Health and Ethics – by Pauline Garvey

Author: Pauline Garvey

 

Why is it important to be active, or is it important to be active in specific ways? In recent years there has been mounting focus on health and wellbeing, as evident in the launch of the ‘Healthy Ireland Framework’ (2013-2025) a Government-led initiative that aims to enhance the population’s health. In this initiative health is presented as a public good, of individual and social concern. In the face of troubling temptations that arise with modern lifestyles the launch of this framework explicitly carries an ethical imperative: individual health, it asserts, affects the quality of everybody’s life experience. It is for the collective good to maintain one’s health. The approach recommends that the way to enhance wellbeing is less by focussing on the negative and more by highlighting what one can do to stay well. It recommends, in other words, a focus on the positive instead of the retribution of a poor quality of life that comes with bad behaviour.^[i]

Often such initiatives focus on activities. From my fieldwork with middle-class Dubliners I have learned that staying well and being healthy is often talked about as routinised and collective in nature. People gather to walk, run or do yoga and the group aspect is an essential ingredient in the diverse efforts to stay healthy. When people talk of ‘activities’ they are often referring to group activities rather than solitary ones. Lots of keep-fit activities like walking or running can be done alone, yet they seem to be more successful when done with others. Respondents who attend tai chi classes might attend with a friend, and even if they don’t join these groups to extend their social networks they seem to prefer them to following a YouTube course online. This is interesting because it implies there is an added feel-good factor to the demonstration of healthy living beyond the benefits that come with social interaction. It is not just about being healthy, I suggest, but pursuing health in the company of others carries an added benefit in a cultural context where consensus is highly valued.

Younger respondents who have children report emphasis on mindfulness in schools where the health and wellbeing of children and young adults is couched as a social and spiritual category as much as a physical one. The National Council for Curriculum for example states that in ‘health promotion, health is about more than physical health and wellbeing. It is also concerned with social, emotional and spiritual health and wellbeing.’^[ii] What we are seeing therefore is an interesting blurring of health, ethics and even spirituality to the degree that it is difficult to discern their distinctions.

 

References:

^[i] A Framework For Improved Health and Wellbeing 2013 – 2025, available online https://assets.gov.ie/7555/62842eef4b13413494b13340fff9077d.pdf)

^[ii] The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. https://curriculumonline.ie/getmedia/007175e5-7bb7-44c0-86cb-ba7cd54be53a/SCSEC_SPHE_Framework_English.pdf