Saturday, September 29, 2012

My latest discovery

This one is regarding obesity.

I was thinking about causes and fascinated by suggested notions. Most ideas that everyone believes, but no evidence actually supports, the effects are seen and the causes ae then conjectured. Well, I thought to myself, if we do not need ant real evidence to start a trend in the things we believe make us fat, then I will pose some ideas.

I believe that people are getting fatter because it was called an epidemic, and so they think along the lies "Everybody is doing it!" So, they sort of use that group mentality thing to justify their natural inclination to overeat. Because really, we are going to look a certain way genetically, no special food or diet devoid of a certain ingredient is going to make us skinnier.

On top of that, I do not think that the whole social media phenomenon is good for our health anyway. Knowing what the rest of the world is doing only gives us reasons to rationalize the acceptableness(new word?) of our faults. I suggest that being overweight is a fault. Only this belief is supported by the Bible, as Glutony is a sin, though, facebook and twitter suggest that it's not.

Where did I get such an idea? Mostly it was in moving here, to Utah. For the first time in my life I would be around other "Mormons!" this was a really unique things. I was always the minority. Even my philosophy professor asked me if I was a Philosopht major or if I would consider it if not. I told him, "No, I'm o philosopher, I'm just Mormon. I know what Ibelieve and have had to know why."

When I moved here, I noticed how being around so many other saints (which one would think would be a strength) made people behave pretty much the same as people everywhere did. I was shocked. In my mind, And comments made by my lawyer convinced me that everyone would behave so differently, it would be like a utopia where everyone knew what to do and be and their actions demonstrated it. Instead, I saw a group mentality and that because of a greater chance of the "bad guy" being mormon, too. It increased the "Allowability" of justified bad behavior. Afterall, if he is mormon and he does that, too then it's ok for me. In short I noted a lot of hypocrisy.

I did not seccumb to such notions, like consuming more food because everyone else is doing it. I just naturally like to be who I am, and that wasn't who the majority was and that was ok with me. Mostly, I was effected by the example of my parents regarding hypocrisy. OK, pull up a chair, no pictures, but it's storytime!

The missionaries found my parents in a little college town in the upper penisula of Michigan. My dad thought  this was quite a coincidence because he had just met some former missionaries at Basic Training who had given him a Book of Mormon. My parents were rock musicians and college students, and they thought Mormons only lived out in Utah, Dad has told me about really odd stories they studied in grade school about Seagulls rescuing their crops as a miracle! Anyway, the missionaries were invited in and made it a regular thing to visit and end up teaching a bit.
Being in their peer group and frankly, smoking and alcohol were perfectly acceptable and normal in their current lifestyle. My mother was cleaning up ashtrays and other beverage items in preparation for their visit and she stopped and told my dad that she did not want to be a hypocrit. Either they needed to tell the missionaries to stop comming or believe what they were teaching and change. They discussed this and decided to tell the missionaies to stop visiting. ha ha ha, ofcourse, they came back, and the rest is history now, but not so distant yet, still it makes a nice story.

 
The moral of the story, I really ought to let you find yourself, but my point in using that story was to give a bit of backgroud to why I see things as I do and why I loathe hypocrisy, If you are going to do something do it! if it is wrong, you will know ansd make proper restitutions, or in this case cut out the real offenders of your diet, not just buy in to what everyone else is saying.

 

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