Anorexia

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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[size=150]Anorexia[/size]

Anorexia is the human correlate of “Wasting Sow Syndrome” in pigs.

The function of Anorexia is to cull the population. When population rates become ‘too’ high (internally measured by high level of stress and very low level of love), a mechanism in the female brain is activated: this mechanism turns-off eating, as well as stimulates the female to hyper-activity to starve her off quickly.

There are two popular theories of Anorexia, both of which fit inside Anorexia as “Wasting Sow Syndrome”:

1.) Anorexia is a desire to look thin, fueled by fashion magazines and judgmental society. On the surface this explanation seems to make sense since thinness is attractive*, and anorexics habitually exercise intensely. The desire to look attractive and gain acceptance feelings feeds into 2.) below; the excessive exercise and hyper-activity is meant to starve the body as quickly as possible, burning off all calories to hasten death.

2.) Anorexia is a cry for love. On the surface this explanation seems to make sense because it truly is a lack of love that anorexic girls are suffering from. It seems to be a cry for attention: that’s true, anorexic girls are crying for affection. What’s really going on though is that the brain is counting “strokes” (E.Berne): the anorexic who feels very high stress due to urban living and Americanitis and nil love-strokes due to her being isolated into a family-unit, a school-machine, etc and each of the care-givers such as he “mother” or “teacher” or “coach” is distant and cold and does not give love in the way the brain recognizes: that sort of expression of “I love you” with touch and eye-contact has become too ‘awkward’ and uncomfortable or against policy for mothers or teachers to perform: therefore the girl’s brain concludes she is an extra in an overcrowded and desperate tribal-group: thus, the mechanism of human “Wasting Sow Syndrome” initiates to reduce the number of mouths to feed both short-term and long-term (females bear children), and strangely and inexplicably to her, the young girl suddenly finds herself rejecting meals with an attitude of vigilance and becoming hyperactive. The medical emergency that results sometimes jolts some moms and dads and sisters and brothers into showing some heart-felt affection which then turns off the mechanism.

Conclusion: due to the prevailing belief even among educated professionals that Anorexia is 1. a desire to look thin due to superficial materialistic fashionista culture, or 2. a cry for attention, the root cause: an ancient neurological mechanism for ensuring the survival of the over-all population during times of tribal (/herd) crisis by the sacrifice of individuals is not likely to be discovered. Most investigators become enmeshed in their own personal “story” or else repeat popular opinions.** The appearance of the popular explanations is bolstered because American culture is shallow and materialistic and this leads first of all to overwhelming stress at judgment, punitivity, ‘not good enough’-ism, fear for the future: i.e. high stress, and also, American culture, caught up in it’s artificiality and shallowness is unable to perform love-strokes due to feelings of uncomfortableness with vulnerable expressions of emotion: then these two experiences the brain reads as tribal crisis and ‘over’-population: high-stress and no love; resulting in the triggering of the mechanism for human “Wasting Sow Syndrome”.

“Dana the 8 year-old Anorexic”, BBC,
youtu.be/RlTTqRcVD9A

  • [size=85]Thinness is attractive to males to be sure that the males returning from the hunt will perform the sex-for-a-meal trade with the thinnest females who are likely hungry and young, and not likely pregnant: pregnancy, old-age, and well-fed tend to occur together with thick girth.[/size]

** [size=85]Watch for this in any discussion that might follow.[/size]

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I know a girl who has 2 psychology degrees and is anorexic. Its a lot deeper than some people might think.

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Except that in many cultures women with serious hips and breasts are considered more attractive. In fact the further away from the hunt we have gotten the more the ideal of female thinness has come into fashion. Women had to do a lot of tough physical labor in hunter gatherer societies.

AS far as the main idea, black women suffer anorexia much less than white women, extremely significantly less. Arguably their lives have more stress and more crowding. They should show more anorexia, but they don’t.

Do you have any science to back up your assertions?

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Do you prefer slim ladies, or thick, obese, pregnant-looking ladies?

(“many cultures”, lol)

Black culture is more humane, therefore more love. Love conquerors all, no matter how much fear and terror there is. The body understands love as touch, eye-contact, and that feeling of emotional uncomfortableness: poor families have lots of love in that sense, well to do and White families are refrigerators as in the BBC investigation of Dana…

What kind of science would you like?

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I certainly don’t prefer slim or thin. I like full bodied women. You know, with the bodies that women, even white women, were considered sexy for having up into the 80s. My range of attraction is pretty wide, but my main attraction is for women who would not be called thin or slim by most people. And, yes, I note the way you try to rig the question.

