As I sit here writing this, staring into a deep abyss, I am in the Pittsburgh International Airport awaiting my flight. Across from me on the other side of the gate sits a middle-aged women on her phone. Her distance is no match for her voice, with a high-pitched tone that is penetrating deeply through my headphones and into my ear canal, drowning out my calming music. The only recourse is to turn that calming music to a level that makes it no longer calming. Adding to the ambiance of the situation, she is wearing a belly shirt, allowing me to stare deep into her umbilicus. Looking out across the horizon of the gate sits a herd of people, nearly all chin tucking as they attempt to bring their eyes closer to the digital masters controlling their thoughts while feeding on their attention spans. Some have the volume full blast, others have headphones, but they all appear to be practicing for a future that includes neck pain and difficulty concentrating. One may ask if airport or public etiquette is on the decline, but a simple glance reveals it has clearly rapidly disappeared. More devastatingly, over half of those individual in the gate would be considered obese, yet this does not stop the onslaught of spandex short shorts, midriffs, and exposed bellies accompanied by a surplus of pizza and candy.
How did we get here? How did we get to this place in society where this is acceptable behavior and considered a social norm, and how did we get here so fast? Airports, where people are placed in a stressful environment and herded together in public, provide a unique method to detect and view the pulse of society, or lack thereof. (For the record, while in the past flying may have been more glamorous, the crowding was actually pretty similar.) You are probably cringing as you read this and once again thinking Champ was in a bad mood as he wrote this one. Yes, as a clinician and someone who spends nearly all of their time promoting health, this is a devastating sight for sore eyes. In fact, this is a sight of utter disaster.
Let’s level with each other here. Society is not working—or at least public health and other efforts to steer our health in the right direction have failed miserably over the last 50 years. The below graph shows the percent of adults who are obese (not overweight, but obese):
All efforts have failed and continue to fail when it comes to improving our health. It has gotten so bad that people are taking medications that cause them to starve themselves to lose weight. On one hand, we continually ask why our physical and mental health has, and continues to, spiral downward as a society. Yet a simple glance across the gate at the airport provides the answer—no academic gibberish or massive public health fair at the local fairgrounds needed. We are not merely fatter than ever due to the consumption of processed foods, grains, sugar-stuffed garbage, and other bunches of frankenfoods that our grandparents may not even recognize as food, but also, and especially, the fact that we are OK eating these foods and even consider them food. We lack the respect for our bodies so much that we are OK putting a plastic wrapped concoction of 35 chemicals down the hatch and then have the audacity to wonder why we are not healthy and obese. We are getting dumber, more anxious, more depressed, and less able to concentrate due to highly addictive devices, cell phones, and social media (and fatter from these as well, and no, we can’t pretend we don’t realize they are terrible for us as the cat it out of the bag on that one). Yet, we remain force-fed products to fix these issues that only make us dumber and fatter, or prescribed medicines that put a bandage over the underlying issues. As I look out in the airport terminal, I see pastries, sandwiches on bread, pizza, chips, Kind Bars, 15 derivations of fake healthy bars, and a sea of devices, with no personal standards whatsoever. Do we really need to ask why we are so unhealthy? And can this really be fixed by a doctor, policy, or a pharmaceutical company?
But this is the airport. Fine. Yet, deeply peering into the 5 inch deep bellybutton of someone yelling on their cellphone in public while their neighbor watches videos on their device at full volume may be beyond a bit annoying to those of us with standards of decency, and also to those of us who feel that such standards help society to proceed peacefully (particularly when we are stuffed next to other people like sardines in a can). This utter lack of respect for ourselves and those around us likely has something to do with the current obesity epidemic (OK, it likely has a lot to do with the current obesity epidemic). Public health has failed, and cultural and religious safeguards have been labeled as antiquated and passe by our overloads. However, it is vital to revisit the previous comment as it transcends the airport.
