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Attack of the MOMS - Part II
Thursday, July 16th, 2009 06:45 pmHaving established that modern society not only is not more violent than traditional societies, but is actually much less violent, I would like to talk a bit about health. I've always been a fellow-traveller of the alternative health movement. The blame (or credit) for this goes partially to my parents and even more so to my grandfather (an antiquarian book dealer), who exposed me to books written during an earlier wave of alternative health movements: the first yogis, vegetarians, hikers, carrot juice addicts, naturists, practitioners of eurhythmics and advocates of perfect eyesight without glasses. Add my hippie friends in the 1970s and you have wholefoods, t'ai chi, orgone accumulators and all the other holistic razzamatazz. These days I'm in Turkey watching the process of health anarchy repeat itself, and jumping in with a peculiar mixture of nostalgia and skepticism. Anyway, from all of this, you'd think I'd be highly critical of modern society with it's “diseases of affluence” and modern medicine with its magic bullets, invasive surgery and other military metaphors.
In fact, I'm not. I admit that there are diseases of affluence. Americans raised on junk food are in just as bad a position as eighteenth-century aristocrats with their gout brought on from pheasants and port, or Roman patricians suffering the ill-effects of gorging on larks tongues in aspic. And that, dear readers, is the wonderful thing. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the developed world, those considered poor have diseases that for most of history were limited to a privileged few. Now I admit that this in itself would not be a powerful argument in favour of modernity, but bear with me. Millions of people in rich countries suffer from obesity, heart disease and so forth because of their diet and lifestyle. Given that they have the alternative of living healthily, this is obviously not good, but let's not forget two things. First, they do have the alternative of living more healthily. Second, they have these diseases of affluence because they are affluent, and believe me, diseases of affluence are better than diseases of poverty. I live in a country on the fringes of the developed world, which means it still has some pretty undeveloped bits. I know people from these undeveloped bits, and the first thing I notice about them is that they're short, they look older than they really are, and a lot of them aren't too bright. There are several reasons for this, but an important one is childhood malnutrition. Peasants on the Aegean coast of Turkey generally enjoy good health because the geography favours fruit, vegetables, olives and fish; the same goes for the Black Sea coast, which is the world's main producer of hazelnuts (and also has plenty of fish), but move into central Anatolia and we're talking bread, onions, the odd legume, bread, meat on a good day, and more bread. This is also how most of Europe lived until recently.
Of course, there are many things wrong with the modern Western diet. However, we are making the mistake of comparing what the average person eats today with what a highly fortunate person (e.g. an Aegean peasant) ate a century or two ago. If we compare the diet of an industrial worker in Manchester today with that of an industrial worker in Manchester in 1850, then I think we have to admit that the evils of saturated fats, sugar, salt and esoteric food additives pale into insignificance when compared to a diet of bread and gin. And speaking of additives, we shouldn't forget that two hundred years ago, people put chalk in flour to make it look whiter and sulphuric acid in beer to give it more of a tang.
Modern diseases may be bad, but would you really want to swap them for pre-modern diseases? I'll admit that the onset of modernity— i.e., the industrial revolution—brought terrible diseases in its wake, such as cholera, or the influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed more people than the war that preceded it. But really, we're over that now. Nowadays, people panic when a few hundred deaths happen as a result of some new kind of flu. If less than a thousand deaths is news, times are good.
Finally, there's the fact that although many alternative therapies and lifestyle practices are based on traditional methods, the phenomenon as a whole is recent. Using Turkey as an example again, there have always been traditional spiritual healers, bonesetters and herbalists here, plus a wealth of health-related folklore. But until comparatively recently, that was all there was. Then along came modern medicine, first restricted to the urban elite, but now available throughout the country. Whatever the disadvantages of modern medicine, you have to admit it's good for some things, such as painless, infection-free surgery, vaccinations, antibiotics and, in general, stopping people dying. Now, thanks to globalisation, Turks not only have modern medicine, but also traditional therapies of other countries (plus traditional-modern hybrids) and are now enthusiastically embracing yoga, acupuncture, reiki and pilates. We could argue about whether this is a modern or a postmodern phenomenon, but whatever it is, it's new.
In fact, I'm not. I admit that there are diseases of affluence. Americans raised on junk food are in just as bad a position as eighteenth-century aristocrats with their gout brought on from pheasants and port, or Roman patricians suffering the ill-effects of gorging on larks tongues in aspic. And that, dear readers, is the wonderful thing. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the developed world, those considered poor have diseases that for most of history were limited to a privileged few. Now I admit that this in itself would not be a powerful argument in favour of modernity, but bear with me. Millions of people in rich countries suffer from obesity, heart disease and so forth because of their diet and lifestyle. Given that they have the alternative of living healthily, this is obviously not good, but let's not forget two things. First, they do have the alternative of living more healthily. Second, they have these diseases of affluence because they are affluent, and believe me, diseases of affluence are better than diseases of poverty. I live in a country on the fringes of the developed world, which means it still has some pretty undeveloped bits. I know people from these undeveloped bits, and the first thing I notice about them is that they're short, they look older than they really are, and a lot of them aren't too bright. There are several reasons for this, but an important one is childhood malnutrition. Peasants on the Aegean coast of Turkey generally enjoy good health because the geography favours fruit, vegetables, olives and fish; the same goes for the Black Sea coast, which is the world's main producer of hazelnuts (and also has plenty of fish), but move into central Anatolia and we're talking bread, onions, the odd legume, bread, meat on a good day, and more bread. This is also how most of Europe lived until recently.
Of course, there are many things wrong with the modern Western diet. However, we are making the mistake of comparing what the average person eats today with what a highly fortunate person (e.g. an Aegean peasant) ate a century or two ago. If we compare the diet of an industrial worker in Manchester today with that of an industrial worker in Manchester in 1850, then I think we have to admit that the evils of saturated fats, sugar, salt and esoteric food additives pale into insignificance when compared to a diet of bread and gin. And speaking of additives, we shouldn't forget that two hundred years ago, people put chalk in flour to make it look whiter and sulphuric acid in beer to give it more of a tang.
Modern diseases may be bad, but would you really want to swap them for pre-modern diseases? I'll admit that the onset of modernity— i.e., the industrial revolution—brought terrible diseases in its wake, such as cholera, or the influenza epidemic of 1918 that killed more people than the war that preceded it. But really, we're over that now. Nowadays, people panic when a few hundred deaths happen as a result of some new kind of flu. If less than a thousand deaths is news, times are good.
Finally, there's the fact that although many alternative therapies and lifestyle practices are based on traditional methods, the phenomenon as a whole is recent. Using Turkey as an example again, there have always been traditional spiritual healers, bonesetters and herbalists here, plus a wealth of health-related folklore. But until comparatively recently, that was all there was. Then along came modern medicine, first restricted to the urban elite, but now available throughout the country. Whatever the disadvantages of modern medicine, you have to admit it's good for some things, such as painless, infection-free surgery, vaccinations, antibiotics and, in general, stopping people dying. Now, thanks to globalisation, Turks not only have modern medicine, but also traditional therapies of other countries (plus traditional-modern hybrids) and are now enthusiastically embracing yoga, acupuncture, reiki and pilates. We could argue about whether this is a modern or a postmodern phenomenon, but whatever it is, it's new.
