Body Weight is a Political Issue

We in the contemporary world have become inured of fast-paced, highly advertised products touted by celebrities who are highly remunerated for their efforts to promote shoddy merchandise, or nutritionally empty, calorie-rich foods – or worse, arguing the relative values of one brand of alcohol over another.

According to “corporate law” (which term is actually oxymoronic), the only responsibility – the single standard to which a corporation need be held – is that it makes money for its shareholders (Korten, 2007, p. 8). We act as if the false standard (perhaps even delusion) of the contemporary universe that holds that we are all separate individuals floating around in the meaningless void were an indisputable fact. There is no other moral or ethical standard that ever need be applied in terms of damage to others or the environment. The occasional court case that surfaces wherein corporations are to be held accountable for sleazy practices or immoral behaviors is usually settled out of court. No one holds corporations responsible for polluting rivers or clear-cutting miles of virgin forest. Of course not. “It’s their job,” we exclaim, as if employment and wage earning were a sacred task; that working at a job and paying taxes were holy work; and that production and consumption were the ultimate goal of evolution.

By this line of logic, there is absolutely no consideration given to the spiritual or moral realm. None. The entire focus objectifies the process as if it were somehow devoid of life. But then, this is in keeping with the worldview that has been practiced and promulgated for approximately the last 12,000 years – since the advent of cultivated agriculture. We might now call it the Cartesian-Newtonian-Darwinian worldview (the clockwork or machine universe) because of the workings of scientific reductionism that have taken a Higher Power of any sort out of the equation; and left us with what Wilber (1995) called “flatland thinking,” in which our worldview has no contours or curves because it has been bulldozed flat for easier consumption.

What a terrible price we have paid for our ease and convenience! What a horrendous burden we have placed on the living waters and cornucopic wonders of our abundant, giving Mother Planet! So many people give lip service to environmental crisis, or any of the other fill-in-the-blank crises that we as a totality of humanity are facing these days; but how little it seems most people are willing to do about it. How many millions of tons of garbage are thoughtlessly deposited in the oceans of the world daily? How much toxic effluent from countless factories is poured into the rivers and streams, the very veins and arteries of our living planet?

And to what end? To make more money! And why? Because each of us from birth has been conditioned (under the guise of “education” and “socialization”) to believe that we must assume our place in the already extant society; and we must do so in ways that we are “taught” (often with violence or other forms of coercion) by those into whose care we are entrusted from birth onward. It is some part of the nature of this conditioning that one rarely retains a working memory of what has transpired during this earliest period of development. It is also about this age when the average person begins to identify with and use the pronoun “I,” indicating a nascent understanding of his or her relative separateness from the world.

This sense of separateness (cupidity, isolation) is a “necessary” condition for the world to operate the way it has in development of technology and what we view as the “modern world,” with its tools and toys, with its many, many forms of entertainment and medication for every manner of taste and need. It seems generally taken for granted that the order and manner of the (especially) Western technologically-oriented worldview is somehow “correct” because Western civilization has controlled the world for the past few centuries, even millennia. It does not matter. I will not quibble about a few thousand years when the planet has been here for approximately 4 ½ billion years (Dalrymple, 1991). It is really only in the last 500 years that humankind has risen (though I use the word advisedly) to its current heights (ditto) vis a vis technology. Eisenstien (2007) has noted the deep and intimate ties between technology and force – and how using the former almost always implies or actualized the latter.

Because I have been haunted for the bulk of my life by a perceived sense of powerlessness and futility, I have examined this question deeply and obsessively for many years. Thus my search has been one of examining the roots of power, its development, and manifestations. My journey has taken me far and wide into the world of the mind and heart – through religion and spirituality; through sociology and psychology; through medicine and alternative healing methods; through practices both legal and illegal; through almost every form of psychotherapy, including forays into deadly, brain-damaging “psychiatric medications.” I have concluded that there seems to be a format or template on which or through which children are reared, especially in Western civilization. Miller (1985) called this the “poisonous pedagogy,” and addressed it as the toxifying agentic process underlying the development of violence and psychopathology in adults, originating in childhood.

I agree with her perspective, and further believe that it is the shame-based rules and guidelines by which children are reared that lead directly to addictions and almost all forms of what is called “mental illness”. Furthermore, it is the toxic sequelae of these childrearing methods that induce unmet emotional and spiritual needs in generation after generation of children that result in multigenerational addictions and diseases. To some extent, this might even be viewed as the meta-intention of those who own and control the infrastructure of society (the “cultural elites”) – to generate a seemingly endless wave of addictive people to produce and consume thoughtlessly – with no concern of desire beyond the satisfaction of their own immediate needs.

We are taught to attempt to satisfy that hunger with money and food and unrestrained sex; with fast cars, liposuction, drugs and alcohol – anything other than to feel and deal with the shame and pain underlying it. My premise is quite simple. Being reared with shame leaves a residue in one’s life – toxic memories and a devastating hunger for fulfillment that Yarrow (1961) called “affect hunger”. If one is able to integrate the tremendous energy that it takes to maintain a self-destructive addiction, then one has the possibility of transforming one’s life; and devoting to healthy self-love and self-care all of the previously misaligned power and energy.