The following are making us fatter:
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Processed foods
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Grains
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Sugar
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Frankenfoods
The following are making us dumber, more anxious, depressed, addicted, and unable to concentrate (and fatter):
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Devices
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Cell phones
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Social media
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Lack of standards, caring, and etiquette
Where else do we find the above? Certainly at airports, as you likely have experienced as well. Yet, the above 8 factors can be seen, glorified, and promoted at nearly every hospital (our supposed epicenters of health), tax-payer funded public school (giving devices to five year olds), public park, and even public library (you can now go to the library to read books on devices, even the children’s section has devices!). These factors are so prevalent throughout our society, especially with our children, that one would think we are running an experiment to see how quickly we can derail our health and short-circuit our brains, starting at all the institutions that have taken over as the epicenters of our communities. In other words, our society seems to be promoting these same factors that make us fatter, stupider, and less polite to those around us—thus explains the utter failure of public health efforts.
A long long time ago, people at the airport used to read books while remaining respectful and quiet
Saying things everybody knows but fails to say
While the above description may seem harsh—albeit 100% accurate—the real question is how long are we going to sit here and watch this strangely open secret continue, particularly since, at this point it is common knowledge? Perhaps those of us too addicted to consider this should put down our devices to allow our brain some rest so that it can begin working again and help us come up with an answer. How are we supposed to raise our kids when our own hospitals and schools are teaching them to be obese, anxious, addicted, and unable to concentrate?
Putting devices in front of kids is a good way to keep them quiet…and anxious, depressed, and unable to learn.
Oswald Spengler, author of Decline of the West, asked in 1923, “What is truth?” He answered that, “for the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.” We must ask ourselves what is truth, particularly when it comes to our mental and physical health and that of our children. Is truth what we are continually told, especially from the institutions that take our tax dollars and “teach” our children and provide us with “healthcare”, or what we see with our very own eyes? If we are told one thing, but watch our mental and physical health go in the opposite direction, at what point do we stop believing what we are told and do an about face?
Carl Jung coined the term collective unconscious when he described those ancient instincts that are buried deep down in the unconscious state of all humans. The collective unconscious explains why people and societies all over the world, even before global communication, experience similar themes. I would argue this explains why we see similar cultural and religious themes in physical and mental health preservation, how we traditionally approached food, our views on consumerism, and how we behave in public. This also explains why certain cultures with standards of appropriate behavior seem to have persisted in areas where individuals are physically and mentally healthier (take your pick of a town in central or Southern Italy and counter it to the Southwest terminal at the airport). If it is considered inappropriate to eat a triple scoop ice-cream cone at 10AM in public in one society, I would bet that society is healthier than one that promotes Cinnabons and triple ice-cream scoops at all hours of the day while waiting for a flight (the former indeed has a 4-5x lower rate of obesity than the latter). What if that same culture follows fare bella figura and dresses up each Sunday while the entire town goes for a 3 hour walk to socialize with each other? Would you bet that society has markedly lower rates of obesity? It also may not be surprising that a man from this same area once saw me for a consult in the hospital and came in a suit for the appointment. Caring has many positive downstream effects.
These gut feelings, like Jung’s collective unconsciousness, are the ones that tell us something is incredibly wrong when our five year olds are given addictive devices at the local public grade schools, which tout themselves as “Apple Distinguished Schools” simply for buying Apple products and putting them in front of 5-year-olds, the last thing you should ever want for your child (don’t take my word for it, just ask the actual founder of Apple). They are those feelings that signal, “I know everybody is doing it, but something seems very wrong.” These gut feelings are those same ones that we are told to ignore as they are supposedly false and passé. They are those same feelings deep in our gut that flare up when we look across the airport terminal at the herd of addicted people—that gut feeling that signals something is seriously wrong here. The ads on the walls and the actions of our schools and hospitals may say this is all normal and there is nothing wrong here—keep eating, keep consuming, check us out on social media and download our health app, just keep feeding the addiction, everyone is doing it. While you are at it, ignore our communities and those around us, standards are passé—just keep consuming. Yet, something deep down inside of us all whispers that this is terribly wrong.
We are at a breaking point in society when it comes to our health and that whisper is resonating louder and louder and crescendoing into a scream. Public health is an abysmal failure. The medical system is collapsing around us, and it is clear it isn’t going to save us. Until we accept this, listen to that gut feeling that is now shouting at us, and believe the patterns we are seeing with our own eyes as opposed to what we are told to believe, we can expect our health and the health of our children to continue to spiral downward.
If we care for our health, we need to escape the herd. The good news is that the majority of people quietly agree with you, even though they are told to ignore what they see with their own eyes.
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