More on being fat

I can see how my last post is subject to less-than-favorable interpretation.  I say fat people are lazy.  What an unfortunate way to put it!

The problem is the connotation (or implication or loading) of the word "lazy."  It is a negative judgmental call about someone, and I oppose judging people.

We do, however, have to understand them and not be naive.  What I mean here is that fat people don't like physical exertion.  They just don't like it, and avoid it, even when they are out "exercising."  It and other personality traits having to do with one's relationship to food, lead to obesity, in spite of medical warnings and efforts and strong desires to have a different outcome.

In other ways a "lazy" person is not lazy -- they may be hard workers, great students, accomplished artists, whatever, but they do not like labor and hate breaking a sweat.

It's not their fault -- it is what they are, part of their personality.  Our society is in denial about "nature" in the nature-nurture spectrum -- we want to say we can do things and often we cannot.  We cannot for the most part change what we are, and we need to be wise about that and change what we can but accept and not judge what we cannot.

It's like being gay or straight -- most people are mainly straight with an occasional gay impulse, most gays also have occasional straight impulses -- so the impression can be gotten that what we are can be changed.  One can change one's behavior if one is truly bi-sexual to ignore one side of our sexuality, but if one is not, then one is mainly gay or straight and no amount of cruel therapy is going to alter it.

The fact is most of what we are, we are born destined to be.  Good upbringing and nutrition and so on help a lot, but there are personality types that persist -- on the unhelpful side there are always bigots, criminals, airheads, addictive personalities, judgmental people.  I will someday have to do a blog on the personality attributes that make for criminal behavior and on the consistent failure of well-meaning people to rehabilitate them and how to really do it (clue -- let the criminal get older).