Social media weaponizing it because they're mostly powerless individually to make the "evil doer" stahp. Usually the case with vigilante justice... So what's the alternative for a more civil and functional society?
Define bad things. I see you shaming a woman or child for being obese and I will not the **** out of you. It isn’t your business. One of the sweetest people I have ever known was obese and assholes lectured him all the time. He knew he was obese, he didn’t want to be obese, he worried about dying from it... he was seeing a doctor for it. He also was supporting his mom and 4 younger siblings after his died of a brain clot - he dropped dead at 26. After he died I found two people I knew that lectured them on his weight and I sucker punched them outside the federal building in the parking garage.
First of all, I want to be your friend. Second, the reason I started this thread was obesity. It’s a much more serious issue than people give it credit for. It’s a massive drain on our society. But I don’t think fat shaming works. I think positive reinforcement and support works to help people lose weight. It motivates them and gives them some desperately needed self esteem. The biggest loser is a great show that defines this. It’s the carrot, not the stick. The older I get, the more I realize that negative reinforcement is a short term solution with potential long term issues. You may get what you want today but if you have to deal with that person for a long time it’s going to bite you on the ass eventually. Like @Nook ’s sucker punch victims.
I agree, and that's why these questions are very dependent on the individual situation. Again these questions clearly entail many different views on what shaming is, and what specific scenarios it would be used under. Firstly, I'm sorry to hear about your friend, life can be cruel. My point for that distinction was certainly not to say people should abuse or bully anyone for being obese, nor even shame anyone. I'm saying obesity is fundamentally a problem, unlike homosexuality. That distinction has to be made. Its something that has to be discouraged (which is a broad term, perhaps meaning different for you from what I am thinking) as a society, it needs to be worked on as a society, it simply wrecks countless lives, and is damaging our society financially. We are up to nearly 40% obese as a nation, 70% overweight which is just overwhelmingly depressing.
Hard to say exactly in this context. A situation I had in mind was a talk I had with someone a while ago. This person is over 30 years old and perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Yet he prefers to just take advantage of family members and live off of them. He was complaining to me about how those family members were giving him a hard time. And I told him that I agreed with them. He got really defensive and though he never said I "shamed" him, he did say that I was talking down to him and trying to make him feel bad. I didn't (and still don't) think I was talking down or trying to make him feel bad. He came to me about a thing and put me in a spot where I had to give my opinion. If my opinion makes him feel bad... then that is good. He should feel bad. He chooses to be a drain on those who love him, and that is a bad thing. I'll say that in general, I never give any critical opinion unless I'm explicitly asked for it.* I have never just gone at people for being lazy or overweight or for smoking. But if they ask me, "hey do you think I should smoke?" then I would say No, I think that is a bad idea. (Of course no one would ever ask me "do you think I should be overweight/smoking/lazy?" so, none of this really matters.) * And even then, not always. "How do these new shoes look?" asks the Mrs. "Very cool," lies Haymitch.
Obesity and in general poor health is a massive problem in the USA. Education obviously helps because it causes cultural change. Having said that, the best thing that can happen is the government can also make common sense restrictions and possibly even tax companies that do not make the changes needed to improve the quality of food they are selling. McDonalds and others can get angry but too bad, they can adapt. As for my friend, he wasn’t perfect with his diet but he really wasn’t relatively bad. A lot of his problem was genetic and health issues he was born with. He dropped out of law school after his father died because his whole family was days from being homeless. He worked as a clerk during the day for the court and most nights he would do side jobs. He died. No one was shocked but I took it really hard. He had a $100,000 life insurance policy through his work and that bought them a small home. I still pay his mom’s cell phone but I cannot bring myself to see her because I get so angry about what happened.
I don’t think you did anything wrong. You didn’t set out to shame him. You gave your opinion during the course of a conversation. In fact I respect you because giving an honesty opinion isn’t always easy knowing the fallout. Personally I want people around me that will tell me when I have screwed up. My driver and right hand man work for me and is my best friend. He will be honest with me, but not to the degree I need. He said I can get nasty and authoritative and as a result no one tells me the total truth... except my wife. My wife scares the **** out of me. She can chew me up and say the most honest and direct things to me. Sometimes I don’t like to hear it but I need to. Jesus my wife is scary and completely fearless. She will watch the world burn on principle and live in the scorched earth If need be.
Thank you. It was hard because he was incredibly selfless and was well aware he would die... and he did.
I read somewhere, maybe on Reddit, that in man's earliest societies, exile from the group was the equivalent of a death sentence (shared food, cooperative hunting, mutual protection etc.) This made early man's deferral to the norms of the group vital to self-preservation and propagation. So we developed a sense of shame .ep us in conformity.
I think that was very much in context. In ancient Greece and Rome exile / ostracism was one of the worst punishments. Considered not that far off from death. Individual humans are very ill equipped to survive in the wild. For pre-industrial societies it would be a virtual death sentence to be kicked out of the group.
Aligns with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I'm just going to say you're my new BFF. You're right about weight loss. It's ****ing hard for some people, especially women. As you said, genes, body type, and it snowballs. My wife struggles with it. She works her ass off in the gym and the results are in very small increments. If she slacks off for a month it puts her back a year. It's tough. I used to think that gastric bypass and lap bands were a p***y's way out but I saw firsthand so many success stories and massive improvements in quality of life that I'm all for that sort of surgery now. I'm sorry about your friend and you're a saint to help his mother out. Props, BFF.
I saw a documentary yesterday about a researcher that was carbon dating fat cells. Some were over 10 years old. When dieting, the fat cells don't go away, they just get smaller so they are still there when you quit dieting and quickly return back to their former size. They also said we were nearing the end of contemporary carbon dating because the Carbon 14 we test in organic matter came from the thousands of nuclear tests done in the 60's and it will soon be decayed.
Live in Europe for more than a month and you will lose weight. Results may vary but it's definitely what's inside the food and lifestyle.
