Sunday, August 15. 2010
 A series of essays on modern motherhood at Boston Review, subtitled Stay-at-home mothering is bad for mothers, their kids, and women’s equality.
I read no article there about Apple Pie, but I may have missed it. The academic lingo is tough at first, but you can get the hang of it. Something called "Care Theory," which I think, in plain English, means not wanting to be a mom.
One of the essays is Time for Public Childcare. Surely that must be so moms are free - I mean liberated - from their annoying and demanding brats so they can golf and play tennis and be CEOs and have lunchtime affairs with the tennis pro.
A re-post from a couple of years ago:
Across the pond, Mediocracy is often thinking about the sorts of things that we puzzle over. In this case, the tendency of people to expect governments to perfect the world. One quote from his piece on "Freedom To" vs. "Approval Of":
Another point of confusion for some libertarians, as for most others with enthusiastic views about the right way to run the world, is the false dichotomy between 'everything is fine' and 'collective action is required'. It is in fact possible to hold a third position, namely that:
(a) the world is imperfect
(b) a legal framework which upholds private agreements is a good thing, because it helps to exploit the benefits of exchange (this principle is usually abbreviated into 'free markets')
(c) specific market failures may require collective action (defence is definitely one; education and medicine definitely aren't; other putative market failures are a matter for debate)
(d) apart from providing a safety net, trying to address any other imperfection by means of government action is to be avoided, if for no other reason than that it invariably involves some form of coercion.
There is a tremendous psychological pressure in contemporary society to jump from 'something less than ideal is happening' to 'the state must intervene'. In fact, it is more than a pressure, it has become an unconscious automatic connection.
Well, not an automatic connection for me. Despite all of the accumulated evidence to the contrary, many insist on that "hope" the hope that government can and will fix "it." And politicians are more than happy to exploit that, because accumulating power tends to be their "unconscious automatic connection."
I heard it yesterday from somebody at lunch: "Bush doesn't care that we're in a recession." I noted (to myself) that this nice Liberal lady was assuming 1. that how much Bush emotes matters and 2. that a President could control international markets if he only chose to do do. I elected to move on to other subjects.
Saturday, August 14. 2010
I am not one for the notion of "hallowed ground" in general, but I understand that people can and do make sacred whatever they want to, for whatever reasons. I tend to find the idea of making places where people die "sacred" to be a pagan, superstitious notion.
Anyway, of course I agree with the Pres that Moslems have the right to freely worship and gather. It's legal. But that's not the point. We recently quoted somebody's shrewd comment that "'It's legal' isn't a defense; it's a confession."
The point is that Americans and especially New Yorkers are reacting to the stunningly in-your-face insensitivity of the siting of this mosque and "cultural center." It's the insensitivity verging on hostility that pisses people off. It's probably legal to site a strip joint next to a Baptist church too, but who would do it?
As I am wont to say, civilization is more about the soft rules than the hard rules. The mosque violates an obvious soft rule of civil behavior. Codes, not laws.The usual consequences of significant soft-rule violations are shunning, rejection, avoidance, or expressions of discontent or even contempt. "Virtual stocks," you might say.
Our condescending elites only worry about the soft rules when it fits their narrative du jour (eg BJs in the Oval Office are ok). Their knee-jerk reactions generally run against the sentiments and instincts of ordinary Americans (among which I am one). I find the Imam's choice to be insulting and contemptible. We Americans have welcomed him to his new adopted country, and are reasonable to expect respect, appreciation, and gratitude instead of self-serving legalisms.
It is reasonable to expect people who wish to be accepted as Americans to learn how to behave. I would, were I to move to another culture.
I think it's a good time for another White House beer summit with the Imam, Pamela Geller, and Bo. Maybe Sissy Willis too. This issue can surely be settled by the O over some cold Coronas with lime.
Image on top: the c. 600 Hagia Sophia, minus the minarets which were added by the Ottomans when they converted this remarkable and splendid ancient Christian basilica to a mosque.
Friday, August 13. 2010
That's a term which has come into fashion lately, and it deserves to. Counterfactuals are a specific variety of BS, as our commenter notes.
The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective. The key to it is its conditionality (If...,then...might have...); the past subjunctive, combined with its lack of factual content. For example, "You bozo - you left a burner on. You could have burned down the house." Well maybe - but it did not happen. Thus no fact.
