I am heartened to see that both her family and “the village” have stepped up to help the Octomom with the functional and economic challenges she and her children will face in the next twenty years. I can only hope that her “full house”, along with the ever-present media attention, will serve to keep her from dysphoria until her children are old enough to fend for themselves.
But I am left with yet another question. Anthropologists have dissected human behavior in ancient times and described a type of institutionalized bulimia in our hunter-gatherer phase. Faced with long stretches of famine, ritual feasting was a community event with the sporadic, unpredictable capture of game (and has been preserved in our religious traditions today). Calories consumed, aided by the “thrifty gene”, would promote our ancestors’ survival until the next successful hunt brought more food. Only with the relatively recent advent of the predictable productivity of agriculture, industry, and technology have we been able to see the explosion of obesity and hear the call for “moderation”. Yes, we need to educate our calorie-drowned population how to make wiser and healthier choices for nutrition if we want to stave off worsening epidemics of diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis, and early death.
But, do we lose something as a society by demanding moderation, even as our instincts and genetic make-up cry for excess? We have seen the devastating effects over the past eight years of binge war, binge corruption, binge resource use, binge speculation. The unfettered feast has led to today’s famine, and most of us are wondering from where our next meal will come. The social democracy for which I advocate will temper those primal urges: cognizant of and sensitive to the responsibility we have not only to ourselves but to others in our global village, we will limit our use of natural resources; share our goods; avoid intoxication from food, alcohol, or substances; use IVF only to “replace ourselves” with two children or fewer (or adopt); and so on. To avoid the roller coasters, we will volunteer to go on a “healthy eating/financial/reproductive/resource plan” for our life.
But, by doing so, will be imprison ourselves, and suppress something uniquely human? The primal desire to live, create, compete, and die without limits. Or will we evolve beyond those needs? Where freedom will no longer be indulgence, but empathy, and we will be free to embrace inner and outer peace? If we cannot, if we continue to view social democracy as an enforced “diet”, we will always be irritable, hungry, and poised to lunge for the next binge. We will always be at war--with others and ourselves.
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