A
growing problem in modern technological society is that of eating
disorders. Compulsive eating (also
sometimes identified as binge-eating disorder), anorexia nervosa, and bulimia
are the ones that we hear the most about.
People who eat too much and can get fat, people who starve themselves in
order to have the apparently perfect body, and people who eat a lot and then
try to get rid of it by vomiting, laxatives, enemas and severe exercise. All of these are very serious conditions that
are becoming increasingly prevalent all over the world. There are many levels of causation affecting
the experience of these disorders. But I
am particularly interested in the causes that are not normally covered in
talking about them: the growing amount of numbness that people feel from living
in an overly frictionless mediated living environment – an experiential vacuum
– and the growing incapacity of people to make and preserve imprints within modern technological fields of
experience.
In
terms of numbness, in a living environment in which there are very few sources
of organic stimulation, it is obvious that food is one source that is still
prevalent. And, as the opportunity to
engage with organic stimulation dries up in the external fields of experience,
it becomes natural to focus on a very easy internal way to feel alive when one
is feeling numb. When we are in the
living death of depression, living in an internal experiential vacuum, food
becomes a very convenient way to temporarily pull us out of it. More precisely, it is as if the internal
world of the whole gastro-intestinal system replaces the conventional external
world as the world in which a person with an eating disorder lives. By the same token, the loss of food in
bulimia from vomiting, exercise, laxatives and enemas and the avoidance of food
in anorexia from starvation can lead to still other kinds of organic
stimulation. All of these approaches to
eating and food can lead to extreme sensations that pull a person out of
numbness.
And
modern technological society has created many seductively tasty foods available
to eat without preparation. All the
mass-produced sweets and the mass-produced salty snack foods. And all the different kinds of fast food like
hamburgers, fried chicken, and pizza.
And all the tasty ethnic foods – the result of living in a multi-ethnic
society. So the variety of foods has
expanded considerably – foods that at least initially form the gastronomic
furniture and architecture of the increasingly important internalized world of
experience. Different foods are the
defined discrete figures that get broken down into the flowing blendable
continual stimuli that is the basis of all organic stimuli and the grounding of
our temporary satisfaction from taste.
But
eating disorders are not only a reflection of problems with feeling alive in
the short term. They are also a
reflection of problems with projecting one’s capacity to feel alive into a more
distant future. If one is unable to
preserve his imprints in more conventional ways in an overly frictionless
mediated living environment, then at least he can preserve his imprints on
himself. He can overeat to the point of
becoming obese. He can starve himself to
the point of becoming extremely thin or even to the point of killing
himself. Death from anorexia nervosa is
certainly a strong imprint one can also leave on family and friends. It is certainly a contribution to one’s personal
surrogate immortality in the form of the powerfully sad and tragic memories
that are left on the people around the victim.
But
even when anorexia doesn’t lead to death, it certainly leads to a long-term
concern among family and friends who, when they become aware of what is
happening to the person suffering from this condition, suddenly start paying a
lot more attention to him than previously.
As an anorexic drops in weight, he leaves a scarring permanent imprint
on the people around him. And although
his problem isn’t so immediately obvious, when the people around a bulimic
become aware of some of the methods that he is using, that also preserves a
very strong imprint on the awareness of these people. Although many bulemics try to keep their
extreme methods secret for purging the food they have binged on.
Sustained
compulsive overeating usually leads to obesity.
And because obesity is so prevalent today and because it does not
generate quite the same alarm bells in the family and friends that surround the
person, compulsive overeating does not lead to the same levels of concern. In many ethnic groups, obesity is implicitly
encouraged. And obesity is not perceived
among many people to be life-threatening.
Again, so many people in modern technological society are obese that it
seems about normal.
Now
some compulsive overeaters, like some anorexics and bulemics, are aware they
have a problem and seek out programs that help people with eating
disorders. But it is a constant struggle
for them to control their food intake, because their internal gastrointestinal
world is the one world, the one field of experience, where they feel truly
alive. And getting fatter is just a way
for many of them to make their internal world of experience bigger. Getting fatter is also a way of preserving
imprints on themselves. And the people
around them will certainly maintain memories that they have become fat. To the extent that some of these people may
want to help the obese person with what they perceive as a problem, the obesity
becomes a vehicle by which the obese person can open or sustain channels of
making and receiving imprints with others and thus pull himself out of his
numbness, out of his experiential vacuum.
Particularly, when a support group is involved like Overeaters
Anonymous, the process of controlling one’s food intake and losing weight
becomes a source of emotional bonding.
And because it is the process of losing weight that is the source of
emotional bonding, the process can never be completed or else the person would
lose his reason for emotional support in the group. Compulsive overeating is perceived by the
members of the group to be a chronic illness that has to be forever
monitored. As are anorexia and
bulimia. And the way of dealing with these
illnesses is to substitute the external world stimulation of human connection
for the internal world stimulation of food.
Because,
when all is said and done, what this is all about is pulling people out of
living in the experiential vacuum created by modern technological society. An experiential vacuum in which people live
lives that are too frictionless and too mediated.
© 2019 Laurence Mesirow
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