(An "indicative conditional," by way of contrast, is a past conditional which is founded on a real, factual consequence which occurred. For example, "If you bozos hadn't left the gate open, the dog would not have run into the street." Indicative conditionals are also debatable, due to their speculative nature, ie, cum hoc ergo propter hoc. For example, in my case, almost every time I water the garden, it rains afterewards.)
Counterfactuals are often used (abused) to make emotional arguments. "If the stimulus had been 3 trillion dollars, our unemployment rate would be 4%."
Free Dictionary offers this:
adj
(Philosophy / Logic) expressing what has not happened but could, would, or might under differing conditions
n
(Philosophy / Logic) a conditional statement in which the first clause is a past tense subjunctive statement expressing something contrary to fact, as in if she had hurried she would have caught the bus.
"Are you a Ranger or a Hobbit?"
"I think I offended a group of very fine, upstanding law students." A tough talk, quite entertaining.
Of course, nobody expects you to take a job in which the demands do not meet your wishes. That's just called "a bad fit." When people complain about legal work hours, they should consider doctors' hours, Wall St. hours, the hours of an infantryman in Afghanistan, or the hours of an entrepreneur, by way of comparison. One quote from the piece:
Nothing world-changing has happened within the limited confines of the nine-to-five work week. Nobody can wake up in the morning and say, “I’m dedicating myself and my family to my fellow man, but only so long as I keep exactly the kind of balance that would make my therapist proud.” Eight hours per day can help make one happy (maybe), but is happiness the point? Do we even know in any given day, week, or month what will make us happy over the medium to long term? We think we do, but I know many, many people who get exactly what they want . . . and then find out it wasn’t as great as they thought it would be.
Thursday, August 12. 2010
 ...I'd buy this W. 12th St. townhouse as a pied a terre. I'd let all my millions of best friends use it, too, when they visited NYC. There would be a maid and a cook who lived on the top floor, and three reserved parking spots at the garage down the street.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum...
With the lousy economy, and the closing of so many Wall St. firms, prices are coming down a bit, but such places remain pricey from my humble standpoint. They are asking $29 million for this typical and rather ordinary one (see photos at link). I guess lots of people want to have places in Manhattan these days.
People who are not familiar with 19th century NY townhouses do not know that they all have pleasant little gardens in the back. Lots of landcaping businesses in NY specialize in townhouse mini-gardens. Little fountains, mini-patios, quiet lighting, pots, plants that like the city, etc. I once knew somebody whose Mom kept her pet tortoise in her NY garden for many years. Animal probably outlived her. It fed on bugs, worms, weeds and grass in the garden, and vegetables left-over from Chinese take-out. Crunched up those skinny dried hot peppers without batting an eye. It lived in the kitchen in the winter.
I think it was a Greek Tortoise (Testudo graeca) that she snuck home in her luggage from a trip to Corfu in the late 1950s. Gerald Durrell, brother of Lawrence Durrell, loved those tortoises when he summered in the Greek islands. Those animals can live well over 60 years. They become precious living heirlooms, like parrots.
Photo of T. graeca in its natural spartan habitat:
Discussions about what "caused" the Civil War never end. From Wilson Quarterly, A century and a half after the first state seceded from the Union, a lively debate over what caused the Civil War continues. A quote:
Whether or not they owned slaves, Southerners almost universally professed the doctrine known then and now as states’ rights, grounded in the federal system as originally understood, at least by the followers of Thomas Jefferson. When the South lost, states’ rights lost with it, and the unquestionable supremacy of the central government has been with us ever since. That abstract phrase “states’ rights” as used before the Civil War immediately prompts the question, states’ rights to what? “The right to own slaves,” McPherson explains, “the right to take this property into the territories; freedom from the coercive powers of a centralized government.”
States' rights were and are about lots more than slavery. It's a historical tragedy that slavery and Jim Crow ended up being the poster children for states' rights. The war was a mighty tragedy too.
Wednesday, August 11. 2010
Wrote this post back in January, before we finalized our travel plans - not going to the Veneto this year...maybe next year. Or maybe Provence...or if the Dems entirely ruin the country, nowhere fun and just farm drudgery.
Considering a visit to Padua (just a few minutes outside Venice) to see the Arena Chapel with its Giotto interior while visiting the Veneto and Dolomites this summer (maybe). It's a famous chapel - more famous than the Matisse and Chagall Church in Westchester - but it looks very much like the Giotto stuff in the chapels in Santa Croce, which I have seen.
