December 16, 2022

Steve Jonas — MD MPH

Dr. Donald Ardell (lucky for me) is long-time friend of mine. He first came to national attention in the early 1970’s when he broadly popularized and expanded upon the concept(s) of “High Level Wellness” that had been originally published in the early 1960’s by Dr. Halbert Dunn. I first met him at the 1986 National Wellness Conference that was held in Stevens Point, WI. I was early in my career in the field of wellness promotion/disease prevention and, as it happened, triathlon racing. As it happened, Don was a triathlete as well. One major difference between us in the sport was that he was fast and I was slow. We remained that way, each of us, until our respective racing careers came to an end just a few years ago.

Don has done major work over the years in what he calls “High Level Wellness,” and more recently developed the concept of “Real Wellness,” which has four components: “Reason, Exuberance, Athleticism, and Liberty.” In a recent issue of the REAL Wellness Report (No. 846, November 22, 2022), he dealt with the matter of aging, in the context of belief and belief systems. (By coincidence, I’m sure, that Nov. 22 happened to be the date of my 86th birthday.) It is important to note that Don is a devotee of the great 19th century agnostic thinker, Robert Ingersoll, and is closely associated with the very important work of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (which you may know of from the ads by Ron Reagan, Jr.). The balance of this column is devoted to excerpts from that issue of the RWR, interspersed with commentary on them that Don invited me to offer (republished here with his permission).

On Healthy Aging, and other Matters (from Don)

1. Determinants That I Suspect Enabled Just About All Aspects of Who I Am, and How and Why I Got This Way 

“How did I end up like this, putting aside the mystery of what this is? What factors shaped how I turned out, at 84, that is, who/what/where and how I am or seem to be?
 
“It's been quite a journey from a blank slate infant learning to smile, roll over, sit up, wave, clap, hurl objects and babble like a grownup evangelical Christian Pentecostal in heat, into an old guy, rather more sophisticated than in the earliest days. While not a great boast, it's really something.
 
“I attribute my situation, for better and for worse, to the following broad and overlapping determinants, ranked in order of consequence: 

⦁ Good fortune (aka random chance, luck and circumstances, such as place of birth, demographics, and cultural/social influences).
⦁ Genetics.
⦁ Environments.
⦁ The influence of significant others, particularly two wives, two children, two girlfriends and my formative years as a student athlete at GWU.
⦁ Lifestyle.
 
“Placing lifestyle as less consequential than the other factors might, at first, seem surprising. After all, I've invested 40 years to the somewhat Don Quixote mission of pleading, persuading and otherwise promoting change from mediocre to healthy lifestyles. But, my mental and physical state, for better or worse, ensued from these biological, cultural and social determinants. Thus, any rank order is arbitrary and circular, since all factors interacted in unrecognizable ways.
 
“Therefore, I conclude that while all factors seem equally determinative, some are more equally so, sort of like pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm.
 
“I think what I've described to account for how I got to be who I am (or seem) after all these years applies to most of the eight billion here on Earth at this time, courtesy of ancient stardust.”

“But What About Jesus?” (one might, or might not, ask.  In that regard, I should note here that Don was brought up in a Roman Catholic home and to parochial school through 12th grade.  He left the religion not too long afterwards.)

Back to Don’s words: “Religion deserves consideration as a determinant in shaping the nature, quality and character of most people across the globe. Though I haven't been a devotee since high school, I have paid attention and been a critic of religion ever since. The topic can't be avoided as a factor in our development.”  

And here are my comments on Don’s thoughts above: 

1.  As for religion, as you know my problem with it is not religion per se.  If folks want to believe in a god or gods that has/have one or more of a variety of super-natural powers, that's their business.  It is organized religion that wants to impose one or more powers of the State, based on one or more of their own religious concepts, upon the civil society as a whole that I have a problem with.  (As my regular readers know, this is a matter upon which I have commented in this space [and elsewhere] on a regular basis.)
 
2. Related to 1., I will not engage in discussions with religious folk about the nature of their belief(s).  Those are entirely their business.  I will engage in discussions of what (some) organized religions want to do to me, as in for example, the matter of abortion rights.
 
