This is a reply to Dr. Jon Robison, with whom I occasionally spar gently on the LinkedIn platform. I began it as a comment on the platform, but it said I’d exceeded the allowable character count.

The conversation began over a post I shared about a sugary-soda tax being implemented in Catalonia, Spain. His most recent comment was …

This is another in a series of posts derived from my book, “Sustainable You,” which asks the question, “why work to sustain the planet if we’re not working to sustain ourselves?”

In the battle between easy and hard, easy is most people’s overwhelming favorite. But we value hard more than many recognize.

If, for example, you have even the slightest interest in woodworking, which piece would you value more, the imperfect table you worked to design and create, or the ordinary piece you bought at IKEA?

Part of a continuing series related to ideas in my book, “Sustainable You/8 First Steps to Lasting Change in Business and in Life.” 

When I share about the changes I’ve undertaken in the second half of my life, relative to the first, I often hear the reply, “oh, I could never do that.”

Let’s put aside the details people react to, and consider the outlook. For the vast majority of possibilities, of course they could. Of course you could. Of course I could.

Part of a continuing series related to ideas in my book, “Sustainable You/8 First Steps to Lasting Change in Business and in Life.”
 

On almost any topic that involves me, just about the most valuable question I can ask is “what’s my role in it?” Even when I’m fooling myself about the answer, I’m still better off asking.

Note: Free video offer at end of interview

Welcome to another installment of "10 Words or Less," in which I ask brief questions of interesting people and ask for brief responses in return. Today's participant is medical director of Renascent Treatment Group in Toronto; we participated in a discussion about food addiction at the Commonwealth Club of California. The 10-words-or-less thing is an ethic, not a limit, so please, no counting. It's not so easy, and besides, let's see you do it.

Name Vera Tarman
Residence Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Family circumstance “Married, with four pets.”
Occupation Physician
Born when and where? “1957, in Germany.”
Anything notable about the circumstances? “For the first three years of my life, I lived in a convent for children.”
A formative event from childhood “My mother died when I was 14.”
Someone who has influenced your path in life, outside family “An aunt named Inge, who was like a mother to me. She was a nurse with a strong work ethic, and was always very encouraging of me.”

An aphorism states that one definition of insanity is endlessly repeating a behavior and expecting the outcome, this time, to change.

I am about to prove, again, that I remain, by that definition, completely bonkers.

Maybe now I’m piling on, but I’ve got one more thread to pick out of the confrontation between Wisconsin fitness scold Kenneth Krause and news anchorwoman Jennifer Livingston. See my first two comments here and here.

A persistent theme in my topics lately has been the hypocrisy and rank dishonesty of corporations and their spokesman, such as when they insist on the standard of personal responsibility, but refuse to take the same responsibility for their own actions.

On my way to another installment of that, I really want to ask: Why aren’t more people — most people! — offended when they are lied to and manipulated? Most people are, when they realize it, but somehow, when corporations do it ... all the time, it’s just business as normal.

Last time I wrote, I decried the stain of Big Food’s insistence that “personal responsibility” should be the only standard of conduct, when it works its ass off to ensure it won’t be held responsible for its actions. It’s scum-suckingly low.

But here’s another part of its duplicity:

They.

Don’t.

Mean.

It.

It is the only logical conclusion.

I’ve visited this area of thought before, but it bears frequent discussion: Corporate — and corporate shill — calls for “personal responsibility” are nothing less than gross insults against reasonable people.