Looking up the rush album 2112 I noticed something... Hmmm. Neil Pert (born September 12, 1952), is an author and a musician. I saw a line in wiki that said "He drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon and John Bonham, players who were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene."
Whoa, Keith Moon (23 August 1946 – 7 September 1978) "left" 9.7.78. He was 32 (according to my math). John Henry "Bonzo" Bonham (31 May 1948 – 25 September 1980) left on 9.25.80, and was also 32. I was reading about the circumstances of Keith Moon's tragic passing, and noticed that his physical proximity was given on wiki as an address, No.12 at 9 Curzon Place, Mayfair in which Cass Elliot had died a little under four years earlier. Cass Elliot (September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974), born Ellen Naomi Cohen, and at the time of her tragic passing, she too was 32. I read her wiki and it said "fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity". Wow, even if I had no interest at all in writing about this subject, it, like "the island" would pull me in regardless of my given field of study.
All I can say again is wow. I started out because I just remembered the album 2112 and thought about how funny it was that I had brought up that whole thing. Everything really is connected though, as if I am experiencing the results of intellectual convergent evolution, re-inventing the wheel over and over because I'm stuck in the loop as the observer.
I chose to name this post numerology because of that way that "Numerology is any of many systems, traditions or beliefs in a mystical or esoteric relationship between numbers and physical objects or living things." I would say that pointing out the path to an eventual obesity relation drawn together by a (silly) string of coincidental dates and locations probably does, in fact, qualify as being an example of such phenomenon. Did someone say feynman diagram again? Maybe it's just the degrees to obesity except in reverse.
Much more on that and the answer to life, the universe, and everything coming soon.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
compassion
The last thing I thought I would be doing so quickly was typing away on this thing, but there are so many questions to be asked! Hopefully the phrase "ask and you shall receive" has some significance in the way that I hope putting questions out there into the universe begs for an eventual societal answer.
Maybe the only relevance to size in this philosophical thinking is in the way that beauty pageant contestants always wish for world peace. That contestant is stuck in a specific observer position. This seems to prevent the individual from even being able to grasp the concept that her societal position as a contestant may depend on her existence in a construct where world peace cannot yet exist.
You know how these things work, text lays around for 250 years before somebody picks it up and thinks it's kinda neat. Today I thought long and hard about several previous posts, and I came to the conclusion that I needed to take a break in talking about obesity for just a minute go back to school for an education in a relatively simple concept that has seemingly gone unnoticed for decades by now, maybe for centuries, maybe for millennium.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a grand experiment going on to figure out how long it takes for a sentient intelligence to arise from the primordial slime and become enlightened to just the right degree. If we are failing to fulfill the requirements of such an experiment, I could fear that the results if said experiment had an expiration date. I really start to hope that if a certain civilization actually had a glimpse of some very important info, that we would try to figure out what they knew and why they were so insistent about a certain date, I think it's 12.21.12.
Ok, start out with compassion and end up with mathematical thinking, totally obliterating the path that I wanted to take! I can't pass up the chance though to reflect on how wiki says two interpretations put the date at either the 21st or the 23rd. If two possibilities were extrapolated from the same data, maybe a misinterpretation caused a failure of translation where it should be from the 21st to the 23rd. After all, according to the equation given, the smallest unit of measurement listed is 20 days to make a uinal. I can't find any representation at this time for a unit of measurement for 3 days in the long count or the Haab' version of mayan chronological technology.
I do find a period of five days or "nameless days" at the end of a Haab's 18 uinals (20 days) known as Wayeb'. It is possible that a similar small period exists in between the 13th and 14th "baktun" that is similar to wayeb. Oh great, now I'm speaking freaking Mayan! Or is it Olmec? Rest assured, the world can't "end" on one date if a span of time is necessary for the transition from the end of one baktun to the beginning of the next! :) In other words, just a long, long, long, long, long, long new year.
While people love the drama, tragedy, and potential chaos involved with any end of the world fantasy, it's less entertaining for the movie industry to provide a theory that the date is more involved with entering the messianic age. Doesn't that feel so much better? I don't think it would sell as many movie tickets though! :)
I saw a phenomenon within this whole Mayan intellectual expedition that repeats over and over a common thread. This one civilization practiced bloodletting. Many other civilizations had similar techniques of establishing rituals to enforce a sociopolitical position and, when enacted, was important to the perceived well-being of a given society or settlement according to wiki.
I've often considered any attempt at religion by a human being or civilization in any time period was simply a manifestation of an instinct to serve. This instinct shows up way too many times within recorded history to be simply coincidence. I have started to imagine that maybe a possibility exists where we are born with one set of instincts merely to survive, but we were given intelligence to figure something out.
Connecting the construct of intelligence to purpose and then combining that with the need to figure something out and the instinct to serve provides a rather crude formula to explain how religion was man's attempt to find a way to grow the part of the brain responsible for compassion and therefore enlightenment. Simple instinct would get us breathing when we "come out", but something deep within the cerebellum has provided us with some kind of desire to build on the compassion center of the human brain itself. The instinct to serve would be a brilliant "trick" to a non-enlightened brain to provide some reason to expand our consciousness even further and therefore get even smarter, and therefore become more enlightened. It's a way to tell an intelligent, sentient race to think and evolve beyond where you are at now, as a race, on the whole.
When thinking backwards, it's easy to observe that religion is a phenomenon that exists, therefore it must have a very deep and significant purpose. When looking back through the portal of history, so many groups attempted to get it right, so therefore there is something to get. After all, we're here! We try and try to explain some purpose, some meaning to it all. Maybe it's that instinct to serve something greater that makes us aware of what great things we could achieve, or what great prize there is at the end of the path to enlightenment.
I asked google a few questions and thought, wouldn't it be great for us to finally figure out this quantum thing so Dr. Steven Hawking could finally provide theory that eventually provides us with the synaptic external network link so we could google mentally! Would that be false enlightenment, or would that be a pathway to eventual enlightenment? Chicken vs. egg again! Wow, synaptic google brought to you by Quantum Devices. Wow, by saying that does it mean it could someday happen? Why not? :)
While even brushing against the phenomenon of quantum, I could not help but also notice how the Feynman diagram almost looks like my philosophical statement that everything is connected and at the same time has two sides. I have to do much more studying to apply some of my contemplation to quantum and also apply quantum to my contemplation! :) I do want to openly express a sentiment of good luck to CERN and Fermilab on finding or not finding the higgs boson though! It's amazing that existence vs non-existence has a parallel to some of my previous arguments and further expresses the duality in which we even exist as the observer, and therefore the duality that also exists in all things connected by the very reality in which we exist!
Considering compassion (getting back on track), I realize the relevance of our ability to acquire it as a race, and how it must start with the individual in order the be eventually acquired by the human race as a whole. I asked wiki if compassion is learned or innate, and both the question and the answer ended up being grounded in multiple observer's mutual desire for us to experience compassion as a race. There was an observation that compassion can exist as a result of some emotional trauma and an ability to identify with how it felt to be the victim of circumstance where a lack of compassion had a negative impact.
I wanted to see if people believe that compassion is part of instinct or something we learn throughout our life. The answer provided didn't really answer my curiosity, but it did illustrate that once an individual is exposed to some kind of abusive behavior, they are given the choice to inflict this behavior on another individual, or they can use that experience to relate to others in a similar circumstance, and that may inspire the compassionate individual to provide help. It's at the root of charity, which is a phenomenon that exists because of need. There I end up back at the struggle to exist providing a reason for existing, and either helping others to exist, or working to terminate their existence. That seems really two sided, but the deeper I try to get at any conflict, the more often two distinct sides are revealed.
In even linking to the Good Samaritan parable, I further read “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Interestingly enough, even in the Gospel of Luke there is yet another hint at the possibility that each of us is another "version" of the observer coming from a finite yet diverse set of possible circumstances. The "golden rule" provides this same sentiment, and I'm sure so does many other concepts already thoroughly introduced into our current knowledge.
It would seem obvious to an intelligent individual that by imposing suffering on another individual, you are contributing hate to society instead of love, and therefore nothing but negative energy could come back to the individual who is so brave to dare fate and break the rules. This golden rule philosophy would be the foundation to any potential Utopian society.
If the beauty pageant contestant really wants "world peace", why would one ever put someone down for their sexual preference? Whenever I bring up sexual preference rights though, it always inevitably comes back to size preference instead of gender preference. It's ironic how some people can argue for one sexual preference and demonize another. Dammit I wasn't going to go there in this post! :)
I found more pondering on the issue of compassion being learned or innate, which I'm guessing is a nice word for "instinct". In this question answer session, it is proposed that "The experience of injustice is important in the development of compassion." The answer in this case actually goes into the additional phenomenon of power struggle and the two sided phenomenon of the bully and the one bullied. This answer still matches up to the other in the way that it illustrates how experience combined with upbringing forms the unique compassion equation within each of us uniquely.
I had a theory about how instinct is the mind-source connection, the thing that starts up the respiratory system when we come out and it is therefore time to exist. If we can relate the metaphorical heart simply being part of the human brain, then our instinct drives us to independently create a heart-source connection over the course of our existence.
I've postulated earlier about how our invention of religion was an attempt to push the compassion center of the brain beyond what it was thousands of years ago, and continue pushing it beyond what it is now. Maybe my only evidence that our race is so obviously not fully mentally evolved is in the lack of compassion the average human will be inclined to show to another human, or "fellow observer".
Maybe the same observer can be brought into a singular reality multiple times if the source has domain over time and space and can place multiple versions of the same observer within the same reality! Compassion would be a test to see how bad we would treat each other even though we could potentially, theoretically, be each other. Wow that's kind of deep, haven't tried to google it but somebody probably wrote something to this affect long, long ago already! :) When I look up golden rule itself it is amazing to see how this is one of many common threads among all religions.
At one point I have considered how I was so compelled to start blogging just after the 41st b-day. I contemplated how maybe there is a hormonal, physical component to enlightenment process that can only occur upon a certain type of maturity. This brought about yet another paleolithic theory about the venus figurines and the way in which so many people have already proposed a pre-historic matriarch theory.
When I simply wondered about how my own hormonal changes might have influenced my thinking, I contemplated something. Since women are prone to possible hormonal fluctuations on a regular cycle, could it be possible that women were provided glimpses of hormonally produced enlightenment at a time when the human brain was still so "fresh"? Could this be another tiny part of the puzzle in trying to figure out details from an age before language or recorded history? I had to ask someone if this mere theory could be perceived as "sexist", but I have no negative intent when even contemplating such an exotic and temporally distant reality. Some people have studied this a lot more than I have at this point and dispute the existence of a matriarchy at all. At this point I have to plan on even trying to read the whole article that I just linked to!
I have had a friend inform me that it's much more likely that any potential matriarch could be explained by the way in which only females can give birth, so they are recognized by paleolithic man as "magical" in that respect. Paleolithic man had a much more sex based religion though because by practicing the ritual of sex, they actually made more of us! What is more magic than that? I've often wondered about the way in which sex is kind of demonized by our current society, more evidence in a sub-conscious fear of over-population.
This fear of over population provided yet another profound realization. There was a line in the blog I linked to, "Hunger is not the result of 'too many mouths' to feed. Global food production has consistently outpaced population growth. People go hungry because they do not have the land on which to grow food or the money with which to buy it." Well, maybe if you replace too many mouths to feed with too many obese people, you can begin to confront the issue of fear of obesity.
While going over population issues, I ran across the philosophy of Malthusianism. You can imagine my surprise when I read that this concept emerged around the time of the industrial revolution! Wow, I have already written before about the critical role the industrial revolution has played in the eventual growth of our collective waistlines. Imagine my surprise when I found a connection between this philosophy and the events going on at the same time.
One article I found about compassion finally crossed over into the use of a specific part of the brain that is responsible for emotion, and therefore connected to the feelings of empathy that can be translated into compassion.
When I discovered the wonders of the insular cortex, I could barely contain myself! I look down at the 2500 word count and I have a thought.
I must begin to craft the skill of writing one singular blog entry that gets to the point and then moves on to the next amazing, fascinating, why didn't they think of this moment. Fantasies of winning the nobel peace prize for solving obesity flow though my mind in an amazingly fantastical OMG moment, only to be quickly dissolved by the realization that I'm some poor southern uneducated hillbilly redneck that just happened to learn to type before the internet and is guilty of creating amazingly long run on sentences and blog posts!
roflmao :)
I really could have stayed on the point, written about this whole compassion thing and how it reinforces what George Harrison wrote when he said love could save the world. By spouting some kind of "love everybody" philosophy repeatedly I just come across as a boring humanitarian hippy. If I politely explain the way in which things I see have a profound emotional impact on me, I might prompt some kind of real attempt at changing what I perceive as a negatively imbalanced status quo.
When suggesting solving such big problems, sometimes you have to imagine the way in which solving a bigger problem might make the first problem seem easy. Simultaneously, one must also see how attempting to solve a perceived smaller problem could either help or exacerbate the bigger original problem, or cause new problems to appear spontaneously that are directly attributed to solving the first problem.
I hope that by eventually tripping over some real, physiology connections I can eventually bring some kind of positive into the equation just by sharing my perceptions and making people with high levels of education ask themselves why not? more often. I wrote the whole blog post about why not just to re-invent the wheel because more skilled and experienced people than I have been all up into this.
I didn't bother to google the concept of reverse problem solving, so I was s.o.l. even while writing such a big blog post on the very subject. I wasn't writing so much about concept as I was exploring that very self-realized concept as I was talking about something I observed, in the context of an old Beatles song. What's that about? I'm a new blogger give me a freakin break! :)
That other article has a link to this personal success blog, amazing how personal success can also translate into societal success, and the more people who are enlightened the better off we all really are.
Ok, when I started to study neurology all the sudden, I looked up obesity and insular cortex, but it looks like a lot of the studies are about what obesity does to the brain. This post is already ginormous, so I can only point out that I am looking for a study that looks to the brain as a cause instead of only looking at obesity as something messing up the brain. I would easily argue that the industrial revolution did not directly cause more of us to be fat, but it may have contributed to making more wrong choices that made us fat. In other words, we don't choose to be fat, but we make bad choices that make us fat.
I found an article titled "Binge eating is associated with right orbitofrontal-insular-striatal atrophy in frontotemporal dementia". I think that this was meant to cover people who were already institutionalized, but this was kind of fascinating in my bigger thought. You know, I thought that if I google "neurological cause of obesity" I would not be bombarded with all the things that obesity is allegedly doing to the brain. I only started to poke around the brain myself because I really do have a sneaking suspicion that while they study how our fat body hurts the brain, they may be overlooking the ways in which the brain contributes to our fat bodies.
Then, I find this article called "Obesity Surgery May Cause Neurological Problems". I was like whooooaaaa because I started to look for what neurologists have done in the area of obeseology but I ended up finding out something kind of sinister that I had not made myself educated to already. One would think that less food digested means less calories, but it's really sad to imagine that without proper follow up care, some people who have the surgery will end up with peripheral neuropathy, or PN if they let themselves fall victim to freaking malnutrition!
I was looking into any studies that attempted to use MRI technology to check out a large number of morbidly obese people's insular cortex. Imagine my surprise when I read the line "Research upon conversation links it to the capacity for long and complex spoken sentences." OMG LOL I happened upon another interesting phenomenon, "that reversible inactivation of the insula disrupts amphetamine conditioned place preference, an animal model of cue-induced drug craving"
Wow, the paradox is astounding that I read earlier, "The insula also reads body states like hunger and craving and helps push people into reaching for the next sandwich, cigarette or line of cocaine." A number of functional brain imaging studies have shown that the insular cortex is activated when drug abusers are exposed to environmental cues that trigger cravings. This has been shown for a variety of drugs of abuse, including cocaine, alcohol, opiates and nicotine. Despite these findings, the insula has been ignored within the drug addiciton literature, perhaps because it is not known to be a direct target of the mesotelencephalic dopamine system which is central to current dopamine reward theories of addiction."
Wow, obviously the "diet industry" hasn't had as much interest in examining the potential insular cortex connection either. I can also safely assume now that Dr. Drew didn't want to address the paradox of removing an addition without taking away the addictive substance for a very very very very very good reason! :) That guy's no neurologist, or obeseologist for that matter. :)
While I started to write about compassion, is it an irony that a little digging brought me to the insular cortex, which brought me to such a complex theory? I wonder if I was supposed to think that deeply about it at all! :) I wonder about how much grant money I could get if I did happen to already be a neurologist and I already knew about all the studies that do not exist because I checked out the book of five rings and it told me to see what I cannot see by seeing what I can see. I was concerned that the gastric bypass might cause some atrophy in some part of the insular cortex, but I obviously had no idea of what I was getting into. I mean, this really is brain surgery, geez! I was wrong because it's not about atrophy as much as it is about proper operation. I don't want people to think that damaging or attempting to remove part of the insular cortex is a good idea or anything damn!
There are too many other functions wrapped up in that thing to mess with it until you know what your doing, and apparently from the age of the research I'm finding, they don't know much! There really is an incredible, awesome balance at work. To see that addiction and compassion are potentially coming from the same general area of the brain is fascinating. I can imagine the first attempt to mess with the cortex to fix obesity and then causing someone to suddenly become a sociopath out of nowhere. There is such a delicate balance in the way our very genetic structure has interlocking pieces that mesh into one another. You cannot simply remove one thing without risking something else. I read this article and realized the power behind what I said before. When I said that size is not a flaw, it's an instruction to provide variation to promote diversity, I had not yet even read this article!
Ok, over 3800 and it's been way too long, I have to sign out for now, but I will no doubt be looking around more to see if there is a neurologist in the room where all of these professional experts are gathering in an attempt to eradicate a problem that may be a symptom. I said something about going back to school and I sure wasn't kidding! I was all ready to "wrap it up" and then I could not resist something I found while studying neurology! It is such a trip that mirror neurons could actually explain why we love to watch porn! That's a good note to end on, and now I'm about to break the 4k word count as it is!
Maybe the only relevance to size in this philosophical thinking is in the way that beauty pageant contestants always wish for world peace. That contestant is stuck in a specific observer position. This seems to prevent the individual from even being able to grasp the concept that her societal position as a contestant may depend on her existence in a construct where world peace cannot yet exist.
You know how these things work, text lays around for 250 years before somebody picks it up and thinks it's kinda neat. Today I thought long and hard about several previous posts, and I came to the conclusion that I needed to take a break in talking about obesity for just a minute go back to school for an education in a relatively simple concept that has seemingly gone unnoticed for decades by now, maybe for centuries, maybe for millennium.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a grand experiment going on to figure out how long it takes for a sentient intelligence to arise from the primordial slime and become enlightened to just the right degree. If we are failing to fulfill the requirements of such an experiment, I could fear that the results if said experiment had an expiration date. I really start to hope that if a certain civilization actually had a glimpse of some very important info, that we would try to figure out what they knew and why they were so insistent about a certain date, I think it's 12.21.12.
