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Worshiping the false idols of wellness

     Before we go further, I’d like to clear something up: wellness is not the same as medicine. Medicine is the science of reducing death and disease, and increasing long and healthy lives. Wellness used to mean a blend of health and happiness. Something that made you feel good or brought joy and was not medically harmful — perhaps a massage or a walk along the beach. But it has become a false antidote to the fear of modern life and death.

    The wellness industry takes medical terminology, such as “inflammation” or “free radicals,” and polishes it to the point of incomprehension. The resulting product is a “Do It Yourself” medicine for longevity that comes with a confidence that science can only aspire to achieve.

     Let’s take the trend of adding a pinch of activated charcoal to your food or drink. While the black color is strikingly unexpected and alluring, it’s sold as a supposed “detox.” Guess what? It has the same efficacy as a spell from the local witch. Maybe it’s a matter of aesthetics. Wellness potions in beautiful jars with untested ingredients of unknown purity are practically packaged for Instagram.

     Medicine and religion have long been deeply intertwined, and it’s only relatively recently that they have separated. The wellness-industrial complex seeks to resurrect that connection. It’s like a medical throwback, as if the idyllic days of health were 5,000 years ago. Ancient cleansing rituals with a modern twist — supplements, useless products and scientifically unsupported tests.

     The dietary supplements that are the backbone of wellness make up a $30 billion a year business despite studies showing they have no value for longevity (only a few vitamins have proven medical benefits, like folic acid before and during pregnancy and vitamin D for older people at risk of falling). Modern medicine wants you to get your micronutrients from your diet, which is inarguably the most natural source.

     Yet the wellness-industrial complex has managed to pervert that narrative and make supplements a necessary tool for nonsensical practices, such as boosting the immune system or fighting the war on inflammation. The resulting fluorescent yellow urine from multivitamins may provide a false sense of efficacy, but it’s a fool’s gold (and the consequence of excessive B2 that couldn’t possibly be absorbed). So what’s the harm of spending money on charcoal for non-existent toxins or vitamins for expensive urine? Here’s what: the placebo effect or “trying something natural” can lead people with serious illnesses to postpone effective medical care. However, I admit that doctors can learn something from wellness. It’s clear that some people are looking for healers, so we must find ways to serve that need that are medically ethical.

(Jen Gunter. www.nytimes.com, 01.08.2018. Adaptado.)

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(Stephan Pastis. “Pearls Before Swine”. www.gocomics.com, 22.04.2019.)

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The fantastic appeal of fantasy

The fantasy genre starts where science ends

     Few things can brighten up a dark morning in a Scottish seaside resort during an Atlantic storm. Yet while sheltering in a bookshop from the rain, I had a moment of sunny revelation. Stacked almost as high as my 11-year-old self were copies of The Lord of the Rings, with a cover illustration that promised mystery and magic. That chance discovery started a lifelong love of the fantasy genre1 , both as reader and writer. 

   The fantasy genre has had more and more success, but today we’re in the middle of an unprecedented fantasy boom. Sales continue to rise and it is now the biggest genre in publishing. The more rational the world gets, with super-science all around us, the more we demand the irrational in our fiction.

     Fantasy is not simply a case of swords2 and sorcery3 . Yes, there is that by the shelf. But the genre is as broad as the imagination. The genre starts where science ends.

    “In these modern times, where most of us sit at computers, fantasy books offer a chance to break out of mundane moments,” says Mark Newton, an editor with the genre. “People like to explore themes that go beyond the limited palette that literary fiction claims to offer.” 

     A search for the origins of fantasy will usually have academics muttering about Beowulf or Homer’s The Iliad, but they come from a time when all stories were fantasy: gods and monsters and supernatural artefacts with humanity caught in the middle. The first modern fantasy writer is usually considered to be William Morris, in the late 19th Century. But it was the early 20th Century where fantasy really started to gain status.

     Fantasy fiction has always been about visionary ideas. You can get artful words in plenty of literary fiction, but being able to see beyond the boundaries4 of the world around us — now that’s a special skill.

     I don’t write fantasy fiction simply to provide a trapdoor5 from the real world. For me, the genre is about the reality. But instead of coming up against it, fantasy maps the unconscious aspirations of our modern society through allegory in story- -forms as old as humanity. It’s about turning off the mobile phone and the computer and remembering who we are in the deepest parts of ourselves.

(Mark Chadbourn. www.telegraph.co.uk, 12.04.2008. Adaptado.)

1genre: gênero. Categoria distintiva de composição literária, como romance, poesia etc.

2sword: espada.

3sorcery: feitiçaria.

4boundary: fronteira.

5trapdoor: alçapão