Cultural Obesity

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by: John Winsor

Like everyone else, I’ve been trying to put the events of the economic crisis in context to help me understand it. I was especially astounded by the death of the WalMart employee on "Black Friday." The bottomline is that we’ve become obese as a culture. For a while now, we’ve become so focused on our appetite to consume. We have all seen how such an appetite for food has caused our health system to come close to collapsing. Now, our whole culture is teetering from the same kind of appetite for stuff.

How do we, as a culture, break this cycle. It’s a lot like working out or eating right. We’ve got to become disciplined in what we consume, always asking, will what I’m contemplating consuming really help me get to my goal or make me happy? It’s about focusing on the moment. It’s a victory every time we don’t bow to our appetite.

To get out of this thing it’s gonna mean putting one step in front of the other and focusing on becoming healthy. There’s no doubt that, when this is over, we’ll all be better off for going through it.

Original Post: http://www.johnwinsor.com/my_weblog/2008/12/cultural-obesity.html