Ok, start out with compassion and end up with mathematical thinking, totally obliterating the path that I wanted to take! I can't pass up the chance though to reflect on how wiki says two interpretations put the date at either the 21st or the 23rd. If two possibilities were extrapolated from the same data, maybe a misinterpretation caused a failure of translation where it should be from the 21st to the 23rd. After all, according to the equation given, the smallest unit of measurement listed is 20 days to make a uinal. I can't find any representation at this time for a unit of measurement for 3 days in the long count or the Haab' version of mayan chronological technology.
I do find a period of five days or "nameless days" at the end of a Haab's 18 uinals (20 days) known as Wayeb'. It is possible that a similar small period exists in between the 13th and 14th "baktun" that is similar to wayeb. Oh great, now I'm speaking freaking Mayan! Or is it Olmec? Rest assured, the world can't "end" on one date if a span of time is necessary for the transition from the end of one baktun to the beginning of the next! :) In other words, just a long, long, long, long, long, long new year.
While people love the drama, tragedy, and potential chaos involved with any end of the world fantasy, it's less entertaining for the movie industry to provide a theory that the date is more involved with entering the messianic age. Doesn't that feel so much better? I don't think it would sell as many movie tickets though! :)
I saw a phenomenon within this whole Mayan intellectual expedition that repeats over and over a common thread. This one civilization practiced bloodletting. Many other civilizations had similar techniques of establishing rituals to enforce a sociopolitical position and, when enacted, was important to the perceived well-being of a given society or settlement according to wiki.
I've often considered any attempt at religion by a human being or civilization in any time period was simply a manifestation of an instinct to serve. This instinct shows up way too many times within recorded history to be simply coincidence. I have started to imagine that maybe a possibility exists where we are born with one set of instincts merely to survive, but we were given intelligence to figure something out.
Connecting the construct of intelligence to purpose and then combining that with the need to figure something out and the instinct to serve provides a rather crude formula to explain how religion was man's attempt to find a way to grow the part of the brain responsible for compassion and therefore enlightenment. Simple instinct would get us breathing when we "come out", but something deep within the cerebellum has provided us with some kind of desire to build on the compassion center of the human brain itself. The instinct to serve would be a brilliant "trick" to a non-enlightened brain to provide some reason to expand our consciousness even further and therefore get even smarter, and therefore become more enlightened. It's a way to tell an intelligent, sentient race to think and evolve beyond where you are at now, as a race, on the whole.
When thinking backwards, it's easy to observe that religion is a phenomenon that exists, therefore it must have a very deep and significant purpose. When looking back through the portal of history, so many groups attempted to get it right, so therefore there is something to get. After all, we're here! We try and try to explain some purpose, some meaning to it all. Maybe it's that instinct to serve something greater that makes us aware of what great things we could achieve, or what great prize there is at the end of the path to enlightenment.
I asked google a few questions and thought, wouldn't it be great for us to finally figure out this quantum thing so Dr. Steven Hawking could finally provide theory that eventually provides us with the synaptic external network link so we could google mentally! Would that be false enlightenment, or would that be a pathway to eventual enlightenment? Chicken vs. egg again! Wow, synaptic google brought to you by Quantum Devices. Wow, by saying that does it mean it could someday happen? Why not? :)
While even brushing against the phenomenon of quantum, I could not help but also notice how the Feynman diagram almost looks like my philosophical statement that everything is connected and at the same time has two sides. I have to do much more studying to apply some of my contemplation to quantum and also apply quantum to my contemplation! :) I do want to openly express a sentiment of good luck to CERN and Fermilab on finding or not finding the higgs boson though! It's amazing that existence vs non-existence has a parallel to some of my previous arguments and further expresses the duality in which we even exist as the observer, and therefore the duality that also exists in all things connected by the very reality in which we exist!
Considering compassion (getting back on track), I realize the relevance of our ability to acquire it as a race, and how it must start with the individual in order the be eventually acquired by the human race as a whole. I asked wiki if compassion is learned or innate, and both the question and the answer ended up being grounded in multiple observer's mutual desire for us to experience compassion as a race. There was an observation that compassion can exist as a result of some emotional trauma and an ability to identify with how it felt to be the victim of circumstance where a lack of compassion had a negative impact.
I wanted to see if people believe that compassion is part of instinct or something we learn throughout our life. The answer provided didn't really answer my curiosity, but it did illustrate that once an individual is exposed to some kind of abusive behavior, they are given the choice to inflict this behavior on another individual, or they can use that experience to relate to others in a similar circumstance, and that may inspire the compassionate individual to provide help. It's at the root of charity, which is a phenomenon that exists because of need. There I end up back at the struggle to exist providing a reason for existing, and either helping others to exist, or working to terminate their existence. That seems really two sided, but the deeper I try to get at any conflict, the more often two distinct sides are revealed.
In even linking to the Good Samaritan parable, I further read “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Interestingly enough, even in the Gospel of Luke there is yet another hint at the possibility that each of us is another "version" of the observer coming from a finite yet diverse set of possible circumstances. The "golden rule" provides this same sentiment, and I'm sure so does many other concepts already thoroughly introduced into our current knowledge.
It would seem obvious to an intelligent individual that by imposing suffering on another individual, you are contributing hate to society instead of love, and therefore nothing but negative energy could come back to the individual who is so brave to dare fate and break the rules. This golden rule philosophy would be the foundation to any potential Utopian society.
If the beauty pageant contestant really wants "world peace", why would one ever put someone down for their sexual preference? Whenever I bring up sexual preference rights though, it always inevitably comes back to size preference instead of gender preference. It's ironic how some people can argue for one sexual preference and demonize another. Dammit I wasn't going to go there in this post! :)
I found more pondering on the issue of compassion being learned or innate, which I'm guessing is a nice word for "instinct". In this question answer session, it is proposed that "The experience of injustice is important in the development of compassion." The answer in this case actually goes into the additional phenomenon of power struggle and the two sided phenomenon of the bully and the one bullied. This answer still matches up to the other in the way that it illustrates how experience combined with upbringing forms the unique compassion equation within each of us uniquely.
I had a theory about how instinct is the mind-source connection, the thing that starts up the respiratory system when we come out and it is therefore time to exist. If we can relate the metaphorical heart simply being part of the human brain, then our instinct drives us to independently create a heart-source connection over the course of our existence.
I've postulated earlier about how our invention of religion was an attempt to push the compassion center of the brain beyond what it was thousands of years ago, and continue pushing it beyond what it is now. Maybe my only evidence that our race is so obviously not fully mentally evolved is in the lack of compassion the average human will be inclined to show to another human, or "fellow observer".
Maybe the same observer can be brought into a singular reality multiple times if the source has domain over time and space and can place multiple versions of the same observer within the same reality! Compassion would be a test to see how bad we would treat each other even though we could potentially, theoretically, be each other. Wow that's kind of deep, haven't tried to google it but somebody probably wrote something to this affect long, long ago already! :) When I look up golden rule itself it is amazing to see how this is one of many common threads among all religions.
At one point I have considered how I was so compelled to start blogging just after the 41st b-day. I contemplated how maybe there is a hormonal, physical component to enlightenment process that can only occur upon a certain type of maturity. This brought about yet another paleolithic theory about the venus figurines and the way in which so many people have already proposed a pre-historic matriarch theory.
When I simply wondered about how my own hormonal changes might have influenced my thinking, I contemplated something. Since women are prone to possible hormonal fluctuations on a regular cycle, could it be possible that women were provided glimpses of hormonally produced enlightenment at a time when the human brain was still so "fresh"? Could this be another tiny part of the puzzle in trying to figure out details from an age before language or recorded history? I had to ask someone if this mere theory could be perceived as "sexist", but I have no negative intent when even contemplating such an exotic and temporally distant reality. Some people have studied this a lot more than I have at this point and dispute the existence of a matriarchy at all. At this point I have to plan on even trying to read the whole article that I just linked to!
I have had a friend inform me that it's much more likely that any potential matriarch could be explained by the way in which only females can give birth, so they are recognized by paleolithic man as "magical" in that respect. Paleolithic man had a much more sex based religion though because by practicing the ritual of sex, they actually made more of us! What is more magic than that? I've often wondered about the way in which sex is kind of demonized by our current society, more evidence in a sub-conscious fear of over-population.
This fear of over population provided yet another profound realization. There was a line in the blog I linked to, "Hunger is not the result of 'too many mouths' to feed. Global food production has consistently outpaced population growth. People go hungry because they do not have the land on which to grow food or the money with which to buy it." Well, maybe if you replace too many mouths to feed with too many obese people, you can begin to confront the issue of fear of obesity.
While going over population issues, I ran across the philosophy of Malthusianism. You can imagine my surprise when I read that this concept emerged around the time of the industrial revolution! Wow, I have already written before about the critical role the industrial revolution has played in the eventual growth of our collective waistlines. Imagine my surprise when I found a connection between this philosophy and the events going on at the same time.
One article I found about compassion finally crossed over into the use of a specific part of the brain that is responsible for emotion, and therefore connected to the feelings of empathy that can be translated into compassion.
When I discovered the wonders of the insular cortex, I could barely contain myself! I look down at the 2500 word count and I have a thought.
I must begin to craft the skill of writing one singular blog entry that gets to the point and then moves on to the next amazing, fascinating, why didn't they think of this moment. Fantasies of winning the nobel peace prize for solving obesity flow though my mind in an amazingly fantastical OMG moment, only to be quickly dissolved by the realization that I'm some poor southern uneducated hillbilly redneck that just happened to learn to type before the internet and is guilty of creating amazingly long run on sentences and blog posts!
roflmao :)
I really could have stayed on the point, written about this whole compassion thing and how it reinforces what George Harrison wrote when he said love could save the world. By spouting some kind of "love everybody" philosophy repeatedly I just come across as a boring humanitarian hippy. If I politely explain the way in which things I see have a profound emotional impact on me, I might prompt some kind of real attempt at changing what I perceive as a negatively imbalanced status quo.
When suggesting solving such big problems, sometimes you have to imagine the way in which solving a bigger problem might make the first problem seem easy. Simultaneously, one must also see how attempting to solve a perceived smaller problem could either help or exacerbate the bigger original problem, or cause new problems to appear spontaneously that are directly attributed to solving the first problem.
I hope that by eventually tripping over some real, physiology connections I can eventually bring some kind of positive into the equation just by sharing my perceptions and making people with high levels of education ask themselves why not? more often. I wrote the whole blog post about why not just to re-invent the wheel because more skilled and experienced people than I have been all up into this.
I didn't bother to google the concept of reverse problem solving, so I was s.o.l. even while writing such a big blog post on the very subject. I wasn't writing so much about concept as I was exploring that very self-realized concept as I was talking about something I observed, in the context of an old Beatles song. What's that about? I'm a new blogger give me a freakin break! :)
That other article has a link to this personal success blog, amazing how personal success can also translate into societal success, and the more people who are enlightened the better off we all really are.
Ok, when I started to study neurology all the sudden, I looked up obesity and insular cortex, but it looks like a lot of the studies are about what obesity does to the brain. This post is already ginormous, so I can only point out that I am looking for a study that looks to the brain as a cause instead of only looking at obesity as something messing up the brain. I would easily argue that the industrial revolution did not directly cause more of us to be fat, but it may have contributed to making more wrong choices that made us fat. In other words, we don't choose to be fat, but we make bad choices that make us fat.
I found an article titled "Binge eating is associated with right orbitofrontal-insular-striatal atrophy in frontotemporal dementia". I think that this was meant to cover people who were already institutionalized, but this was kind of fascinating in my bigger thought. You know, I thought that if I google "neurological cause of obesity" I would not be bombarded with all the things that obesity is allegedly doing to the brain. I only started to poke around the brain myself because I really do have a sneaking suspicion that while they study how our fat body hurts the brain, they may be overlooking the ways in which the brain contributes to our fat bodies.
Then, I find this article called "Obesity Surgery May Cause Neurological Problems". I was like whooooaaaa because I started to look for what neurologists have done in the area of obeseology but I ended up finding out something kind of sinister that I had not made myself educated to already. One would think that less food digested means less calories, but it's really sad to imagine that without proper follow up care, some people who have the surgery will end up with peripheral neuropathy, or PN if they let themselves fall victim to freaking malnutrition!
I was looking into any studies that attempted to use MRI technology to check out a large number of morbidly obese people's insular cortex. Imagine my surprise when I read the line "Research upon conversation links it to the capacity for long and complex spoken sentences." OMG LOL I happened upon another interesting phenomenon, "that reversible inactivation of the insula disrupts amphetamine conditioned place preference, an animal model of cue-induced drug craving"
Wow, the paradox is astounding that I read earlier, "The insula also reads body states like hunger and craving and helps push people into reaching for the next sandwich, cigarette or line of cocaine." A number of functional brain imaging studies have shown that the insular cortex is activated when drug abusers are exposed to environmental cues that trigger cravings. This has been shown for a variety of drugs of abuse, including cocaine, alcohol, opiates and nicotine. Despite these findings, the insula has been ignored within the drug addiciton literature, perhaps because it is not known to be a direct target of the mesotelencephalic dopamine system which is central to current dopamine reward theories of addiction."
Wow, obviously the "diet industry" hasn't had as much interest in examining the potential insular cortex connection either. I can also safely assume now that Dr. Drew didn't want to address the paradox of removing an addition without taking away the addictive substance for a very very very very very good reason! :) That guy's no neurologist, or obeseologist for that matter. :)
While I started to write about compassion, is it an irony that a little digging brought me to the insular cortex, which brought me to such a complex theory? I wonder if I was supposed to think that deeply about it at all! :) I wonder about how much grant money I could get if I did happen to already be a neurologist and I already knew about all the studies that do not exist because I checked out the book of five rings and it told me to see what I cannot see by seeing what I can see. I was concerned that the gastric bypass might cause some atrophy in some part of the insular cortex, but I obviously had no idea of what I was getting into. I mean, this really is brain surgery, geez! I was wrong because it's not about atrophy as much as it is about proper operation. I don't want people to think that damaging or attempting to remove part of the insular cortex is a good idea or anything damn!
There are too many other functions wrapped up in that thing to mess with it until you know what your doing, and apparently from the age of the research I'm finding, they don't know much! There really is an incredible, awesome balance at work. To see that addiction and compassion are potentially coming from the same general area of the brain is fascinating. I can imagine the first attempt to mess with the cortex to fix obesity and then causing someone to suddenly become a sociopath out of nowhere. There is such a delicate balance in the way our very genetic structure has interlocking pieces that mesh into one another. You cannot simply remove one thing without risking something else. I read this article and realized the power behind what I said before. When I said that size is not a flaw, it's an instruction to provide variation to promote diversity, I had not yet even read this article!
Ok, over 3800 and it's been way too long, I have to sign out for now, but I will no doubt be looking around more to see if there is a neurologist in the room where all of these professional experts are gathering in an attempt to eradicate a problem that may be a symptom. I said something about going back to school and I sure wasn't kidding! I was all ready to "wrap it up" and then I could not resist something I found while studying neurology! It is such a trip that mirror neurons could actually explain why we love to watch porn! That's a good note to end on, and now I'm about to break the 4k word count as it is!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
obeseology
so important (or so i seem to think) that I wanted to introduce a concept that I don't think has been invented yet, s0rry charlie!
Look closely at any of the stories that I link to about Mrs. Simpson. Look closely at the comments. Notice the number of times "kill yourself" appears, and for the sake of this experiment, disregard context. I'm not a sociologist, I'm an obeseologist. I study the phenomenon of fat hate now, not by choice, but by circumstance. When asking yourself why there hasn't been any attempt on the part of the powers that be to end size discrimination, maybe you should be asking yourself why not?
Oh man. I looked up obeseology.com and sure enough somebody got it, but they redirect to youbwell.com. LOL Maybe it's a hint that all along I should have just gotten a massage license. roflmao
Look closely at any of the stories that I link to about Mrs. Simpson. Look closely at the comments. Notice the number of times "kill yourself" appears, and for the sake of this experiment, disregard context. I'm not a sociologist, I'm an obeseologist. I study the phenomenon of fat hate now, not by choice, but by circumstance. When asking yourself why there hasn't been any attempt on the part of the powers that be to end size discrimination, maybe you should be asking yourself why not?
Oh man. I looked up obeseology.com and sure enough somebody got it, but they redirect to youbwell.com. LOL Maybe it's a hint that all along I should have just gotten a massage license. roflmao
"why not?" concept, theory
Why Not?
"We were talking - about the space between us all
And the people - who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse of truth - then it's far too late - when they pass away
We were talking - about the love we could all share - when we find it
To try our best to hold it there - with our love
With our love - We could save the world - if they only knew
Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small, and life flows on
within and without you
We were talking - about the love that's gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul - then you may find,
peace of mind, is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within and without you" ~ Author: George Harrison; Lead vocal: George Harrison
Upon waking, the "daily rant" is a phenomenon that has become a great bane and misfortune for any individual with the good/bad luck to be in audible vicinity of said rant. It can become so deep at times that it can be almost emotionally painful to endure. Sometimes the way some singular, important truth appears can decide the degree to which any emotional behavior can manifest.
In one of my waking rants, an individual who was seeking some mental or spiritual relief started playing music. By chance, fate, destiny, or "predetermined response", this song was played.
Hearing the lyrics while in the process of pondering such deep thought about the theory of everything and therefore the solution to everything brought about an emotional response within myself. Upon taking a short break, I was able to see the great tragedy in the many ways that the truth is revealed to us all, but for some reason we must choose to maintain our own, personal, customized status quo. I think of the quote "your own private idaho" because even though wiki would tell you it's simply a movie title, it has also become a cliche' to explain this very phenomenon.
"And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within and without you" Dammit George! I was wondering how I could have ever pondered the possibility that within the construct of multiverse theory, we really could all be different versions of the same observer, with a finite, yet incredibly diverse set of circumstances provided. "Why not?" At the same time, I thought about how I have already previously written about how important an individual's mere existence is, because an alternate reality is almost infinitely different as a result of any individual's non-existence. Freakin George already thought of it, and by placing it within catchy lyrics he was able to attempt mass enlightenment through current media. Why not?
"With our love - We could save the world - if they only knew
Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change" Dammit George! He could not have possibly been suggesting that "love could save the world" could he? Why not? I mean, if hate causes a plethora of negative posibility, and love causes a plethora of positive possibility, then isn't George freakin Harrison quite a smart-ass to suggest that love could possibly save the world! Sneaky hippy! lol If they only knew.... Good one George! I couldn't have said it better myself.
When contemplating the phenomenon of hate, I realize that it's simply one personalized status quo conflicting with a larger majority established status quo. One behavior that could have been tolerated hundreds of years ago is unacceptable now because the group status quo has changed, and therefore the individual customized status quo has a choice of adapting and adjusting or conflicting and fighting. When trying to address any societal issue, it must be vital then to identify, validate, and adjust a conflicting individual status quo. Get your number two pencil and don't go out of the lines while selecting your multiple choice rehab, lol. Why not?
