yes, but most people don't have the ability to withdraw from society in order to do so. Mostly we are talking about young people here, as older people mostly tend to accept themselves a bit better. But the younger group, starting as young as 10 or so up to, on, late 20s have the hardest time with this. Even if they avoid tv, it's everywhere. Everything you see and hear is constantly telling young people that they aren't good enough. When someone is immersed in that kind of message, it is very hard at a young age to think yourself out of it. Parents have a responsibility to teach, and protect their children as much as they can, but it's pretty hard. I can control what my kid's see and hear while they are at my house. But I cannot control what ads they see on the side of a bus or billboard, what they hear on the radio during baseball practice, what they see and hear at school, and so on. It's extremely pervasive.
I think some people are more sensitive than others, and those with low self-esteem are more likely to get caught up in these messages and buy into them. But even though it's ultimately up to us as individuals to find our acceptance and happiness, it's still up to us as a society to value people for their actual worth as a person and we fail miserably at that.
. . . well maybe in the hell realms . . . .
Women are lovely. Men too (so I have been told).
The 'external beauty' confidence scam is shallow and comedic. However you might have been contaminated. Get well. Live simply. Be beautiful in nature not unnaturally.
Women in particular are bombarded with an image that is based on anorexic emos that are self hating. I know how easy it is to be contaminated by false values and ideals.
Breaking free, going makeup less etc is hard . . . However it is a freedom.
We should lock up the fashion industry for crimes against humanity. They are enslaving innocents. Should we be compassionate? It may be they need reeducating. Perhaps they could be trained as flower arrangers?
We are all weak, fragile, easily led, easily broken. Be kind to those who have fallen on life's cat walk . . . one day we will have, 'bodhisattvas on parade'.
. . . till then . . .
:wave:
We can only do so much. Do what you can to promote kindness and show acceptance of those you come in contact with. A colleague of mine is a psychologist whose specialty is people who suffer from body dysmorphic disorder. One thing she has said that really stood out to me is that it's important not to make too much of an issue of the person's body (and the neuroses surrounding it) itself. That serves only to feed the preoccupation with physical appearance. Instead, it's better to feed and offer affirmation for the more substantive aspects of a person's being: his/her kindness, intelligence/insight, determination, ambition, etc. The way she actually phrased it was "the difference between how boys are raised in this culture vs. girls." Girls are affirmed for physical appearance, while boys are praised more for their ability and as a result don't show as much proclivity towards body image issues. However, I find that more men these days have similar problems and, yes, the corporate machine has a lot to do with it.
Simply just showing someone that you are more interested in who their are on the inside can subvert the preoccupation with external appearance, if only for a little while. Doing this consistently can help plant the seeds of a larger and more expansive self-concept, that is vaster than one's body. This is essentially what the Buddha was trying to get at with anatta: that which we tend to create an identity out of is ephemeral and ultimately disappointing. We focus instead on honorable action, rather than being the object of another's lascivious gaze.
The idea of accepting ourselves sounds nice but obesity is a serious problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity
Real compassion is not always being nice and compassion for oneself can also include facing a painful truth and taking responsibility for the amount of calories we put in our body.
What they need is love and support from some people who care versus a world who still bullies them constantly.
I'm reminded of a kid who came to my office crying one day. I had him sit down and asked him why he was crying. To paraphrase (and remember, this is a 12 year old): "The other juveniles in this institution aren't at the same level as my intellect. And as a result, those individuals taunt me because they are inferior to me. They refer to me as a nerd because my intellect allows me to utilize a level of verbal interaction that confuses them. And so, they constantly reiterate the same derogatory comments about me."
I responded that if he wanted to be treated like a normal kid, maybe he needed to start acting normal. They wouldn't call you a nerd and a geek if you didn't act like a nerd or geek.
His response (again, paraphrased): "No. I am of the opinion that I should uphold my dignity by refusing to lower my behavioral standards to those pupils who are clearly beneath me."
Well, it's back to the old saying that (and I always get this wrong) ""If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got". I referred the kid to counseling and discussed the situation with his parents...who were geeks/nerds themselves, and they didn't see an issue.
My point...if by support, what needs to said never gets said, then I think we just condone.
That’s not bullying.
When people are in denial about their problem it is not compassionate to reinforce them in their denial.
I have never actually been overweight. But from being in situations where a huge lifestyle change was necessary, that motivation needed to come from within. It never worked when I was coerced by others, or when others used scare tactics on me.
