You and I Are Too Old To Keep Adapting to A Sick Society

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Peter Kalonji on Unsplash

You don’t need fixing. Period. Full. Stop.

Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

If you share with me the lifelong compulsion to fix what is wrong with your life/face/diet/home/work/fill-in-the-blank, this article is for you.

As always, heartfelt thanks to those Dear Readers and writers whose thoughtful words inspire my work. This time it’s

Annie Scott

whose recent article

How to feel sure of yourself in a world that tells you not to

caused me to recall back in 1978 when I was taking courses in Public Relations at American University. Here’s the quote from her article that stopped me cold:

When I started working in PR in my 20s I was devastated to learn the true machinations behind how the women’s magazines I loved were actually created. Step 1: create a problem people don’t know they have. Step 2: make them feel ashamed about it. Step 3: sell them the solution. (author bolded)

Having been brought up to believe that I was inherently worthless as a girl, and therefore unwanted, every single thing about me needed to be fixed. So all those slick magazines offering a cure? I’M IN.

I spent decades and umpteen dollars trying to fix every aspect of my life, assuming all of it was fundamentally flawed. Once X was fixed, OH HEY this over here needs to be fixed, that will be a grand, thanks.

Like my aging house there is always something (as I write this, an electrician is working on an overhead heating unit in my bathroom that melted the plastic. Nuff said).

I succeeded in significantly contributing to the GDP, moved my personal life not one whit forward and many MANY whits backward, and still ended up feeling like an utter loser.

No matter how slim, how pretty, how gorgeous the skin/clothing/hair/body, there was always something wrong. Something else to buy, another self-help program to take because there was just so much WRONG with me.

No. There is so much wrong with society that it would wring us dry of hope, happiness, health, and every other damned thing in the name of profits.

Society is sick. Not us.

Okay, well, some of us are sick, but the larger question is whether or not society made them that way.

There is considerable research, for example, about the impact of our lousy diet of 60% or more ultra-processed foods on our microbiome, which is our second brain, and directly responsible for mood, anxiety and the like. Here is a piece by fellow Stacker

Maria Cross

which might help put our mental health in context:

It's a Crime: How Food Can Trigger Aggressive Behaviour

For those interested in getting better, Stacker

Jim the Geek

wrote this about a recent Netflix documentary on that magical microbiome. I watched it last night and it was worth the investment.

There is also plenty said about the so-called Wellness Industrial Complex, which is its own sick cycle of idiotic products that can actually harm. That said, excellent writer Brad Stulberg pointed this out some time back over on Medium.

From that piece:

The problem is that so much of what’s sold in the name of modern-day wellness has little to no evidence of working.

According to decades of research, real wellness is a lifestyle or state of being that goes beyond merely the absence of disease and into the realm of maximizing human potential. Once someone’s basic needs are met (e.g., food and shelter), scientists say that wellness emerges from nourishing six interrelated dimensions of your health: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, spiritual, and environmental.

Nourishing these interrelated dimensions of health, however, does not require that you buy any lotions, potions, or pills. Wellness — the kind that actually works — is simple: it’s about committing to basic practices, day in and day out, as individuals and communities. (author bolded)

To Annie’s point, we’re convinced we have all kinds of problems we don’t have. Then society creates REAL problems, blames us for them, and offers fake cures and fixes at hefty prices. My favorite Exhibit #1 is Goop. I frankly don’t care if aficionados get pissed, it’s a ripoff and has, sadly, attracted some genuine nutjobs to celebrity status. Ms. Paltrow included.

Here’s another quote from Annie’s piece:

So where do we draw the line? How much life-improvement advice do we need? When (is) it ok to have flaws - and when do they become a problem? How do you reach the point of being happy with who you are - when the world is constantly telling you every part of your personality is a flaw in need of fixing?

I spent decades believing that if I only looked like this, smelled like that, had this very expensive jacket, I would have love, be well, all of it.

Bullshit.

This is how I looked in my mid-fifties:

I was slim, long bountiful hair, fake nails, nice teeth, smelled nice, had a decent income for a while….and had terrible eating disorders. The amount of maintenance for this look - which lasted seconds, thank you- was unbelievable.

Didn’t get me love, or approval, or any damned thing. Lotta women hated me because they assumed that I had endless queues of men lining up. What an effing joke that is.

