I guess the question that comes to mind is what is the need the drives the almost panicked quest for a coherent conceptual framework in which to analyze the rudders for obesity?
What would happen if one were to realize such a framework did not exist in reality?
Just because we can draw pictures by connecting data points in certain ways doesn’t necessarily make such pictures an accurate depiction of reality. But they soothe the brains hard-wired desire to see patterns.
What underlies my questions is that it’s pretty evident that there remains a lot we don’t know in this area. We should therefore restrain our natural passion to find patterns that may or may not be there in reality.

I think the missing component in this post is the physical/biological component which addiction creates. At the beginning, it is surely a matter of incremental choices which start a person down the path – although there are those who say that from their first hit they lost control. However, the fact is that real addiction creates a physical dependence that is terribly hard to overcome. Think of what it would be like to hold your breath for 2-3 minutes at a time all day long and you have some idea of what coming off an addiction is like. So, obviously, life has to be pretty awful for a person to get to the point where they are willing to put themselves through that. Really, under any other circumstances we would consider it a sign of some sort of disorder to put one’s self through that sort of torture. So, the behavioral model makes sense at the beginning before a strong biological dependence on a substance has taken hold. However, once a person is addicted, there is a real, biologically based component which must be overcome that should not be discounted.

Rod, step back and rethink this for a minute. Let’s look at a couple of possibilities.
One possibility is that about 30 years ago there were social and cultural changes that have led many people to take up an “ethic of cheating” and acquire addictive behavior where food is concerned. Basically, in the last 30 years a larger portion of the population decided to become gluttons than had ever before in all of human history.
Another possibility is this. About 30 years ago the government (followed by the culture at large) began a massive push to get people to follow “low fat” diets, which resulted in re-engineering of many food products to replace dietary fat with processed carbohydrates and fructose. This resulted in many people having chronically high insulin levels, and insulin is the primary hormone needed to store energy as fat.
Hmmm. One possibility is based around a therapeutic view that seems Oprah-approved. The other is based on biochemistry. But one of the two also lets thin people feel morally superior. It’s the public health version of using CFL bulbs or driving a Prius.
Seriously Rod. Your grandparents and their doctors would have likely told you that to lose weight you need to quit eating sugar and starches. Square that with a USDA food pyramid that told people to eat 6-11 servings of bread, rice, and pasta per day.
Please take a little time and read Gary Taubes “Good Calories, Bad Calories”. Trash it at will afterwards if you like, but at least read it. Below are two of his lectures – one at Berkeley and one at the Steven’s Institute.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BF0BD46BF38A4DF9
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149&ei=412hS4nZNabwqAOdyNyRDA&q=gary+taubes&hl=en#
And a lecture on the same issues by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

A great new book on food and culture is “The Italian Way:Food and Social Life,” published by the University of Chicago Press. “The Italian Way focuses on two dozen families in the city of Bologna, elegantly weaving together Harper’s outsider perspective with Faccioli’s intimate knowledge of the local customs. The authors interview and observe these families as they go shopping for ingredients, cook together, and argue over who has to wash the dishes. Throughout, the authors elucidate the guiding principle of the Italian table—a delicate balance between the structure of tradition and the joy of improvisation.”
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=6642778

Social structure changes alone will not be enough (ref. need to stop subsidizing high-calorie food, and many other economic incentives that push food into every environment). BUT:
1. Stop offering food in every concievable work-related, faith-related, sports-related, event. No snacks for tiny soccer players. No donuts and bagels at 9 AM business meetings. No snacks in Sunday School, for crying out loud. No vending machines in schools, park districts, etc etc. None of this existed 50 years ago.
2. As Rod noted, change our attitude about food being available at all hours of the day and night.
3. Shrink portions. At restaurants and at home. Slowly, so as not to be hungry all the time. If we’re given a huge portion, take some home.
4. Get used to the fact that not every meal will be tempting and delicious. Fat and sugar are delicious; 50 years ago, we didn’t eat as much of them and we were OK with that.
5. School lunches: must be healthy and moderate-calorie, even if the kids at first don’t like them. Tough.
There are so many more.

