Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [97]
But what if instead of that happy feeling we actually experience a sense of nausea? That would be most unprofitable. So the entire worldview behind the marketing (including the government's collusion at many levels) is designed to derealize the actual experience of eating junk food.
Were it possible to break free of this carefully marketed mindset, you might find virtually all the foods you're supposed to crave are actually revolting.
I say this as someone who will eat ice cream or pizza or a fast-food hamburger a few times a year and enjoy it. But I am aware that it is not in my best interests to eat such "food" more than occasionally, and I am alive to the weird drugged-out sensations such meals cause.
Exercise has been derealized into a bizarre either/or world of extreme sports or TV-induced passive sloth/torpor as a spectator. Extreme risk and extreme conditioning are glorified (again, for the purposes of selling you a "sports drink" of sugar water and cheap vitamins or a costly bicycle, etc.) while a more normal pattern of enjoyable exercise has been positioned as "too time consuming" even as the average American household manages to watch almost eight hours of TV/Web per day.
Meanwhile, if you can escape this derealization, you will find that exercise, yes, even occasionally strenuous exercise, releases all sort of endorphins and mood enhancers--and not just extreme conditioning (which is often if not always destructive to overall health) but movement as simple as walking a few blocks here and there for 20 minutes.
The experience of walking, running, martial arts, digging, hunting, etc. has been derealized into a marketable "product," i.e. a gym which requires membership and familiarity with all sorts of costly machines or a "sport" which requires all sorts of costly classes, equipment, etc.
The "fitness gym" experience can also be derealizing. One mounts some contraption, puts on one's "my stuff, my world" iPod and then watches CNN or some other mindless loop of bogus "news" while maintaining a heart rate of X, as demanded by one's personal trainer as the "optimum" key metric of the whole experience. Never mind how you feel; keep it at 99, pal, or you "failed."
Personally, I'd rather dig a ditch (yes, I've dug plenty of ditches, so I know exactly what's involved) than sit on some contraption lost in a cocoon of sensory override. I'd rather take a walk or get on my bike or do anything in the real world than go to a room of machines occupied by people ignoring each other. I know many of you feel the gym is a key element in your fitness program, and I understand it's practical; but I don't "get it" and would rather do katas or play around with my bamboo staff.
If this is what's pitched as required for "fitness" (and exactly what metric do we use to define that?), no wonder most people prefer lounging on the sofa watching cooking shows.
It seems to me a key cause of obesity, attention deficit disorder and a dull lethargy devoid of the fun and zest of exercise/physical motion is that our experience has been derealized in order to sell us some product or service.
A key element of the obesity epidemic derealization is that the obese citizen internalizes the responsibility for his/her weight gain as a personal failing--a lack of discipline, an unhealthy upbringing, etc.--anything other than the profitable cause, the relentless marketing of mouth-feel engineered food at stupendous profit margins, all enabled or approved by the State.
In terms of obesity, this spiral leads to endless dieting, classes, workshops, vitamin regimes, etc., none of which address the inner hungers of the frustrated and self-loathing consumer.
The Derealization/Simulacrum Trap appears throughout the economy. Thus "innovation" is often not so much innovation as its simulacrum; it