I read that, to visit the Capella, you need reservations, decontamination, etc. Plus a time limit and no photos, as is usual in Italian historic churches.
Laura Ingraham speaking to Howard Fineman, via Driscoll's The MSM Sure Grades on a Curve:
How is it though with all these smart people at Newsweek – I went around the block with Evan Thomas about this as well. How did you all think that a guy who basically went from the Harvard Law Review, to some community leafleting, organizing, whatever you want to call it, to a short stint, a few lectures about constitutional law at [the University of] Chicago, very short stopover in the state Senate, and a very short stopover in the U.S. Senate. How does that add up to experience to run the biggest economy and the biggest military in the world? And why wasn’t Newsweek, instead of doing these celebrified covers of Michelle and Barack as historic, and celebrity culture, and all this love-love-love-love-love, why wasn’t – Why weren’t those questions asked before this election took place? Because to me, those were the questions to ask. . It wasn’t about personality. It was about experience and outlook.
and note this bit:
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt gathered the NBC reporters together in early 2009 and scolded them for reporting negatively on Barack Obama. GE owns 80% of NBC Universal.
A buddy had an Aussie field biologist friend who used to like to get drunk and recite this potty-mouth ditty around the campfire to much merriment: The Bastard from the Bush.
It's a new one to me, but probably all Aussies know it by heart.
 Our friend Sippican is having a major sale of his brand-new antiques. Serious markdowns.
His stuff is all solid wood, nothing fake, and generally consistent with Maggie's Farm style - all-American homespun with no Baroque or Rococo.
We have a couple of his pieces and they are handsome. Heirlooms (and if you happen to wonder about the etymology of "heirloom," it's just like it sounds).
Here's Sipp's furniture website.
Tuesday, August 10. 2010
 The smallest North American turtle lives in similar habitats to those of the Spotted Turtle (one of my favorite reptiles), and is a relative of the wonderful Wood Turtle. Nowadays, they have changed the official name to Bog Turtle.
(When I was young, I located a colony of Spotted Turtles in a sedgy marsh on the edge of a stream. On a sunny day, they'd be basking on the little tussocks, and splash into the shallow water when you walked by -not walked, actually - hopped from tussock to tussock in one's Keds. Spotted Turtles are listed as endangered too, now. Like Muhlenberg's, Spotteds seem to live in small colonies in specialized habitats which are senstive to human - and dog - intrusions.)
The Bog Turtle likes marshes with wet sedgy meadows in limestone areas. Despite their name, they do not live in acidic Sphagnum Bogs. They are rarely seen because they like to burrow in muck, but they are probably endangered. I have never seen one in the wild, even though our beaver marsh overflow is probably perfect habitat for them with its grassy hummocks, rivulets, beaver channels, damp meadows - and all of our Berkshire limestone and marble ledges and bedrock.
If you have ever encountered one, tell us.
The range of these turtles is dispersed:
Muhlenberg's Turtle was named after amateur botanist and sedge expert Gotthilf Henry Ernst Muhlenberg - an interesting character who played a role in the Revolution. Muhlenberg College in PA was named after his dad.
I read that America's saving rate is rising, and that people are paying off their personal debt - and that retail business is terrible.
Are you buying stuff and spending money, or restraining yourself these days?
Let us know, in the comments.
Sunday, August 8. 2010
 Instead of turning up my nose at Baroque design, I decided to try to get into the heads of those who promulgated this heavily-ornamented style from around 1600 to 1750 in Europe.
Aside from some Italian kitsch, nobody has done new baroque for a long time. This remarkable book, Baroque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, despite its abundance of photos, is not a coffee-table book. It is dense with text and scholarly detail, and 500 pages of small print which tests my eyes. There is no way I will complete this before I arrive in Vienna, but I will give it the old college try.
One idea which is coming through clearly is the notion of "the world as a stage." Baroque design is meant to be a stage set. It was meant to impress and/or intimidate and/or inspire - to convey power and wealth, but also to provide a grandiose setting for the highly formalized interactions and occasions of the high classes of the time. It does that, however fussy, overdone, and gratuitously gaudy it may look to a modern eye.
Another feature of Baroque design is that it moves. It has curves, details that jump out; interiors can be a "blooming, buzzing confusion" (the term William James used to describe his speculation about the experience of a human infant).
