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I agree it's a small percentage. But a very vocal and self confident small percentage. Like trying to reason with a flat earther. On the one had, you could say they're harmless but on the other, consider how flawed their logic processes are and then consider they vote, advocate, make business decisions that impact others.
People are complex and just because they have a few strange views doesn't mean all their opinions are unreasonable. It's too easy these days to dump people into categories based on one or two beliefs.
I'm not sure you can say that local people we meet are very vocal - you might be referring to personalities that the media you watch is showing you. In that case, change what you watch. Chances are that other media never show the clips you've seen. It's the new state of our world - divide us so we won't respect each other.
I've lived in at least half the states in the US, and while there were differences in culture and ethnic backgrounds, people seemed to be about the same wherever you went. By that I mean, if you happened to strike up a conversation on public transit, or on the plane/train, or in a restaurant, people seemed OK mentally. Invariably, you had something in common w/ them. But for the last few years, the vast majority of people I talk to are half crazy. So this is not a local thing, it seems to be a trend.
Sometimes I wonder if I went to sleep and woke up on another planet. You can't talk politics w/ people because very weird stuff happens. Now that's a tricky subject anyway, but that's just one example. Nowadays, 2 or 3 minutes into a conversation w/ these folks I either start agreeing w/ them in the hope that will let them wind down, or I do the fake phone call thing just so I can bow out gracefully, if not honestly. People have certainly changed physically. Just look at youtube videos of bands in the 60's 80's. Everyone looks like they should gain about 30 lbs, but I think this was the normal back in the day. Now, a lot of people look poofed up. Maybe its due to the growth hormones we ingest when we eat factory farmed livestock?
Has it always been like this? It seems I would have noticed if it was. But my experiences say there are a lot of people running around that appear normal, but you quickly see they're off in another zone.
It is you! Plenty of people have casual and deep conversations.
Then you're quite thin for a man... perhaps even TOO thin, depending on your height and build. And I find it interesting how you did the (!) for the woman's average weight (which really isn't that high), but not for the men. Do you only think women should be watching their weight, or what? Just some observations on my part.
And yes, of course humans have gotten bigger over the generations. Mostly due to our changing diets, from "farm fresh" to processed foods, and also having more sedentary lifestyles. We sit at desks, some people don't even leave their homes to work, and depend on cars to get around in most regions. It's logical.
This is also a sound theory as a contributing factor. I quit smoking 4 years ago, and yeah, I put on some weight. Ended up gaining a LOT of weight over those next few years, between quitting smoking + pandemic + pre-menopause + losing both of my parents and my dog. But I've now shed all of that and then some, for a grand total of 72lbs since last year.
I think that a question has to be asked about what timeframe we are comparing today to.
I want to look at the middle of the 20th century as a comparison since that's where someone compared the percentage of overweight people, and that's why I think that smoking is a big part of it. The sixties were not a time when everyone was eating fresh farm to table food. I have plenty of Boomers in my life to tell me about what they ate as kids. In my Dad's poor family, every meal had a large compliment of southern biscuits made with lard as a key ingredient, and bleached flour as the base. Loads of salt and fat and carbs, even if it did not come in a box with a bunch of polysyllabic "chemicals" in it. My husband, who is now 65 and the same age as my parents, talks about how his Mom was not a good cook and took full advantage of all of the new convenience foods and the miraculous new invention of the microwave. TV dinners were very common in his household. And he's showed me some of the snacks, you can go back and look at the ads for some of those products, they absolutely were processed foods. Not to mention that lead was everywhere in everything.
Sedentary lifestyles? Maybe. Though plenty of people had desk jobs of one kind or another back then, too. And a lot of the harder labor jobs were a lot less safe than they try to make them today, as well. I don't think that people in general exercised a ton more back then, compared to now.
Now I'm not saying that a person has to be a smoker to be thin, or even that there are not fat smokers as I've known some. But I think that for a lot of people, smoking is an appetite suppressant and/or changes their biochemistry in a way that allows them to stay thinner with less effort and less conscious restriction on diet. It is a hell of a devil's bargain that will kill you in a different way of course. But I seriously think it's been about the same time frame that we have seen the massive push to get most people away from nicotine, and we've been hearing about the obesity crisis in the US.