"We were talking - about the love that's gone so cold and the people, who gain the world and lose their soul - then you may find,
peace of mind, is waiting there" I know George, those of us who are emotionally immature and spiritually ignorant will be trapped in a cold, hateful existence until we open ourselves up to the love that awaits us all, and the true enlightenment that really could solve every societal problem there ever was, is, or ever will be.
I was made aware of a phenomenon that was brought up recently in light of the Donna Simpson scandal. The current google search results number as of this moment 4.3 million...... I love the number 4 million, for some reason this is the 3rd time it has rushed towards me in observing numerological phenomenon occurring in parallel to writing about the obesity phenomenon.
"the people, who gain the world and lose their soul". In one show, Dr. Drew actually confronted the obsession with fame. One could argue the philosophical deal with the devil to be famous. I can also surmise the medical industry's acceptance of a death rate of 212 out of 105,000 weight loss surgeries. I know they like to say "0.2 %", so I'll put both out there out of fairness to the doctors who announce this stat to someone who is already stuck in the perception of an individual who has already had said hypothetically contemplated surgery.... Ok, bias pointed out, whew. lol In more simplistic terms, the deal with the devil works both ways for those attempting to correct an imperfection and give a few human sacrifices to the gods of good health. Why not?
Oh, that show! I was laughing and crying in two distinctly different potential universes simultaneously I'm sure! ;) In this reality I was just simply attempting to observe from the all seeing eye of the obesiverse. 2 experts on a show, neither of them trained in the education of obeseology. They came close though! Let's see, Dr. Drew is an expert in addiction. What a wonderful opportunity to address the paradox of attempting to cure an addiction without taking away the offending entheogen. Hmmmm. One can observe what does not exist simply by observing what does exist. Why not?
Dr. Mark Lamont Hill is a witty, intelligent and articulate associate professor of education and anthropology who also happens to be very entertaining. As a result, he appears on a few shows that I have watched from time to time. If anyone wants to get to the bottom of solving every known societal problem we are confronted with, it's this guy! As a result of his extensive training in anthropology, he is thoroughly embedded in the position of observer to humanity itself. It is quite understandable, with such extensive appearances in addition to his regular career, that he would not be so thoroughly trained in obeseology that he could not address just one specific issue. He made it a point to discuss the existence of fetishism, but without training in the sub-culture, he would not have the necessary information to help provide separation of the fetish from the preference.
It is my opinion, without such extensive training in anthropology, that size preference is not fetishism. My only defense of this argument is in the way that we find other physical preferences to be accepted, but size is often overlooked because of a given mass status quo of the simple human construct of "what is beautiful". When someone has a size preference, their personal status quo is conflicting with a given status quo of what we should perceive as beautiful. Dr. Hill would no doubt be fascinated with the way in which one physical preference is categorized or demonized simply because of a newly established definition of beautiful.
With the training in anthropology, Dr. Hill has been forced by his education to adapt his thinking in a way where events from 35,000 years ago are not so irrelevant today. Most people see that number, and in the same way we confuse millions with billions with trillions talking about the economy, the average human will not be able to recognize how significant it is that the paleolithic era extends from 10,000 years ago to 2.5 million years ago. Dr. Hill is not just thinking "big", he has to think "huge" when referencing relevant events in our human race's history. It is totally understandable that he would point out "growing" as a fetish without having the education in obeseology to point out how size preference is a completely different phenomenon.
He did point out a "bug" fetish, which has another parallel in the way that the rounded shapes of a woman's body combined with the creasing that takes place between those rounded areas gives an almost "segmented" body type appearance as in the shape of some bugs. Ok, too far off the point! :) If Dr. Hill did have more of an education to this particular sub-culture, maybe he could begin to see how this is, in a way, part of our current day anthropology in such a big and relevant way. By simply pointing out the difference between a growing fetish and an "as is" size preference, he could have helped Dr. Drew and Joy herself to see that NOT all guys who like "fat chicks" want to grow them like a prize pig or something. He might even have gotten more gigs and more appearances if he was more educated to this very phenomenon and thus became a more attractive guest on shows like this. Why not?
Another guest was Jessica Kirson. I have to assume that she is an expert in this area because she appears to be a different size from the other panel members. If we lived in a more tolerant politically correct culture, I could not point out her difference in size just as I would not have a reason to point out any difference in race of any panel members. I like to slip a little thinking exercise in whenever I can, and the parallel between race and size hate is real. When you start thinking from the perspective of why not, it causes you to imagine what currently doesn't exist, and how disappointing it is to live in a time when such intolerance even exists. Simplistically, if I point out that someone is black, there must be racist intent. If I point out someone is fat, it is an accepted manifestation of size discrimination, possibly brought about by size intolerance and size hate.
One could argue that Joy was being "size-ist" in bringing Ms. Kirson on her show because she is only relevant because she happens to be, by total coincidence, a little on the heavy side. Poor Jessica was so obviously uncomfortable to be put in that position. She even had to do a little cute joke about a sandwich. Even though she herself actively enjoys, as a comedian, the phenomenon of being "the fat one", she would understandably be uncomfortable when put in the position of defending herself against a public perception that "we're all like that". She too was given an opportunity though. Dr. Hill and Dr. Drew are educated experts, but comedy is like a study of humanity itself. It is an accepted talent and art, and it is a way in which enlightenment can actually be provided through humor.
"We were talking - about the space between us all and the people - who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion" Comedy is a mathematical art. People who practice this art by writing jokes must create a logical equation balancing something incredibly inappropriate with an irrelevant fact and breaking into the humor center of the human brain. The fact that humor exists at all is an incredible testament to our existence, in the way that the truth hurts, but the truth must be confronted to solve some deep, universal problem. Enlightenment can be painful, but comedy allows for the possibility that enlightenment can feel good. By some miracle we can take the most negative emotion and attempt to reverse it with the simple realization of how things are compared to how things could be, or will be. The humor center of the brain is the only way to break through and address some issues that need to eventually be addressed down the line. The comedian practices the art of taking something bad and assuring us by saying "we'll be laughing about this tomorrow".
By doing this, the comedian is actually at the forefront of humanity's attempt to make things better in the long run, or better down the line. This comedian was confronted by something that she too was uneducated about. An entire sub-culture exists and is "ripe for the picking" because I'm sure a plus size comedian already has a portfolio of jokes at hand in explaining how ridiculous fat hate is, and the fact that it exists despite our human desire and hope to stop hating. Her relevance to this particular event supersedes even my own realization that she actually is a cute bbw too. :) Really though, she knows that she is filling a slot, that with the passing fame of each popular comedian of size, there exists a new opportunity to find success in this already pre-existing position. I keep thinking back to her sandwich joke, realizing that she knows the degree of her own comic ability and she was able to take an otherwise inappropriate situation and benefit from her own physicality in the process. If she was more educated on the difference between a "feeder and feedee relationship" vs the known, obviously relevant existence of a size preference, she could probably have written five funny jokes about this story as she was on the way to the show itself. So, in a way, her lack of education to the size sub-culture, despite her physicality, provided her with a limit to her comic expression because of a lack of information. The more information she had, the funnier she would be in this situation, and the more she had the chance to provide further education in the process. By knowing of the difference between "feeder" and "fat admirer", she could have told pretty funny jokes based on the resident conflict that could exist there. Conflict, after all, is at the center of most comic premise. Why not?
"Never glimpse of truth - then it's far too late - when they pass away" Dammit George! This hippy philosophy isn't supposed to interfere with my ability to enjoy a catchy tune! This line sets up the emotional impact of the entire work. It is a tragedy when someone lives their whole life trapped within the permanent perspective of hate. While they attempt to deny the existence of another individual for some arbitrary reason, they are limiting their perspective because they cannot allow themselves to appreciate our mere existence and the universal truth that diversity has to exist for us to last longer than the dinosaurs. When someone exists strictly from the perspective of hate, they cannot truly accept, understand, or practice love for themselves or for all of humanity. George recognized the way in which hate coming from the individual creates an eventual societal loss in the love that the individual could have contributed. While the hate from one individual can seem insignificant, one must recognize the positive potential for the love that comes from just one individual.
In the way that I can link to two such extreme examples of "good and evil", I must also recognize the fact that our existence within the balance is affected drastically by immeasurable individual contributions. With this thought in mind, one can begin to see why within the obesiverse, I simply cannot limit my opinions and observations to obesity in and of itself. The problem of obesity is actually the sum of a much larger equation, the solution to which would change our mass status quo in a way that is simply unacceptable to important, influential individuals. In such a way a conspiracy nut may weave a tale of evil inspired by corruption and greed, I am forced to recognize all the players in this dog and pony show of obesity panic. Why not?
Someone who was not actually there at the show I have obviously spent so much time dissecting was the person at the center of this assumed atrocity of body growth."And to see you're really only very small, and life flows on within and without you" Others might enjoy the game of opposites that I love to point out as the observer in a reality governed by the balance. The absence of the person at the center of this spectacle is a very important thing to consider within itself. By bringing in the person at the center of the controversy, one might run the risk of spoiling the fun of speculation inspired by misinformation. The story itself is based in fiction because the ambition to get to 1000lbs is a fantasy being sold to those individuals who have an expansion fetish. Even though that singular claim is for their benefit, this woman happens to be an example of upper paleolithic beauty at the same time. She could have been the ultimate expert in providing the education necessary to keep the size acceptance people from getting all up in her ass. She could have provided education to a seemingly ignorant group of individuals. By use of the word ignorant I simply mean not educated to this specific phenomenon or sub-culture. Nobody knows Donna Simpson's motive better than herself, but she wasn't on the show. Why not? I keep talking about the balance and irony and coincidence as if they are part of a "God force" themselves, so it's only natural that when I look up Donna Simpson on wiki, I notice that a woman by the same name was in a musical group called "The Waifs". Maybe God does make himself visible all over the place! :)
This is getting quite a bit longer than I first imagined, but George was nudging me from the grave as the haunting melody of this song played. It's ironic that the song was being played to tune me out, so in a way, even an individual who couldn't stand to hear me rambling about this any more resorted to playing it. By doing so, I was provided another tidbit in the massive quantum study of humanity. I don't have time to get a degree in anthropology, or paleontology, but I have been trying to answer this nagging question since I discovered my own attraction to a female form that happens to be larger than my current societal standard of beauty. Just like all of the people I have shared this preference with, I spent a long time asking myself WHY instead of why not. Little did I know, that by studying the phenomenon of why not, I would start to grasp just a tiny sliver of the greater question of why. I have often said that obesity will be fixed as a result of fixing some other societal problem, because of the balance and the way in which everything is connected and has two sides. A hint at this two sided phenomenon is illustrated by the bible as good and evil, but the bible is just one tome of knowledge in an amazing collective of shared experience and possible enlightenment, waiting around for our brains to evolve to the point where we can finally see the forest for the trees.
Obesity is one sliding, moving component to the puzzle box of humanity. Isolating obesity within the context of something to fix instead of recognizing it as a side effect of the industrial revolution is fascinating. Seeing the individuals who suffer from this natural consequence held responsible and hated by society as a result is painful and inhumane. I have written before how even though I am attracted to a certain "type", I would be willing to reconcile with society and "turn straight", give up the fat chicks, if obesity could really be cured without so many people having to die or suffer in the process. The universal truth though is that fat has been with us for over 35,000 years, and as a race we have worked hard to develop technology that slowly makes us less and less active in an effort to save time instead of having to exert physical activity and wait on the slowness of any manual process.
I have such love for humanity that I could even begin to contemplate giving up my right to have a sexual preference at all (because it's fat and not a-ok gay). At the same time, I live in a society that is being fattened up, and is comprised of fat people as well as thin people. I'm being told that I should not find a certain physicality attractive because it is unhealthy, but I'm literally surrounded by fat people at the same time! Ahhh the balance! I could give up fat chicks if it meant improving the overall health of our society, but because of my compassion and love for said fat chicks, I see the "glass half empty" where 212 deaths out of 105,000 is still too much. While there is such uproar about what this woman is doing coming from all sides, it's ironic to see how much misinformation there is. Why not? After all, the truth isn't nearly as entertaining as the story. The mere intelligent discussion of any possible solution to our obesity is strangely absent. Maybe if the right sponsor comes along and pays the right price, they can be the designated messiah of obesity even though it will be later proved that their method is ineffective too. At least you tried though right? Why not?
Look closely at any of the stories that I link to about Mrs. Simpson. Look closely at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Notice the number of times "kill yourself" appears, and for the sake of this experiment, disregard context. I'm not a sociologist, I'm an obeseologist. I study the phenomenon of fat hate now, not by choice, but by circumstance. When asking yourself why there hasn't been any attempt on the part of the powers that be to end size discrimination, maybe you should be asking yourself why not?
"We were talking - about the space between us all
And the people - who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse of truth - then it's far too late - when they pass away
We were talking - about the love we could all share - when we find it
To try our best to hold it there - with our love
With our love - We could save the world - if they only knew
Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small, and life flows on
within and without you
We were talking - about the love that's gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul - then you may find,
peace of mind, is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within and without you" ~ Author: George Harrison; Lead vocal: George Harrison
Upon waking, the "daily rant" is a phenomenon that has become a great bane and misfortune for any individual with the good/bad luck to be in audible vicinity of said rant. It can become so deep at times that it can be almost emotionally painful to endure. Sometimes the way some singular, important truth appears can decide the degree to which any emotional behavior can manifest.
In one of my waking rants, an individual who was seeking some mental or spiritual relief started playing music. By chance, fate, destiny, or "predetermined response", this song was played.
Hearing the lyrics while in the process of pondering such deep thought about the theory of everything and therefore the solution to everything brought about an emotional response within myself. Upon taking a short break, I was able to see the great tragedy in the many ways that the truth is revealed to us all, but for some reason we must choose to maintain our own, personal, customized status quo. I think of the quote "your own private idaho" because even though wiki would tell you it's simply a movie title, it has also become a cliche' to explain this very phenomenon.
"And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within and without you" Dammit George! I was wondering how I could have ever pondered the possibility that within the construct of multiverse theory, we really could all be different versions of the same observer, with a finite, yet incredibly diverse set of circumstances provided. "Why not?" At the same time, I thought about how I have already previously written about how important an individual's mere existence is, because an alternate reality is almost infinitely different as a result of any individual's non-existence. Freakin George already thought of it, and by placing it within catchy lyrics he was able to attempt mass enlightenment through current media. Why not?
"With our love - We could save the world - if they only knew
Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change" Dammit George! He could not have possibly been suggesting that "love could save the world" could he? Why not? I mean, if hate causes a plethora of negative posibility, and love causes a plethora of positive possibility, then isn't George freakin Harrison quite a smart-ass to suggest that love could possibly save the world! Sneaky hippy! lol If they only knew.... Good one George! I couldn't have said it better myself.
When contemplating the phenomenon of hate, I realize that it's simply one personalized status quo conflicting with a larger majority established status quo. One behavior that could have been tolerated hundreds of years ago is unacceptable now because the group status quo has changed, and therefore the individual customized status quo has a choice of adapting and adjusting or conflicting and fighting. When trying to address any societal issue, it must be vital then to identify, validate, and adjust a conflicting individual status quo. Get your number two pencil and don't go out of the lines while selecting your multiple choice rehab, lol. Why not?
"We were talking - about the love that's gone so cold and the people, who gain the world and lose their soul - then you may find,
peace of mind, is waiting there" I know George, those of us who are emotionally immature and spiritually ignorant will be trapped in a cold, hateful existence until we open ourselves up to the love that awaits us all, and the true enlightenment that really could solve every societal problem there ever was, is, or ever will be.
I was made aware of a phenomenon that was brought up recently in light of the Donna Simpson scandal. The current google search results number as of this moment 4.3 million...... I love the number 4 million, for some reason this is the 3rd time it has rushed towards me in observing numerological phenomenon occurring in parallel to writing about the obesity phenomenon.
"the people, who gain the world and lose their soul". In one show, Dr. Drew actually confronted the obsession with fame. One could argue the philosophical deal with the devil to be famous. I can also surmise the medical industry's acceptance of a death rate of 212 out of 105,000 weight loss surgeries. I know they like to say "0.2 %", so I'll put both out there out of fairness to the doctors who announce this stat to someone who is already stuck in the perception of an individual who has already had said hypothetically contemplated surgery.... Ok, bias pointed out, whew. lol In more simplistic terms, the deal with the devil works both ways for those attempting to correct an imperfection and give a few human sacrifices to the gods of good health. Why not?
Oh, that show! I was laughing and crying in two distinctly different potential universes simultaneously I'm sure! ;) In this reality I was just simply attempting to observe from the all seeing eye of the obesiverse. 2 experts on a show, neither of them trained in the education of obeseology. They came close though! Let's see, Dr. Drew is an expert in addiction. What a wonderful opportunity to address the paradox of attempting to cure an addiction without taking away the offending entheogen. Hmmmm. One can observe what does not exist simply by observing what does exist. Why not?
Dr. Mark Lamont Hill is a witty, intelligent and articulate associate professor of education and anthropology who also happens to be very entertaining. As a result, he appears on a few shows that I have watched from time to time. If anyone wants to get to the bottom of solving every known societal problem we are confronted with, it's this guy! As a result of his extensive training in anthropology, he is thoroughly embedded in the position of observer to humanity itself. It is quite understandable, with such extensive appearances in addition to his regular career, that he would not be so thoroughly trained in obeseology that he could not address just one specific issue. He made it a point to discuss the existence of fetishism, but without training in the sub-culture, he would not have the necessary information to help provide separation of the fetish from the preference.
It is my opinion, without such extensive training in anthropology, that size preference is not fetishism. My only defense of this argument is in the way that we find other physical preferences to be accepted, but size is often overlooked because of a given mass status quo of the simple human construct of "what is beautiful". When someone has a size preference, their personal status quo is conflicting with a given status quo of what we should perceive as beautiful. Dr. Hill would no doubt be fascinated with the way in which one physical preference is categorized or demonized simply because of a newly established definition of beautiful.
With the training in anthropology, Dr. Hill has been forced by his education to adapt his thinking in a way where events from 35,000 years ago are not so irrelevant today. Most people see that number, and in the same way we confuse millions with billions with trillions talking about the economy, the average human will not be able to recognize how significant it is that the paleolithic era extends from 10,000 years ago to 2.5 million years ago. Dr. Hill is not just thinking "big", he has to think "huge" when referencing relevant events in our human race's history. It is totally understandable that he would point out "growing" as a fetish without having the education in obeseology to point out how size preference is a completely different phenomenon.
He did point out a "bug" fetish, which has another parallel in the way that the rounded shapes of a woman's body combined with the creasing that takes place between those rounded areas gives an almost "segmented" body type appearance as in the shape of some bugs. Ok, too far off the point! :) If Dr. Hill did have more of an education to this particular sub-culture, maybe he could begin to see how this is, in a way, part of our current day anthropology in such a big and relevant way. By simply pointing out the difference between a growing fetish and an "as is" size preference, he could have helped Dr. Drew and Joy herself to see that NOT all guys who like "fat chicks" want to grow them like a prize pig or something. He might even have gotten more gigs and more appearances if he was more educated to this very phenomenon and thus became a more attractive guest on shows like this. Why not?
