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 What’s in it for me? Learn the truth about modern society’s obsession with
“wellness.”
 An obsession with wellness has become an ideology, limiting freedom of thought and
action.
 Slim and fit are “good,” fat is lazy and bad. Society now equates healthy living with
morality.
 The pressures of wellness can make you feel anxious or guilty, leading you to
overexert yourself.
 Companies use wellness to shift responsibility to employees and make everyone work
harder.
 Politicians have used the tenets of wellness to justify cutbacks in welfare and other
social benefits.
 Final summary

What’s in it for me? Learn the truth about

modern society’s obsession with “wellness.”
We’re all worried sick about our health. Even if you’re fit, you may feel you need to diet. We
don’t sleep enough; we’re constantly jumping on the next trend, be it superfoods or juicing.

What is causing society’s unhealthy obsession with health? Previously only people who were
sick made health a central issue. Healthy people, on the other hand, thought about politics,
relationships or philosophy – in short, they focused on life in general, not the latest sniffle.

So what’s different today? These blinks help you get to the bottom of the wellness craze to
figure out how we can heal ourselves in the right way.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

 how being health conscious can harm a budding philosopher;

 why eating cookies makes you feel guilty; and
 how an obsession with wellness distorts government welfare policy.

An obsession with wellness has become an

ideology, limiting freedom of thought and
action.
Many people consider the pursuit of wellness a lifelong goal. To stay on track, these people
avoid “unhealthy” influences, whether it be eating fatty pork chops or smoking cigarettes.
They head to a Pilates class daily and occasionally enjoy some pampering at a fancy spa.

Eating correctly and exercising daily – what’s wrong with that?

Well, we first have to consider that “wellness” means more than exercising regularly and
eating healthily. Wellness is an ideology; it holds that a healthy body is a necessary state for
success and happiness in life.

Thinking this way marks a significant societal change. If you cared about your looks and
health decades ago, people would think you vain and superficial. Today, the cult of wellness
stresses that to be successful in everything in life, you need a fat-free, fit body and a clear,
capable state of mind.

The problem is that adhering to such an ideology compulsively can limit your freedom of
thought, causing you to miss important experiences.

The wellness doctrine is based on a narrow way of thinking that revolves exclusively around
health while forbidding many activities such as drinking or taking recreational drugs. Such
activities society used to view as not only enjoyable but also important rites of passage.

Many American universities now require students to sign a wellness contract upon
enrollment. Students pledge to abstain from alcohol and drugs and devote themselves to
living healthily.

Yet these straight-edge students will undoubtedly miss out on youthful experiences that once
inspired society’s greatest thinkers. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously indulged
in coffee, cigarettes and alcohol while at school, his circle of friends enjoying discussions of
absurdity and revolution.

Such experiences were mind-expanding! Contemporary students of philosophy pushed to

follow the tenets of wellness might miss out.

Slim and fit are “good,” fat is lazy and bad.

Society now equates healthy living with
morality.
So it’s clear that being obsessed with health isn’t healthy. But shouldn’t this at least mean the
end of people judging a person’s character based on physical appearance?
Well, not exactly. People now face a moral imperative from society to be both healthy and
happy.

Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič has dubbed this biomorality – people must take care
of their bodies because not doing so means they are stupid or irresponsible. It is a moral
judgment – healthy people concerned about their bodies are good people, and unhealthy
people are bad people.

Such a mentality explains why people view those who are obese as lazy or not trying hard
enough, if at all, to improve their health. In doing so, obese people are evading their moral
and social responsibilities.

Television has capitalized on this tendency to equate “fat” with “bad” and “healthy” with
“good.” English chef Jamie Oliver has a show called “Jamie’s School Dinners,” on which he
has been critical of unhealthy eating among school children.

The show demonized parents for letting school children have food like potato chips and
sugary soda.

While it is, of course, not healthy for children to consume processed foods, Oliver jumps at
the opportunity on his show to shame offending parents, calling them indifferent to their
children’s health and welfare – an unfair assessment, as Oliver at no point takes into
consideration a family’s income or social situation.

Similarly, smoking has become another way to judge a person’s social morality. Smokers are
thought of as more “stupid” and “selfish” than people who don’t smoke.

The crucial point is that biomorality has led us to focus all our attention on the physical body,
socially shaming people into following a wellness lifestyle and in doing so, keeping them
occupied with diets and fads as to not question the moral assumptions of such obsessions.

It’s a never-ending cycle. The quest for a perfect body is eternal, and you can always “do
better.”

The irony is that, by striving to meet unreachable goals, eager to be on the side of the “good,”
we end up with less time to engage with people socially. Doing so might help us rediscover
the things that make our peers morally upstanding, like being helpful or caring.
The pressures of wellness can make you feel
anxious or guilty, leading you to overexert
yourself.
Wellness as an ideology works against itself. When we try to follow its tenets and “feel
better,” in reality, our quest for wellness can make us feel worse.

