Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [179]
Citizens spending hours sitting on the sofa watching cooking shows is immensely more profitable for the Power Elites than citizens turning off the TV and engaging the real world of growing and preparing real food. The profit potential of citizens experiencing the real world in these ways is almost zero. There is little profit in seeds, raw vegetables and garden mulch.
Nurturing a single bean plant and preparing the harvest, however small, gives an enlightenment that is unattainable by any other means.
In a way, an analysis of the politics of experience leads to this point: lived experience is the key to seeing through the sham politics of experience presented by the Power Elites for their own benefit.
Just as mind and body are one, so too are food, activity and health one. But it is much more profitable to make us ill with "food" manufactured to be unhealthy and then proceed to sell us the pharmaceutical and surgical "cures."
Yes, some diseases are genetic and others are triggered by environmental factors; these will need to be treated by medications or surgery or other treatment. But to ignore the causal connections between food, diet, activity, consumption of mass media/marketing and chronic disease/ill health is to ignore the "obvious." Why surrender control over those elements of health we do influence?
This is why I have said, "A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." In the context of a State/Elite-shaped politics of experience that profits from unhealthy fake-food and the management of the resulting diseases, then wresting control of one's food is decidedly revolutionary.
A free people will want control of their own lives, sustenance and destiny; an enslaved people will "buy" whatever they are "sold" and accept their Masters' "explanations."
As soon as we buy a packaged "food product" or "fast food," we have ceded control of our nutrition and "cooking" to a corporate entity whose concern is not our health but shelf life, profit margins, and engineering the "taste" of the "product" to trigger the reward centers of our brains in a cocaine-like fashion.
If you think this is exaggeration, please take it up with the former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, David Kessler, M.D. who reached these conclusions after careful study of the available scientific evidence. He published his findings in 2009: The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Among many other points, he found that the nutrition information on packaging is manipulated by the food industry to mask its true composition. Thus the "quantified data" which you are invited to trust is deceptive.
Why should we cede control of our health and well-being to global corporate interests whose sole purpose in marketing their products as "food" is to maximize sales and profits?
It is a reflection of the twisted influence of false ideologies that taking control of one's food, cuisine, nutrition and health can be viewed as either "highly progressive" (down with the corporate parasites and toothless State lapdogs) and "highly conservative" (let's get back to the roots of what made this country great--real homegrown food, real homecooked family meals and hard work) at the same time.
Is there any wonder than an integrated understanding steers clear of ideological entanglements? Ideologies are all about the opposite of understanding: manipulation of public opinion by Power Elites to further their own control and gain.
I would like to emphasize the ontological (inherent) value of control and thus the importance of establishing who holds control in every causal chain or network. We often cede control without even being fully aware of the surrender.
For instance, if I buy a packaged food item which contains more salt than is healthy for me to consume in one day, then