Another guest was Jessica Kirson. I have to assume that she is an expert in this area because she appears to be a different size from the other panel members. If we lived in a more tolerant politically correct culture, I could not point out her difference in size just as I would not have a reason to point out any difference in race of any panel members. I like to slip a little thinking exercise in whenever I can, and the parallel between race and size hate is real. When you start thinking from the perspective of why not, it causes you to imagine what currently doesn't exist, and how disappointing it is to live in a time when such intolerance even exists. Simplistically, if I point out that someone is black, there must be racist intent. If I point out someone is fat, it is an accepted manifestation of size discrimination, possibly brought about by size intolerance and size hate.
One could argue that Joy was being "size-ist" in bringing Ms. Kirson on her show because she is only relevant because she happens to be, by total coincidence, a little on the heavy side. Poor Jessica was so obviously uncomfortable to be put in that position. She even had to do a little cute joke about a sandwich. Even though she herself actively enjoys, as a comedian, the phenomenon of being "the fat one", she would understandably be uncomfortable when put in the position of defending herself against a public perception that "we're all like that". She too was given an opportunity though. Dr. Hill and Dr. Drew are educated experts, but comedy is like a study of humanity itself. It is an accepted talent and art, and it is a way in which enlightenment can actually be provided through humor.
"We were talking - about the space between us all and the people - who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion" Comedy is a mathematical art. People who practice this art by writing jokes must create a logical equation balancing something incredibly inappropriate with an irrelevant fact and breaking into the humor center of the human brain. The fact that humor exists at all is an incredible testament to our existence, in the way that the truth hurts, but the truth must be confronted to solve some deep, universal problem. Enlightenment can be painful, but comedy allows for the possibility that enlightenment can feel good. By some miracle we can take the most negative emotion and attempt to reverse it with the simple realization of how things are compared to how things could be, or will be. The humor center of the brain is the only way to break through and address some issues that need to eventually be addressed down the line. The comedian practices the art of taking something bad and assuring us by saying "we'll be laughing about this tomorrow".
By doing this, the comedian is actually at the forefront of humanity's attempt to make things better in the long run, or better down the line. This comedian was confronted by something that she too was uneducated about. An entire sub-culture exists and is "ripe for the picking" because I'm sure a plus size comedian already has a portfolio of jokes at hand in explaining how ridiculous fat hate is, and the fact that it exists despite our human desire and hope to stop hating. Her relevance to this particular event supersedes even my own realization that she actually is a cute bbw too. :) Really though, she knows that she is filling a slot, that with the passing fame of each popular comedian of size, there exists a new opportunity to find success in this already pre-existing position. I keep thinking back to her sandwich joke, realizing that she knows the degree of her own comic ability and she was able to take an otherwise inappropriate situation and benefit from her own physicality in the process. If she was more educated on the difference between a "feeder and feedee relationship" vs the known, obviously relevant existence of a size preference, she could probably have written five funny jokes about this story as she was on the way to the show itself. So, in a way, her lack of education to the size sub-culture, despite her physicality, provided her with a limit to her comic expression because of a lack of information. The more information she had, the funnier she would be in this situation, and the more she had the chance to provide further education in the process. By knowing of the difference between "feeder" and "fat admirer", she could have told pretty funny jokes based on the resident conflict that could exist there. Conflict, after all, is at the center of most comic premise. Why not?
"Never glimpse of truth - then it's far too late - when they pass away" Dammit George! This hippy philosophy isn't supposed to interfere with my ability to enjoy a catchy tune! This line sets up the emotional impact of the entire work. It is a tragedy when someone lives their whole life trapped within the permanent perspective of hate. While they attempt to deny the existence of another individual for some arbitrary reason, they are limiting their perspective because they cannot allow themselves to appreciate our mere existence and the universal truth that diversity has to exist for us to last longer than the dinosaurs. When someone exists strictly from the perspective of hate, they cannot truly accept, understand, or practice love for themselves or for all of humanity. George recognized the way in which hate coming from the individual creates an eventual societal loss in the love that the individual could have contributed. While the hate from one individual can seem insignificant, one must recognize the positive potential for the love that comes from just one individual.
In the way that I can link to two such extreme examples of "good and evil", I must also recognize the fact that our existence within the balance is affected drastically by immeasurable individual contributions. With this thought in mind, one can begin to see why within the obesiverse, I simply cannot limit my opinions and observations to obesity in and of itself. The problem of obesity is actually the sum of a much larger equation, the solution to which would change our mass status quo in a way that is simply unacceptable to important, influential individuals. In such a way a conspiracy nut may weave a tale of evil inspired by corruption and greed, I am forced to recognize all the players in this dog and pony show of obesity panic. Why not?
Someone who was not actually there at the show I have obviously spent so much time dissecting was the person at the center of this assumed atrocity of body growth."And to see you're really only very small, and life flows on within and without you" Others might enjoy the game of opposites that I love to point out as the observer in a reality governed by the balance. The absence of the person at the center of this spectacle is a very important thing to consider within itself. By bringing in the person at the center of the controversy, one might run the risk of spoiling the fun of speculation inspired by misinformation. The story itself is based in fiction because the ambition to get to 1000lbs is a fantasy being sold to those individuals who have an expansion fetish. Even though that singular claim is for their benefit, this woman happens to be an example of upper paleolithic beauty at the same time. She could have been the ultimate expert in providing the education necessary to keep the size acceptance people from getting all up in her ass. She could have provided education to a seemingly ignorant group of individuals. By use of the word ignorant I simply mean not educated to this specific phenomenon or sub-culture. Nobody knows Donna Simpson's motive better than herself, but she wasn't on the show. Why not? I keep talking about the balance and irony and coincidence as if they are part of a "God force" themselves, so it's only natural that when I look up Donna Simpson on wiki, I notice that a woman by the same name was in a musical group called "The Waifs". Maybe God does make himself visible all over the place! :)
This is getting quite a bit longer than I first imagined, but George was nudging me from the grave as the haunting melody of this song played. It's ironic that the song was being played to tune me out, so in a way, even an individual who couldn't stand to hear me rambling about this any more resorted to playing it. By doing so, I was provided another tidbit in the massive quantum study of humanity. I don't have time to get a degree in anthropology, or paleontology, but I have been trying to answer this nagging question since I discovered my own attraction to a female form that happens to be larger than my current societal standard of beauty. Just like all of the people I have shared this preference with, I spent a long time asking myself WHY instead of why not. Little did I know, that by studying the phenomenon of why not, I would start to grasp just a tiny sliver of the greater question of why. I have often said that obesity will be fixed as a result of fixing some other societal problem, because of the balance and the way in which everything is connected and has two sides. A hint at this two sided phenomenon is illustrated by the bible as good and evil, but the bible is just one tome of knowledge in an amazing collective of shared experience and possible enlightenment, waiting around for our brains to evolve to the point where we can finally see the forest for the trees.
Obesity is one sliding, moving component to the puzzle box of humanity. Isolating obesity within the context of something to fix instead of recognizing it as a side effect of the industrial revolution is fascinating. Seeing the individuals who suffer from this natural consequence held responsible and hated by society as a result is painful and inhumane. I have written before how even though I am attracted to a certain "type", I would be willing to reconcile with society and "turn straight", give up the fat chicks, if obesity could really be cured without so many people having to die or suffer in the process. The universal truth though is that fat has been with us for over 35,000 years, and as a race we have worked hard to develop technology that slowly makes us less and less active in an effort to save time instead of having to exert physical activity and wait on the slowness of any manual process.
I have such love for humanity that I could even begin to contemplate giving up my right to have a sexual preference at all (because it's fat and not a-ok gay). At the same time, I live in a society that is being fattened up, and is comprised of fat people as well as thin people. I'm being told that I should not find a certain physicality attractive because it is unhealthy, but I'm literally surrounded by fat people at the same time! Ahhh the balance! I could give up fat chicks if it meant improving the overall health of our society, but because of my compassion and love for said fat chicks, I see the "glass half empty" where 212 deaths out of 105,000 is still too much. While there is such uproar about what this woman is doing coming from all sides, it's ironic to see how much misinformation there is. Why not? After all, the truth isn't nearly as entertaining as the story. The mere intelligent discussion of any possible solution to our obesity is strangely absent. Maybe if the right sponsor comes along and pays the right price, they can be the designated messiah of obesity even though it will be later proved that their method is ineffective too. At least you tried though right? Why not?
Look closely at any of the stories that I link to about Mrs. Simpson. Look closely at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Look at the comments. Notice the number of times "kill yourself" appears, and for the sake of this experiment, disregard context. I'm not a sociologist, I'm an obeseologist. I study the phenomenon of fat hate now, not by choice, but by circumstance. When asking yourself why there hasn't been any attempt on the part of the powers that be to end size discrimination, maybe you should be asking yourself why not?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
stand on a ledge and jump
Update! I was kind of "drunk blogging" when I was writing this one, and instead of trying to re-write it or completely change it, I might add some stuff here and there because I was "writing while impaired".
There is still the phenomenon of shamanism to consider, so cheap vodka and tropical punch flavor kool aid might have been my last remaining legally available entheogen. The real irony is in the way that the sugar used to make the kool aid might some day be cost prohibitive for the poor like myself. :) Even worse, I must constantly monitor and self prohibit my use of alcohol for fear of becoming an alcoholic.
I did a google for "freudian slip joy behar donna", and this was the second result. I would say "how the hell?", but I suddenly remembered, we're all on the island. Do we need shamen? Do we need Timothy Leary now more than ever? While we are trying to figure out so many things to get the TOE, does it make sense to even be making such an issue of this construct of obesity? I am able to think spiritually on a level that almost seems to supersede any attempt to use religion for a mechanism for control, because my connection to God forces me to recognize certain universal truths, and inspires me to live accordingly on the positive end of the equation.
Before ever having a drink or touching the keyboard, channel flipping destiny brought me to the History channel, where I was intrigued by a show about Miyamoto Musashi and something fascinating about The Book of Five Rings. Wow, trying to do a google to get to a History Channel point of entry relevant to this show brought me to this point, interesting...
The whole point of bringing up the Book of Five Rings was to illustrate something to be said philosophically about "the void". A powerful observation, "In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." Also important to note, "By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist." Those words sat for around 250 years before somebody thought that the concept was "pretty cool" to say the least. I love the Japanese! Metabo! I was struck at the coincidence in how I have been ranting about some crazy "right to exist" argument that nobody is even disputing, all the while this stuff is supposed to filter down to me as I ponder the persistent and fascinating sensationalism and spectacle of obesity in it's pure form from the "all seeing eye".
The yin and yang of demanding change without clear, safe, proven, definitive, and knowledgeable path towards that change is providing the observation that everyone yelling "lose weight" is completely ignorant as to exactly how that whole thingy works.
They seem ignorant or indifferent to the death toll that currently exists and is growing due to the effort to improve health. I find one article advocating surgery with the quote "Out of the 105,000 patients who underwent bariatric surgery, about 212 of them died in the hospital, at a mortality rate of 0.2 %. So the stats speak for themselves…" When I read something like that, I ponder, by saying that the stats speak for themselves, is that "low" 212 acceptable? How much would the surgeon have to pay you to tell the family that their loved one didn't make it after doing this to be around to play with the kids? This was one "google quick pick" that I found while even attempting to see a death toll brought up. After all, the stats speak for themselves. Why scare anyone from possibly improving their health just cuz a few losers had to die?
By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. Does that mean by knowing 212 people died, I know that many more people will acceptably die as well? Am I wrong for being compassionate about the friends and loved ones of those who died for their health and the health of all those who will be so lucky not to die? Just like size is the last safe prejudice, are the obese the last acceptable human sacrifice to the Gods of thinness and health for all? I used to simply be amused by the persisting question "why not end size discrimination?". Now at this point in our society I fear it is becoming a matter of life or death in more ways than you are being led to believe.
I will honestly say that when our pres was brought in, I shed a tear with the sheer realization that our society just evolved intellectually. We overcame hate in favor of giving all peoples a chance to contribute on such a huge level. If I seem to ever criticize any decisions concerning obesity by our current admin, it's out of concern for humanity, not a political agenda. I will have to say up front that I still have utmost respect for the social evolution responsible for bringing our society into the 21st century. I sincerely appreciate the fact that a historical first like this was (finally) even possible to begin with.
Ok, here is the original drunk blog, wanted to bring in the heavy intellectual, only barely related to obesity thought stuffs before this crazy ranting starts!
OMG I just saw a weird parallel and I'm now seeing a secondary result that is totally fascinating.
OK, everybody knows about all the people who have this strange, weird, extremely hateful way of saying "go kill yourself" when they see a photo of a big chick eating a cheeseburger. It is so disturbing to the average person perusing you tube to come across a big woman eating or jiggling or both, that they usually have some pretty choice hateful words. I wanted to save this phenomenon for a future post at some other time where I attempted to count the "for" and "against" comments, and then save the "go kill yourself" total as an extra special bonus.
OH NO. I watched this clip several, several times in horror as I paid very careful attention to the specific comment by equal rights for all Joy Behar.
I have watched Joy's show on Headline News . I can appreciate her candid talk about this whole outrageous equal rights for all issue going on, and how ridiculous it is in this day and age that some people don't have certain rights that should be enjoyed by all.
I won't criticize, and I'm not trying to be mean. I think Joy is an amazing, professional entertainer. I am a lazy slob myself compared to such a prolific, influential personality. She is probably a future thinker, because she is profoundly affected by the plight of one group who is constantly under attack, and has to fight for several rights that should be self evident.
I would probably pee a little (Whoopi what are those pads called?) if I was ever in the immediate vicinity of such a massive, mega-star. She really makes me love the gays every time she has one of her witty, intelligent, charming, articulate, successful, very well dressed guests come on her show to illustrate the many ways in which certain (sexual) preferences come without a choice and people should not be marginalized because of their preference for a partner.
After saying all of this, I must hope that one day even the likes of super star Joy Behar will come to realize that other people have struggles too (without struggle we would cease to exist). Small people have small lives, and even the woman who seems to be at the center of attention has a profoundly small existence in the big scheme of things..... If you subscribe the theory of moral panic, you might suspect that there seems to be one going on right now under Joy's (very pretty:) little nose.
I know that Joy practices the art of comedy, and she does it very well to be where she is. She is awesome. I would try to be funny until the stuff people started throwing made it's impacts upon my person and the immediate area around me.
In a quantum sense, (rodney dangerfield sense of self degradation), "I would suck so bad at stand-up that people from other realities would be booing me off the stage!" (rim-shot) I don't know, I would get the hook pulling me off, or the dreaded "gong"!
Ok, let's get down to it, I had to kiss a little tail before I had to pull out what I was going to pull out... It blew my mind, because I knew it was accidental in an attempt to be funny in a current political climate where fat people have to be encouraged, nudged, just a tad. I keep pulling out "moral panic" and it's strange that I found out about Mr. Campos' stand on this phenomenon after I had used the wiki link to it in pondering some free writing myself.
Ok, I keep procrastinating! It's rough because this is kind of profound, and all the people within "the community" who are complaining about this woman are not even seeing this one tiny shred of data because they are trapped in "for" or "against" size acceptance. I wish they could see that someone advocating for size acceptance might have done some damage control by pushing that woman aside and really speaking for "the rest of us" in a manner of speaking.
I didn't listen so carefully at first, because I was so "wow" when I saw the photo of the hot fat chick behind the women of the view, of all places! Then I heard it.... Oh crap. "She might as well stand on a ledge and jump, because it's the same suicidal mission she's on, that anyone who is on, wants to kill themselves in my opinion".
Beleive me, I had to listen to that several times to make it out, because I felt a stumble there, right into the point, where she seemed to almost realize what she said and tried to cover it up with the sincere gesture of concern for the woman's health. We all make little comments sometimes for someone's own good right? I think this is why the whole size acceptance movement started. I argue "existence" and this is why.............
I see "go kill yourself" all the time. I know that the women of the view might have gotten some strange, deranged emails at times, so they might see it, they might know about it, who knows. I have been keeping track of the fat hatred going on in comments, that I'm sure is going on in the comments to this story, and in just about any story that features a supersized individual who is not conforming and getting sliced open or shoving a diet drug cocktail into their mouth-hole. The truth is, what this one woman is doing might seem unusual, but I am so very nervous to see what appears to also be going on behind the scenes at the same time.
When Joy said "she might as well stand on a ledge and jump", I know what she meant. If I bad mouth Joy for such a comment I am not the one who is going to carry much weight against such a powerful media entity. The very reason I respect her is the reason I also fear her. He he ah-hem... I see people say "go kill yourself" and it hurts, because I am obese by proxy. These comments are real, this hate is real. I don't think anyone would argue that this clear, blatant hatred actually exists. It reminds me of the hatred for another group of individuals, a group that Joy cares very much about and she constantly brings on her show to make me more accepting of them. Make me less likely to hold their preference for a partner against them. You know what I mean, maybe, who knows?
Ok, then after I tolerate what the other women in the group have to say about (insert Frankenstein voice)"obesity, bad, obesity, health, obesity, bad" Joy comes back with a typically vaudevillian manner and says "that big though, that big?" and then "I've heard of chubby chasers but this is ridiculous". Audience gives a little chuckle, probably by the disappointment of those who thought showing such a huge woman's photo would be a barrel of laughs.
I just had one overwhelming response to this. I do exist. I would "do her". I am one of those "chubby chasers", and yes, THAT BIG.
Please, Joy, please, pretty please, don't deny my right to merely exist. I know it was just a laugh, but hearing someone in the media mimic an almost sickening sentiment by accident saying "stand on a ledge and jump", even in context of a larger statement, and then denying my very existence for a laugh right after was really disappointing and even somewhat hurtful to witness. I thought to myself "that's ridiculous". I'm ridiculous. Correction, I shouldn't exist, maybe because I am obese by proxy I too, should stand on a ledge and jump.
I guess it's crazy at this point to bring up the whole upper paleolithic era when a matriarch of supersized women could have actually ruled the land. Wouldn't the ladies of the view be empowered to imagine women ruling the land, oh, but they were fat women. Maybe it's possible to dismiss any current, modern size preference as rediculous, or deny the existence at all and call it a "fetish".
You know, maybe it's ok for one group of people to have a specific preference, but if there is "size preference" they should be marginalized, and dismissed, and discounted as mentally disturbed individuals who have a deviant sexual behavior that really isn't right. You know, I almost started to forget which physical preference I started talking about! Did you? I mean, it's ok to have a sexual preference, but as long as size doesn't get involved. It's going to be hard to hear Joy say the words "equal rights for all" in the context of just one group of people. Oh wait, that's what hypocrisy is right?
I hope this wasn't disrespectful to point out, I simply have some compulsion to fight for my right to exist. Size hate really is the last acceptable one. All this time I thought it was just a quirk that size hadn't made it's way onto any anti discrimination law. I saw race, religion, sexual preference, all get inclusion into an umbrella intended to protect against hate. I had meant to do a whole post called "why not end size discrimination?" because I thought it was strange that this wasn't something already addressed. I wondered who could possibly be the one saying NO to anyone suggesting any protections of the rights of those of size. I guess people might have thought "those people don't need their rights protected, they need to put down the cheeseburger!". I mean, who would say no to ending any kind of discrimination?
