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Notes -
I'm reminded of the phenomenon of the "luxury belief," where people espouse beliefs while being shielded from the consequences of those beliefs. The types of people self-motivated enough to move into cities and pursue an education or elite career also tend to be self-motivated enough to keep themselves fit, and so the message that there's nothing wrong with being fat or unfit doesn't really affect them. But others don't have such self-motivation and take the message seriously, resulting in the current Healthy At Every Size and fatness acceptance movements and the consequential early deaths. That said, it's not as if Red Tribe folks particularly listen to the Blue Tribe in this kind of messaging, and so that doesn't explain why Red Tribe tends to have many more fatter people than the Blue Tribe.
I do wonder how the differences would be if we controlled for intelligence or socioeconomic status. Certainly I see plenty of obese people in my everyday life in my blue tribe enclave, but they generally tend to be in the lower classes. It could be primarily a class divide, where the Blue Tribe's most visible members are on the upper end while being left/liberal and the Red Tribe's most visible members are on the lower end while being right/conservative.
And to spitball, there are some just-so stories that come to mind. Left/liberal is more associated with marrying later or not at all as well as being more willing to divorce, which puts greater pressure on individuals to be and stay fit longer. It's also more associated with lack of a belief in the afterlife, which would create greater pressure on keeping alive and healthy. It's also more associated with colleges, which in the USA means more opportunities for athletics. It's also more associated with postmodernism, which would allow for a greater disconnect between one's actions and one's beliefs, as well as a greater disconnect between one's beliefs and reality.
I think there’s a bit of bias toward “everyone is just like me” belief as well. If you and everyone you know are high achieving type A personalities who make time to work out, it’s not that hard to reason yourself to the conclusion that everyone is like that and simply lacks some sort of environmental helps that would make them successful. If I made it because of hard work, and everyone works hard, you must have some extra problems that I don’t have or you’d make it too.
Personally I think both can be true and in fact are true. There can be things like lack of money, exposure to ideas that you could use to build a great future, IQ, supportive familles, race , or even geographical proximity that can radically change your life prospects. But I don’t think that negates work. It’s not either or, it’s both and all of the above. What I see the left making the mistake on is that they think the existence of environmental or biological factors somehow means not having to work hard as well. I see systemic racism narratives as something poisonous to black people in so far as it convinced them to not bother to try.
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