We Should Be Ashamed of Ourselves, by David Larson

By David Larson, Crisis Magazine, March 12, 2021

David Larson is an editor and/or writer for a number of publications and has a masters in theological studies from Spring Hill College. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughter.

Data released recently by the CDC showed that 78% of those who died, were hospitalized, or placed on a ventilator due to a COVID-19 infection were overweight or obese, making it among the most deadly risk factors. Health experts have always known that being overweight is unhealthy, but we’ve become scared to hold up a standard of weight in our culture because of something we are even more afraid of—shame.

Our fear of being shamed and of shaming others is a key component of the extreme individualism of American society, sometimes called “expressive individualism.” In this view, we are each the gods of our own tiny universes and have the right to define reality as we rule those universes. To invert John Donne, every man is an island. Asserting any kind of standard from one universe onto another is “shaming.” The science in the actual universe may assert something unequivocally, but in one’s individual universe that doesn’t matter. ….

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