Then I thought that they may have overlooked the severe building of hatred brewing in all these little ugly comments. All the people who say "go kill yourself" in those nasty, ugly comments to any photo that dares to attempt to show a large sized female in a "sexual" context... Man, people used to get pissed when same sex couples kissed on tv. Now that's not ok to criticize. It seems that it's ok to still criticize against one group, but wait, they don't need protection.
All I can say is that this is what you get when you let the status quo go by, thinking that everybody has the same rights, thinking that there is no need to protect people of size from discrimination because it's non-existent. Oh, forget all that talk about size discrimination, that's just hot air. When I saw someone accidentally say "go kill yourself" because it's just habit, because it's just ingrained, because it's just so programmed in there, I get kind of nervous. I think therefore I am. I think I have a right to exist.
I would find that mystifying, attention drawing, nearly irresistible to look at, figure of "hyper femininity" sexy long before I would even recognize any of today's super models as female at all. I do exist. I've heard of chubby chasers that actually find the physical appearance of such a woman to be very feminine and yes, attractive.
Please don't leave me flipping channels and hearing you say that everybody has equal rights except FAT PEOPLE AND THOSE WHO ACTUALLY DO FIND THEM ATTRACTIVE..... Please..... Please...... Please.
On a separate note, I happened to be taking just a few pics of a woman that probably looks enough like this woman while at a buffet style restaurant. I never even knew that this show came on, and this topic had been broached. I was curious as to why, for the first time, a manager saw me taking a few pics and asked "can I help you?". There was a bit of snickering here and there, and some odd looks, but I get used to that when walking around with a woman well over 300lbs and not hiding a single pound of it with big baggy clothes as expected by "the mob".
Upon coming home, I see this story breaking out and I'm like "OMG that manager chick and other employees saw this thing!". I was somehow able to distinguish the attention given at the restaurant as being different this time. I have to wonder if anyone who saw the woman I was taking pics of thought for even a second that this could be her or something. In the past when I would take pics or even shoot video clips out at a place, people just stared in the "as usual" sense that they do every time they see a 300lbs woman for what must be the very first time. Now it's different. I think after this stuff has reached this level, it will always be different.
There are people taking pics or making videos weekly eating a wide variety of stuff, and I am well aware of this because by coincidence I have actually created that kind of content... For all of those people in the sub-culture complaining about being "outed", you were outed every time you went out. People stare. They have to. Obesity is a spectacle, and it's not this woman making it one. Wake up! It's called moral panic, and it's the new money grab baby!
People have to make a choice, and it isn't about "acceptance". There is going to have to eventually be "one camp" that shows solidarity for size existence because that is the only defense to the "but your health" argument. If you go get cut open today, you'll still be fat tomorrow, and yes, a few days after that. No matter what extent people of size go to or don't go to in any effort to change or not change their size is really nobody's business.
If obesity is a "medical" matter, then people need to butt out because no other medical condition causes the general public to deny your right to merely exist. I know people are screaming about obesity, but let one of them scream the actual cure and I'll listen, unless you can "fix" us without killing us in the process, leave us alone.
A note to the producer of the view... Do the research. The whole freaking piece was based on misinformation because the woman claims to be getting up to 1000 as a freaking spiel! Dammit don't be so freaking stupid already! The producer of that show should have at least read the damned article to get the facts straight because the story these women were talking about was wrong! Misinformation, ambiguity, conflict, hypocrisy..... When this whole obesity thing blows over everybody will be on to the next moral panic, the next excuse to spend 400 Million on some other initiative. There's your damned story.
Geez I needed to say "you mad, you mad" to myself! How would they come to that dollar amount proposed for that initiative? By total coincidence the WHO claims to know how many obese people there are in the world. Take a guess! 400 Million! (in 2005) Wow, people just don't get it. I don't think the "left leaning" media conglomerate who owns the show "the view" wants to get it. The discovery of the 400 million coincidence was an accident, but I just pictured a meeting where certain individuals are asking themselves, "geez, how much should we ask for?", and then someone else flipping through the WHO report sees the 400 Million fatties total and says "how about 400 Million?" That should do ya.
There is still the phenomenon of shamanism to consider, so cheap vodka and tropical punch flavor kool aid might have been my last remaining legally available entheogen. The real irony is in the way that the sugar used to make the kool aid might some day be cost prohibitive for the poor like myself. :) Even worse, I must constantly monitor and self prohibit my use of alcohol for fear of becoming an alcoholic.
I did a google for "freudian slip joy behar donna", and this was the second result. I would say "how the hell?", but I suddenly remembered, we're all on the island. Do we need shamen? Do we need Timothy Leary now more than ever? While we are trying to figure out so many things to get the TOE, does it make sense to even be making such an issue of this construct of obesity? I am able to think spiritually on a level that almost seems to supersede any attempt to use religion for a mechanism for control, because my connection to God forces me to recognize certain universal truths, and inspires me to live accordingly on the positive end of the equation.
Before ever having a drink or touching the keyboard, channel flipping destiny brought me to the History channel, where I was intrigued by a show about Miyamoto Musashi and something fascinating about The Book of Five Rings. Wow, trying to do a google to get to a History Channel point of entry relevant to this show brought me to this point, interesting...
The whole point of bringing up the Book of Five Rings was to illustrate something to be said philosophically about "the void". A powerful observation, "In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness." Also important to note, "By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist." Those words sat for around 250 years before somebody thought that the concept was "pretty cool" to say the least. I love the Japanese! Metabo! I was struck at the coincidence in how I have been ranting about some crazy "right to exist" argument that nobody is even disputing, all the while this stuff is supposed to filter down to me as I ponder the persistent and fascinating sensationalism and spectacle of obesity in it's pure form from the "all seeing eye".
The yin and yang of demanding change without clear, safe, proven, definitive, and knowledgeable path towards that change is providing the observation that everyone yelling "lose weight" is completely ignorant as to exactly how that whole thingy works.
They seem ignorant or indifferent to the death toll that currently exists and is growing due to the effort to improve health. I find one article advocating surgery with the quote "Out of the 105,000 patients who underwent bariatric surgery, about 212 of them died in the hospital, at a mortality rate of 0.2 %. So the stats speak for themselves…" When I read something like that, I ponder, by saying that the stats speak for themselves, is that "low" 212 acceptable? How much would the surgeon have to pay you to tell the family that their loved one didn't make it after doing this to be around to play with the kids? This was one "google quick pick" that I found while even attempting to see a death toll brought up. After all, the stats speak for themselves. Why scare anyone from possibly improving their health just cuz a few losers had to die?
By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. Does that mean by knowing 212 people died, I know that many more people will acceptably die as well? Am I wrong for being compassionate about the friends and loved ones of those who died for their health and the health of all those who will be so lucky not to die? Just like size is the last safe prejudice, are the obese the last acceptable human sacrifice to the Gods of thinness and health for all? I used to simply be amused by the persisting question "why not end size discrimination?". Now at this point in our society I fear it is becoming a matter of life or death in more ways than you are being led to believe.
I will honestly say that when our pres was brought in, I shed a tear with the sheer realization that our society just evolved intellectually. We overcame hate in favor of giving all peoples a chance to contribute on such a huge level. If I seem to ever criticize any decisions concerning obesity by our current admin, it's out of concern for humanity, not a political agenda. I will have to say up front that I still have utmost respect for the social evolution responsible for bringing our society into the 21st century. I sincerely appreciate the fact that a historical first like this was (finally) even possible to begin with.
Ok, here is the original drunk blog, wanted to bring in the heavy intellectual, only barely related to obesity thought stuffs before this crazy ranting starts!
OMG I just saw a weird parallel and I'm now seeing a secondary result that is totally fascinating.
OK, everybody knows about all the people who have this strange, weird, extremely hateful way of saying "go kill yourself" when they see a photo of a big chick eating a cheeseburger. It is so disturbing to the average person perusing you tube to come across a big woman eating or jiggling or both, that they usually have some pretty choice hateful words. I wanted to save this phenomenon for a future post at some other time where I attempted to count the "for" and "against" comments, and then save the "go kill yourself" total as an extra special bonus.
OH NO. I watched this clip several, several times in horror as I paid very careful attention to the specific comment by equal rights for all Joy Behar.
I have watched Joy's show on Headline News . I can appreciate her candid talk about this whole outrageous equal rights for all issue going on, and how ridiculous it is in this day and age that some people don't have certain rights that should be enjoyed by all.
I won't criticize, and I'm not trying to be mean. I think Joy is an amazing, professional entertainer. I am a lazy slob myself compared to such a prolific, influential personality. She is probably a future thinker, because she is profoundly affected by the plight of one group who is constantly under attack, and has to fight for several rights that should be self evident.
I would probably pee a little (Whoopi what are those pads called?) if I was ever in the immediate vicinity of such a massive, mega-star. She really makes me love the gays every time she has one of her witty, intelligent, charming, articulate, successful, very well dressed guests come on her show to illustrate the many ways in which certain (sexual) preferences come without a choice and people should not be marginalized because of their preference for a partner.
After saying all of this, I must hope that one day even the likes of super star Joy Behar will come to realize that other people have struggles too (without struggle we would cease to exist). Small people have small lives, and even the woman who seems to be at the center of attention has a profoundly small existence in the big scheme of things..... If you subscribe the theory of moral panic, you might suspect that there seems to be one going on right now under Joy's (very pretty:) little nose.
I know that Joy practices the art of comedy, and she does it very well to be where she is. She is awesome. I would try to be funny until the stuff people started throwing made it's impacts upon my person and the immediate area around me.
In a quantum sense, (rodney dangerfield sense of self degradation), "I would suck so bad at stand-up that people from other realities would be booing me off the stage!" (rim-shot) I don't know, I would get the hook pulling me off, or the dreaded "gong"!
Ok, let's get down to it, I had to kiss a little tail before I had to pull out what I was going to pull out... It blew my mind, because I knew it was accidental in an attempt to be funny in a current political climate where fat people have to be encouraged, nudged, just a tad. I keep pulling out "moral panic" and it's strange that I found out about Mr. Campos' stand on this phenomenon after I had used the wiki link to it in pondering some free writing myself.
Ok, I keep procrastinating! It's rough because this is kind of profound, and all the people within "the community" who are complaining about this woman are not even seeing this one tiny shred of data because they are trapped in "for" or "against" size acceptance. I wish they could see that someone advocating for size acceptance might have done some damage control by pushing that woman aside and really speaking for "the rest of us" in a manner of speaking.
I didn't listen so carefully at first, because I was so "wow" when I saw the photo of the hot fat chick behind the women of the view, of all places! Then I heard it.... Oh crap. "She might as well stand on a ledge and jump, because it's the same suicidal mission she's on, that anyone who is on, wants to kill themselves in my opinion".
Beleive me, I had to listen to that several times to make it out, because I felt a stumble there, right into the point, where she seemed to almost realize what she said and tried to cover it up with the sincere gesture of concern for the woman's health. We all make little comments sometimes for someone's own good right? I think this is why the whole size acceptance movement started. I argue "existence" and this is why.............
I see "go kill yourself" all the time. I know that the women of the view might have gotten some strange, deranged emails at times, so they might see it, they might know about it, who knows. I have been keeping track of the fat hatred going on in comments, that I'm sure is going on in the comments to this story, and in just about any story that features a supersized individual who is not conforming and getting sliced open or shoving a diet drug cocktail into their mouth-hole. The truth is, what this one woman is doing might seem unusual, but I am so very nervous to see what appears to also be going on behind the scenes at the same time.
When Joy said "she might as well stand on a ledge and jump", I know what she meant. If I bad mouth Joy for such a comment I am not the one who is going to carry much weight against such a powerful media entity. The very reason I respect her is the reason I also fear her. He he ah-hem... I see people say "go kill yourself" and it hurts, because I am obese by proxy. These comments are real, this hate is real. I don't think anyone would argue that this clear, blatant hatred actually exists. It reminds me of the hatred for another group of individuals, a group that Joy cares very much about and she constantly brings on her show to make me more accepting of them. Make me less likely to hold their preference for a partner against them. You know what I mean, maybe, who knows?
Ok, then after I tolerate what the other women in the group have to say about (insert Frankenstein voice)"obesity, bad, obesity, health, obesity, bad" Joy comes back with a typically vaudevillian manner and says "that big though, that big?" and then "I've heard of chubby chasers but this is ridiculous". Audience gives a little chuckle, probably by the disappointment of those who thought showing such a huge woman's photo would be a barrel of laughs.
I just had one overwhelming response to this. I do exist. I would "do her". I am one of those "chubby chasers", and yes, THAT BIG.
Please, Joy, please, pretty please, don't deny my right to merely exist. I know it was just a laugh, but hearing someone in the media mimic an almost sickening sentiment by accident saying "stand on a ledge and jump", even in context of a larger statement, and then denying my very existence for a laugh right after was really disappointing and even somewhat hurtful to witness. I thought to myself "that's ridiculous". I'm ridiculous. Correction, I shouldn't exist, maybe because I am obese by proxy I too, should stand on a ledge and jump.
I guess it's crazy at this point to bring up the whole upper paleolithic era when a matriarch of supersized women could have actually ruled the land. Wouldn't the ladies of the view be empowered to imagine women ruling the land, oh, but they were fat women. Maybe it's possible to dismiss any current, modern size preference as rediculous, or deny the existence at all and call it a "fetish".
You know, maybe it's ok for one group of people to have a specific preference, but if there is "size preference" they should be marginalized, and dismissed, and discounted as mentally disturbed individuals who have a deviant sexual behavior that really isn't right. You know, I almost started to forget which physical preference I started talking about! Did you? I mean, it's ok to have a sexual preference, but as long as size doesn't get involved. It's going to be hard to hear Joy say the words "equal rights for all" in the context of just one group of people. Oh wait, that's what hypocrisy is right?
I hope this wasn't disrespectful to point out, I simply have some compulsion to fight for my right to exist. Size hate really is the last acceptable one. All this time I thought it was just a quirk that size hadn't made it's way onto any anti discrimination law. I saw race, religion, sexual preference, all get inclusion into an umbrella intended to protect against hate. I had meant to do a whole post called "why not end size discrimination?" because I thought it was strange that this wasn't something already addressed. I wondered who could possibly be the one saying NO to anyone suggesting any protections of the rights of those of size. I guess people might have thought "those people don't need their rights protected, they need to put down the cheeseburger!". I mean, who would say no to ending any kind of discrimination?
Then I thought that they may have overlooked the severe building of hatred brewing in all these little ugly comments. All the people who say "go kill yourself" in those nasty, ugly comments to any photo that dares to attempt to show a large sized female in a "sexual" context... Man, people used to get pissed when same sex couples kissed on tv. Now that's not ok to criticize. It seems that it's ok to still criticize against one group, but wait, they don't need protection.
All I can say is that this is what you get when you let the status quo go by, thinking that everybody has the same rights, thinking that there is no need to protect people of size from discrimination because it's non-existent. Oh, forget all that talk about size discrimination, that's just hot air. When I saw someone accidentally say "go kill yourself" because it's just habit, because it's just ingrained, because it's just so programmed in there, I get kind of nervous. I think therefore I am. I think I have a right to exist.
I would find that mystifying, attention drawing, nearly irresistible to look at, figure of "hyper femininity" sexy long before I would even recognize any of today's super models as female at all. I do exist. I've heard of chubby chasers that actually find the physical appearance of such a woman to be very feminine and yes, attractive.
Please don't leave me flipping channels and hearing you say that everybody has equal rights except FAT PEOPLE AND THOSE WHO ACTUALLY DO FIND THEM ATTRACTIVE..... Please..... Please...... Please.
On a separate note, I happened to be taking just a few pics of a woman that probably looks enough like this woman while at a buffet style restaurant. I never even knew that this show came on, and this topic had been broached. I was curious as to why, for the first time, a manager saw me taking a few pics and asked "can I help you?". There was a bit of snickering here and there, and some odd looks, but I get used to that when walking around with a woman well over 300lbs and not hiding a single pound of it with big baggy clothes as expected by "the mob".
Upon coming home, I see this story breaking out and I'm like "OMG that manager chick and other employees saw this thing!". I was somehow able to distinguish the attention given at the restaurant as being different this time. I have to wonder if anyone who saw the woman I was taking pics of thought for even a second that this could be her or something. In the past when I would take pics or even shoot video clips out at a place, people just stared in the "as usual" sense that they do every time they see a 300lbs woman for what must be the very first time. Now it's different. I think after this stuff has reached this level, it will always be different.
There are people taking pics or making videos weekly eating a wide variety of stuff, and I am well aware of this because by coincidence I have actually created that kind of content... For all of those people in the sub-culture complaining about being "outed", you were outed every time you went out. People stare. They have to. Obesity is a spectacle, and it's not this woman making it one. Wake up! It's called moral panic, and it's the new money grab baby!
People have to make a choice, and it isn't about "acceptance". There is going to have to eventually be "one camp" that shows solidarity for size existence because that is the only defense to the "but your health" argument. If you go get cut open today, you'll still be fat tomorrow, and yes, a few days after that. No matter what extent people of size go to or don't go to in any effort to change or not change their size is really nobody's business.
If obesity is a "medical" matter, then people need to butt out because no other medical condition causes the general public to deny your right to merely exist. I know people are screaming about obesity, but let one of them scream the actual cure and I'll listen, unless you can "fix" us without killing us in the process, leave us alone.
A note to the producer of the view... Do the research. The whole freaking piece was based on misinformation because the woman claims to be getting up to 1000 as a freaking spiel! Dammit don't be so freaking stupid already! The producer of that show should have at least read the damned article to get the facts straight because the story these women were talking about was wrong! Misinformation, ambiguity, conflict, hypocrisy..... When this whole obesity thing blows over everybody will be on to the next moral panic, the next excuse to spend 400 Million on some other initiative. There's your damned story.
Geez I needed to say "you mad, you mad" to myself! How would they come to that dollar amount proposed for that initiative? By total coincidence the WHO claims to know how many obese people there are in the world. Take a guess! 400 Million! (in 2005) Wow, people just don't get it. I don't think the "left leaning" media conglomerate who owns the show "the view" wants to get it. The discovery of the 400 million coincidence was an accident, but I just pictured a meeting where certain individuals are asking themselves, "geez, how much should we ask for?", and then someone else flipping through the WHO report sees the 400 Million fatties total and says "how about 400 Million?" That should do ya.
Monday, March 15, 2010
don't worry, be happy
After all this deep thinking, I had to wonder what the use would be to any of my ramblings without an ability to think deeper and comprehend any of it.
One exercise that I came up with that could potentially bring some positive light into the daily grind occurred suddenly to me without warning, so I wanted to share it here.
