Semaglutide and the wild democratization of thinness

livemint.com:

₹80,000 per month and the pill can cost ₹10,000 per month. The drug is even more expensive in the West. Yet, there is such strong demand for it that Nova Nordisk is unable to meet it.

An odd quality of our times is that the rich are our guinea pigs, and it is they who inform us of new cures and that they are ‘safe.’ But there is ancient wisdom in us that warns us of easy things. Among the people who are very suspicious of Semaglutide are, not surprisingly, those who would not be needing it. They are fit and usually misunderstood as ‘disciplined.’ It is one of our most bogus concepts—that some people can endure a degree of suffering to do the right thing, or, in other words, that some people are ‘disciplined.’ The fit are usually people who are simply lucky enough to enjoy physical exercise and who find it easy to stay away from fast carbs, or who have a strong useful vice, like vanity, that helps them make little sacrifices.

Discipline is a name given to private procedures that come easy to some people and is plain suffering for most others. Even most ascetics in history who did painful things were probably aided more by their mental ailments than any resolve. The fit ask others to be fit because it is in our nature to ask people to be like us, to do what comes easy to us.

But the path to fitness makes most people miserable. I know people who start believing in mysterious injuries inside them just to save themselves from exercise, and who manufacture mental trauma just to eat some chocolate. Modern food is a very powerful drug.