November 25, 2004

  • Woke up to oil trails in the driveway. Iridescent puddles at this point under the onslaught of a non-accumulating thanksgiving snow shower. Checked my engine: oh man—oil all over the engine block.. My only hope—a leaking oil filter.  Torqued the filter right: it turned 2 revolutions to tighten back down. *fingers crossed*


     



     


     


    Heard yesterday, Robin Meade on CNN Morning’s Show: “Do you think you can go cold turkey on overeating on Thanksgiving?”  Her self follow-up: “Fat chance!”


     


    I’m psyching myself to run this afternoon.  It’s 34 degrees now, winds about 15 mph, gusting to 28 for a wind chill of 22 degrees.  Oh yeah, the snow flurries.  I’m actually hoping for a total whiteout in Dreamland by time I get there. Looking forward to wildly-thrashing crystals melting in my eyes: a nearly silent movie that induces nature’s contact tears.


     


    A couple of years ago I spent the holidays in Central America.  Third World stuff.  Upon returning to the U.S., my first shocking impression was how many truly obese people there are in America.  It struck me that I hadn’t seen a truly obese person since I had left the States.  And then, upon returning, seeing so many so quickly:  ...such an appalling contrast.


     


    But I’m one who believes that feelings of revulsion are often a lack of compassionate understanding (NOT acceptance, understanding).  So I began to ponder: “What dynamic could  be at work in America to account for such a stark difference between peoples of two economically-distinct societies?”


     


    I’ve a thought.  A reflection.  And it’s this: 


     


    The gift of food, by nature, engenders thankfulness.  Food begs to be given to bind us as community.  I repeat: food begs to be given to bind us as community. 


     


    In Third World countries, where nearly all resources are scarce, food too, is precious, even in meager quantities.  And its gift or provision is readily appreciated since the difference between acceptance and non-receipt can, and sometimes does, border as direct pathways to life or death.  In other words, even a little gift or provision of food is beneficent, thankfulness is readily evident, yet obesity is as scarce as the food itself.


     


    In advanced countries of relative plenty such as America, there are scarcities, but food is generally abundant.  And so we eat.  And eat.  And eat.  But do we do so simply because we’re pigs?  Or do we, too, have an innate penchant to give and give thanks for food? 


     


    If the latter, our relative overabundance diminishes the opportunity for thanksgiving IF all we do is consume to a level of basic healthy sustenance.  There’s a food inflation: its excess makes it worth less, that is, it's less appreciable.  If all we as Americans would do is eat to a point of sustainability just beyond starvation (all of us muscled, svelte, slender), ‘gifts of food’ (or other forms of its provision) would abound at levels far beyond anything ever before encountered and yet generally be met with a “No thanks.”  Food would lose a lot of its appeal.  And, with that, its ability to bind community together would diminish.  Granted, in such an instance, if we, as a society, had some other force in place to bind us as a community—as a surrogate for the role of food—say, a vision that a race of slender beings is an absolute prerequisite to conquering known alien civilizations (wtf?!),  then we could yet tie society together without the traditional role of food to bind us. Let food inflate itself through ubiquitousness to virtual inutility!  Who cares?  But let the like-mind of becoming lithesome cosmos-conquerors propel us onwards!


     


    But.  That ain’t the case. Food is society’s paste.  But we must understand that food is no longer something most of us as farmers or hunters or scavengers produce for ourselves.  We can no longer be thankful with our own reaping hands, under both the provisions and onslaughts of nature, for its vicarious presence.  Food is a market.  We obtain it in a robust marketplace.  And thus, the law of supply states that, if it is overabundant, it must be cheap.  And cheap means it becomes a pasty water, or a watery paste binding, at best.


     


    So how in a market of overabundance can a society make food ‘dear’ again and restore its (thankful) societal function as the paste that binds?  Increase demand!  And that means: heighten your appetite.  Eat more and more and more until it hurts.  But, then, you see, the expanding gargantuan body yearns for more and more the next time around.  Hugeness begets a feeling of genuine hunger once again.  The inutility of an excess of food deflates to meet a rising gluttonous demand.  The quest to satisfy our pyramiding demand makes us thankful for what we increasingly have!  With obesity, we not only put it on, we become a glued-together society once again.  Of course, as such, unless we’re all Jabba the Hutts,



    we’ll never have a rat’s fat-ass chance (fat chance?!) to conquer the cosmos anytime soon.  (With increasing body weight comes increasing payloads, and unfortunately, even in advanced industrial countries, space propellants and interstellar cargo space both still remain scarce.)


     


    p.s:  as a follow-up to this, I offer this rephrased-but-remembered Cold War observation of libertarian Karl Hess (which I read in Playboy as a kid): "Go ahead and let Russia invade the United States.  At the time the first Russian tanks roll up to the first McDonald's franchise amidst the blocks of New York City, they'll stop dead in their tracks.  Fast-food will accomplish what diplomacy couldn't."

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