I read an article about a week or so ago (wish I had a link) that hypothesized our obesity epidemic is not due to our diet (not the foods themselves) or lack of exercise of any behavioral issues– those things have been with us for a long time. The theory presented is that ersatz chemicals in our foods– steroids from meats, pesticide residues and above all plastic breakdown chemicals from micowaving food in plastic containers– is playing havoc with our body chemistry, causing us to go into fat-storage overdrive.

One of the things that I think is so frustrating about dieting/trying to lose weight/etc. is that restaurants, convenience foods, etc. have managed to insert into our minds a wholly unrealistic notion of proper portion size.
Considering that the average adult is supposed to consume between 1800 and 2000 calories per day, each meal should come in somewhere around the six hundred calorie mark. Now, there’s plenty of room for individual choice here–someone may eat a much more calorie-intensive breakfast, with a modest lunch and very small dinner, perhaps–but the point is that if *all* of your meals are ending up being much greater than six to seven hundred calories, and you are not a much greater than average height, frame size, activity level (e.g., not a professional athlete, etc.), then owing for individual metabolisms and so forth you are likely going to gain, or at least not lose, any weight.
But portion sizes are insane. Take a look, for instance, at McDonald’s nutrition information (posted on their website). A children’s chicken nugget meal with a small order of fries and a 12 oz soda contains 520 calories. The adult chicken nuggets combo contains either 1050 calories (with medium fries and soda) or 1,270 calories (with large fries and soda). The much smaller children’s meal would be an appropriate size meal for many, if not most, adults.
And this problem isn’t in the least limited to fast food restaurants. A lot of restaurant servings approach two reasonable-sized meals, all served at once on one plate. The effect of this is that eventually people forget what a normal amount of food even is, and with the best will in the world, will eat a bigger portion of food than they need.
Now, you take something like obesity, which has physical and psychological components, and you create the impression that a “normal” portion is at least twice what it should be, and you’ve set something in motion that’s going to be hard to fix.
I’ve always like the NHLBI’s “Portion Distortion” quizzes; whenever I’m getting frustrated with my weight loss efforts, a quick glance at these quizzes can help me pinpoint the areas where I’m probably still eating too much. But this is where the social factors are so strong–we’ve simply gotten used to being served larger plates of food and bigger food items, and it’s easy to think we’re being deprived (or depriving ourselves) if we select or are served significantly less food than we’re used to eating.
The quizzes are here:
http://hp2010.nhlbihin.net/portion/

What’s missing from this analysis is the economic factors which drive obesity and other food-related disorders. Namely, the desire of food companies to manipulate our desire for food into a profitable business which naturely leads to increased consumption of food, and thus obesity. Rod focuses on the cultural issue of “indulgence” framing this in some kind of virtue vs. vice war, with liberal attitudes towards indulgence being at fault here. But this gets it very, very wrong. Liberals in general are not in favor of self-destructive behavior, but if anything are in favor of healthy living, healthy diets, and healthy lifestyles.
What force in our culture is in favor of self-destructive self-indulgence? It’s the economic forces of consumer society, which if anything are driven by “market conservatives” who think that the free market is a better decider of what is good for you than either tradition or liberal idealism. The reason Europe lags behind the US in obesity and dietary self-destruction is that, for one, Europe has had stronger traditions about diet to overcome, and two, they have been less inclined to let the economic marketplace rule dietary practices. But they are still only human, and human beings have desires for food that can be manipulated into over-consumption very easily, which is what the economic markets want from us.
We now have a world-wide agricultural and food consumption industry devoted to devising the most enticing possible foods, or better, food-like substances, which can prey upon nature human desire and tastes and hunger to encourage over-consumption, and thus bigger sales and profits. That accounts for at least 90% of the problems we see with obesity, and not some kind of cultural failure to be self-disciplined. Self-discipline has always been hard, but it’s made incredibly hard in our modern food-industry culture, and frankly, we have to recognize that human beings have a limit to their ability to resist temptations that are put before them every day, in a thousand little ways, and seemingly with the complete endorsement of the culture at large.
Dreher may say we ought to condemn obesity, but this would be like condemning adultery while encouraging gorgeous hookers to offer themselves at rock bottom prices door to door, at every corner, at every venue, and through constant advertising. Sure, individuals of pristine virtue could somehow overcome that temptation, but who could really expect a society as a whole to? As long as we encourage the offering of bad food at cheap prices whenever and wherever desired, we will have obesity. Expecting sainthood of every citizen is simply unrealistic, and blaming them for being sinners while protecting the purveyers of sin is a form of hypocritical insanity.

