Mortality

Internet News (Le Monde) reported yesterday the rather astounding results of a recent study in the U.S.: White adults are doing less well than their Black counterparts: they have a lowered life expectancy. Why? Noteworthy, this is true of less educated whites at fifty, those with no post-secondary education that an earlier generation would have called working class. In effect, these workers are ravaged by drugs, alcohol and sciatica (overwork).

The presenting article seems to think we are dealing with the effects of stress due to competition, but I would tend to see it differently. To my mind, they are exhausted consumers, consumers of everything: yes, drugs, alcohol, but also of work and leisure. The movie critic Pauline Kael called it years ago: employment has become our last area of heroism, it is a priviledge we compete to enter. And in current times, chilling with Netflix has become something of an achievement as well, so that working and not working, playing and not playing, have become equally exhausting.

Am I advocating regression? In a way; there are stages to aging, ways to let go of youth. Without hurtling oneself forward...

http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2015/11/03/hausse-inedite-du-taux-de-mortalite-au-sein-de-la-population-blanche-americaine-la-moins-eduquee_4801740_3222.html