Meanwhile you've got people desperate to make it as simplistic as "eat less, move more, that's it!" when our bodies are more complex than that...sorry about it, but it's just plain true, there is a LOT going on in a human body, from our gut biome to our hormones to stress... And I rolled my eyes so hard when I saw one of Bill Maher's Youtube things where he was talking to Fran Lebowitz and they sat there waxing smug and superior about not being overweight while smoking and justifying why smoking wasn't really that bad. It's hard to be perfectly healthy but I don't have much patience for a holier than thou attitude about this any more than anything else.
Which circles me back a bit to the subject at hand. Frankly, this whole "everybody sucks" thing...I'm not buying it, not really. Those who say it are typically implying that it's everyone else except for them, of course. These things are all a matter of perspective. I don't find it difficult to try and be forgiving of my fellow human beings. We're all just trying to live out there. I don't know what people are going through, and not only is everything not about me, MOST THINGS are not about me. I am not the only player character in the game here. Of course other people annoy me sometimes, but I try really hard to let that go because if I don't, if I clutch each petty grievance to my bosom and invest in those negative feelings about others all the time, I'm not going to like my own mental environment much, nor the person that I become.
You can't control other people. But you can control yourself. Including what thoughts and observations you put your energy into about what's going on around you. And anyone who is telling you that it's ALL bad, is probably trying to sell you something.
People are complex and just because they have a few strange views doesn't mean all their opinions are unreasonable. It's too easy these days to dump people into categories based on one or two beliefs.
I'm not sure you can say that local people we meet are very vocal - you might be referring to personalities that the media you watch is showing you. In that case, change what you watch. Chances are that other media never show the clips you've seen. It's the new state of our world - divide us so we won't respect each other.
If it were just a few people on TV or YouTube, I could discount it. But I've run into them professionally, including some very senior management positions, as well as people in the local community. A lot who've bought into various "theories" and I don't mean the classic political ones, but everyday job and business dealings. I wish I could give some examples, but it would be very obvious where they came from.
Best example I can come up with that doesn't give anything away. Ever watch Skinwalker Ranch? I've run into folks that think that's real.
One of my high school teachers was a Baptist minister. We certainly did not agree on everything, but he was open-minded and willing to discuss any number of topics. He had has opinions, but would consider yours and wasn't rude or condescending. At the time, he was a great educator, and good friend of mine. I visited his church periodically throughout my 20s. They knew I didn't agree with them on everything, but they were interesting, friendly, etc.
Fast-forward a decade. He's now taken a position as principal of a fundamentalist school in the area. I met up with him for lunch one day a couple years back, and he's fully immersed in QAnon, conspiracy theories, anti-vaccines, etc. They're highly suspicious people. Very aggressive in taking their beliefs into the public arena.
Has it always been like this? It seems I would have noticed if it was. But my experiences say there are a lot of people running around that appear normal, but you quickly see they're off in another zone.
It is not you. I think the sad thing is that this is how people really are. But before we all had manners and codes of conducts.
We were already heading this way, but Covid pushed a lot of people deeper into isolation. We stare at our screens instead of interacting with other people enough. Humans do not thrive psychologically in isolation, we just don't. It makes us weird. Combine that with the fact that by and large most of us are fed a steady diet of manipulative propaganda through our screens, which is meant to make us lose trust in our institutions and neighbors and to increase hostility, fear, outrage and so on... I mean. It's no wonder.
As for this observation here:
I long marveled that I was blessed and fortunate to be able to eat whatever I want and never gain weight. I have been petite my whole life. All of the women and most of the men on both sides of my family put on serious weight by middle age, the women often gaining weight during pregnancy that they were never quite able to lose. Granted, "eat whatever I want" did not mean gorge myself on bags of cookies and pounds of fudge or entire pizzas in a sitting or anything. I could only ever nibble something sweet or rich and be quickly done. I don't have a huge appetite for much of anything, anyhow.