Broken Yogi, interesting post. As a crunchy conservative I think there are a lot of ways in which the food industry is protected from the ills it helps cause, and I’d support sensible legislation targeted at addressing these things–perhaps more widespread labeling to include restaurant food, limits on advertising, ending or decreasing some types of subsidies, and other efforts in those areas.

Broken Yogi, I’m betting you have never been to this blog. If you were a regular reader, you’d know that my cultural critique doesn’t simplistically blame “liberals” for all the bad, and credit “conservatives” for the good. In fact, as my longtime readers know, I’ve caught hell from the right for the things I have written about food, especially the industrial production of food. The line from these conservatives is the same lifestyle-libertarianism that they condemn in liberals when it comes to matters of, say, sexuality: Who are you to question my choices?
Anyway, on the “what this critique is missing” point, I didn’t intend a single blog post to be an exhaustive critique of the obesity problem and its causes. I agree with you that our food production system is very much to blame for making it harder for people to eat healthily. It incentivizes bad eating.

Broken Yogi, are you the one who has the blog “The Broken Yogi Samyana”? I found that blog when I was looking for information on cults, and was trying to understand why people join them. I am now a semi-regular reader. I’d read more, if I could tolerate the high octane. Maybe I’ll be able to sometime. So if that blog is yours, thank you so much for your fine writing, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail.
About weight control. I have found a few things helpful.
1. Accept responsibility for my individual reality. That means eating patterns also.
2. (Someone else said this): Break-fast like a King, dine (at mid day) like a Prince, sup like a Pauper.
3. Follow the OverEaters Anonymous protocol of eating 3 squares a day, and nothing in between.
4. Allow myself to get hungry, and sustain hunger in between meals. The experience is important.

I believe lifestyle has a huge influence on obesity. Specifically, the busy-ness of life for most families now leads them to eat a lot of high-calorie,high-sodium processed foods. If there is no one home to cook dinner or fix lunches, then making healthy meals becomes much more difficult. Everyone’s tired when they get home at 6:30! Also, the amount of time we spend sitting down is perfect for fattening us up. Lots of people are in the car A LOT and otherwise they are sitting in front of a screen many hours a day. For this I partly blame our built environment; most people cannot walk to a destination near them. It isn’t a part of their ordinary routine. There are no businesses near most people’s homes in suburbia, and if there are, they’re across an eight-lane road.
A lot of people try very hard to live healthfully. They make crockpot meals, they try to make fast but healthy meals at dinner, they try to fit in a walk-to-nowhere some days. They make valiant efforts but they really have to become countercultural to make weight control work easily.
And Erin, actually studies I’ve seen say that a relatively large breakfast, a moderate lunch and a light dinner really is the best way to lose weight and keep it off, as a general rule.

The source of the problem in the case of the societal adiposity phenomenon is the loss of the concept of sin. The social structure which is defective is the Church. Gluttony is a sin. It is a character flaw. It is a sign of pusillanimity, and hence is a classic vice as well as a Christian one. It can be cured not by diet and exercise but only by penance and amendment of one’s life.
Obesity due to physiological anomalies is of course not in this category.
I do not say these things because I am free of the vice of gluttony. I am not. But I do not gain weight even if I overeat. Thus my sin is not visible in pendulous folds of flesh. But it is nevertheless visible to the Author of Virtue.