Versailles, St. Peter's Square (which is a circle), and the Hofberg Library are some classics of Baroque. Baroque is sensual, indulgent, extravagant, maybe grandiloquent. Like Bach. Bernini's 1650 Ecstasy of St. Theresa contains most of the elements of Baroque, especially the melding of sensual art with the grand architectural design:
Here's a short list of the main elements of Baroque design.
Wiki explains how Baroque design has its roots in Mannerism, and how it was replaced, as a design fashion, by the aesthetic of Neoclassicism, which embraced restraint and cool "reason" as a reaction to a Baroque which had been taken to its limits.
We do not need to be enslaved to the aesthetic of our own time - or of any time. Baroque, however interesting, just isn't a Maggie's Farm, Yankee style. It's not in the blood.
Here's a Baroque era table, which I find both hideous and wonderful at the same time. It certainly moves, with those squigglies wiggling all over the inlay, and those sea slugs creeping up the legs:
 I was working yesterday, so Mrs. BD visited a friend on the shore to do some kayaking (that was before she came home to do her weeding).
She reported that the sky was filled with Ospreys, and young ones were perched in the trees on the little islands, screaming for more sushi.
Her friend told her that there are now 19 pairs of Ospreys breeding in the immediate area. 20 years ago, none. That is a remarkable conservation achievement. 30 years ago, they were rare in the Northeast although they were never rare in Florida.
I love to watch them fishing, hovering then diving with their talons forward, and then struggling to free themselves from the pull of the water. The young ones seem to learn how to do it, but it's a wonder they don't all drown.
The Osprey has worldwide distribution. A summary of the magnificent Osprey here.
Do you like him any better now?
No?
Then you're not a racist.
 A new report claims a bias against female beauty in a number of jobs. I am not surprised.
I always advise young associates to avoid regular work with sexy females, unless the associate is on the make. The distraction can be too much for a fellow to handle, the chemistry can be too exothermic, and familiarity can quickly turn to grievous consequences after a couple of cocktails.
For a serene and honorable life, I advise working with fat women with a wart on their nose - preferably with a hair growing out of the wart.
This strategy has always worked for me. I have a libidinous nature and a dirty mind, so it matters.
Well, it was another busy week in American politics.
Saturday, August 7. 2010
 Mrs. BD reports today, after trying Gibbs' recommendation, that a paste of vinegar and baking soda is quite effective for poison ivy. (Remember McGeek's case of poison ivy?)
Mrs. BD is highly sensitive to poison ivy, but when she gets weeding she stops paying attention and just rips along like a weeding machine.
Gibbs is usually right about things. I made her take some Benadryl too. Partly to compete with Gibbs, I guess.
This is a repost from 2006 (so you need to right-click on the links)
 What if the part of human nature which wants paternalism, or maternalism, in the State is sometimes, or often, stronger than the part that wants freedom, autonomy, self-reliance and self-determination?
What if we are wrong to imagine, as Bush claims, that an aspiration for freedom lives in the hearts of all mankind?
What if that aspiration is a simple error of a uniquely American culture, which combined northern European Calvinism which rejects any hierarchy in church or in life; a personal relationship with God; Lockeian liberalism; a distinctly northern European moral code in which honor, reliability, hard work, personal responsibility, generosity, and integrity are the measure of a person; a frontier attitude which expects life to be difficult but remains optimistic, and an innate distrust of government and politicians - is a very strange brew?
Maybe a strange brew which permits people to make the most of their lives and their "inner lives" - or the least of them, if they so chose - but requires more practical and psychological independence and liberty than most humans desire. Maybe?
We know that our revolutionary ancestors were in the minority, here in the colonies. The most vociferous, for sure. But most were Loyalists until the tide finally turned. Zogby polls would not have supported rebellion against the Crown. Neither King George, nor Lord North, were evil people, by any means. Well-intentioned, but confused by the new American spirit.
These are hardly original questions, but they come up because of a series of bits that stuck in my mind. One was a piece at Daily Pundit, about the Russian comfort with Putin's moves towards autocracy. A piece by Callick at TCS asks Is the world moving beyond liberal democracy? Another was a piece also posted on Maggie's about the blue-ification of my once-granite-ribbed New Hampshire, where I own the ancestral family farm, and where I live Thursday night-Monday morning. Also, Dr. Sanity's piece, which said it better than I could: Come for the Equality, Stay for the Bestiality and Tyranny.
As a shrink and a psychoanalyst, I am philosophically - and spiritually - biased towards the idea of an environment in which people can find their own way, and discover and use their strengths and individual gifts and talents in life. I am fond of telling my psychiatry students that "reality is always on your side."