Sure, many cultures.

They may have more love. But they also don’t see beauty and sexiness the same way as white Americans. As far as I can tell Latino culture accepts a broader range of female body types as sexy. Scandanavia - though now bombarded by US ideas of beauty - still seems to put out a wider range of images of attractive women, with muscular and even potentially thick women as considered attractive. Africa definitely has a range of cultures where larger bodied women are considered attractive. The parts of Asia I’ve lived in also had a much broader range of considered attractive women’s body types, though this is changing under the bombardment of Western media and their Asian copycats. Native pacific groups definitely had ideals more in the direction of full bodied women.

Any science that backs up what you are saying…links to research, whatever.

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Moreno; for me there are two kinds of reading: the one I call critical reading, that’s the kind of guarded reading that criticizes; the other kind of reading I call sympathetic reading, that’s the kind of reading that reads for belief and understanding. I’m telling myself you’re doing a critical reading. You’re not wanting to learn something new, you’re not wanting to understand a new way of seeing things, you’re looking for an argument and wanting to stay in your box of understanding. That’s cool; up to you. Do I have any scientific research? No. This is an original theory based on my observation of anorexics, my understanding of needs-based-psychology and anthropology, and my reading of a number of scholarly articles on “Thin Sow Syndrome” (TSS) and “Post Weaning Multisystemic Wasting Syndrome” (PMWS). There are many articles on these topics, however, I’m not repeating the dominant discourse (see “**” in the OP), I’m blazing new terrain. So… in reply to your challenges for triplicate copies and an off-topic debate: as Joshu would say: “Mu!” [無]

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In general that’s fine with me. But a few points. One, if you actually had some support for your position, it could change my mind. I’ve known anorexics and your hypothesis does not fit my experience. But if you had something behind the bald assertion, my position could change. For example a coherent explanation for why black women do not suffer anorexia, one that still supported your sow analogy, would definitely gotten me to rethink my position. Second, what you are basically saying is that you don’t want to learn anything from my points. Which is fine, but it’s not as if one of us, you, is working with an open mind, and the other, me, has a closed mind. You could use my questions and critique as opportunities to change or improve your understanding of your position. I certainly do. I learn as I write. It’s not as if I am conscious of all of what I end up writing before I try to formulate and think over what I am being presented with. You could use my challenge to find a way to make your ideas clearer, or perhaps explain distracting inconsistancies. But you prefer others to only have a sympathetic reading, and that is certainly the sign of a closed mind, on this issue that is. Third, mocking someone else’s position, your LOL, and then ignoring it when I can support my position, is not a sign of an open mind either. Fourth - off topic!? That is utterly absurd. Every point I raised was right on topic. It was all addressing what I saw as weakness in the hypothesis in the OP. It was certainly critical, but off topic…that’s a joke critique on your part. Last, ‘Mu’. To use that Zen response after making a semi-intellectual hypothesis when faced with criticism is hypocritical.

A dog has the Buddha nature because…(long copernicus hypothesis)
But if a dog has a Buddha nature, wouldn’t… (much shorter challenge of hypothesis by Moreno)
MU! (copernicus)

LOL. (me)

Start with the MU and not a bunch of the very stuff MU is meant to cut off, then you might earn the position of using that MU as a response. I see little interest in unmaking in this thread on your part. MU does not mean ‘Shut up, my ideas should fill the air.’ LOL.

But I will leave you with your thread.
May you find the sympathetic posters to fill it.

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As I say, it’s 'cause Black folk got love, but White folk is chilly. That’s how the brain counts love-strokes is by counting eye-contact, touch and that awkward ‘I love you’-feeling. Coloreds can still show vulnerability, White folk have become too cold and distant and neurotic to be able to communicate their feelings. For people like me with a deep sense of Negritude and a very high EQ, this is just obvious: scientific proofs not required.

I couldn’t imagine anything more irrelevant and also defamatory in the context of the subject of Anorexia than your personal taste in ladies’ body-types. – what a pig!

Oh sure. Thank-you. I’m honored.

I really feel no need to be understood or to convince anyone.

Your position? Sorry I missed your theory of the etiology of Anorexia? I generally hear either the 1. fashion magazine and pressure theory, or 2. the cry for love and attention theory. Would you like to add something further? Either way, my brilliant and elegant ‘Wasting Sow’ theory contains both 1 and 2.

Mu in the sense Joshu said it means ‘pass’ or ‘no comment’. Anyways Troll… the topic is Anorexia, not Zen…