It’s not just the food industry. It’s our entire transportation system. You can’t get anywhere easily without a car in 90% of people’s neighborhoods (if you can even call where they live a neighborhood.) No sidewalks, miles of suburban sprawl between everything, perpetual and unquestioning funding for increasing highway lanes while we expect public transit to be “profitable,” preferring to ship our food thousands of miles which necessitates packaged food use with a lot of salt and sugar additions.
Add this to the 24-7 Fear Factory that is Cable News and you have everybody paranoid that if their child walks to school, she will be kidnapped and found mutilated days later. (This despite the fact that crime is DOWN since the 1979s.)
It’s hard to maintain a healthy weight if you never walk a further distance than from the parking lot to the grocery store. The whole system is sideways and hardly anybody can see that.
You’ve already covered the bit where we subsidize the least healthy foods and ignore the most healthy ones.

Also, our urban planning encourages sprawl, by automatically extending city services to all comers, rather than forcing distant developments to foot the bill for sewage, water, and electricity extensions themselves. If they had to foot the bill rather than the municipalities, we’d have a lot denser development with more unadulterated countryside in between. (Aesthetically preferable in my opinion, but definitely healthier opinions aside.)

Ro-de-Cha (your rap name): Regretfully, I agree with each point that underlies your post. Inasmuch as you do not (as you say) overindulge in food, I would instead check out your excessive indulgence in Sophoclean phraseology.

Your comment about the surprising self-restraint in the Netherlands reminds me of my own surprise on my first visit to Sweden. I expected a free-love left-wing paradise, and found one of the most uptight, conformist places I had ever been. I spent three weeks there, and flew home sitting next to an American professor who had spent a year there, and who confirmed my impressions. We Americans have a lot to learn about the cultural diversity in Europe, and about the history and culture that have produced the various national cultures.
By the way, the Swedes eat very well, and are all quite fit and thin.

It just all goes to show that people who are fit and thin are never fun to be around.

Rod,
Checking out your “crunchy con-ness” more, I’m glad to see that you aren’t simply polarizing this debate along liberal-permissivenss/conservative-suppressiveness lines. And I appreciate that you can’t cover everything. Nevertheless, I think you, and a few others like Roland, are trying to frame this in the traditional model of “gluttony” as a sin of personal failings, rather than recognizing that we are not living in anything remotely like a traditional world. As someone else pointed out, there’s the biochemistry of diet that needs to be looked at in many people’s cases, but even worse, there’s the myriad ways in which the modern world has just screwed up our biochemistry to the point where huge numbers of people are simply unable to control their weight any more. That isn’t a moral failing, that’s an inability to adapt biologically and psychologically to a massive and sudden change in living habits, agricultural practices, economic incentives to produce and sell way too much of the wrong kinds of foods, stress and unnatural life demands, all of which makes it very, very difficult for most people to maintain healthy weight and healthy diets. Others have pointed this out better than I have.
I’m not sure what the situation is, but I can see the problem very clearly. Labelling and educating is fine, but it’s not going to change all that much for most people. What we are looking at is only one aspect of a culture-wide degradation of our lives by the engines of consumer economics. I appreciate that you take some heat from conservatives, but what I can’t understand about socially-minded traditional conservatives like yourself is how most of them seem completely fine being aligned with market “conservatives”, when it’s those forces which are destroying the traditional world, including our natural diets, and not liberals. Maybe I’m just a hippie, but I don’t see our obesity problem as a sign of a socially permissive society, but the sign of an economically lawless and ethicless society that makes the buck the primary currency of social value. People are getting rich off of obesity, and that’s considered just great no matter what the consequences, as if it weren’t a much worse problem than illegal drugs, because it’s our free enterprise system at work. And conservatives are supposed to back the free market system at all costs, right? That’s pretty much what the GOP is all about, always has been, and it gets social conservatives to vote for them by making a few empty gestures of hippie-hate and gay-bashing and railing against abortion, but never does much of anything, and meanwhile the social conservative keep voting in the very people who are actually destroying their lives.
Anyway, that’s probably too much of a rant, and I don’t mean it personally, but there you are. Like your blog, by the way, even if we’re coming from different ends of the spectrum.

