Saturday, July 14, 2007

The Fattening, and Thinning, of America

Up to 10 million teens develop disorders in this area. And worries about it can start much younger than that.

Adults are worried about it, too. And companies make big profits on our neuroses.

We've become a culture obsessed with it to a degree unprecedented in history. But solutions to it remain elusive.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we'll look at why, with all our focus on weight in today's culture, many of us are getting fatter and fatter while millions of others are wasting away to nothing.

What in the world is going on with our weight?

There are so many factors at play here, aren't there? A skinny-as-a-rail 13-year-old looks in the mirror and sees a whale. The advertising agencies air-brush models to within an inch of their lives and dramatically alter how we see beauty. Plastic surgeons give whoever has the moeny to pay whatever body they want. Doctors and drug companies push their solutions in packages of pills that make them richer and the rest of us sicker.

Research shows that 42% of first to third grade girls want to be thinner. And 81% of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat. Our neurosis is being manipulated to make money. And not just that - our food industry has been seriously corrupted by a totally skewed profit motive that makes us realize that our corporations and political systems are exhibiting strong psychopathic tendencies.

The work of Norberto Keppe can help us to understand what's going on here, and shows us how to develop new business and residence structures designed to take the power out of the hands of the banks and corporations, and put the resources, money and power into our hands. These ground-breaking structures and ideas are outlined in Keppe's revolutionary book, Liberation of the People: The Pathology of Power. This book highlights his great idealism, but also his astute social critique, and his solutions. It's great stuff. Write me at rich@richjonesvoice.com if you'd like a copy of this book.

We'll look at our topic today - the Fattening and Thinning of America - in a very expansive way. My dear friend, Susan Berkley from New York City, joins me to talk with Claudia Pacheco, psychoanalyst and vice-president of Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy.

Click here to listen to this episode.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Richard,
Dan again here. After listening to all of your podcasts now, I am left very confused. Each podcast presents a plethora of vague, undefined concepts and fuzzy logic.

There is no evidence for a spirit or trancendental energy sources that we must resonate with. This is stated as fact throughout the podcasts.

I find it mind-bloggling that your belief is that disease is caused bynot being in tune with this trancendental energy (which is not defined). If we take a useful reductionist view for a moment - a viral infection is caused by a viron latching onto our body's cells much the way a magnet attracts a piece of iron. It is a simple numbers game - if you receive enough virons - your cells will be invaded. Please define this trancendental energy, explain HOW our body is in tune with it and explain HOW a virus will not attack a cell if we are in tune.

The 'magical thinking' littered in these podcasts is in stark contrast to a world ever revealing itself to be naturalistic. The medical analysis given are borderline quakery.

I encourage you to think critically about analytical trilogy. You are interested in phsycology and the mind - ask urself about the evidence for this 'essential energy'.

Sincerely,
Dan

Anonymous said...

Dan,
I am sorry you wasted your time by listening to this podcast. I listened to a couple myself and check back here occasionally for a laugh at some of the lunacy put forth on this website. If you think that you are going to have an enlightening discussion with Richard I think you will be sadly disappointed.

Richard Lloyd Jones said...

Hey Dan,

Well, I must say, I´m amazed you are still listening, but I guess that counts for something. hehehehe

My scientific friend, there is collosal evidence for spiritual energy sources (read: God) in much of philosophy and early science.

I´m going to throw in this quote here in the hopes that it will at least explain where we are coming from in Analytical Trilogy, so readers of your comments won´t just stop off at your being mind boggled. This is from a soon-to-be-published workbook to go along with Keppe´s New Physics book, which has just been translated into English. The quote is from the workbook, and is by Cesar Soos, whom you´ve heard before on my Podcast:

"There is a field of genetics today called Epi-Genetics. Epi means the source of, or the cause. Scientists today are puzzled by the fact that in a pair of identical twins, one can present symptoms of schizophrenia while the other might not. If twins have exactly the same genetic code, and if schizophrenia supposedly comes from genetic factors, how to explain that only one of them develops the disease? What’s even more puzzling is the fact that human beings have inborn genetic correctors for these conditions. What causes the correctors to work or not to work in a person? We can begin to see that these correctors are connected to the way a person thinks, which leads us to the psychological life of the person; our attitudes, our ways of reasoning with regard to reality, our willingness to accept or not to deal with our problems—these will be the important factors that affect our DNA. We can even say that these factors can force our DNA to change for the better or for the worse."

I know this won´t bring us any closer together, but I do hope it will show you that there is a basis for everything we say on this Podcast. It just happens to be quite different from what is normally touted in science. I would suggest that the naturalistic explanations in science are actually the ones lacking, not ours.

All the best to you, and thanks for listening and commenting as always.

Richard Lloyd Jones said...

Hi J.C.,

Well as usual, you've added absolutely nothing to the conversation. Someday it might be nice if you actually took the time to enhance your comments with something useful. Intelligent even.

Hey, if you're going to listen, why not try understanding our point of view instead of just dismissing what we're doing here? If you're looking for something to validate your already-entrenched point of view about stuff, obviously you're not finding that here. That's ok, but if you're tuning in, why not make an effort to understand where we're coming from?

Of course, you are not required to do that. You can just go back to listening to things that back up what you already believe. I will not be personally wounded if you choose to stop listening.