First, a quote that I couldn't find immediately, "without struggle we would cease to exist". When I uttered that sentiment to another individual, the first thing that came to mind for them was the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". Within the context of that story, an individual was given the opportunity to see how things would be different if they didn't exist. This storyline has been duplicated potentially thousands of times in modern fiction, and even though humanity is entertained by the thought, they would never allow themselves to imagine the mechanism in place behind that very phenomenon! Another quote, "our existence is so relevant in this reality, that even our non-existence affects another version of reality because of the way in which it would be different".
The point of the exercise would simply be to think about the statement "I think, therefore I am". I started to think deeper now that I am older, and now that I have started to lose loved ones due to the phenomenon of our mortality. I have been made aware, on more than one occasion, that we are lucky to even be thinking and breathing at all.
A theme of a television show on spike called "1000 ways to die" is a reminder of just how the term "freak accident" can be the way in which destiny and fate conspire to enact an individual's immediate termination from this reality. In the opening of the show, the monologue says "The human body is remarkably resilient... Every day we fight a new WAR against GERMS, TOXINS, INJURY, ILLNESS, and CATASTROPHE The fact that we survive at all is a miracle... Because, every day we live...We face 1000 WAYS TO DIE."
This show provides an opportunity to disturb the equilibrium that is brought about by a failure to acknowledge one's own mortality. A quote that I thought about was "equilibrium is obtained by assuming immortality". In a way, people are being reminded of their mortality constantly now, and without the ability to appreciate life in the moment, some people are only left with the staggering reminder that they will one day no longer exist. If one can appreciate the mere degree to which they are important to this reality, maybe they would have some additional social compatibility tool to work with.
The fact that we are here, participating as random integers in a giant equation that can only be completed because we are, or once existed, is a pretty magical phenomenon to imagine. Not only do we exist as individuals, but we also exist as a social being as well, the most visible representation of "intelligence" on this planet. One can begin to appreciate one's mere existence more when one is reminded that they are meant to be here as part of the human struggle, and no matter what any one individual says, in no way can any one human's existence be "unacceptable" or "incorrect".
Maybe one mental exercise that I can contribute to the size acceptance movement in general is to give people more individual inspiration by assuring the individual of how important they are to the humanity equation on the whole. Size is a way in which we were meant to be different. It's not a "genetic flaw", but a programmed instruction to create variation in an effort to insure survival of our entire race.
When someone says, "fatty", having the ability to think above the individual self gives empowerment. It gives the individual the ability to realize that someone who is vocally attacking another individual based on "size" is just as likely to have the same response to a different race, or to a different religion, or to a different political opinion, or to a different financial strategy, different age group, ect, ect. This, in turn, gives the person being attacked the upper hand without a word spoken, because there is the ability to wonder which category of hate the other individual falls into. Hmmm.
Formerly fat? This group can be quite obnoxious. They are the cheerleaders on the sidelines, sure that if "they can do it you can do it". Usually they are being paid by someone to spout their opinions and sell the product they are being paid to sell (carnie wilson), but there are times when they choose to lead a crusade against the "excuse makers" of fatness. The irony and kharma to that situation is the way in which the formerly fat nearly always end up "re-fatting" no matter how much they brag about how long it's been or how "long term" their strategy is opposed to "whatever you were doing wrong".
They are the most cruel, because they know how difficult the struggle is, but they strive to "make it look easy" to all the skinnies out there, further giving those individuals the impression that everybody could do it if they just really wanted to. Even though they came from and will inevitably return to fatness, they seem to be the biggest enemy to size existence. "They'll be back, but will be silent".
Fat and Cut? This is the group who are also cheerleaders, because they have made a really radical, serious, life threatening decision to "go all in" and have the stomach amputation. They have participated in body modification for the sake of behavior modification. These people are determined to walk away from fatness and never look back. They would have you believe that as long as they show their scars and talk endlessly about what they have done, they will gain the respect from the skinnies because they have made the supreme sacrifice. When someone says "you should go get surgery", they can be empowered by the fact that even though it did not really work, they still went the distance to prove that they were willing to comply, even though they still cannot comply with the new size limit on our culture.
The size acceptance advocate? Are they attacking anyone? I mean, they are occasionally guilty of minimizing the struggles of the "barely fat" because there is no way for the plump to really understand the struggle of the morbidly obese. The irony is in the fact that the plumpers are treated worse because they are "so close" to avoiding fatness. Because people have the impression that small amounts of weight or easy to lose, they automatically assume that when someone is just a little bit overweight, there should be no struggle in losing enough to fit in. The tragedy is in the fact that the barely obese are this way because for whatever reason (natural selection), they were just meant to be "a little bigger" than "average". I will bring in something I think is relevant, because I want to show that people who are embedded a little too deeply in the size acceptance movement can be blinded to what the general public thinks of their "struggle".
I happened to catch the episode originally aired December 9, 2009, episode 14. "Death #:451 Event Name: Ass Phyxiated TOD: April 6, 2005 Location: Omaha, Nebraska Premise: A traveling salesman meets an obese woman and has sex with her. She passes out on top of the man after climaxing and suffocates him." There was a link to the dimensions forum talking about it, and deep within all of that I found the actress name is Angelina Duplisea. When I viewed this segment, I was immediately curious about if a television producer would choose an "actual size" female, or go with the ridiculous and in my opinion more insulting "fat suit". Upon seeing one shot, I could immediately distinguish a genuine, real shape of a lovely plus sized female, and my first thought was positive. In a sub-culture that is more size sensitive than any of us could ever know, the mere use of an "actual size" actress is very very significant.
All of my life, I have been witness to media that attempts to make us believe that someone on the screen is "larger than they appear". I have always wondered why there was a tendency, except in rare occasions, where talent and physicality became integrated. Without the fat experience, there may not have been the realization or eventual development of said talent. It is impressive to me that any producer would realize and actually take advantage of the physical spectacle of obesity, simply because it exists and is quite effective at drawing attention for some reason. It is part of the mystery, mysticism, and magic of obesity itself.
When someone says "such a pretty face", I am already aware that said face would not have the identical structure if the individual in possession of said face was not, in fact, fat.
I brought up that actresses name because if she googles it again, I would prefer that she see at least one other opinion in the "positive" column who can identify and appreciate her as a "future thinker". I saw a plus sized woman make the comment "I don't get why fat girls appear/perform/participate in videos or films that depict them in such negative ways." Most of the male opinion agreed that the whole pretense was kind of campy, sensationalized, but "the chick is hot".
The woman who is disappointed in this kind of imagery is so trapped as the size acceptance observer, that she fails to realize that the use of an "actual size" actress is a step in the direction of acknowledging that fat people are here to stay and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. Again, "fat people exist therefore they have a right to exist".
The actress pointed out "I find it funny, however, to see the majority of men that appreciate my work, while women(generally) have comments that are like, 'oh how can she do that?'...I read in one forum how some woman thought I was 'sloppy', because of some imagined stain on my dress(there was none, she was just projecting)
Fortunately, I have an answer for why and how I can do this. I like myself. I am overweight and while I'd change it if I could, it is what it is now. If I can get (legit, non porn)work as an actress, I will take it. So just expect to see me on TV, in magazines/galleries or in movies more often. M'kay?" When looking through a forum like that, and seeing the massive difference in opinion going just from male to female, can you imagine the infinite probability of opinion by "the skinnies"???
I can appreciate what she had to say, because she will continue "despite" the protesting females of "the size acceptance movement" and she will continue to take legit work whenever she can get it. By being "out there" with her great look, she really is promoting "size beauty" while promoting "size existence" and "actual size" actor and actress selection as well!
Anyone so trapped in the size acceptance mode of observation could only discourage this kind of activity because of a failure to realize that the world doesn't have the same perspective that they do. The world needs to be shown that obesity is here and the obese have a right to exist because they do exist and they will exist (from alpha to the omega). To start arguing about "what is" and "what isn't" size acceptance illustrates one of the most complex, interesting, and enigmatic inner conflicts within size acceptance itself.
Wow! Went off on a rant there. It's all connected though. Appreciation of life, a tv show, a fatty on a tv show, response to that fatty, that response filtering down to me, it's all connected.
The skinnies? This category is so massive and complex! If only the fatties could begin to imagine how many things are going on in the skinnies minds! Maybe they could be empowered to the point of laughing at the name calling jerk instead of crying or creating an organization with the intention of "making it stop" or both.
I, myself, am part of the skinnies group. While I appear smaller in comparison to my preferred partner, I exist in a paradox where my mere choice of a larger partner makes me obese by proxy. I recognize in my own personal experience the tendency for the skinny male admirer to be marginalized by the size acceptance movement. It is totally understandable that the skinny guy has no idea of what it's like to exist as the morbidly obese female. In that respect it is expected that the role of the admirer is not going to carry the same weight in any size acceptance argument because of the lack of perspective.
When I examine the attitudes towards the big actress, I can almost relate to a bubbling sense of resentment and a need to have a voice in the attempt to create conflict with a figure that is significant in the role of size existence. I must refrain from going too deep here because "size acceptance vs size existence" is another subject entirely.
The skinnies are comprised of such diversity, yet there is still finite categorizations. When looking at the whole obesity struggle from a bigger perspective, it's easy to see all of the various negative influences at work. The skinnies have been programmed since the '60 by the invention of an image put forth by what almost appears to be the fashion industry itself.
The original starting concept of thinning the venus was to explore the connection between how sub-conscious concerns about over population might have contributed to the direction of the fashion industry. The fact that heterosexuals did not fully accept homosexuals did not stop heteros from handing over control over what is considered beautiful by our culture. If you were to read thinning the venus, it is apparent that inspiration took over and I went into completely different territory!
It is my hope that it is not inflammatory to suggest that heteros participated in reproductive sabotage by sending out a finite acceptable definition of beauty, but the fact that most male fashion designers seem kind of effeminate has surely been noticed by others than myself. :) While we still struggle over basic human rights of homosexuals, it is clear that somewhere along the line society and culture entrusted them in letting the straights know what we should all find attractive and the physical standards by which we should all strive to attain. This is simply an observation of coincidence, not a protest or an angry rant about the state of affairs and another excuse to dislike another social group.
The point of all that is that the skinnies are looking at all kinds of stuff. If you weren't fat, you might be bald, you might be short, you might be too tall, you might have big feet, or "tiny hands", or you might have messed up teeth, or big ears, or no muscles, or too much muscle, or lack of charisma, or out of style dress, or quirky personality, or have a big nose, or be cross-eyed, or walk funny, or be too smart, or be stupid, or be too greedy, or gullible, or overly optimistic, or overly pessimistic, or the wrong religion, or the wrong political belief. It's wrong to discriminate, except... It's a status of the human condition that should start opening people's eyes to the fact that "without struggle, we would cease to exist".
An observer stuck in the position of being obese would find it very difficult to sympathize, understand, or care about the position that a skinny takes on obesity. It is vitally important though, to be empowered, to understand that someone yelling "fatty" is a lot better than someone having permission to shoot the obese on sight. There is a scary line between the right to exist and anticipation of non-existence.
Mr. Campos has a very important message that people refuse to see because they are so caught up with trying to wrap their minds around the truth and really "understand". It took a lawyer, trained in the arts of perception and manipulation of perception, to even attempt to point out the severity of what's going on and the negative potential in the future if allowed un-checked. In a time when money is tight, he recognizes the way in which a party in power might arrange the facts in such a way to generate revenue through legislation. By constantly adjusting the criteria of obesity, it takes a big thinker to imagine that the obesity epidemic is created by changing the rules so that more people are considered obese, thus becoming a marker for the phenomenon of moral panic that he is able to recognize from his perspective.
The skinnies come from all points of origin and have had all different manner of perception "installed within them" from their upbringing. The many various differing levels of intolerance towards obesity is undisputed, the real issue is in the way that intolerance is something our race has been attempting to do away with for over a hundred years, but fails to see when it's right under their nose, being practiced by "themselves".
I look forward to the report coming out from the skinnies that holds the secret to how to fix this "issue". While I maintain that "eat less do more" is simple logic that has been ignored by nearly half the population, my only fear is that known inadequate methods of weight loss are promoted, or given away in such a way that further encourages the "shrink'em or kill'em" path.
This started out as a thinking exercise, but maybe I hope to reach the other "future thinkers" that will be compelled, like myself, to say "something" in the hopes that others are inspired simply to think deeper, think smarter, hate less. When exposed to hate, now my first reaction is almost sympathy. I pity those who experience the perspective of a single emotion embedded in negativity. For those are the individuals who are truly ignorant to the magic of the gift of life itself.
One exercise that I came up with that could potentially bring some positive light into the daily grind occurred suddenly to me without warning, so I wanted to share it here.
First, a quote that I couldn't find immediately, "without struggle we would cease to exist". When I uttered that sentiment to another individual, the first thing that came to mind for them was the movie "It's a Wonderful Life". Within the context of that story, an individual was given the opportunity to see how things would be different if they didn't exist. This storyline has been duplicated potentially thousands of times in modern fiction, and even though humanity is entertained by the thought, they would never allow themselves to imagine the mechanism in place behind that very phenomenon! Another quote, "our existence is so relevant in this reality, that even our non-existence affects another version of reality because of the way in which it would be different".
The point of the exercise would simply be to think about the statement "I think, therefore I am". I started to think deeper now that I am older, and now that I have started to lose loved ones due to the phenomenon of our mortality. I have been made aware, on more than one occasion, that we are lucky to even be thinking and breathing at all.
A theme of a television show on spike called "1000 ways to die" is a reminder of just how the term "freak accident" can be the way in which destiny and fate conspire to enact an individual's immediate termination from this reality. In the opening of the show, the monologue says "The human body is remarkably resilient... Every day we fight a new WAR against GERMS, TOXINS, INJURY, ILLNESS, and CATASTROPHE The fact that we survive at all is a miracle... Because, every day we live...We face 1000 WAYS TO DIE."
This show provides an opportunity to disturb the equilibrium that is brought about by a failure to acknowledge one's own mortality. A quote that I thought about was "equilibrium is obtained by assuming immortality". In a way, people are being reminded of their mortality constantly now, and without the ability to appreciate life in the moment, some people are only left with the staggering reminder that they will one day no longer exist. If one can appreciate the mere degree to which they are important to this reality, maybe they would have some additional social compatibility tool to work with.
The fact that we are here, participating as random integers in a giant equation that can only be completed because we are, or once existed, is a pretty magical phenomenon to imagine. Not only do we exist as individuals, but we also exist as a social being as well, the most visible representation of "intelligence" on this planet. One can begin to appreciate one's mere existence more when one is reminded that they are meant to be here as part of the human struggle, and no matter what any one individual says, in no way can any one human's existence be "unacceptable" or "incorrect".
Maybe one mental exercise that I can contribute to the size acceptance movement in general is to give people more individual inspiration by assuring the individual of how important they are to the humanity equation on the whole. Size is a way in which we were meant to be different. It's not a "genetic flaw", but a programmed instruction to create variation in an effort to insure survival of our entire race.
When someone says, "fatty", having the ability to think above the individual self gives empowerment. It gives the individual the ability to realize that someone who is vocally attacking another individual based on "size" is just as likely to have the same response to a different race, or to a different religion, or to a different political opinion, or to a different financial strategy, different age group, ect, ect. This, in turn, gives the person being attacked the upper hand without a word spoken, because there is the ability to wonder which category of hate the other individual falls into. Hmmm.
Formerly fat? This group can be quite obnoxious. They are the cheerleaders on the sidelines, sure that if "they can do it you can do it". Usually they are being paid by someone to spout their opinions and sell the product they are being paid to sell (carnie wilson), but there are times when they choose to lead a crusade against the "excuse makers" of fatness. The irony and kharma to that situation is the way in which the formerly fat nearly always end up "re-fatting" no matter how much they brag about how long it's been or how "long term" their strategy is opposed to "whatever you were doing wrong".
They are the most cruel, because they know how difficult the struggle is, but they strive to "make it look easy" to all the skinnies out there, further giving those individuals the impression that everybody could do it if they just really wanted to. Even though they came from and will inevitably return to fatness, they seem to be the biggest enemy to size existence. "They'll be back, but will be silent".
Fat and Cut? This is the group who are also cheerleaders, because they have made a really radical, serious, life threatening decision to "go all in" and have the stomach amputation. They have participated in body modification for the sake of behavior modification. These people are determined to walk away from fatness and never look back. They would have you believe that as long as they show their scars and talk endlessly about what they have done, they will gain the respect from the skinnies because they have made the supreme sacrifice. When someone says "you should go get surgery", they can be empowered by the fact that even though it did not really work, they still went the distance to prove that they were willing to comply, even though they still cannot comply with the new size limit on our culture.
The size acceptance advocate? Are they attacking anyone? I mean, they are occasionally guilty of minimizing the struggles of the "barely fat" because there is no way for the plump to really understand the struggle of the morbidly obese. The irony is in the fact that the plumpers are treated worse because they are "so close" to avoiding fatness. Because people have the impression that small amounts of weight or easy to lose, they automatically assume that when someone is just a little bit overweight, there should be no struggle in losing enough to fit in. The tragedy is in the fact that the barely obese are this way because for whatever reason (natural selection), they were just meant to be "a little bigger" than "average". I will bring in something I think is relevant, because I want to show that people who are embedded a little too deeply in the size acceptance movement can be blinded to what the general public thinks of their "struggle".
I happened to catch the episode originally aired December 9, 2009, episode 14. "Death #:451 Event Name: Ass Phyxiated TOD: April 6, 2005 Location: Omaha, Nebraska Premise: A traveling salesman meets an obese woman and has sex with her. She passes out on top of the man after climaxing and suffocates him." There was a link to the dimensions forum talking about it, and deep within all of that I found the actress name is Angelina Duplisea. When I viewed this segment, I was immediately curious about if a television producer would choose an "actual size" female, or go with the ridiculous and in my opinion more insulting "fat suit". Upon seeing one shot, I could immediately distinguish a genuine, real shape of a lovely plus sized female, and my first thought was positive. In a sub-culture that is more size sensitive than any of us could ever know, the mere use of an "actual size" actress is very very significant.
All of my life, I have been witness to media that attempts to make us believe that someone on the screen is "larger than they appear". I have always wondered why there was a tendency, except in rare occasions, where talent and physicality became integrated. Without the fat experience, there may not have been the realization or eventual development of said talent. It is impressive to me that any producer would realize and actually take advantage of the physical spectacle of obesity, simply because it exists and is quite effective at drawing attention for some reason. It is part of the mystery, mysticism, and magic of obesity itself.
When someone says "such a pretty face", I am already aware that said face would not have the identical structure if the individual in possession of said face was not, in fact, fat.
I brought up that actresses name because if she googles it again, I would prefer that she see at least one other opinion in the "positive" column who can identify and appreciate her as a "future thinker". I saw a plus sized woman make the comment "I don't get why fat girls appear/perform/participate in videos or films that depict them in such negative ways." Most of the male opinion agreed that the whole pretense was kind of campy, sensationalized, but "the chick is hot".
The woman who is disappointed in this kind of imagery is so trapped as the size acceptance observer, that she fails to realize that the use of an "actual size" actress is a step in the direction of acknowledging that fat people are here to stay and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. Again, "fat people exist therefore they have a right to exist".