Judith,
Yeah, that’s my blog. Wow, didn’t expect to find mutual readers at a place like this, but I guess it’s a smaller internet than we sometimes think. Glad you’ve enjoyed it.
All your eating suggestions are very good. I really like Michael Pollen’s seven word summary: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. It’s tricky, because “food” is very loosely used these days to describe what people eat. I would say that the biggest problem with gluttony is the attempt to satisfy one’s sense of taste, rather than one’s real hunger. Modern food doesn’t nourish us, it stimulates our taste buds, and the result is an overstimulated nervous system that is underfed nutritionally, and thus overeats in an attempt to be satisfied. Food companies are spending billions figuring out just what stimulating tastes they can inject into food in order to get us to buy and eat more of it. People are losing their sense of what natural tastes actually are, and what kind of food people are built to eat (you can say by evolution or God it doesn’t much matter).
I’m not suggesting vegetarianism for all, but “mostly plants” is still a good idea, particularly because the most unnatural part of the present food production chain is the meat industry. I raise a few genuinely free-range chickens, geese and ducks for my family in the countryside, and so I know what a real egg tastes like, but I don’t think many people do. The kind of food people are eating is the real culprit here, not psychological attitudes and so forth, and so I think it’s a mistake to try to tell people that it’s their fault, when for most people it’s the result of a crazy culture. It didn’t used to be that people had to think and learn so much about diet to get things straight in their lives, because most of what was available to eat was real food, and that made life sensible. Now real food is very hard to find, and it’s hidden from view behind a whole bunch of fake food. I don’t know how or if you can really legislate against that, so for the time being its true that people really do have to be smarter and disciplined above and beyond the ordinary round of things. But let’s not try to make them feel guilty and ashamed at the same time. That’s just counterproductive. (speaking to Rod there)

Yogi: but what I can’t understand about socially-minded traditional conservatives like yourself is how most of them seem completely fine being aligned with market “conservatives”, when it’s those forces which are destroying the traditional world, including our natural diets, and not liberals. Maybe I’m just a hippie, but I don’t see our obesity problem as a sign of a socially permissive society, but the sign of an economically lawless and ethicless society that makes the buck the primary currency of social value.
Yogi, it’s out of print, but I hope you’ll one day get a copy of my book “Crunchy Cons,” which is far more congenial to your point of view than you think. I see market conservatism and most contemporary liberalism as being two sides of the same coin. Both make a fetish of autonomy and choice as being primary social goods, with no reference to what is chosen. Or rather, with selective reference to what is chosen. There is fundamentally no great difference between the conservative who declares that he has a right to eat whatever he wants and to do whatever he likes with his property, without judgment (because it is his own), and a liberal who declares that he has a right to do whatever he likes sexually with his body, without judgment, because it is his own. In our society, the left and the right have a lot more in common in this regard than most liberals and conservatives think.

Actually, I see overeating, and constant eating, as springing more from anxiety then gluttony. But take gluttony away from food, and look at it more abstractly. One of the problems I see in my own history, and in the people around me, is “needing more.” I am not talking about material things, but ideas, points of experience. I observe it when I listen to my colleagues talking at staff meetings; they always need more of what they already have. And the consequences, and accumulation of always needing more has suddenly imploded in my own life too. When I meet someone who doesn’t need more, I am thunderstruck, like that man who served our small group from behind the deli so many years ago, I am still carrying him with me. When our group sat down at the small table, I could see he had affected everyone the same way. But then, when we started talking about him, someone said “take Einstein for example”. But that is exactly my point, one doesn’t have to be Einstein.

