What can I share from my own experiences that ties into our first couple weeks of class... I sleep a lot, I eat and drink too much, I watch a lot of TV, and I'm waiting until a half hour before this post is due to write it... If only the first two weeks had been about laziness and procrastination!
I think some of the best examples for theories, ideas, agendas, etc. can be found in places we wouldn't normally look. For example, the TV series South Park, as crude and childish as it is, still manages to make some excellent observations on society from time to time. In a season 9 episode "Bloody Mary," one of the characters, Randy Marsh, is diagnosed with alcoholism after being arrested for drunk driving. While the diagnosis of alcoholism is a helpful nudge towards recovery for many, the "disease" of alcoholism is an enabler for Randy. Since he is now powerless against his illness, he begins drinking even more and relegates himself to a wheelchair. While the episode is still very much "South Park" with its toilet humor, the observations on disease labeling and public perception are interesting. While identifying diseases such as apotemnophilia or alcoholism may be beneficial for some (Ryan had a good post earlier about his own addiction problems and how a program helped him), I think it can give some people an excuse for how they act, which just facilitates more drinking (in the case of alcoholism) or a more determined attempt at limb removal (in the case of apotemnophilia). He also uses his disease to garner favors from others, which shows how a person may be treated differently after the discovery of a disease such as an addiction, even if their appearance and personality hasn't changed from before the diagnosis.
What am I trying to get at here? I don't think I know. Pinker would say the labeling is just going to expose more people to something they don't actually have, creating cases where there is no such case, and Lewontin would write 35 pages on why alcoholism isn't genetic and shouldn't be used to determine a person's role in society. In the end, if you are reading this and hoping to make the 12:00 deadline, you're probably screwed, but good luck anyways!
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ReplyDeleteI get where you're are going, somewhat, in that the need to name an issue as a disease isn't always helpful in fixing the problem (who says it needs to be fixed?). For example, having similar procrastination issues going, when someone calls me lazy, its not like I instantly just want to jump off the couch and run a mile or do all my homework at once, though I've done that on my own sometimes, when -->I<-- felt like it, not when someone else felt like I should... I mean really, call me lazy and you'll probably hear me say "Ya... so what?"
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