American Hubris

Seriously, please stop talking to people about “health” if you are suffering from diet-related disease and sickness. In fact, I don’t want you to say anything to me about GMOs if you are drinking soft drinks, eating junk and not eating the RDA of fruits or vegetables. Even more, I don’t want to hear that you are a vegan, plant-based, vegetarian, flexitarian, paleo or pescatarian if you are consuming everything else at the same levels as everyone else. Likewise, if you have never grown or produced a single thing and have not even pondered how much waste that you are single-handedly producing, accepting, validating and tolerating to conveniently consume, then you need to zip it about the environment.

We don’t get to pat ourselves on the back for not using straws, if we eat out all the time, our houses are full of Amazon boxes or the latest trends from Target. From here on, I refuse to participate in anymore conversations about your particular consumer lifestyle or about another podcast if you don’t read a real book that challenges our consumer mentalities or the missing foundation of truth and love on which consumer lifestyles are built.

We have a lot of nerve fighting over masks and vaccines when 88% of us have some form of diet-related disease and sickness, and most of us wouldn’t know what to do with a piece of fruit if it hit us in the head. Do you really think you can tell someone else what do in regards to their health, if you are suffering from any form of diet-related disease and sickness?

Don’t you see, we have already sold our birthright as human beings to have the identity of a consumer? We have already pledged allegiance and put our faith in the way of man’s finite, fallible and deadly reasons to build a system that makes junk cheaper and more convenient than fruits and vegetables, and not only tolerates us eating ourselves to death but condones, encourages and rewards it.

Consumerism is nothing but a complete dependence on a system of checks and balances, inputs and outputs, transactions and return on investment. This monoculture, that we chose to live, move and have our “individual” being in, has been built to validate, justify, explain and glorify any amount of idolatry and gluttonous consumption, and blind us from the devastation and destruction that we cause by our consuming ourselves, our neighbor and our world.

Consumerism and our consumer mentality have disconnected us from our purpose, our places, our people and from ourselves. It is the result of believing that we can secure, earn, steal, kill, order and acquire everything we need or want to freely live without responsibility, care or concern of anyone or anything around us, just as long as we consume what we want, when we want, how we want, why we want and where we want.

Good Lord, we talk about a lot of things. We have opinions and commentary for days when it comes to just about anyone and anything under the sun… that is OTHER than the very person and the very things that we have some personal control over. I am not just talking about our individual selves but the most simple and basic actions that might prove we actually believe what we say. Are we aware that it is our actions not our words that prove or disprove what we actually believe?

Funny, how we like to rant and rave about entitlement, cancel culture, people taking advantage of the system and “socialism” but we have failed to realize how most Americans feel completely entitled to have diet-related disease and sickness, and expect that the devastating costs, including the 2.9 trillion in annual cost of diet-related disease and sickness to be shared by everyone.

How many of the 88% of Americans say they believe in pro-life but have no problem destroying their very own bodies everyday by acts of omission and commission- in regard of what they do and do not eat? Seriously, how can anyone be pro-life when the top killers in America are diet-related disease and sickness?

I doubt you will ever hear a dietitian or the diet and fitness industry tell you that the way you eat is either curse or blessing, and we are participating in either cursing our bodies or blessing ourselves by how, what, where and why you do and do not eat and drink. Consequently, what we choose to give or withhold from ourselves determines and reflects whether our health will be a blessing or a curse to not only ourselves, but to everyone else.

It is obvious from everything we say that we have a problem with many things but it seems like we have no problem with filling our bodies with foods that kill them. Our diet-related disease, diet and fitness industry, medical industry and our health and wellness industry are produced and sustained by gluttony. But even worse than an economy built on the worship of man-made gods, somewhere along the way our religious systems turned a blind eye to our idolatry and the result is apparent- we don’t treat our bodies like holy temples but more like trash dumps.

Can we admit that it is absurd to talk about who is right and who is wrong, and what’s right and what’s wrong when we have all participated in lifting up an “economy” that promotes and, at every level, helps produce diet-related disease and sickness in Americans?

It is this deadly economy that we gladly bow down to as entitled consumers that has not only made us most susceptible to dying from the Coronavirus, but it has now shortened life expectancy, costs us trillions each year, has produced a national security issue and enables companies to make trillions in profits off disease producing products.

Who among us has not freely chosen to participate in an economy that has allowed our communities to be filled with businesses that do nothing but sell products that contribute to diet-related disease and sickness, sabotage our children’s health and future, provide the lowest paid jobs to maximize trillions in profits, has pretty much decimated agriculture and local food systems, has filled our homes, schools, businesses and communities with cheap, convenient and addictive junk. Now, it appears that diet-related disease and sickness will “not only bankrupt health systems, but it will also put a brake on the global economy” in the next 10 years

It seems like the one thing that we have the power to change is our individual selves but that would REQUIRE us to confess our individual hubris and change our daily lives.