While traveling in Austria last summer I had plenty of time to look at central Europeans, and there are more fat men, women and children there than 20 years ago. The means of transportation haven’t changed all that much, from what I can tell: trains, trams, walking are still prime means of getting around many cities. Something else is at work. Maybe expanded hours for places to eat are a factor. Maybe more sweet and carbohydrate, although I saw a lot of traditional food.
Maybe it’s just not as much of a sin to be fat anymore?

I remember reading somewhere that “fidgeting”, or moving around in one’s seat at work or school, is a significant source of calorie burning.
At least for adults, I suspect that the advent of computers in offices is a larger contributory cause of the problem than we think. It used to be that, when at work, one would have to type, then get up and go to a file cabinet, walk a few steps to a mimeograph machine (or even a Xerox) to make a copy of something, and then return to one’s desk to do the next thing on one’s list. Not great expenditures of energy by themselves, but they do all add up over the course of a week.
Today, we can do all those things by pushing a button or clicking on a mouse. Need to make a copy ? Click “2″ on the screen, then watch the copies stream out of your next-to-your-desk printer. Need to file something ? Maybe not—paperless offices are the in thing, and you can always just save your document to your hard drive. No getting up or walking around necessary. You can eat lunch at your desk—and if you really want to impress the boss, have it delivered to your desk as well.
We simply don’t move around as much as we used to, even in our offices. And when we don’t move around, we gain weight. To quote the immortal Rollicking Ross Perot, “it’s just that simple, Larry.”
Your servant,
Lord Karth

Judith,
Yeah, that’s my blog. Wow, didn’t expect to find mutual readers at a place like this, but I guess it’s a smaller internet than we sometimes think. Glad you’ve enjoyed it.
All your eating suggestions are very good. I really like Michael Pollen’s seven word summary: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. It’s tricky, because “food” is very loosely used these days to describe what people eat. I would say that the biggest problem with gluttony is the attempt to satisfy one’s sense of taste, rather than one’s real hunger. Modern food doesn’t nourish us, it stimulates our taste buds, and the result is an overstimulated nervous system that is underfed nutritionally, and thus overeats in an attempt to be satisfied. Food companies are spending billions figuring out just what stimulating tastes they can inject into food in order to get us to buy and eat more of it. People are losing their sense of what natural tastes actually are, and what kind of food people are built to eat (you can say by evolution or God it doesn’t much matter).
I’m not suggesting vegetarianism for all, but “mostly plants” is still a good idea, particularly because the most unnatural part of the present food production chain is the meat industry. I raise a few genuinely free-range chickens, geese and ducks for my family in the countryside, and so I know what a real egg tastes like, but I don’t think many people do. The kind of food people are eating is the real culprit here, not psychological attitudes and so forth, and so I think it’s a mistake to try to tell people that it’s their fault, when for most people it’s the result of a crazy culture. It didn’t used to be that people had to think and learn so much about diet to get things straight in their lives, because most of what was available to eat was real food, and that made life sensible. Now real food is very hard to find, and it’s hidden from view behind a whole bunch of fake food. I don’t know how or if you can really legislate against that, so for the time being its true that people really do have to be smarter and disciplined above and beyond the ordinary round of things. But let’s not try to make them feel guilty and ashamed at the same time. That’s just counterproductive. (speaking to Rod there)

While traveling in Austria last summer I had plenty of time to look at central Europeans, and there are more fat men, women and children there than 20 years ago. The means of transportation haven’t changed all that much, from what I can tell: trains, trams, walking are still prime means of getting around many cities. Something else is at work. Maybe expanded hours for places to eat are a factor. Maybe more sweet and carbohydrate, although I saw a lot of traditional food.
I think it is futile to attempt to point to a single factor, however tempting that may be. Merchandizing plays a role, but it isn’t the sole driver. Ubiquity of food surely plays a role. Changes in what goes into the food I will argue is a factor, specifically such items as high fructose corn syrup. Social issues, including a bit of the “do your own thing no matter what” ethos surely are a factor as well.