Struggling with it gave me a fresh look on friendship.
There were very friendly people who (with the best of intentions) supported the part of me / the potential thoughts that undermined my effort of getting grip on my weight.
There were not so friendly people who (maybe with not the best of intentions) attacked these thoughts and who said things I didn’t particularly wanted to hear.
I learned to appreciate these “unkind” comments. They supported the potential thoughts that would make me change my habits.
I said they used him as the nearest trash can and that remark made him angry.
But I knew because I had been in the exact same situation and had learned to stop being the nearest trash can myself.
But I’ll give this discussion a rest. We’re off topic I think
It's such a fine line between completely expecting others to solve problems for us and blaming ourselves for our shortcomings. Why is it so hard to talk to most people about this? The world thrives on duality and black and white... it's sort of sad how discussing the grey areas can be almost a "radical" act.
When I tried to quit smoking the first few times, a lot of friends tried to pull the "tough love" approach on me. It just made the inevitable lapses even more wrought with shame. I had to get away from those people (well, all people for a while) and just listen very attentively to my body and mind. It was a very inward process and I had to set aside a lot of the things I'd heard about smoking. It's like when someone tells you "Don't look down!" when you're high up somewhere. It's better just to pay attention to the moment at hand sometimes.
And who made you (or anyone) the police of other people's bodies - or 'health' - or caloric intake?
That is a horrendously arrogant position to assume based on nothing more than what a person LOOKS like. It is a bias, a prejudice, and nothing less. There is no 'compassion' in assessing, judging, and shaming people based on their looks.
Overweight / obesity is a VERY complex issue.
For the most part--- the "obesity epidemic" is a media & diet industry created faux crisis. Obesity rates have fallen and leveled off for the last 10 years or more; especially among children. There are studies, believe me, but they don't sell fear and loathing to the masses with those studies...
Fat people CAN be healthy. MANY fat people are active, healthy and yes, even athletic.
Thin people are not automatically healthy by merits of pants or dress size.
There is not one single solitary disease that ONLY fat people get because they are fat. Not diabetes, not heart disease, not cancer. They claim that being obese "raises the risk factors" for certain diseases. However, according to the studies (even quoted by my own doctors) the rise in the percentage risk factor is NOT THAT SIGNIFICANT.
Here's a good Example:
The new obesity horror-de-jour is cervical cancer amongst fat women. Here's how it works:
Take a random sampling of 100 average-to-thin size women and about 3% will at some point develop cervical cancer.
Take a random sampling of 100 Obese (and ONLY obese) women, and the percentages 'jump' to 4.5 - 5.5%. , not exactly significant.
Oh sure, nearly double, but it's not like it's jumping from 45% to 80%. Things are never kept in perspective when there are pills to sell and diet plans to shame fat people into....
It is certainly much LESS significant than the rise in stats for smokers vs. Non-smokers, drinkers vs non-drinkers, etc. Yet we don't exactly attempt to assess and vilify every single person seen sipping a cocktail, do we? And one reason there may be that rise in statistical percentages is because many fat people avoid preventative medical care or monitoring- to avoid going to health care "professionals" who shame them for their weight and/or blame their weight for every symptom under the sun.
Another thing to ponder; according to the ADA; Diabetes has a current rate (in the USA) of 8.3% of the entire adult population. However there are claims that 35% of the adult population in the USA is Significantly Overweight, and 15% are morbidly obese.
Soooooo.... why isn't diabetes up to at least the 15 - 20% mark instead of merely 8%? Because weight is usually a SYMPTOM of diabetes, not the cause of diabetes, that's why. Never has been.
Even if you are a doctor, one can not judge why a person is fat, nor their health status, just by looking at them. You can't divine their cholesterol numbers, their triglycerides, their hormonal balance, their thyroid function, their blood pressure or any other VALID measurement of "health" just by how fat (or thin) they are. This is a fact.
But part of the book shows how his preventative care measures can reverse heart disease by a greater factor than coronary bipass surgery!
I'm not saying size of pants is the determining factor but it is apparent from ornish's research that diet and exercise are a major factor in the health of a person.
I have not heard of this author, but honestly there is nothing he or you have said in your post that I can argue with. Diet and exercise IS important, absolutely.
