What Are Your Pretending Not to Know?
Bogus stories justifying inaction in the face of real problems are at the root of why personal and planetary health remain out of reach.
Years ago, I attended a personal development course, and behind the main stage on the first day was a tiny sign that read: “What are you pretending not to know?” Over the course’s three days, the sign kept being replaced with larger ones until it became a prominent backdrop.
The course explained how people construct stories to justify why their lives or the world doesn’t work. For example, people frequently say they don’t exercise because they work too much. The “story” is that work displaces time for exercise, which is less a statement about reality as it is a statement about one’s priorities. The storyteller pretends to not know this is an excuse in order to reconcile to themselves and others why they don’t act on their own priorities or address problems. Without the story, there’s just overworking and poor health.
No Action or Change + Believable Story = Acceptable Outcome
A few years ago, I saw a man walking down a Brooklyn sidewalk on a December morning in a big, puffer jacket; this would have been normal if it had not been seventy degrees . My kids and I were in shorts. This so-called weird weather has been happening for at least a couple decades and getting way weirder of late. Balmy Brooklyn winters are no longer weird, yet folks keep acting shocked when Christmas isn’t white or when the things that used to happen once a decade —floods, fires, etc. —happens multiple times in a year. The man’s parka was his proof that winter in December was still a thing.
Additionally, people pretend to not know that problems are addressed through direct action, not wishful thinking. Regarding climate, an area of expertise, there’s a widespread myth that a recyclable, renewable-powered facsimile of the status quo is on the horizon and will handle the climate problem. Nothing is handled; atmospheric C02 keeps getting worse, the weather is getting more violent and unpredictable, and the climate has been sufficiently disrupted by anthropogenic forces to remove the possibility of achieving a stable climate baseline. No notable country, institutions, corporations, or individual has proposed any solutions to these issues at scale, and most are making them worse.
The obesity epidemic is similar. Like rising seas to coastal cities, obesity harms bodies, compromising health, wellbeing, and shortening lifespans. Rather than acknowledge this threat and address the well known causes underlying the country’s 42 percent obesity rate, the mainstream media has created “body positivity” so folks have a plausible story to justify and reconcile their (highly commercialized) unhealthy lifestyles and poor health. Being positive about being overweight is like being positive about heart-disease or climate-collapse —when compared to the alternative, there’s nothing to celebrate.
The process of transformation means taking something from one form to another, not fixing or improving an intrinsically broken model. That transformation is needed in so many domains, but will remain out of reach until people stop pretending that things that do suck, don’t, and until they stop pretending that anything other than personal action —not store-bought providence —will save the day.