3. My thoughts about making it to 86 (once again, on 11/22/22, numbers, this year, that have a particular rhyme to them) are similar to Don’s about making it to 84.  Among the many thoughts that you have produced is that in engaging in one form or another of Real Wellness (for me from my mid-40s) is a major factor for each of us in reaching our respective ages, being relatively healthy and active.  For me, on the health-promoting side, began in my 40s with healthy eating and regular exercise.
 
4.  Good fortune (aka random chance, luck and circumstances, such as place of birth, demographics, family economics, and cultural/social influences); Genetics; Environments; the influence of significant others.  For me I did have good luck in all of the above factors, but most especially my father, Prof. Harold J. Jonas, the finest human being I have ever had the privilege to know.  Although he passed away in 1996, continues to live in my memory, every day --- plus other friends, relations, and mentors (including yourself) of course.

5.  Lifestyle, influenced in the beginning by the great George Sheehan and then from the mid-1980's by yourself of course.
 
6.  I would not rank the influences listed in “4.”  They were/are of different levels of importance at different stages of one's life.
 
7.  I never did read "Animal Farm."  But of course, "1984," along with Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," and Jack London's "The Iron Heel" were all inspirations for my book "The 15% Solution."
 
8.  And then we come to “What about Jesus?” (which, since he was a Jew, applies to both Christians and Jews, although not in equal proportions).  There may or may not have been a real person whose life and death approximated in some way the stories that are told about him in what is called "The New Testament."  Certainly, there were one or more persons who significantly challenged Roman and Jewish authority in what we now call Palestine in the early years of the Common Era.  He/they, over several centuries (as you know that first book of the New Testament was not written until about 100 years after the events, real or imagined or both, that were chronicled in it) was widely referred to, written about, fought over. 

Indeed, many battles were fought over what the "real" Christ and the "real" doctrines were, until the Roman Emperor Constantine made "Christianity" the official religion of his part of what was left of the Roman Empire.  That version was put firmly into place in that geo-political entity by the Nicaean Creed with the "Christ-was-the-supernatural-son-of-God doctrine at its center, of 325.  The religion and its doctrines were then further codified by St. Augustine in the 4th-5th centuries who, among other things, put religion-based anti-Semitism (the Jews killed Christ) at its center.

For a thorough disquisition on what happened during the period of the formation of what became the Roman Catholic Church, see The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason, by Charles Freeman (Knopf, New York, 2003).  Perhaps the most significant quote in it is from Augustine: “There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger.  This is the disease of curiosity . . . It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and wish man should not wish to learn.”  (Sound familiar?  Should you wish to learn more about this kind of thinking, consult, say, Justice Alito or Ross Douthat.)

9.  As for prayer, I disagree with you (that is, I disagree with Don).  Of course, in my view (and Don’s as well) there is/are no supernatural being(s) who can respond to prayer, and then do something for the praying person.  And of course, prayer cannot affect anything outside of the person making saying it/them.  But prayer can have a powerful internal influence on that person, from making them feel better about something or someone, to actually causing them to go out and make positive change in the world in one way or another.  (Of course, negatives can arise from prayer too.)

10.  As for age, of course it is the person and who he/she is at a given point in time that counts.  As has been said many times, age is just a number.  All the factors mentioned above of course influence a) what age one will reach and b) the state of one's health, physical and mental, when one gets there. 

And there rested that particular discussion with Don.  For both of us, I hope that, living the life of REAL Wellness, we will continue to have such discussions, for some time to come.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books.  In addition to being a contributor to BuzzFlash.com, he is a “Trusted Author” for OpEdNews.com , and an occasional contributor to Reader Supported News/Writing for Godot; and From The G-Man.  His own political website, stevenjonaspolitics.com, is an archive of the political columns he has published since 2004.  He was also a triathlete (36 seasons, 256 multi-sport races), retiring after the 2018 season.

Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Brewster, NY: Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016, available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon).  In 1996 he published a ‘future history’ of the United States entitled The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Third Version published by Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, Brewster, NY), and available on Amazon.

He has a distribution list for his columns.  If you would like to be added to it, please send him an email at sjtpj@aol.com.