My point is, that lots of fat people DO exercise, and DO eat healthy.... many move more and eat healthier than naturally thin folks do. My point is you can't TELL who is healthy and who isn't only by the numbers on a scale or what a person looks like. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the Vaca Sutta, the Buddha laid down five conditions which makes a statement "well-spoken, not ill-spoken". These five conditions are:
In the Patimokkha, those five conditions are set out as questions which you can ask yourself before "admonishing another": These are:
In the Abhaya Sutta, the Buddha was asked, "Lord, would the Tathagata say words that are unendearing & disagreeable to others?" To which the Buddha replied, "[T]here is no categorical yes-or-no answer to that." The Buddha then went on the explain that in the case of statements that are unendearing and disagreeable, he would only say them if such statements were 1)factual, 2)true, 3)beneficial and 4) said at the proper time.
The various types of statements which the Buddha said he would or would not make are as follows:
I think that it is important to note that according to the above, not only is there always a need for a statement to be factual, true and beneficial, but there is also always a need for "a sense of proper time" for saying it.
And we know that was rubbish. The chances of cancer and heart disease go up dramatically for smokers.
It’s roughly the same for people with high fat percentages. They have significant higher health risks.
I don’t care too much what people look like and I’m not as judgmental as I may seem. Obesity is a real health risk though. And the problem is growing worldwide. Denying it is as harmful as denying the health risks of smoking or alcohol abuse.
Plus I for one know that I feel much better after losing the overweight.
I probably agree that human behavior and how it relates to tendencies in society is a hugely complex matter. I certainly don’t have the answers.
Thinking about behavior as if it were a matter of individual responsibility is more practical in the short run maybe.
For example if I would want to quit smoking; it could take decades before society has solved the issue. But if I find a way of motivating myself to quit that can happen within a year.
At the same time we can work on making changes on a bigger scale like regulating commercials for cigarettes or prohibiting smoking in public areas and things like that. This approach is more meaningful in the long run.
I really hear what you're saying though. I will admit that I most definitely preach acceptance of all shapes and sizes, and yet, I'm pretty harsh with my own body.
Sooner or late, one way or another, it's gonna get you.
Overweight and even obese people, can be healthier than their thinner counterparts. The point is, that many of us make a whole lot of assumptions and judgements about an obese or overweight person when we see them, which we have no business doing. We don't know if they are healthy or not. We don't know why they are overweight. We don't know if maybe they've already lost 50 pounds and are still working on it, or recently gained 100 pounds from being on steroids. But most of us right away assume when we see someone who is overweight, that they are eating too much fast food, that they sit on the couch and stuff themselves with pizza and 2 liter bottles of pop and so on. But it's not true. And while some people need a kick in the butt to get themselves motivated, it's pretty silly to assume you need to point out to an overweight person, that they are overweight.
I dislike being around people who smoke. They smell. But some of my best friends smoke. When I was a kid, most of my relatives smoked. I still loved them. But I wish someone had convinced my grandfather that smoking was bad for him...before he died of lung cancer and emphysema. I wish someone had convinced my aunt that smoking was bad for her...before she died of a heart attack at age 40, which the doctor attributed to heavy smoking. My father wished he had been convinced by someone of the health hazards of heavy drinking and heavy smoking before he had his massive heart attack and stroke. I never minded a bit when colleagues said, "Vince, you really shouldn't eat so many donuts. It can't be good for your health."
That's completely different than calling someone a "fat ass" or a "fat pig".
Expressing legitimate concern for someone's health -- even when they don't want to hear it -- is, in my view, an act of friendship.
My grandma has been smoking for 60 years. She doesn't have cancer but she has COPD as a result. She has been told for a long, LONG time that it was bad for her. 10 other people telling her that and shaming her as a result (which is what most people end up doing even if they mean well) was not going to suddenly convince her.
Anyhow, as far as genetics, we have more control over this than we want to believe. Lifestyle has a lot to do with why were are getting fatter as a country, but, even someone who isn't fat themselves, can produce a child prone to obesity based on what they eat. What we eat and everything we put into our bodies (including sounds and images) changes the cellular structure of our bodies. It's not simply that we move less and eat more. What we eat has a HUGE impact on our bodies and we're still told that things that aren't good for a lot of people are necessary for health.
Offering support can be done with acceptance and love, absolutely. But most people can't treat that line carefully enough and end up saying things like "why are you order another bid mac meal? You realize that's just going to make you fatter, right?" and think they are helping. Even though for a lot (not all most certainly) of people, the right equation of proper food and movement will cause weight loss, the reasons why they eat how they do are not so easy to solve. A lot of things play into the reasons a person gains weight, and once they gain it it causes metabolic changes in the body that make it incredibly hard to lose it without some extensive training in nutrition (true nutrition not USDA nutrition) and mindfulness of the body during movement.
