That's not a crisis
It’s another Inigo Montoya moment, and again, it’s about the use and misuse of the word crisis. From the BBC:
The public health threat posed by obesity in the UK is a “potential crisis on the scale of climate change”, the health secretary has warned.
Maybe I should cut the health secretary a bit of slack, because he did say obesity was a “potential crisis,” and not an out-and-out crisis. But it’s still a misuse of the word, in my opinion. To quote myself:
Crisis is not a synonym for bad situation.
Here are a couple of good definitions of crisis:
A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.
An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.
You’d have to work pretty hard to convince me that obesity is even potentially at “a crucial or decisive point,” or that it is potentially “an unstable condition,…involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.” It seems to me that if the current situation with obesity goes on the way it is, it will go on the way it is.
Roy Jacobsen
in Word Choice, You keep using that word
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Reader Comments (4)
I'm not sure what your problem is with this. How does a situation in which legions of young fat people are spiking healthcare costs to unsustainable levels not qualify as "an unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change"?
Maybe I've become jaded by the constant cries of "Crisis!" 99 and 44/100 percent of the time, the crises that are trumpeted by government or NGO officials are nothing of the sort, and things usually work themselves out with only minor adjustments.
In this case, I honestly don't see what in this situation is going to lead to an abrupt or decisive change in anything. Educators and government health officials (and some parents) are going to make new efforts to get young people to exercise more and eat more healthy foods/less junk. Medical care providers and insurers will find a way to adjust their charges and coverages to make the bottom line work out. Some people will stay fat or get fatter, and pay the price both monetarily and physically, while others will get a clue and start taking better care of themselves.
I'm editorializing here, but I think that Western society is rather more prosperous and resilient than many of us think. We'll somehow manage to get through the "Fat Youth" so-called crisis, and few of us will even notice any changes.
The situation in the Sudan? There's a crisis for you. Iran's efforts to make nuclear weapons, coupled with their continuing threats to wipe Israel off the map? That's heading toward crisis.
I don't know why you're so sanguine about the abilities of educators and health officials to influence young people. Has it really been your experience that when a teacher or government official says, Put down the joint or cupcake, teenagers hop to? Also, you say that "insurers will... find a way to make the bottom line work out"; now if you mean THEIR bottom line, surely you're right, but I don't know why you find that comforting. Fatness leads to sickness, which means fewer workers and higher healthcare costs; insurance companies aren't going to solve that problem for us, no matter what they do with their rates. Finally (and most strangely) you say, "Some people will stay fat or get fatter, and pay the price both monetarily and physically, while others will get a clue and start taking better care of themselves." Do you really think the first group doesn't affect the second? (I'm not even gonna touch Israel and Iran.)
All this, however, is really beside the point. I don't doubt that you can make an argument that the fat-crisis is overblown; that no matter how much money it costs, it will never lead to drastic changes in policy; and even that Western societies in general have a propensity for the hysterical -- but your post wasn't about culture, politics, or economics; it was about language and usage. You said the secretary "misused" the word "crisis," and that's just wrong. He used it the way almost every other native English speaker uses it: to categorize situations ranging from genocide to losing a girlfriend. You may not like it when people use the word lightly, but there's a world of difference between your preference and proper usage.
Obesity is not a crisis. It is not healthy but there are far more pressing issues at hand. We cry and whine that we are fat. Fat means that you are eating more food than you need. We should be thankful that we live somewhere where we have access to that kind of abundance.
There are people all over the world, dying every day because they do not have enough food. While we are crying and "in a state of emergency" because we have so much extra food that we can not stop cramming it down our throats.