Here’s another: six-pack abs. Like being thin, we equate this with health. Truth, the extreme work most have to do in order to achieve those abs can make us ill. To that, read this.

From that article:

Generally, experts say that a man has to get down to about 10 percent body fat in order for his abs to show. For women, the number is closer to 15 percent fat. And that’s not even for fitness-model-level definition. According to a 2009 guideline from the American Council on Exercise (ACE), about 2 to 5 percent fat in men and 10 to 13 percent of fat in women is essential. That is tough on the body. Essential fat is the fat that is incorporated into bodily tissues, like bone marrow, the spinal cord, and various organs.

I’ve had those abs, or very close to it:

I was 64, 118 lbs and as cut as I would ever be at 7% bodyfat. No kind of healthy. Six-pack abs did nothing to make me happier, more popular or loved. That I would even believe such a thing is the whole point. We twist ourselves into pretzels trying to grab that brass ring, that magical thing, that will “do it” for us.

You and I are WAY Too Old to still believe this blatant bullshit which sucks the life right out of us, the money out of our wallets and leaves us not only poor but emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.

It’s a radical act to push back at the bullshit.

Want a good place to start your own pushback campaign? Look no further. I have something which might help.

For those of you who love a good origin story that doesn’t involve a superhero, here you go. In 2002, the BBC produced a documentary about how the public relations industry got its start.

Here you go:

From a Psychology Today review:

Century of the Self shows how advertising once aimed to influence rational choice. This gave way in the early 20th century to advertising aimed to connect feelings with a product. Amazingly enough, at the root of this change was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays, an American propagandist in WWI, applied his wartime experience and his uncle’s theories of the unconscious to peacetime commerce. He invented the field of public relations, popularized press releases and product tie-ins, and changed public opinion about matters ranging from women smoking to the use of paper cups — all to increase sales. Viewing politics as just another product to sell, Bernays also helped Calvin Coolidge stage one of the first overt media acts for a president and helped engineer the 1954 coup in Guatemala on behalf of his client the United Fruit Company, by painting their democratically elected leader as a communist. (author bolded)

This is an investment of time. It’s also a serious investment in YOU. This documentary does a great job of helping us understand how we are manipulated.

Don’t think you are? You’re a damned fool. I was.

Angry about it? GOOD.

After you watch this I DARE you, I DOUBLE DARE YOU to ask yourself why you ever got sucked into buying those products, believing the lies, and giving away your future and your kids’ college fund to fixes that never ever worked, EVER.

No “have-to-have” three-thousand-dollar Chloe cotton blouse is going to do anything for me except prove how gullible I am.

If you’re horrified at how gullible you’ve been, and I was, I would also invite you to kiss your new freedom hello. That’s if indeed you’re able to peel away from the Velcro that is the Western advertising machine.

Of course it’s hard. I still look at my aging face and wonder about a face lift. I still look at my middle, which has perhaps six pounds of muffin that I don’t want, and wonder about liposuction.

That’s how powerful the manipulation, the messaging is. It starts nearly at birth and is never-ending. The Century of the Self is already twenty-two years old.

Look at how much more sophisticated the messaging is via social media.

And we wonder why we’re not well as a Western society. Society is sick. We abuse and eat our young, hate the old, and bludgeon everyone in the middle for not being perfect.

There is absolutely nothing that will substantially change if I paid for millions of fake fixes. None of those things will bring me love or acceptance or anything else.

I might, I might, temporarily like my face or belly better until my restless mind finds something else to be unhappy about, which goes to the primary point of this article.

The work I do on my heart will pay off. The work I do on my soul will pay off. The work I do on my health will pay off. The basics work. They are straightforward and simple: good food, lots of movement, good social structure and a purpose.

The way I see it, let’s do the work that does pay off. You and I deserve it.

Society is sick. The more we adapt to it, the sicker we get.

Take your life back. Take your mind back. Take your health in hand.

Let’s play.

Photo by gaspar zaldo on Unsplash

Thanks as always for hanging out with me today. I hope you got value from this and as always thanks to other Stackers for their inspiration. If this was valuable to you please consider

If you know someone else who is whipsawed by what you know are unnecessary compulsions, consider

Either way, freedom is relative to each of us, and ultimately, hard-won. Let’s work at it, and above all, let’s play along the way.