How does one square America's superpower status with it's being the planet's most medicated people? Our ability to shock and awe may have less to do with military prowess than with our appetite for pills.
Of course, running the world can knock the stuffing out of anyone. One must expect the insufferable headaches that come with selflessly serving ungrateful neighbors. Then there are those days lacking sufficient hours when fearless broad shoulders could use a little something to recharge the batteries.
But in the interest of national security, shouldn't we ban television advertisements for prescription drugs? I can't think of a better way of instilling hope and patience in our adversaries than by trumpeting our ailments. Watch a half hour of network evening news and you'll learn we've got heartburn, hemorrhoids, flatulence, constipation, depression, clogged ateries, sore joints, short attention spans, weak lungs, insomnia, bad backs. And we've lost that lovin' feelin'. An enemy would have to conclude all they have to do is wait and eventually we'll just pass out.
Posted by Bobby Farouk at December 4, 2004 05:10 PMIs it possible our Better Living Through Chemistry has given us worse allergies, which in turn have to be medicated?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 4, 2004 09:32 PMI think Americans enjoy being sick. Having something wrong with you somehow validates your existence.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at December 5, 2004 04:57 AMDid you read the Thomas de Zengotita essay in the December Harper's? It's called "Attack of the Superzeroes: Why Washington, Einstein, and Madonna can't compete with you." Interesting stuff on the idea that as products of American media culture we can't really find it in our hearts to admire real heroes because we're too busy being the stars of our own epics. He pays a lot of attention to the way audiences eat up stories of heroic battles with rare diseases. The reason he suggests is the one you've just given: people want to believe they have some innate characteristic that makes them fascinating to other people. A disease arguably is that.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at December 5, 2004 02:02 PMI'm convinced this somehow ties in with Alan's post on the Holy Grail and Graeme's on the Aryans. Reality doesn't cut it for most humans so we create myths about our meager lives, our so-so homelands, etc.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at December 5, 2004 02:23 PMOur pill dependency is the most glaring example probably in human history of an industry making demand out of thin air. The pharmaceutical industry isn't really in the pharmaceutical business anymore.
We certainly do seem to have a new set of myths about the perfect life. On the one hand, people who are sick do still feel special (have no responsibility, people have to take care of them), but on the other hand sickness has become something truly wrong. We have a pill for everything, practically anything's curable or treatable. Most of the diseases left have a behavioral (and hence moral) component. Sickness isn't a fact of life anymore, an avenue of misfortune. Now sickness itself is a sign of moral weakness.
Once something like health or beauty becomes a matter of choice (and a matter of class at the same time, naturally), it all ceases to be fate and everything changes.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at December 6, 2004 10:51 AM