I was reading this post about being aware while you are eating, and it occurred to me that this is not just an issue that applies me directly, but also has implications for human consumption overall.
I have felt for many years that my eating habits are unhealthy. I go into some other zone when I am eating, and as a result often eat more than I should. In short, eating is an automatic process, and it appears to formed by certain events and patterns in childhood. Consequently, my eating does not correspond to what my body needs.
If I were able to inject awareness into the process or preparing and eating food, I would 1) have a much richer experience, and 2) be able to monitor and react to the signals my body sends about what it really needs.
But what about the rest of my consumption (buying stuff, using energy etc) and, what about our society’s consumption? Isn’t it true that we have a consumption problem here in the U.S.? We consume 25% of the world’s energy, and it seems we are realizing that the spending binge we’ve all been on has not led us to a happy place, nor a stable one.
Do we need to become more conscious of our consumption across the board?
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Yes, absolutely. I think we tend to think about life ”getting in the way” when we know we are not taking care of ourselves, or the planet, and we become passive to all the outer forces in our lives and allow them to create huge perception gaps. We’ve become de-sensitized and uninformed. Our efforts to get away from each other (urban sprawl, SUV’s), and to capitalize on each other (selling ‘food products’, spreading misinformation ‘climate debate’, etc…), have undermined the essential trust that we put in each other and the system. It’s become normal to eat 1,500 calories in one meal, to be obese, to drive hugely polluting vehicles, to have homes that are inefficient, to not know where your food is coming from… We need to be able to trust the system (the market regulates itself, i.e. won’t sell products that make you sick, or have huge eco foot prints), or we need to start back at the basics and re-organize our communities and food systems, grow our own food, make our own clothes, bike to work. We need a revolution, or maybe just a little injection of socialism.