But I also know that, in the big world, this view is often odd, blasphemous, antisocial, or rebellious. After all, few cultures even would embrace the notion of Erikson's idea of individuation - much less his notions of development. For us, the independent individual is King - but not so everywhere. Our Western near-sanctification of the individual is unusual, unique perhaps.
The revolutionary notion of the Individual As King is why we have guns, and private property, and educational chances for all, and a zillion places of worship, and clubs, and blogs, and a million volunteer organizations and charities and land trust and conservation organizations. And why we rely on our families before anything else, and why we distrust what the experts say. And it is why we have opportunity - not material equality - but opportunity for all, to make our own choices and decisions as grown-ups about how to plan a life. Economics is just one of many considerations in life, for most (not that we all would not welcome a bit more money).
Europe has embraced state parentalism - little different from its monarchical past: the fantasy that smart, powerful persons know best, or deserve power over us, is a piece of our childhood which we are reluctant to give up. A left-over from the time of nobility and serfdom. Our American culture may label that "childish," but probably most do not. Since psychosocial development is driven by the need to adjust to reality, the endurance of the parental fantasy must distort development for many people, similar to what happens commonly to the kids of the very wealthy.
Give me liberty or give me health care and more freebies: The American Left has similar aspirations, and a similar condescending attitude towards the human potential for autonomy and self-determination on the part of its policy-makers. "We'll take your money you earn, and fix it for you - because we care." AKA "It takes a village." (And, by the way, in my opinion it does "take a village" - but not a federal government.) The classic and revealing argument of the Left for idolizing the thug and murderer Castro is "But they have free health care." It's close to what they always said about Mussolini: "He made the trains run on time." (And that is saying a lot, in a place like Italy.)
State parentalism is one step from totalitarianism. And not just psychologically, but also in reality. First, you get the people used to the idea that they can depend on the government to take care of you and to solve your problems (rather than simply to defend you, and to keep life reasonably fair), and, having slowly softened them up, you build on that until you can't smoke a cigarette in your car without getting fined, or find a decent fried chicken take-out in NYC.
I always thought that Jack Kennedy's "Ask not..." (listen to it) was a fine call to maturity, and Reagan often echoed JFK in his speeches. The more powerful government becomes, the more the people will tend to regress psychologically, just as the more of their money you take from them, the less motivated they will feel to work hard, and to be inventive and creative with life. Necessity is the mother of invention, and a thoughfully planned life is necessary for most of us.
Happy human cattle is my nightmare. And yet every human is prone to the regressive, almost gravitational, pull, to childhood and relative helplessness. We must thank God for the adolescent rebel which lingers in all of us, however mature and effective in the world we may or may not be.
The bottom line is this: What if most humans do not feel that they have what it takes to handle life in freedom, and to deal with their own basket of challenges in life? What if most of them, both in the US and abroad, do not share my Yankee ideals? What if most people do not want to be kings of their own domains? Then what?
Image: Time Magazine named Joseph Stalin "Man of the Year" in 1939 and 1942.
Friday, August 6. 2010
The big cheerful news of today is 131,000 jobs lost, and slowing economic expansion. Says the WSJ:
"It still feels like a recession," Jay Feldman, economist at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note. He pointed out that private jobs are still down 0.3% compared with 13 months ago, when the economy started to grow again. By contrast, private jobs were up by 3.5% on average in the job market recoveries of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
I visited my dentist this afternoon, and he admitted to me that business was terrible. People are putting everything off.
 I wasn't surprised by that, but he told me something interesting: the dentists are offering Botox, lip plumping, and wrinkle injections now (Juvaderm, collagen, etc). He said they take a several-day course on weekends, take an exam, get a certificate, then have their receptionist ask "Would you like to consider some of our new services?"
"You can get a brand new smile."
He told me they do it for half of what the dermatologists charge around here for the same thing (the latter of which is around $1000 for a basic Botox routine).
Yes, "It still feels like a recession."
The only thing about this lengthy recession ( an ongoing recession for which, at this point, I blame federal government policies and plans) which brings a smile is the significant deflation in the price of good hand-made cigars.
You may not have read my piece this week, Preventive Medicine: Drive carefully, and make sure you have good genes. It's not the best post in the world, but it makes my point.
