[Marxism] Question on alienation and anxiety

["Tony Abdo" <gojack10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Overeating is linked to depression, boredom, and inactivity.  All this is
also linked, in general, to poor physical health.  Conisder overeating to be
an effort to self treat for depression.  However, more severe depression can
actually lead to appetite suppression.  The mere fact of going through with
it to consume an adequate meal is more effort than a severely depressed
person may feel capable of doing.  And a severly depressed individual does
not want the social contact associated with meal consumption.

One can say, that in some sense, capitalist society takes the large
depressed mass of worker-consumers and offers fast food as quick medication
for their depression, leading to profits for some, and obesity for the
consumers.  And like other addictive meds, a larger and larger dose is often
needed to continue to reach the same effects of relieveing the continued
depressed state. Each buffet must be bigger, and a bigger bargain to boot.

Alcohol is often described in the medical community as a an effort to self
medicate for depression.   It also is a food, and as a food substance is
frequently overconsumed leading to obesity.  But all food in a large sense,
is considered relief from pressure. That's why feasts are the centerpiece of
holidays. Thanksgiving is seen as having made it through the harvest season
without a disaster, and now lets relieve ourselves from our previous
worries!  A stuffed bird then leads to stuffing ourselves.

There have been many studies of what the specific motives of overeating are.
These studies have been done already.  But often wrong conclusions are drawn
from study results.  Instead of seeing obesity flowing from depression,
often the reverse is seen as the principle thing learned.  Conclusions of
these studies will state the obvious, that obese people often suffer
depression, too.  But will fail to state that it was depression that
actually was the major factor for so many to become overweight in the first
place.

As usual with medical problems, the whole medical effort to 'fight obesity'
under capitalism centers often times around developing new meds to change
chemical processes in the body. That way McDonalds and KFC can continue to
go about business, and controlling weight will become strictly the
individual's responsibility, in coordination with the doctor and the
pharmacist.  Nobody now really expects the weight loss centers and athletic
clubs to do much more for health than tanning salons are capable of.  Paying
for one's activity at a gym now competes with running freely in the street,
or bicycling there, and risking one's life that the body doesn't collide
with a car, or break an ankle from bad pavement, etc.

It is considered subversive to say that depression has become a mass
phenomena.  And if one can't say that, then how can it be shown that
depression is the principle causative factor to consumer consumption,without
being subversive to society?  No top echelon doctor wants to be that, a
subversive!  To do so is suicide, and not so hot for the pocketbook, either.

Tony
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As regards overeating, this is usually associated with a lack of self-care,
or if you like self-love, or at the very least the inability to regulate
your own food-intake, though lack of selfcontrol or social pressures which
create a certain attitude towards eating food. But to attribute that simply
to "alienation" is a speculative generality. You would need to investigate
specifically what the real motives behind overeating are. But, at the most
basic level, overeating presupposes that you can actually do it, i..e. that
there is sufficient food, and that you have the money or access rights to
food, so that you can stuff yourself on it. That may seem like a platitude
but for millions of people it isn't self-evident. Extrapolating from FAO
data, the number of chronically hungry human beings around the world must
now be around 860 million (including 800 million+ in "developing
countries"); around 25 million human beings die annually from hunger. These
people do not have much chance of overeating, because the food is simply not
there.

Jurriaan

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