Much is made of the epidemic of obesity in Australia. At least once a week my news screen features carefully constructed body-only shots of fat people wearing inappropriate clothing walking down the footpath (sidewalk, for my American readers), consuming yet more trademark labelled sugar. Apparently we're all at risk of contracting contagious chubbiness.
Which is what "epidemic" means - the widespread occurrence of an infectious disease. Flu and ebola and measles come as epidemics. There are times, particularly while watching football on TV, that I can believe stupidity comes as an epidemic - spread by tiny particles called morons. I've yet to be convinced, however, that obesity is an airborne pathogen. Not that I don't think some of our major fast food producers haven't tried, in some dark basement of their R&D departments, to develop a tiny twisted virus thing to make us all crave their high salt offerings constantly. Just the sort of thing that can be spread via those auto-air-freshener things in the toilets.
This is why it's important to get out in the fresh air regularly - they'd need a air freshener the size of a grain silo.
Less inappropriately dressed and, so, less visible, is the growing problem of anxiety and low self-esteem. Maybe it's not so noticeable because we all suffer from it these days and there's no "normal" to contrast it with. We're all constantly on edge waiting for the next inevitable sign that we're inadequate and not meeting expectations. And I think I've found the culprit.
It would be easy to blame the media or bloggers - especially bloggers, opinionated bastards! - or the high pressure corporate society of today. Sure, they all make a contribution, but the real offenders are our appliances and our technology.
6.50 AM and I'm already feeling like I should be a multi-armed Hindu god given the number of things I'm trying to juggle; uniforms, teeth, baby breakfast, school lunches. There's some bread in the microwave to defrost. That should take care of itself, at least. Nope. When it's done it beeps to let me know. Great. Then every twenty seconds or so thereafter the bloody thing beeps again; a guilt laden tone that says, in one short second, "there's something you've forgotten".
Uniforms in the spin drier; they'll be ready to go tomorrow morning. Settle down for some sleep and the drier cycle finishes. Job done! Dad of the year! Just getting into the bliss of the hypnagogic state ... the drier starts again, runs for 10 seconds ... and beeps. It's got a little subroutine that does that to "keep the clothes fresh". Yeah, like fun! The whole thing was designed by an engineer that had come to hate the customers. It's timed so there's just not long enough to go to sleep between occurrences of the little reminder. My laundry is outside and downstairs. @#$%@#!
It's not enough that my smart phone wakes me in the middle of the night to remind me that I didn't plug it in to the charger, it has to become an instrument of third-party guilt by conveying me messages from other machines. I made an appointment and took a card last time I went to the dentist. That's as far as I wanted to go - conscience satisfied. I never intended to actually go to the follow up. A card is easily lost and that excuse is always valid. Now the computer at the dentist's colludes with my smart phone to keep reminding me of the appointment until I acknowledge by return of post. Another expectation that I have to live up to.
And so it goes. The car reminds me that it needs a service every time I start it. The computer tells me how many updates behind it is when I log on. My Outlook calendar fires up little reminders of appointments coming in the next 2 years and Facebook tells me all the birthdays I've forgotten. Then someone gives you a lifestyle monitoring band that can drive you to a twitching nervy by tapping you on the shoulder every half hour to remind you how far you haven't walked, how many hours of REM sleep you didn't get and how much body fat you've still got. Just bloody marvelous!
So I'm inadequate and anxious before I've even factored into my day time to worry about my income, my mortgage and my kids' reading ability or adequate space to feel guilty about being a middle-class white heterosexual male without a significant disability.
I'm sure there are some dark forces at work; some clandestine collusion between the manufacturers of anti-depressants, psychologists, software engineers and the alcohol industry. It's a mutually profitable arrangement.
"Hypnagogic", if you haven't come across the word, is descriptive of that heavenly state of being almost asleep.
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Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time.
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