If you want to help and support someone, offer to be their partner, don't just tell them what to do. Don't assume you know why someone is how they are and that they've done certain things to get them there. My one friend I mentioned earlier, was a track and field star in high school. She's obese, yes, but she's also very tall and very strong. She maintains regular health care and does not have any risk markers in any of her health numbers. Her cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other markers are all in healthy range. Carrying all that weight it hard on her joints though and she has worked with doctors on doctor approved weight loss plans to lose weight, and it hasn't happened beyond 10 pounds here and there. She is still working on it. I guarantee you she doesn't need people to point out to her that she's obese, or people to tell her she's unhealthy. Her and her doctors know better than you do. Another person I know is obese because he has lupus and has been on high doses of steroids since he was 8 years old. He cannot work, he cannot drive, he can hardly move because of his disease. So, go ahead and tell him that he's unhealthy because he's obese. Believe me, he knows he's not healthy but it's not because of the reasons you think.
Not accepting people for who they are?
I think I simply kicked in some open doors on the health risks of obesity.
@vinlyn a lot of people who mean well in simply telling their friends that they are fat, end up making them feel more ashamed than they were to start. Because when you start telling someone something they already know "hey, did you know you are overweight and it's bad for you" then it makes them feel that everyone thinks they are stupid on top of everything else.
I'm not arguing that obesity isn't a problem. But it is no different than anything else. You cannot force someone to stop smoking just because they know it's bad. You cannot make someone stop drinking because it's bad. You cannot MAKE someone do something just because it's not good for them. If that was the case, no one would have unhealthy habits. It is not as simple as most people make it out to be, that if people would ONLY eat less and walk more, they'd lose weight. Once again, if that was the case, we wouldn't have the problem we do.
The thread is about "personal responsibility and compassion". It seems to me we ought to be encouraging people (including myself) to take personal responsibility for health issues they can control (for example, I can't control my heart condition...it's genetic; I can control my weight problem, that's making better choices). And it seems to me we ought to be compassionate in how we deal with people with weight issues. But doing nothing shows no compassion.
Also, for your information, I help run a weightloss/fitness/nutrition group for about 40 people on FB (most of whom are friends or acquiantences of mine) and I have plenty of conversations about exercise and nutrition with people who *ask* for it. I don't go around telling people I purport to know what is the best for them or what the cause of their condition is. I also don't feel a need, in EVERY SINGLE THREAD, to report to you about what I may or may not do to solve all the various problems in our world. Just because I don't talk about it, don't assume I don't do something. I don't owe you a resume of the things I do in my life just because I happen to be discussing an issue.
Off the cuff, it can be difficult to respond in a way that isn't rude or dishonest. But you know, if they were just searching for someone to say "No you're not!" that's irritating as well... but rather common...
@vinlyn, you are free to self-loath, you are free to ridicule yourself and denigrate yourself because of your (perceived) weaknesses and overweight status.... however, you do NOT have the right, and it is NOT compassionate, nor caring, nor "showing concern" to monitor, assess or judge OTHERS the same way.
Being a size 8 instead of a size 28 is not a "moral obligation" - for anyone. People are made in different sizes and shapes and with a good diet, moderate exercise, and general health-care ANYONE can be healthy- at size 8 OR size 28. If you don't believe that, that's fine. But keep in mind that you don't police the world according to " Vinlyn's rules and standards of Health".
And simply face the fact that obesity is a health problem. Not a simple problem but a real problem.
Don’t deny it, fight it.
What I do when I hear someone talk about themselves like that is say to them in so many words: "I'm your friend, I love you and admire you as a person, you're a good person, you're a talented person, you have worth. What you look like is not a problem for me, please don't make it a problem for you. Be aware of healthy habits, do what you can to be healthy... not skinny. Maybe that will result in weight loss, but then again maybe not. But doing what you can to be healthy IS A GOOD thing, regardless. So don't talk about yourself like that around me, ok? "
I really have given that talk to several people I know, in real life and online .... and you know what? There was a time when *I* got that talk from someone too, and I needed it to help me stop with the self-loathing too. THAT'S the kind of 'compassion' and concern real friends and loving family give to each other, not lectures or name-calling because they are fat.