Then came the last attempt that I made to quit smoking, which I have been doing more or less since I was 15 years old (I did quit while pregnant, but started again within months of having my 2 kids.) So there I was, in my early 40s, trying to quit smoking. Got a few weeks in and noticed that even though I did not feel like I was eating more, I was putting on weight immediately and noticeably. I realized that in order to quit smoking without getting fat at the same time, I am going to have to implement an exercise routine, which I have never really had. I fell off the wagon and I still smoke. The 10 lbs I picked up in under a month have not budged, but I haven't gained any more.
This experience got me to thinking. I don't recall as many overweight people around back in the 80s and 90s when I was a kid/teen....and you know what, tons of people smoked back then. You could smoke in malls, restaurants. And in the 1960s even more people smoked, most adults smoked, and most smoked far more heavily because you could do it anywhere, anytime just about. Heck I've seen fixtures in old bathrooms specifically designed for a little ashtray and shelf for one's smokes right by the toilet! And many of those relatives of mine who put on weight in middle age...also quit smoking in middle age.
So I don't think it's necessarily what we are eating. I think it might be the fact that smoking affects weight and metabolism. I mean, too, look at a lot of the art from Europe before they colonized the Americas and tobacco trade became much of a thing at all, there were a lot more fluffy people and thick ladies were often painted as great beauties!
Obviously I'm not saying that people should smoke to avoid being overweight, when smoking is as bad for you or worse. But I think I might really be onto something with this theory about the why of it.
It's an interesting theory. I don't disagree. But I think the Food Network has probably not helped. Like what HGTV did for real estate. Everything thinks they need the Taj Mahal right out of the gate.
There are some people who just can't help themselves. They need to drag politics or other hot button issue into almost every discussion. The key is to say nothing.
They HATE that especially if they know or suspect you might disagree.
Frankly, this whole "everybody sucks" thing...I'm not buying it, not really. Those who say it are typically implying that it's everyone else except for them, of course.
That is indeed the subtext, if indeed "everybody sucks" is actually the point.
Personally, for me, the point is that human nature is an immutable thing, and part of it is that as a society / culture / whatever we manage to keep making the same mistakes. And we are doing that now, in a big way -- one might even say, several big ways at once. The net effect is one of constant, unending, multiple stressors on individuals and on society as a whole, and lots of people are breaking down under it. This is why "everyone" seems to be "off their rocker".
A thousand, or ten thousand years from now, I expect if I could go to the far future in a time machine, I could still recognize a dolphin, or a cat, or a mouse, because they have fixed natures. For the same reasons I'm sure I'd recognize humans. We flatter ourselves that we're different -- that we can use our big brains to transcend the human condition. Certainly some of us can do that to an extent, imperfectly. But in the main, most of us can't pull it off. And when confidence in our systems and institutions erodes enough, people collapse around it, and turn on each other -- and it becomes a race to the bottom.
I am relatively unaffected by this because I'm old and don't have 6 or 7 decades ahead of me, and I'm doing well enough that I don't have debt to worry about; if my current dream gig turns to crap I could even afford to retire. At least so long as inflation doesn't get too bad and my health kinda-sorta holds up and a freak storm doesn't mow my house down, I'll be okay. But I don't think most people are very okay. I think an appalling number of them are coming apart at the seams. And the ones that aren't, are mentally adjusting to much reduced prospects. My 19 year old grandson has his act very much together and is thriving in college but his mother struggles to pay for it and he does not think he'll ever be able to afford the staple of the American Dream -- a house. Indeed he wonders how he will afford an apartment. He wonders when it will ever make sense for him to have a child -- both the ethics of bringing a child into such a world, and the expense.
So yeah ... it's not surprising that people are going all yargle-bargle on each other at times. Here at Chez Mordant we have to disconnect from national and world news regularly for periods of time, to protect our own sanity. There's a surfeit of very bad news almost every blasted day. Mass genocide, wars against autocrats, refugee crises, you name it. One can only take so much.
Based on the driving skills (lack of) I see I'm inclined to think that many people are not as normal as they once were.
I would NEVER talk to anyone about politics unless I knew they were on my wavelength, anything else is asking for trouble.
What to blame peoples poor behavior on? My opinion is smartphones, dividing attention constantly, demanding attention RIGHT NOW. Multi-tasking is really not working but people feel compelled to do it in order to fit all the things on their agenda into the time allowed. Hang up and drive. Pay attention to what is important.
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