[Altair]

Originally Posted by Gem

Right. There is a social/environmental pattern to the obesity equation, and we need to stop looking in the narrow scope on individualism. The general social narrative is saying, 'It's your choice. Your responsibility,' thus constructing 'a person' as a being who makes choices free from and without regard to all else. That's perspective hasn't worked because that's not the reality of people. People make choices that effect their environment as the environment affects them, and this constructs 'a person' as one who lives at the interface between themselves and the conditions in which they live.

I think it simply sits an unease with popular narratives in society, i.e. individualism, self-sufficiency, ''the rational man'' and all of that. The environmental factors are ignored..

Some people do get overweight because they have no discipline and eat loads of cookies, potato chips, hamburgers, etc., but when your entire environment is build in a certain way it becomes another story. Poorer people being overweight is also a logical outcome when quality food is expensive..

Originally Posted by Gem

We have placed the whole 'burden' (pun intended) as individual responsibility and undermined the social responsibility we all share. This is very convenient, because the policy makers who create the structures and systems we build up the environments by can ignore the fact that the trends are social, and say, 'it's your responsibility,' as a way to shirk the social responsibility they have.

The policy makers are in large part responsible for the sort of people that exist in a society. Even something as simple as green space and form of buildings will have an impact on how people live and how they view their place in the world.. If someone grows up without any green space or with nothing but fast food around they will grow up to become different people, emphasizing different things in life, voting differently, etc. etc.

We may have been trained to view our ''I'' as an indestructible thing, existing in a vacuum, but it is malleable and changing..

Incidentally.. I view the mass consumerist, modernist cities as anything but individualistic! They make everything the same with clear structures. A business district here, a suburb there, a highway over there, some fast food restaurants here. It all becomes incredibly predictable and inorganic, cities all becoming ''more of the same''. Despite championing ''individualism'' such a built environment doesn't even get close resembling it..

Somehow lost the track with ''losing weight'' here.. I value complex environments as opposed to sterile, structured environments... hehe..