A propos of that topic, see Docs running to stand still in The American. A quote:
The general popularity of widespread preventive care rests on the shaky presumption that such medical services head off more serious medical conditions, save lives, and reduce healthcare costs. A lengthy literature actually challenges each of those premises; at least when recommended preventive care services are not limited to a shorter list of medical interventions and targeted to the most appropriate types of patients likely to benefit from them. But the broader political argument often is that “cost” should not be a disincentive to greater demand for such presumably necessary services, particularly when society as a whole is supposed to benefit in the long run from better population health.
A friend and reader emails this, re the old Wellfleet place we posted a couple of weeks ago:
I've been in a bunch of really old shacks down that way. The people that built them were really amazingly flinty and resourceful. I've attached a picture of a threshold of a door from Truro. They couldn't manage to have a door sweep, so they made a sort of rain gutter with a drain hole in the nose. You know how the rain comes at a house down there. There was never any overhang in those old houses, so the rain sheeting down the door would probably flood the floor, and some poor bastige named Higgins or Crowell or Snow or Starbuck got it off the honeydew list as best he could. Marvelous.
Thursday, August 5. 2010
A re-post from a couple of summers ago -
Two young Carolina Wrens fecklessly fluttered into our den today while the door was open. The pup promptly swallowed one, as any half-trained retriever will do, but I gently grabbed the other and carried him out to a safe branch. He crapped in my hand, but I don't mind that at all. Glad to be of service. I will take it as a frightened "Thanks," like when God grips you.
Birds frequently fly into our house. A couple of years ago, two dumb young flickers flew down the dining room chimney, and their beaks are sharp. They were tough to catch with the 11' ceiling. But I will never forget my friend who found a befuddled Screech Owl perched on an andiron in his fireplace. He called me and asked what to do. I said grab him firmly but gently around his wings, and open your hand outdoors. It worked out fine, but the bird was confused a little by the sunlight and took a magical minute or so to compose himself perching on his hand, reorient himself, and then to fly into a dark, dense pine.
Our Carolina Wrens are noisy in spring (a piercing "teakettle teakettle teakettle"), invisible during their breeding season, and out and about again now. I thought they were migratory, but I had one at my feeder last winter, and apparently they are not, entirely. Harsh winters kill them off, but their populations bounce back.
They look twice the size of our happy House Wrens, and are noisier. Rugged little guys.
Wednesday, August 4. 2010
As an intro, see the fourth toon down. I am not willing to pay $45. to post it. (I would pay up to $3. to use it.)
When I was a lowly intern, I was presiding over an ER when we got a radio call around 9 pm about an accident in a mall parking lot involving two cars with kids in them. A head-on, both cars going about 35 mph (that equals a 70 mph accident). When the ambulances arrived, four kids grey, not breathing. DOA. A Mom, still almost pink but dying with head trauma. A Dad, straight to trauma surgery for internal bleeding.
I have never assigned so many people, so quickly, to body bags and the morgue.
So when I read pious government utterances about "preventive care," I just have to laugh. People who talk about that have no idea what they're talking about. Doctors advise people to lose weight, to exercise, to quit smoking, to lower their carb intake, to drink only two wines/day, to wear bike helmets, to use condoms, to eat your vegetables (why? I don't know), to take their medicines, etc., every day. Blah, blah, blah. I might as well advise them to never leave the house because they might get hit by a bus. In the end, people do what they want, and adults are adults. Nobody lacks information and, in my view, if you want to be fat, then go for it.
Personally, I intend to remain trim, fit, athletic and energetic, but I am not interested in sacrificing my life and fun and adventure on the altar of "health" and "safety." There is no vitality or joie de vivre in that. I enjoy a little danger, stress, and excitement. I have crossed crevasses and climbed mountains and kayaked Grade 5 rapids (and almost drowned) and spent many hours on the back of motorcycles. I faced a p-ed off Cape Buffalo (and killed it. Regret it now - there was no point to it), and I sky-dived once. We always drove too fast. We quit all those things when we had young kids, despite the fact that my brother could have raised them very well indeed, and we had good life insurance.
Since everybody dies, and, with modern medicine, dies in a lengthy and expensive and often wretched drawn-out process (80% of US medical costs are in the last year of life), all "preventive medicine" can even hope to do is to delay the process a little bit.
However, it cannot even do that, really. It's 90% wishful thinking: The Big Lie of Preventive Care.
Another good toon from The New Yorker: "Tell me straight, Doc. How long do I have to ignore your advice?"
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