Natural Causes

An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

De: Barbara Ehrenreich

Narrado por: Joyce Bean

From the celebrated author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explores how we are killing ourselves to live longer, not better.

A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Natural Causes describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much about what is inevitable. One by one, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guide our attempts to live a long, healthy life -- from the importance of preventive medical screenings to the concepts of wellness and mindfulness, from dietary fads to fitness culture.
But Natural Causes goes deeper -- into the fundamental unreliability of our bodies and even our "mind-bodies," to use the fashionable term. Starting with the mysterious and seldom-acknowledged tendency of our own immune cells to promote deadly cancers, Ehrenreich looks into the cellular basis of aging, and shows how little control we actually have over it. We tend to believe we have agency over our bodies, our minds, and even over the manner of our deaths. But the latest science shows that the microscopic subunits of our bodies make their own "decisions," and not always in our favor.

We may buy expensive anti-aging products or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these things offer only the illusion of control. How to live well, even joyously, while accepting our mortality -- that is the vitally important philosophical challenge of this book.

Drawing on varied sources, from personal experience and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, Natural Causes examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich then tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of how we might better prepare ourselves for the end -- while still reveling in the lives that remain to us.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Ehrenreich's sharp and fearless take on mortality privileges joy over juice fasts and argues that, regardless of how many hours we spend in the gym, death wins out. An incisive, clear-eyed polemic, NATURAL CAUSESrelaxes into the realization that the grim reaper is considerably less grim than a life spent in terror of a fate that awaits us all."
—p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #454545}Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted

"...[A] provocative, informative, hilarious, and deeply moving book. A must read."—Arlie Hochschild, New York Times bestselling author of Strangers in their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

"Throughout the text, [Ehrenreich] employs the erudition that earned her degree, the social consciousness that has long informed her writing, and the compassion that endears her to her many fans...A powerful text that floods the mind with illumination-and with agonizing questions."—Kirkus (starred review)

"[Ehrenreich] offers a healthy dose of reformist philosophy combined with her trademark investigative journalism. In assessing our quest for a longer, healthier life, Ehrenreich provides a contemplative vision of an active, engaged health care that goes far beyond the physical restraints of the body and into the realm of metaphysical possibilities."—Booklist

"Barbara Ehrenreich is a singular voice of sanity amid our national obsession with wellness and longevity. She is deeply well-informed about contemporary medical practices and their shortcomings, but she wears her learning lightly. NATURAL CAUSES is a delightful as well as an enlightening read. No one who cares about living (or dying) well can afford to miss it."—Jackson Lears, PhD, Editor in Chief of the Raritan Quarterly Review

"This book is joyous. It is neither anti-medicine nor anti-prevention; it is pro-balance, pro-scepticism and pro-perspective. Paradoxically, Natural Causes is about hope. If you are struggling with choices that weigh hope in potential medical advances that damage quality of life against non-treatment and the acceptance of a terminal diagnosis, this may not offer much comfort, but...as with so many of Ehrenreich's books, NATURAL CAUSES is a much-needed tonic."—The Guardian

If you are OLD, it’s a must read

Wouldn’t you prefer that your obituary says “died of natural causes” than any other specific disease that you spent the last 10 years of your life trying to be certain you did or did not have?

This book will give you a better understanding of American healthcare and then virtually in the other book that I’ve come across. Unfortunately what you learn isn’t necessarily going to make you feel better. But it might make your final 5-25 years a better life.

Barbara Ehrenreich is really mad at ... something!

Barbara Ehrenreich is such an engaging writer, provocative and insightful. But she's grown very angry at somebody or something, and it's next to impossible to figure out whom or what. She doesn't like the whole "wellness" thing, but she's a gym rat. She rails against taxes on cigarettes and seems to want us all to smoke, or something, especially if we're poor - can't really tell. She doesn't want us to extend our lives if it means we have to eat right and exercise, but it's OK to live longer if we can eat lots of chocolate cake, or something.
She points out that some people do all the right things and still get cancer or drop dead of a heart attack. Life makes no guarantees and apparently not a whole lot of sense to her. Then you die. So ... what? She still does good works and contributes in ways most of us can only hope of doing; I'm just not sure why she went on this particular rant.
I'll ignore Ms. Ehrenreich's Natural Causes for now and keep exercising as best I can, eating right as best I can, and enjoying and contributing as best I can. And I hope she cheers up.

The end's the best part. Didn't have to be so long

A tad preachy and comtemptuous throughout the front and middle of the book, but the emperical pantheo-animist ending was inspired.

vibrant

as an older person with cancer I appreciated many of the insights and perspectives in this book, especially it's positive sense of an animate, vibrant universe, one we are born out of and die back into, naturally

Just Plain Wrong.

Half way through now and I will finish out of hopeful curiosity, but I'm currently astonished at the ends she's going to to prove her point. For example, she's absolutely clear mindfulness programs (aka meditation apps) have nearly no medical efficacy. That's simply not so. She's cherry picking studies to make her arguments. It's also astonishing how she condemns all forms of elitism while she herself lays that out with remarkably aloof and cutting snark. It's disappointing since her previous work has been on point and important.