The cause of obesity is an interesting issue.
There would be those on the free market who argue that if farm subsidies were removed then obesity would disappear because there would not be the economics for farmers to produce the low-value crops that can grow in cool climates. Thus, farming in cool climates like Europe, “Blue” America, East Asia and Canada would (at least largely) disappear. Farming would be confined to hotter climates where high-value crops, multiple crop seasons per year, or flatter and more sparsely settled land allow for cheaper food production. Farmers in these hotter climates would gain more profits than they can today with subsidised farming in cooler regions. In turn, the less energy-dense food produced in hot climates would reduce the obesity of the world’s population, I imagine this theory goes.
On the other side are the radical socialists who attribute obesity to overproduction for profit from agribusiness. They argue that in a rationally planned society farming could be made optimal in both productivity and sustainability by means of democratic planning via workers’ councils on a global scale. The problem is that it is difficult for workers’ councils of this type to co-ordinate on a large scale.
It is, in fact, easy to see how a free market does not encourage healthy eating. Animal protein foods are by far the most economically efficient to produce – whilst the fashionable talk about returning to vegetable protein, they do not recognise that it cannot compete in terms of labour efficiency and land cost with the most extensive and low-yielding forms of animal husbandry in some of the worst climates in the world. Martin Taylor in his book “Bludgers in Grass Castles” epitmoises this dilemma: whilst he states that pastoralists are subsidised, it is only in the most grudging manner that Taylor admits that the subsidies to extensive pastorialists in arid areas of western Queensland are less than those to intensive stock-rearing on better soils and in better climates overseas.

Dear Mr. Dreher,
Some interesting points and observations have been made already. I would like to add my personal belief regarding the developments in the Netherlands in the last decades. But let me give some data first.
Whereas the Netherlands has for centuries been a Christian – Socialist country, reflected in the party-coalitions in power, we now have had a slew of cabinets with the VVD and D66, conservative liberals. (Caveat: Our Dutch ‘liberal’ has little in common with what you call liberals!)
Since then, shops are open until very late hours; all used to close at six p.m. Then the obligatory closing on Sunday fell. Shopping 24/7 is now around the corner. On the other hand, working 24/6 has dramatically decreased. So there is more time to buy and consume calories and less to burn them. The country has also moved from blue to white collar with concomitant fall in exercise. Agriculture and hard production are out. Trade is in and generates much more wealth.
To be rough: We transport the foods and goods of the developing countries, making money from it that enables us to eat all their foods and waste their resources in throwaway goods. Our growing obesity is their hunger and the contrast turns to conflict and then war.
Flash point now is Somalia, where the West fished the seas empty, so that so-called pirates took to the seas to be battled by our well-fed navies.
Now, I believe that by shedding the Christian and social(ist) ethics of justice, moderation and a fair share for all, we have set ourselves on the path of hedonism, of instant gratification in all areas of life. Notions like sacrifice and abstinence have gone the way of the steam engine. Gratitude for the earth’s bounty or (heaven forbid!), the Lord’s mercy, are relegated to quaint musea. We are the masters, so we are entitled to all, we will use it all – even if it keeps us embroiled in constant war, even if it destroys the whole earth.
Beliefs and economies are hand-in-glove. As wealth grows, religious and social beliefs give way and vice versa: ardent believers will be found in poor countries — and neighborhoods. Yes, the global situation I sketched is replicated in our towns and villages. The chasm between the haves and have-nots grows; churches, temples, synagogues, mosques are populated by the poor. The rich promulgate atheism.
We all need a jihad, that is: a return to the source.
Chastity, poverty, purity once were meaningful vows.
They should be stressed ever again, against the flow of modern economies.
Those were my two bits.
Respectfully yours,
Dhr. drs. VHJM van Neerven MSW MA
editor-in-chief VNCcommunicationcounsel
Amsterdam, the Netherlands