The actress pointed out "I find it funny, however, to see the majority of men that appreciate my work, while women(generally) have comments that are like, 'oh how can she do that?'...I read in one forum how some woman thought I was 'sloppy', because of some imagined stain on my dress(there was none, she was just projecting)
Fortunately, I have an answer for why and how I can do this. I like myself. I am overweight and while I'd change it if I could, it is what it is now. If I can get (legit, non porn)work as an actress, I will take it. So just expect to see me on TV, in magazines/galleries or in movies more often. M'kay?" When looking through a forum like that, and seeing the massive difference in opinion going just from male to female, can you imagine the infinite probability of opinion by "the skinnies"???
I can appreciate what she had to say, because she will continue "despite" the protesting females of "the size acceptance movement" and she will continue to take legit work whenever she can get it. By being "out there" with her great look, she really is promoting "size beauty" while promoting "size existence" and "actual size" actor and actress selection as well!
Anyone so trapped in the size acceptance mode of observation could only discourage this kind of activity because of a failure to realize that the world doesn't have the same perspective that they do. The world needs to be shown that obesity is here and the obese have a right to exist because they do exist and they will exist (from alpha to the omega). To start arguing about "what is" and "what isn't" size acceptance illustrates one of the most complex, interesting, and enigmatic inner conflicts within size acceptance itself.
Wow! Went off on a rant there. It's all connected though. Appreciation of life, a tv show, a fatty on a tv show, response to that fatty, that response filtering down to me, it's all connected.
The skinnies? This category is so massive and complex! If only the fatties could begin to imagine how many things are going on in the skinnies minds! Maybe they could be empowered to the point of laughing at the name calling jerk instead of crying or creating an organization with the intention of "making it stop" or both.
I, myself, am part of the skinnies group. While I appear smaller in comparison to my preferred partner, I exist in a paradox where my mere choice of a larger partner makes me obese by proxy. I recognize in my own personal experience the tendency for the skinny male admirer to be marginalized by the size acceptance movement. It is totally understandable that the skinny guy has no idea of what it's like to exist as the morbidly obese female. In that respect it is expected that the role of the admirer is not going to carry the same weight in any size acceptance argument because of the lack of perspective.
When I examine the attitudes towards the big actress, I can almost relate to a bubbling sense of resentment and a need to have a voice in the attempt to create conflict with a figure that is significant in the role of size existence. I must refrain from going too deep here because "size acceptance vs size existence" is another subject entirely.
The skinnies are comprised of such diversity, yet there is still finite categorizations. When looking at the whole obesity struggle from a bigger perspective, it's easy to see all of the various negative influences at work. The skinnies have been programmed since the '60 by the invention of an image put forth by what almost appears to be the fashion industry itself.
The original starting concept of thinning the venus was to explore the connection between how sub-conscious concerns about over population might have contributed to the direction of the fashion industry. The fact that heterosexuals did not fully accept homosexuals did not stop heteros from handing over control over what is considered beautiful by our culture. If you were to read thinning the venus, it is apparent that inspiration took over and I went into completely different territory!
It is my hope that it is not inflammatory to suggest that heteros participated in reproductive sabotage by sending out a finite acceptable definition of beauty, but the fact that most male fashion designers seem kind of effeminate has surely been noticed by others than myself. :) While we still struggle over basic human rights of homosexuals, it is clear that somewhere along the line society and culture entrusted them in letting the straights know what we should all find attractive and the physical standards by which we should all strive to attain. This is simply an observation of coincidence, not a protest or an angry rant about the state of affairs and another excuse to dislike another social group.
The point of all that is that the skinnies are looking at all kinds of stuff. If you weren't fat, you might be bald, you might be short, you might be too tall, you might have big feet, or "tiny hands", or you might have messed up teeth, or big ears, or no muscles, or too much muscle, or lack of charisma, or out of style dress, or quirky personality, or have a big nose, or be cross-eyed, or walk funny, or be too smart, or be stupid, or be too greedy, or gullible, or overly optimistic, or overly pessimistic, or the wrong religion, or the wrong political belief. It's wrong to discriminate, except... It's a status of the human condition that should start opening people's eyes to the fact that "without struggle, we would cease to exist".
An observer stuck in the position of being obese would find it very difficult to sympathize, understand, or care about the position that a skinny takes on obesity. It is vitally important though, to be empowered, to understand that someone yelling "fatty" is a lot better than someone having permission to shoot the obese on sight. There is a scary line between the right to exist and anticipation of non-existence.
Mr. Campos has a very important message that people refuse to see because they are so caught up with trying to wrap their minds around the truth and really "understand". It took a lawyer, trained in the arts of perception and manipulation of perception, to even attempt to point out the severity of what's going on and the negative potential in the future if allowed un-checked. In a time when money is tight, he recognizes the way in which a party in power might arrange the facts in such a way to generate revenue through legislation. By constantly adjusting the criteria of obesity, it takes a big thinker to imagine that the obesity epidemic is created by changing the rules so that more people are considered obese, thus becoming a marker for the phenomenon of moral panic that he is able to recognize from his perspective.
The skinnies come from all points of origin and have had all different manner of perception "installed within them" from their upbringing. The many various differing levels of intolerance towards obesity is undisputed, the real issue is in the way that intolerance is something our race has been attempting to do away with for over a hundred years, but fails to see when it's right under their nose, being practiced by "themselves".
I look forward to the report coming out from the skinnies that holds the secret to how to fix this "issue". While I maintain that "eat less do more" is simple logic that has been ignored by nearly half the population, my only fear is that known inadequate methods of weight loss are promoted, or given away in such a way that further encourages the "shrink'em or kill'em" path.
This started out as a thinking exercise, but maybe I hope to reach the other "future thinkers" that will be compelled, like myself, to say "something" in the hopes that others are inspired simply to think deeper, think smarter, hate less. When exposed to hate, now my first reaction is almost sympathy. I pity those who experience the perspective of a single emotion embedded in negativity. For those are the individuals who are truly ignorant to the magic of the gift of life itself.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
thinning the venus
After practically free writing the quantum obesity post, there is a realization that I should clarify my writing as theoretical and philosophical rather than giving the impression that even I believe that my opinions are "correct". In simply using the word correct, I must also point out that even I realize in a system of infinite possibilities all needing different outcomes, there may not be such a thing as "correct" at all.
It has been pointed out to me by my "idea reflector" that some of my musings and conversation can sometimes appear to be that coming from an individual who suffers from the modern afflictions of intolerance and bigotry. I have to point out the way in which I can only try to understand another individual's opinion by first trying to see with the individual's perception itself. Because of this, I have to point out "early" (lol) in this blog's development that my opinions are just that, opinions.
I am self-taught in the age of instant information retrieval, so I do not hold any single degree (just computer certification), but instead, I study new information from as many available outside individual perceptions as possible (balance is difficult to find at times). There are some times when I might ponder a possibility that seems irrational, nonsensical, fantastical, bigoted, racist, sexist, ageist, or even "revolutionary". My writing is the act of sharing this perception, not acting upon it. I maintain that I remain "neutral" and for whatever reason, I am compelled to share "what I know" (or what I think I know) because I believe that the more individuals who ponder the theory of everything, the higher the probability of actually figuring it out some day, probably just after my lifetime has ended! :(
In a reality where it is even merely a possibility that we already hold the knowledge of enlightenment within us, it is almost disappointing to exist in a time before that knowledge has been shared. Simultaneously, someone(s) had to exist in the time-line where we had to be ignorant to the truth in order to discover it in the way that we (eventually) do.
Whew! When talking about the thinning of the venus with another individual, it was immediately assumed that I would offend a group or multiple specific groups of individuals because I was making overly broad generalizations. By basing some opinions on mere stereotype without extensive research in an area, I am guilty of ambiguity myself!
I will say that it is simply inevitable that I will occasionally tip-toe into subjects such as race or sexual orientation, because those things are directly connected to size preference and orientation. Rather than being stuck in the position of the size acceptance advocate, I can look at the phenomenon of size, and isolate it within the big picture.
I believe that others are fully capable of this and, in fact, already have started to apply obesity to everything in the context of obesity's relevance to "everything". If I look at an article that complains about people who complain about the anti-obesity initiative, this guy is complaining just to complain because he's pointing out that nobody significant is complaining! (roflmao)
That's all left vs right, red vs blue stuff that I am entertained by rather than attempting to participate in! :0 As smart as this guy is, he is still trapped within "the left" because he refuses to see the "future potentiometer" that bringing any government into your kitchen creates.
It is "ludicrous" (that word's been here before:) to attack the anti-obesity task force philosophy and link it with a "nanny state" because, honestly, that makes too much sense. The "right" should never be allowed to give such an opinion while supporting "smaller government" by pointing out how how many individuals have been contracted by said government at a cost that is not mentioned within that article, but brought up here.
Wow! Red vs Blue is big business!
I have to point out that simply observing what's going on from the perspective of "tax-payer" is massively different from seeing what's going on from the perspective of "size acceptance activist". When I start at one blog that complains about another blog, I am forced to use google to even attempt to be enlightened about the cost of this government initiative. In both fighting blogs nobody says anything about cost, which I find ironic simply because of the state of the economy we are in "in the present, in this reality".
Obesity perspective is probably a lot differently from the point of view of anyone currently making a six-digit salary from the insurance industry. It's also different from the perspective of the individual working for the food lobby. It's different from the perspective of the mother who just caught her teen daughter inducing vomiting after a meal for the first time. It's different from the perspective of the doctor, of the health researcher, of the very entity (a presidential taskforce made up of four Cabinet-level secretaries as well as the director of the OMB and several senior White House policy staffers) that has been charged with the task of creating "a report due to the president in 90 days with recommendations on how to solve the obesity issue".
Wow! 90 days to figure out a 35,000 year old problem! No wonder somebody might complain about how much this is costing!
Looking back, it's easy to recognize how irrelevant the first two articles really are when you get down to the "nitty-gritty". The first two articles really are not irrelevant though, because I was compelled to dig where they did not want to go in order to be enlightened to the much larger, ominous problem.
How can one begin to work out the problem of obesity if there are so many arguments going on between left vs right that any "solution" will be tainted, and therefore have a negative affect on the future potential outcome?
By merely suggesting a tax on any type of food, it is suggested that hunger is not an issue, the economy is not an issue, that it is acceptable to make bad foods higher in cost to match good foods instead of making good foods lower in cost to match bad foods (which is so crazy it could actually work so it's probably far left or right). Carrot vs. stick, at the cost of the entire farming industry as we know it? Financial incentive works, but making trash as expensive as good food instead of making good food as inexpensive as trash is almost inhumane.
Making bad food costlier makes more hunger (potential for poverty induced starvation, different from famine), making good food cheaper makes more healthier, less dreaded "obesity". Except, of course, for those who somehow choose to make an obese spectacle of themselves out of respect to the upper paleolithic hold-backs like myself who are visually stimulated by them! (explanation for the "fat lady" phenomenon?) :)
BTW let's see how quickly this would be deleted! :)
Sometimes observation provides inspiration, which leads to enlightenment. When attempting to see a complex subject from any one perspective, the nagging constant of status quo and the reality of our race's response to the industrial revolution is quite a quandary indeed! It has long been this writer's hope that at some point, the struggle with obesity will be resolved along with the struggle of everything. There is a very distinct possibility that it might be necessary to fix other things before any kind of solution based in this reality will ever have any affect.
I have already suggested that obesity is a mere side affect of a much larger and harder to solve dilemma. It's ironic in our present reality of "disaster preparedness" we do not recognize how dangerous it is to even toy with the idea of making food more expensive during a bad economy, or using the annual cost of any one health problem as an excuse to eliminate (pessimistic) or reduce (optimistic) a specific group from our population. While one side (size acceptance) is fighting an argument it can't win, the other side (anti-obesity) is making huge, expensive, potentially societal punishing decisions based on partial knowledge with a willingness to make these decisions based upon acceptance of the unknown!
What alarms this author is the way in which it is so obvious that certain entities need money and they are willing to use inaccurate information as an excuse to squeeze more money (we all know you want it) out of every one of us. The additional costs of obesity are nothing compared to rampant spending, big irony in how much is being spent to solve the problem that is costing so much! The costs of obesity that are being fed to the public have been altered to suit an obvious money grabbing agenda. It's hard to stay on track of simple size acceptance when one starts to figure out the larger issue. It's tragic that the obese are so obviously marginalized and ignored, even within the very argument that they are the cause of.
If the medical industry was truly concerned with the welfare of the obese individual, why are so many doctor's offices scales limited to 400lbs or less? Why aren't most health clinics equipped with blood pressure cuffs designed to fit an arm over 17 inches? If a majority of our population has been "predicted obese" by a certain date, then shouldn't more efforts be made to match this eventual need while trying to correct the problem? Are we so confident that obesity will be figured out by a certain time that we don't need to accommodate the obese, or does our society fail to accommodate the obese because of a refusal to acknowledge that they exist and will continue to exist? By simply observing the anti-obesity sentiment in our current society, is it "ludicrous" to imagine that some day people will be shoved onto a train to be brought to "the (fat) camps"? Why would they be willing to go? Why would anyone be willing to go? What if you were made to want to go? I grew up in a society that made sure to enlighten me about a certain behavior that could lead to sociological catastrophe. I sometimes have to ask myself as a present day obesity observer if such strong harsh language and obvious mistreatment is a marker for even the tiniest probability of such a historical repeat.
Instead of merely complaining about fat prejudice and attempting to force an unrealistic (and socially unacceptable) acceptance argument, I am compelled to express my fear and insecurity. I exist in the paradox where it is wrong to discriminate, except...
This causes all of those anti-discrimination messages to become instantly tainted with hypocrisy and the realization of an obvious system of unfair preferential treatment. The paradox of obesity mirrors the paradox of religion in the way that homosexuals have "equal rights" as individuals to express their sexual preference, but religious institutions already have a definition of a term that trumps any attempt to "amend" that definition. Obesity is related simply because the obese are the last safe prejudice. The modern day struggle of the obese makes me ponder how the authors of our constitution were thinking so ahead of time and outside of their own experience, they wrote that all men are created equal at a time when they owned other people.
Omg I skimmed the article I just referenced because of it's google rank in "last safe prejudice" and low and behold, "Because this is a feminist issue, NOW should take a public stance against size discrimination. An anti-size discrimination resolution, first passed by California NOW at our 1988 Conference, will be considered at the 1990 National NOW Conference in San Francisco." I was laughing with an associate about how some members in this very group might be tempted to water board me if they were able to access my total collective of work! lol It's unfair for me to assign a stereotype to feminists, because on some level of the multiverse, I am a feminist. (take a deep breath and a deep thought simultaneously:).
I could have just as easily looked further through the results to find this article by PBS, which I appreciate the mere existence of in itself as a broadcast medium of excellence surrounded by mediocrity.
Thinking exercise! Take a few deep breaths and ponder this!
Upon doing one of my first of many google searches, I was reminded that it is Pi Day as well. In the definition of Pi I find a relevance to humanity in itself. "Pi is an irrational and transcendental number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating." Not any possible hint at how the complexity of DNA was meant to create a variation of physicality in an attempt to insure survival, and the more opportunities provided, the more this variation would be compounded.
While there is little hope of ever getting to the end of Pi, there exists a possibility that we may someday develop a mathematical representation of what Pi, in it's infinity, represents in some other physical or ethereal manifestation (oh, I forgot, our planet is involved in this one). When there exist such wonderful possibilities, how can humanity choose to mire itself in attention grabbing issues rather than figuring out how to create the perfectly balanced societal standard.
Is it ludicrous to imagine that in such a positive environment, the end result of any individual's experience is positive? If weight wasn't the thing that an individual was so worried about, would weight be the issue that plagues, haunts, and eventually damages that individual and results in further weight gain?
When contemplating and learning more about Pi, and the constant of the expansion of matter in the known universe, I was fascinated to wonder what the mathematical expression for the natural expansion of matter would be for the "BMI" of just one human form. Big note! The human BMI, no matter how "ginormous" a person is, would still only reflect a tiny tiny tiny amount of mass expansion in physics!
I have to wonder if there is even the possibility that since our early evolution, there was some inner compulsion to expand in such a way to provide harmony with the state of our environment and our given planetary size. Yes, gravity itself, in relevance to our evolution, may be telling our cells to expand and eventually our body to expand. Maybe it's a primitive attempt to expand the physical manifestation we inhabit in such a way to keep up with the rate of expansion of our very consciousness.
All of this thought about obesity and the universe! Whew again! :)
Just a thought, due to the physics problems with a recycling expansion and contraction of our universe, I had a theory myself. Because our universe is following the rules of constant expansion, and because multiverse is even a theory itself, I have to wonder about the universal limit of expansion and the probability of new universes being spawned by one "unstoppable" expanding source universe. This universe would be so filled with "some entity" that it occasionally breaks said rules of universal expansion by attempting to keep growing even though it is met with resistance to that expansion.
Instead of a "big bang" it would be a "big belch". The fact that our invention of religion has already given our God the property of being "omnipresent", it would make sense that everything in our universe is made from the stuff that is continually ejected from that source "Godverse". Because we continue to follow the same rules as the universe we were derived from, it is important for me to recognize the purity of humanity and all life itself, and how precious it is that we have even been granted with existence, consciousness, intelligence, and purpose to ponder such amazing things. In that way, our intelligence in itself is evidence of the existence of "something" that favors life over death because of the nearly infinite creation that life brings about.
All of this would appear to have nothing to do with the subject at hand, except to illustrate real problems we have been given to figure out instead of inventing new problems that suit our convenience or preference. This is an exercise in thinking bigger, thinking outside of the first person perspective. If we were encouraged to use our brains more, maybe we could uncover ways in which we could tell the brain what we want instead of it being the other way around. Isn't the cure for obesity assumed to be within each obese person? Come on y'all, you can't have it both ways!
It's my opinion that we exist in a kind of over-legislated reality where one of the few things that are left for us to indulge in is eating. We have to eat to survive, we have to eat a certain amount every day, so people are pretty assured that they won't be pushed around when it comes to what they want to eat and how much of it they will eat. It's no surprise that this obese reality has a mantra of take the drugs we want you to take and not the ones we don't. We also live in a time when more food than ever is coming from sources we are not even aware of, so the potential for metabolism destroying contaminates entering our food supply is real.
In the left vs right war of words in obesity, I see this article where a guy is calling another author a "professional denialist" instead of offering his own advice about finding the obesity source and discouraging obesity hate. The article he is linking to in an unflattering manner is much more informative and eye-opening to the reality that I have spent my adult lifetime experiencing myself as an individual who is literally obese by proxy.
In his article, Mr. Mitchell says "the problem is dire enough that concerns over body image and politeness might have to take a back seat for a while". Wow, is there a clearer sentiment of intolerance and disregard for all things "eating disorder" than that!