To do so requires a great deal of work on oneself. It also requires compassion, honesty, love, joy, and the ability to look at one’s faults and foibles unflinchingly – and then proceed to change oneself in accord with the mandates of the resulting vision in order to finally attain all of the aspects of self that addictions only promised. But the greatest of these is forgiveness. It is absolutely imperative that one comes to forgive oneself all of one’s faults and foibles, all of one’s perceived transgressions against oneself and others. It is the greatest virtue and the highest healing.

In doing this, one must often go against the ways of the world. I now see all addictions as being self-destructive, induced as they are to keep one from being self-aware of one’s faults and deficiencies as well as skills and powers – both the Shadow and the Gold. Because addiction is so efficient, one must abandon it utterly and take up a new way in order to redeem (L., redemere: to repurchase) oneself. It is only in owning oneself, all of the traits and quirks and foibles; and doing so with love and joy and compassion that willingly acknowledges one’s faults and one’s greatness – that one becomes capable of being a true and genuine human being.

One is hindered in this great and tremendous quest by contemporary society’s insane focus on money and acquisitions – and its obviation of spiritual awareness and the larger relationships required to support living gently on this planet that supports us all. Societal and political systems that do not nurture a sense of wholeness block spiritual awareness and development. In this sense then, body weight is a political issue because the gross distortions that compulsive overeaters develop are a result of attempting to suppress or manage tremendous toxic shame stored as memories of abuse and neglect. These are aided and abetted by an addictiogenic society focused on efficiency and order and the making of money.

Thus, in some ways, the ability to eliminate weight and maintain it, are directly related to one’s belief systems and one’s perceived relationship with one’s family, one’s peers, and ultimately, the planet as a whole. One’s belief systems create one’s reality. If one acts on a false belief, one will create a distorted reality (i.e., a fat body). I believe excess body weight is actually a metaphor for the amount of toxic emotional material one carries and has not yet released.

This really relates to the idea of creating a kind of scar tissue around early wounds such that one does not have to be confronted by them on a daily basis. I am, of course, referring to emotionally traumatic, shame-based wounds and memories. Much of what is considered to be adult behavior is really nothing more than various defense mechanisms erected to deflect attention from one’s innate woundedness – addictions, aggressive behaviors, anger, condescension, assumed superiority, even sexism, racism, classism, and ageism. All of these very effectively keep attention away from one’s woundedness.

They are also very costly in terms of one’s own energies. They require a lot of attention, maintenance, and upkeep. Being angry all the time, for example, requires that one have a constant supply of material about which to be angry, or more correctly, about which one feels justifies feeling angry. Then one can keep one’s offended attitude in the forefront to contend with others – and not admit the possibility that one feels frightened, ashamed, and insecure. The same might be said of most of the façades that people construct, that become known as personality styles. Most are the result of early wounds that are being cared for and cultivated because they resulted from interactions with one’s earliest caregivers – who were, at the time, absolutely necessary for one’s survival, and hence unable to be adjudged as having done anything wrong. One therefore turned very early against oneself in blame and shame to defend whatever atrocious actions were taken against one – defended them and adjudicated them as correct and proper; and judged oneself therefore to have been wrong and at blame! Having done this repeatedly, one easily arrives at a position of feeling guilty, at least, for assigning any blame or responsibility to one’s caregivers.

At the same time, it is quite difficult to pursue the tasks of one’s adult life with the enormous burden of the residua of the original acts in one’s daily awareness and consciousness. Thus, one might early adopt eating too much food (a favorite of mine) in order to cloud or obfuscate one’s own consciousness; in order to be less aware of the caustic experiences – in other words, to dissociate from one’s own self in some manner. Like any repetitive action, one can easily become inured of it – and use it even in situation when it is not necessary or appropriate. One might adopt such a behavioral pattern as one’s normative choice.

Healing, therefore, becomes a matter of integrating the dissociated material; and subsequently adopting new behavioral patterns based on the healed awareness (i.e., eating less because one no longer has aberrant cravings for more than one actually needs; not using stimulant drugs because one no longer feels severely depressed and energetically sluggish without them). These new behavioral patterns are relatively easy when one no longer feels the need to shelter or defend the damaging actions, and the sequelae, of one’s earliest caregivers. Then all of the anger and rage that one may have been directing toward oneself will be appropriately assigned to the proper party, and released. The emotion must be released first. At some point thereafter, forgiveness will come of its own accord, as will appropriate eating habits and body weight adjustment. But the healing and the release are primary and, as such, cannot be forced.

The entire process may become much easier, if one no longer has to use food to suppress innate desires and needs. One need not struggle, blaming “demons” or cursing one’s craving for sweets and carbohydrates; or denigrate oneself, wishing one were “normal.” One can simply be whom one is, and must perforce make one’s own way in the world. One’s path is neither easier nor harder than anyone else’s. But it will be one’s own, won utterly and with a lovingkindness one was never shown as a child. One has to “grow myself up” as it were, by being one’s own best analog inner parent, treating oneself in the best possible ways one can – as a loving, protective adult fiercely guarding one’s inner child. One must emotionally become an adult, and not blame one’s parents (or others) for one’s pains and difficulties. One must be responsible for fostering joy and embracing the power that resides within oneself – and for manifesting the world in the image one embraces.