What is anxiety, why cook at home and what the neighbors are for: three great lessons of 2019

[Jultxxxyes]

Thus we have opened our eyes to these realities this year three people who have much to say about the way we live

 

Now that 2020 is going to start, it is inevitable to look back and take stock of what we have learned this year. And it has been a lot. We started 2019 believing that the vital anxiety anxiety was a (treatable) evil of a few, burning life in food delivery apps and without being aware of how to take advantage of the huge human capital that adds a good neighborhood. Then three people opened our eyes to a better life.

The voice that alerted Spain of the empty kitchens
What a paradox: there are more and more kitchens that have no idea of cooking. We look for various recipes on the Internet, we get hooked on all editions of MasterChef, we venerate any Instagram photo with a healthy dish…, but then we go to the kitchen, open a can, three minutes in the microwave and go. The abuse of "ultraprocessed" is one of the causes of the obesity epidemic in the West. Dietitians-nutritionists put their hands to their heads: "You have to cook more," they say. But it is not as easy as it seems; The causes and consequences of not doing so are complex.

Isabel González Turmo, PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Seville, has analyzed the phenomenon in the pages of Cooking was a practice (Trea, 2019): "No one knows what it is to 'throw the stew what you ask for', it has lost the oral tradition of recipes and, therefore, its diversity and richness. Before, no gazpacho was equal to another. " When in doubt if it is a matter of class (not a few studies indicate that asking someone to spend more time cooking and buying only fresh produce requires economic power), Turmo rebels: "Perhaps it is true in countries rich. In the poor, where families are numerous and you probably have even a neighbor in your care, the miracle of multiplication is still being done, and more and more is being cooked. " In Spain, we barely get to an hour a day, and it is a declining figure, according to a study by the market research company GFK.

The way in which kitchens are integrated into houses, of course, does not help. "The standardization of the floors turned them into a shameful space, where the appliances are practically hidden: a corridor to enter and run away. No one lives in them anymore. But now, with its incorporation into the living room, the thing is the same or worse: it is a mere place to chop, heat and serve, because nobody wants fried smells, meatloaf or meatballs to take over the room, "says the anthropologist. To make matters worse, everyone eats on time (individualization, of course, does not lend itself to the simmer).

And we are surrounded by gadgets, to make foams or other virguerías, whose function is to accumulate dust. The author narrates it this way: "They are bought for a show cooking. You do not use them at home in your day to day, but, at most, at weekly dinners with friends (if it is a group of six, it is your turn every month and a half.) You don't have time to learn to handle them. You get frustrated and leave them. " The story is so deep that there are even thinkers who describe the return to the stove as a revolutionary act. Michael Pollan, author of Cooking. A natural history of transformation (Debate): "Cooking is a way to protest against specialization, against the total rationalization of life, against the infiltration of commercial interests in all facets of our existence." There is nothing.

Against the nonsense of making anxiety a disease
Eparquio Delgado has more than 11,000 followers on Twitter. Little for a soccer player or a rock star. But a lot for a psychologist from Tenerife (he works at Centro Rayuela) that delivers messages as little sexy as the following: "Psychology does not explain joy", "There is no solution for everything", "I have no anti-suffocation formulas", "I also do not have of effective tools to tell anyone how he has to live "... We will never hear him refer to the impostor syndrome, vigorexia or other alleged disorders that he describes as" invented "and whose mere mention books are sold and devour items all over the world .

The mental health term itself frightens him: "Who decides if I am mentally healthy? And with what criteria? If there is not a single biological marker that indicates it ..." And even anxiety seems a distorted concept: "All we go through episodes that wake her up. Turning her into illness is nonsense. " The antipsychologist of the year? Indeed, if you consider this discipline a source of self-help and verbiage; but if something claims the disseminator in their networks is the respectful practice of the profession, which is only capable of giving individualized guidelines ... and as far as possible from the pill bottle.

 

"Finding in the brain the cause of our suffering, and not in what happens in the environment, is a mistake," says the author of The Self-Help Books. What a scam! (Laetoli): "And more and more people are sensitized to it. Not because of my disclosure, but because of the reality that they are uncovering all the recent news about poverty, unemployment, bookmakers ... It is already unsustainable to maintain that if someone has a bad time it's your fault inside. " Hence, that all the latest news of celebrities making public their mental problems (another great phenomenon of 2019) awakens mixed feelings: "It helps to make visible, but I don't think it will end stigma, because this is much deeper. biomedical model has stigmatized suffering. Now, how do you get stigmatized if it is not going to the root? "

Your road map: stop turning any unpleasant feeling into illness and recover psychology as a trip to the depths of the subject (where pleasures, frustrations, desires and life history are), and not so much to its gray mass. Not forgetting that, in addition, there is a cultural component. "A classic example of consultation: people who lose their mothers and come the next day because they are desolate. How they will not be! The duel was understood before, but now professional help is sought immediately. Life is denatured. I, of course, I send them home. I tell them: 'Come back in a month if you're still the same.' They never come back. "

In search of neighbors to ward off loneliness
The distrust of technological advances goes back to the time of Socrates, who already predicted that the new tradition of writing would end the power of memory. "Before we hate phones, we hate cities," sociologists Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman have written in their technological innovation reports. That the networks isolate us, trigger anxiety levels, incite superfluous knowledge or bring out the evil trick that many carry inside, is a reality that a few studies have put on the table. However, the year we said goodbye has been full of examples from the other side of the coin, with the consolidation of digital platforms that reinforce the local fabric. Since social networks are relatively new, scientific study of their effects is also new. And now there are authors who question past messages about its use. "What if the opportunity they offer were up to the cost?" They pose.

Nextdoor is one of them, which closes the year with a presence in 3,000 neighborhoods in Spain, in 250 cities and towns. "The relationships that are forged here have an impact on people's real life, cause the celebration of activities in the neighborhood, the encounter with neighbors and the creation of a space of solidarity and help," says Joana Caminal, head of the Community in Spain. The # MyPuertaE estáAbierta initiative, which combats unwanted loneliness (two million people in this country live alone), has been consolidated successfully. In it, to the organizations involved (from the Red Cross to the Friends of the Elders Federation), users who have given strength to the phenomenon, such as Valeria Laguna and its neighborhood group of Gaztambide, in Madrid, are added.

The decorator, 35, used this social network in February 2019, when her boyfriend left her unexpectedly. "I felt very sad, I spent hours crying ... And I had no one to talk to. I knew about the existence of these groups for older people. And I thought: 'What about the young people? Don't they feel alone?' a message on Nextdoor: a call to join a WhatsApp group to stay in touch and meet from time to time. Now they are my friends. " An 18-year-old girl, a painter over 70, a civil guard from Cádiz ... There are many neighbors whom Valeria did not know and were in the same situation. "We meet to go to the movies or we go with each other if anyone has to go just to get a tooth," he says. "It's funny, because social networks have always isolated me. I was lying to my friends to not stay and spend hours watching Facebook. And this time, I could say they saved me."

The young woman, who has already overcome her personal crisis, plans to keep the group while there is someone who needs it in the neighborhood (right now, there are 16). Caminel recounts other similar initiatives: the neighbor who has set up three small music festivals in the neighborhood, the one that is helping to use less plastic on his street, the one that installs renewable energy plants in his urbanization or the 90-year-old woman that makes historical routes through the streets of Malasaña.