Apparently, as thorough of a reporter as he is, he fails to realize that obesity can be a downward spiral, and when someone encourages "fat hate", they are causing even more pain and suffering and yes, obesity... This statement defends ridicule and hate in favor of public pressure and permission to tax us for making bad decisions. The denial I see in that statement is that all obese people want to be that way, and they could change if only they really wanted to. We should have permission, even encouragement to mentally abuse them to help them. I've never seen any other appearance related health issue bring about such disregard for the mental/physical well being connection.
By being overly concerned with weight, an individual is potentially setting themselves up for an eating disorder. We discourage people with OCD from having to count all the tiles in every room they go in, or have to wash their hands 200 times a day, but we will tell people it's OK to puke after eating if they don't get all gross and "death fat".
The moral panic article and the allegedly radical views of Paul Campos are more enlightening to the universal truth that obesity can't be "cured", and we must realize the damage being done if we don't address the source as a society as a whole. In that article, Campos says "As for where the increased risks associated with being heavy come from (such as they are), many of them come from weight cycling, which is clearly bad for people, and which is the outcome of 98% of diets. Others come from the stress and social discrimination generated by having what's considered an inapproprirate body in this culture. Others come from diet drugs, eating disordered behavior, poverty -- all things strongly associated with higher than avberage weight."
When taking the two quotes side by side (almost unfair kind of), it's easy to see who has to defend a position that most of us realize is kind of sh*tty. Mr. Campos wants to illustrate what's really going on, what has been really going on, and in my opinion, how it's unfair to stigmatize the obese when there is no known "solution" or even research to prove without a doubt that every obese person would be in hypothetical better health if they were smaller. It seems as if the research itself is favoring the idea that smaller is automatically healthier in order to prepare us for some other package of b.s. I guess it's a "no duh" to say that healthcare is kind of a hot topic, the obese are used to being picked on, let's use this to sell that.
I know that when/if the day comes when someone is calling me a "nut job", I will be happy to accept said label in favor of getting past personal differences and get to the bottom of what that person really wants to express, or what they think should be "done". So many people these days are being armed with "obesity bad" without any clear facts about exactly what percentage of all those diabetes costs really are associated with a real life obese person!
All that %10 of health costs being pinned on obesity seems kinda high to me. I'm willing to bet that they are counting all diabetes and all high blood pressure and all this and that even though all those patients are not obese.
I will not attempt to defend any argument that obesity is "ok" or that it is not damaging to one's health, but I will defend the position that no matter what someone's size is, they should not be denied respect and dignity and freedom from the pressure to conform to anyone's standards but their own. The article by Dan Mitchell complaining about backlash about the obesity initiative further provides evidence that mainstream opinion about obesity favor an attitude of intolerance in order to avoid having to address the simple truth that there is no cure for obesity itself.
"concerns over body image and politeness might have to take a back seat for a while". I had to read that again and imagine the banner at the train station where the fatties are being rounded up for the camps... It's ironic he would choose to link to the interview with Campos, because Campos is the humanitarian in this self-created conflict, and therefore, if he can topple the good guy, he must be the good guy. Maybe it was just another food theme to write about, this guy loves this subject for some reason! He's writing about the business of food, and thanks to the obese, business is good! :)
I wanted to add to this gigantic 3500+word monstrosity the fact that I actually look forward to the report that comes out. I, like many people, would be curious to know how their theory of obesity differs from my own.
It has been pointed out to me by my "idea reflector" that some of my musings and conversation can sometimes appear to be that coming from an individual who suffers from the modern afflictions of intolerance and bigotry. I have to point out the way in which I can only try to understand another individual's opinion by first trying to see with the individual's perception itself. Because of this, I have to point out "early" (lol) in this blog's development that my opinions are just that, opinions.
I am self-taught in the age of instant information retrieval, so I do not hold any single degree (just computer certification), but instead, I study new information from as many available outside individual perceptions as possible (balance is difficult to find at times). There are some times when I might ponder a possibility that seems irrational, nonsensical, fantastical, bigoted, racist, sexist, ageist, or even "revolutionary". My writing is the act of sharing this perception, not acting upon it. I maintain that I remain "neutral" and for whatever reason, I am compelled to share "what I know" (or what I think I know) because I believe that the more individuals who ponder the theory of everything, the higher the probability of actually figuring it out some day, probably just after my lifetime has ended! :(
In a reality where it is even merely a possibility that we already hold the knowledge of enlightenment within us, it is almost disappointing to exist in a time before that knowledge has been shared. Simultaneously, someone(s) had to exist in the time-line where we had to be ignorant to the truth in order to discover it in the way that we (eventually) do.
Whew! When talking about the thinning of the venus with another individual, it was immediately assumed that I would offend a group or multiple specific groups of individuals because I was making overly broad generalizations. By basing some opinions on mere stereotype without extensive research in an area, I am guilty of ambiguity myself!
I will say that it is simply inevitable that I will occasionally tip-toe into subjects such as race or sexual orientation, because those things are directly connected to size preference and orientation. Rather than being stuck in the position of the size acceptance advocate, I can look at the phenomenon of size, and isolate it within the big picture.
I believe that others are fully capable of this and, in fact, already have started to apply obesity to everything in the context of obesity's relevance to "everything". If I look at an article that complains about people who complain about the anti-obesity initiative, this guy is complaining just to complain because he's pointing out that nobody significant is complaining! (roflmao)
That's all left vs right, red vs blue stuff that I am entertained by rather than attempting to participate in! :0 As smart as this guy is, he is still trapped within "the left" because he refuses to see the "future potentiometer" that bringing any government into your kitchen creates.
It is "ludicrous" (that word's been here before:) to attack the anti-obesity task force philosophy and link it with a "nanny state" because, honestly, that makes too much sense. The "right" should never be allowed to give such an opinion while supporting "smaller government" by pointing out how how many individuals have been contracted by said government at a cost that is not mentioned within that article, but brought up here.
Wow! Red vs Blue is big business!
I have to point out that simply observing what's going on from the perspective of "tax-payer" is massively different from seeing what's going on from the perspective of "size acceptance activist". When I start at one blog that complains about another blog, I am forced to use google to even attempt to be enlightened about the cost of this government initiative. In both fighting blogs nobody says anything about cost, which I find ironic simply because of the state of the economy we are in "in the present, in this reality".
Obesity perspective is probably a lot differently from the point of view of anyone currently making a six-digit salary from the insurance industry. It's also different from the perspective of the individual working for the food lobby. It's different from the perspective of the mother who just caught her teen daughter inducing vomiting after a meal for the first time. It's different from the perspective of the doctor, of the health researcher, of the very entity (a presidential taskforce made up of four Cabinet-level secretaries as well as the director of the OMB and several senior White House policy staffers) that has been charged with the task of creating "a report due to the president in 90 days with recommendations on how to solve the obesity issue".
Wow! 90 days to figure out a 35,000 year old problem! No wonder somebody might complain about how much this is costing!
Looking back, it's easy to recognize how irrelevant the first two articles really are when you get down to the "nitty-gritty". The first two articles really are not irrelevant though, because I was compelled to dig where they did not want to go in order to be enlightened to the much larger, ominous problem.
How can one begin to work out the problem of obesity if there are so many arguments going on between left vs right that any "solution" will be tainted, and therefore have a negative affect on the future potential outcome?
By merely suggesting a tax on any type of food, it is suggested that hunger is not an issue, the economy is not an issue, that it is acceptable to make bad foods higher in cost to match good foods instead of making good foods lower in cost to match bad foods (which is so crazy it could actually work so it's probably far left or right). Carrot vs. stick, at the cost of the entire farming industry as we know it? Financial incentive works, but making trash as expensive as good food instead of making good food as inexpensive as trash is almost inhumane.
Making bad food costlier makes more hunger (potential for poverty induced starvation, different from famine), making good food cheaper makes more healthier, less dreaded "obesity". Except, of course, for those who somehow choose to make an obese spectacle of themselves out of respect to the upper paleolithic hold-backs like myself who are visually stimulated by them! (explanation for the "fat lady" phenomenon?) :)
BTW let's see how quickly this would be deleted! :)
Sometimes observation provides inspiration, which leads to enlightenment. When attempting to see a complex subject from any one perspective, the nagging constant of status quo and the reality of our race's response to the industrial revolution is quite a quandary indeed! It has long been this writer's hope that at some point, the struggle with obesity will be resolved along with the struggle of everything. There is a very distinct possibility that it might be necessary to fix other things before any kind of solution based in this reality will ever have any affect.
I have already suggested that obesity is a mere side affect of a much larger and harder to solve dilemma. It's ironic in our present reality of "disaster preparedness" we do not recognize how dangerous it is to even toy with the idea of making food more expensive during a bad economy, or using the annual cost of any one health problem as an excuse to eliminate (pessimistic) or reduce (optimistic) a specific group from our population. While one side (size acceptance) is fighting an argument it can't win, the other side (anti-obesity) is making huge, expensive, potentially societal punishing decisions based on partial knowledge with a willingness to make these decisions based upon acceptance of the unknown!
What alarms this author is the way in which it is so obvious that certain entities need money and they are willing to use inaccurate information as an excuse to squeeze more money (we all know you want it) out of every one of us. The additional costs of obesity are nothing compared to rampant spending, big irony in how much is being spent to solve the problem that is costing so much! The costs of obesity that are being fed to the public have been altered to suit an obvious money grabbing agenda. It's hard to stay on track of simple size acceptance when one starts to figure out the larger issue. It's tragic that the obese are so obviously marginalized and ignored, even within the very argument that they are the cause of.
If the medical industry was truly concerned with the welfare of the obese individual, why are so many doctor's offices scales limited to 400lbs or less? Why aren't most health clinics equipped with blood pressure cuffs designed to fit an arm over 17 inches? If a majority of our population has been "predicted obese" by a certain date, then shouldn't more efforts be made to match this eventual need while trying to correct the problem? Are we so confident that obesity will be figured out by a certain time that we don't need to accommodate the obese, or does our society fail to accommodate the obese because of a refusal to acknowledge that they exist and will continue to exist? By simply observing the anti-obesity sentiment in our current society, is it "ludicrous" to imagine that some day people will be shoved onto a train to be brought to "the (fat) camps"? Why would they be willing to go? Why would anyone be willing to go? What if you were made to want to go? I grew up in a society that made sure to enlighten me about a certain behavior that could lead to sociological catastrophe. I sometimes have to ask myself as a present day obesity observer if such strong harsh language and obvious mistreatment is a marker for even the tiniest probability of such a historical repeat.
Instead of merely complaining about fat prejudice and attempting to force an unrealistic (and socially unacceptable) acceptance argument, I am compelled to express my fear and insecurity. I exist in the paradox where it is wrong to discriminate, except...
This causes all of those anti-discrimination messages to become instantly tainted with hypocrisy and the realization of an obvious system of unfair preferential treatment. The paradox of obesity mirrors the paradox of religion in the way that homosexuals have "equal rights" as individuals to express their sexual preference, but religious institutions already have a definition of a term that trumps any attempt to "amend" that definition. Obesity is related simply because the obese are the last safe prejudice. The modern day struggle of the obese makes me ponder how the authors of our constitution were thinking so ahead of time and outside of their own experience, they wrote that all men are created equal at a time when they owned other people.
Omg I skimmed the article I just referenced because of it's google rank in "last safe prejudice" and low and behold, "Because this is a feminist issue, NOW should take a public stance against size discrimination. An anti-size discrimination resolution, first passed by California NOW at our 1988 Conference, will be considered at the 1990 National NOW Conference in San Francisco." I was laughing with an associate about how some members in this very group might be tempted to water board me if they were able to access my total collective of work! lol It's unfair for me to assign a stereotype to feminists, because on some level of the multiverse, I am a feminist. (take a deep breath and a deep thought simultaneously:).
I could have just as easily looked further through the results to find this article by PBS, which I appreciate the mere existence of in itself as a broadcast medium of excellence surrounded by mediocrity.
Thinking exercise! Take a few deep breaths and ponder this!
Upon doing one of my first of many google searches, I was reminded that it is Pi Day as well. In the definition of Pi I find a relevance to humanity in itself. "Pi is an irrational and transcendental number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating." Not any possible hint at how the complexity of DNA was meant to create a variation of physicality in an attempt to insure survival, and the more opportunities provided, the more this variation would be compounded.
While there is little hope of ever getting to the end of Pi, there exists a possibility that we may someday develop a mathematical representation of what Pi, in it's infinity, represents in some other physical or ethereal manifestation (oh, I forgot, our planet is involved in this one). When there exist such wonderful possibilities, how can humanity choose to mire itself in attention grabbing issues rather than figuring out how to create the perfectly balanced societal standard.
Is it ludicrous to imagine that in such a positive environment, the end result of any individual's experience is positive? If weight wasn't the thing that an individual was so worried about, would weight be the issue that plagues, haunts, and eventually damages that individual and results in further weight gain?
When contemplating and learning more about Pi, and the constant of the expansion of matter in the known universe, I was fascinated to wonder what the mathematical expression for the natural expansion of matter would be for the "BMI" of just one human form. Big note! The human BMI, no matter how "ginormous" a person is, would still only reflect a tiny tiny tiny amount of mass expansion in physics!
I have to wonder if there is even the possibility that since our early evolution, there was some inner compulsion to expand in such a way to provide harmony with the state of our environment and our given planetary size. Yes, gravity itself, in relevance to our evolution, may be telling our cells to expand and eventually our body to expand. Maybe it's a primitive attempt to expand the physical manifestation we inhabit in such a way to keep up with the rate of expansion of our very consciousness.
All of this thought about obesity and the universe! Whew again! :)
Just a thought, due to the physics problems with a recycling expansion and contraction of our universe, I had a theory myself. Because our universe is following the rules of constant expansion, and because multiverse is even a theory itself, I have to wonder about the universal limit of expansion and the probability of new universes being spawned by one "unstoppable" expanding source universe. This universe would be so filled with "some entity" that it occasionally breaks said rules of universal expansion by attempting to keep growing even though it is met with resistance to that expansion.
Instead of a "big bang" it would be a "big belch". The fact that our invention of religion has already given our God the property of being "omnipresent", it would make sense that everything in our universe is made from the stuff that is continually ejected from that source "Godverse". Because we continue to follow the same rules as the universe we were derived from, it is important for me to recognize the purity of humanity and all life itself, and how precious it is that we have even been granted with existence, consciousness, intelligence, and purpose to ponder such amazing things. In that way, our intelligence in itself is evidence of the existence of "something" that favors life over death because of the nearly infinite creation that life brings about.
All of this would appear to have nothing to do with the subject at hand, except to illustrate real problems we have been given to figure out instead of inventing new problems that suit our convenience or preference. This is an exercise in thinking bigger, thinking outside of the first person perspective. If we were encouraged to use our brains more, maybe we could uncover ways in which we could tell the brain what we want instead of it being the other way around. Isn't the cure for obesity assumed to be within each obese person? Come on y'all, you can't have it both ways!
It's my opinion that we exist in a kind of over-legislated reality where one of the few things that are left for us to indulge in is eating. We have to eat to survive, we have to eat a certain amount every day, so people are pretty assured that they won't be pushed around when it comes to what they want to eat and how much of it they will eat. It's no surprise that this obese reality has a mantra of take the drugs we want you to take and not the ones we don't. We also live in a time when more food than ever is coming from sources we are not even aware of, so the potential for metabolism destroying contaminates entering our food supply is real.
In the left vs right war of words in obesity, I see this article where a guy is calling another author a "professional denialist" instead of offering his own advice about finding the obesity source and discouraging obesity hate. The article he is linking to in an unflattering manner is much more informative and eye-opening to the reality that I have spent my adult lifetime experiencing myself as an individual who is literally obese by proxy.
In his article, Mr. Mitchell says "the problem is dire enough that concerns over body image and politeness might have to take a back seat for a while". Wow, is there a clearer sentiment of intolerance and disregard for all things "eating disorder" than that!
Apparently, as thorough of a reporter as he is, he fails to realize that obesity can be a downward spiral, and when someone encourages "fat hate", they are causing even more pain and suffering and yes, obesity... This statement defends ridicule and hate in favor of public pressure and permission to tax us for making bad decisions. The denial I see in that statement is that all obese people want to be that way, and they could change if only they really wanted to. We should have permission, even encouragement to mentally abuse them to help them. I've never seen any other appearance related health issue bring about such disregard for the mental/physical well being connection.
By being overly concerned with weight, an individual is potentially setting themselves up for an eating disorder. We discourage people with OCD from having to count all the tiles in every room they go in, or have to wash their hands 200 times a day, but we will tell people it's OK to puke after eating if they don't get all gross and "death fat".
The moral panic article and the allegedly radical views of Paul Campos are more enlightening to the universal truth that obesity can't be "cured", and we must realize the damage being done if we don't address the source as a society as a whole. In that article, Campos says "As for where the increased risks associated with being heavy come from (such as they are), many of them come from weight cycling, which is clearly bad for people, and which is the outcome of 98% of diets. Others come from the stress and social discrimination generated by having what's considered an inapproprirate body in this culture. Others come from diet drugs, eating disordered behavior, poverty -- all things strongly associated with higher than avberage weight."
When taking the two quotes side by side (almost unfair kind of), it's easy to see who has to defend a position that most of us realize is kind of sh*tty. Mr. Campos wants to illustrate what's really going on, what has been really going on, and in my opinion, how it's unfair to stigmatize the obese when there is no known "solution" or even research to prove without a doubt that every obese person would be in hypothetical better health if they were smaller. It seems as if the research itself is favoring the idea that smaller is automatically healthier in order to prepare us for some other package of b.s. I guess it's a "no duh" to say that healthcare is kind of a hot topic, the obese are used to being picked on, let's use this to sell that.
I know that when/if the day comes when someone is calling me a "nut job", I will be happy to accept said label in favor of getting past personal differences and get to the bottom of what that person really wants to express, or what they think should be "done". So many people these days are being armed with "obesity bad" without any clear facts about exactly what percentage of all those diabetes costs really are associated with a real life obese person!
All that %10 of health costs being pinned on obesity seems kinda high to me. I'm willing to bet that they are counting all diabetes and all high blood pressure and all this and that even though all those patients are not obese.
I will not attempt to defend any argument that obesity is "ok" or that it is not damaging to one's health, but I will defend the position that no matter what someone's size is, they should not be denied respect and dignity and freedom from the pressure to conform to anyone's standards but their own. The article by Dan Mitchell complaining about backlash about the obesity initiative further provides evidence that mainstream opinion about obesity favor an attitude of intolerance in order to avoid having to address the simple truth that there is no cure for obesity itself.
"concerns over body image and politeness might have to take a back seat for a while". I had to read that again and imagine the banner at the train station where the fatties are being rounded up for the camps... It's ironic he would choose to link to the interview with Campos, because Campos is the humanitarian in this self-created conflict, and therefore, if he can topple the good guy, he must be the good guy. Maybe it was just another food theme to write about, this guy loves this subject for some reason! He's writing about the business of food, and thanks to the obese, business is good! :)
I wanted to add to this gigantic 3500+word monstrosity the fact that I actually look forward to the report that comes out. I, like many people, would be curious to know how their theory of obesity differs from my own.
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