We put intense pressure on ourselves to adhere to a wellness doctrine by eating correctly and
exercising. All of this stress compounds, leaving us full of guilt and self-blame anytime we
might slip off base and “cheat” with unhealthy foods or skipping a workout session.

When being “well” is synonymous with being “good,” eating a cookie becomes a criminal
act, inspiring frustration and self-hatred.

Worse, trying to hide your seeming moral weakness from others can be isolating. For
instance, if you feel guilty for quitting a diet, you might avoid friends to hide the extra
pounds you may have gained as a result.

Following such a judgmental doctrine also leads to overexertion and feelings of anxiety when
we fail. We conflate our successes and general happiness with the ability to follow strict
exercise protocols, even after a long, exhausting day at work.

Within such a system, failure is inevitable. Your body will eventually force you to rest! When
this happens, wellness devotees can become overwhelmed with anxiety, as clearly this failure
will lead to others, and a good life will remain out of reach.

This becomes a vicious cycle, sapping energy and leaving you less capable of meeting goals
and, in turn, making you more anxious.

Some people even try to fight through exhaustion by doing even more – spending all their
free time at the gym and spare cash on life coaches.

In this way, the wellness doctrine works contrary to our natural instinct to rest and indulge
occasionally.

What sort of society does an obsession with wellness create? As you’ll see in the next blink,
we’ve built a community of highly functioning neurotic machines with a single life purpose –
to work.
Companies use wellness to shift responsibility
to employees and make everyone work harder.
Most major companies today offer employees courses to learn how to relax or quit smoking.
Many also have set up private gyms for employee use. Such caring gestures are appreciated;
who doesn’t want a boss who clearly cares about your well-being?

There is, however, a dark side to wellness at work.

Wellness programs reinforce the idea that only you are responsible for your well-being,
workplace satisfaction and success. It is certainly bad for your health to work long hours for
poor wages, concerned about being fired at any moment. But the wellness doctrine maintains
that employees can thrive under any conditions as long as they think positively, live a healthy
lifestyle and know how to relax.

For example, Google offers its employees mindfulness courses; they are popular. Workers
learn to relax by focusing on the present moment and breathing. This practice ideally helps
employees deal with stressful situations that arise at work or in general.

While being mindful can help in life, this also carries the implication that each employee
takes it upon himself to manage often overwhelming workloads; a busy schedule isn’t to
blame for employee stress.

Beyond that, a wellness culture can create competition among employees, ensuring that
everyone work as much as possible. Wellness teaches us that we can do anything if we
optimize our minds and bodies – clearly more beneficial to a company than its overworked
employees.

These practices are further supported by health apps which encourage people to monitor
performance and compete with others.

Politicians have used the tenets of wellness to

justify cutbacks in welfare and other social
benefits.
A wellness ideology is also a powerful tool in politics, especially for politicians who
necessarily want to distract or divert attention from one issue to another.
After all, wellness is a spiritual quest for health and happiness or personal well-being.
Politics, on the other hand, requires collective thinking to improve the state of a nation.

So while the wellness movement might not seem overtly political on the surface, it can serve
a political function: drawing the attention of the middle class away from the needs of society.
Politicians can act without facing blowback from a public largely distracted by personal
concerns.

A profound political effect of the wellness doctrine is that it helps justify cuts to the welfare
state.

In the 1990s, both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton pushed
through massive welfare reforms, claiming that people who expected money from the
government would just become lazy and stop looking for work.

Such arguments are intimately related to the wellness ideology. What politicians here were
doing was holding people responsible for their success or failures – regardless of economic
conditions.

So if a person lost his job and couldn’t find employment, the wellness ideology says it’s not
the job market’s fault but the fault of the individual for having the wrong mind-set. Maybe
the person didn’t want a job badly enough or didn’t have the stamina to work harder.

People already employed and financially comfortable bought into this sort of thinking, and
viewed the unemployed and poor as a lazier class. As a result, people became reluctant to
help others in need or stand up to government policy on their behalf.

So, while the craze for wellness might seem to push people to become healthier, it’s dividing
society and increasing and legitimizing injustices.

Final summary
The key message in this book:

Wellness, self-improvement and healthy living have been used as a ploy to make people
slaves to work, oblivious to society’s needs and so focused on personal success that they
can’t see how others are suffering. This obsession has blinded us to the facts and the
power we have to change them.

Got feedback?
We’d sure love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to
remember@blinkist.com with the title of this book as the subject line and share your
thoughts!

Suggested further reading: 30 Ways to Reboot Your Body by Ben Greenfield

30 Ways to Reboot Your Body (2015) gives you the keys to repairing and regenerating your
body so you can take your health and fitness goals to the next level. These blinks explain the
importance of digestive health, light exercise and solid routines. Get ready to have your ideas
about diet and exercise challenged.