Sunday, January 21, 2007
CARING FELLOW WISHES TO PENALISE POOR
Daniel Donahoo, writing in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, exposes obesity’s connection to hyper-individualistic consumerism, wealth, and - ahem - climate change:
Obesity is a symptom of a culture that doesn’t know how to care for each other.
It is a visible identifier of our hyper-individualism, the push towards perfection in our work, education and with our bodies.
Our push for perfection with our bodies is visibly identified by us becoming Moore-class waddlers? Fascinating. Do continue:
It is driving us to try to fill an unexplained emptiness. And, the more we talk about it, the more apparent it becomes.
It is this emptiness that is the cause of obesity and many other issues.
That explains Phillip Adams.
It’s a big hole into which we pour our consumerist lifestyles in an attempt to fill it up.
Consider the thousands of youth blurring the dance floors on weekends filled with ecstasy and speed.
Not a particularly obese segment of the community, you’d think.
So, we fill our houses with Ikea furniture and stainless-steel appliances. We fill our lack of conversation and interaction with TV and internet screen time. We fill our sadness with comments like “it’s all good”. And we fill our bodies with food in an attempt to gain some control. The real issue isn’t that any individual child is overweight, the issue is that we live in an obese society.
Fat City! Samuel Brannan’s vision is at last a reality.
It’s a society too big for itself and that is splitting at the seams and has lost its sense of what it wants and values.
It wants stainless steel appliances and Ikea furniture, apparently.
Obesity, human interaction and climate change all need to be addressed together. The creation of a healthy environment will lead to healthier and more connected people within that environment.
Solutions to improve the environment will improve our health.
And what might those solutions be?
We must consider policies such as carbon taxes or carbon-trading schemes that will increase the cost of fossil fuel-based activities such as driving a car because of the increasing petrol prices.
This leads to less car use, more walking and bike riding and a reduction in greenhouse gases. In the long term, we will see people trying to find work closer to home and communities again localising.
No, Daniel. Increase fuel prices and only poor people will reduce their driving. Only poor people will be forced to locate whatever work is available close to home. Hey, bring it on; add a dollar to the price of petrol per litre and it’ll make no difference to the likes of me, apart from thinning the roads of traffic when I’m driving to work. But people on low wages who balance their weekly budget down to the last cent ... they’ll be condemned to your “localised communities”, formerly known as slums.
Of course, Donahoo is a tilter.
(Via Don D.)