The four essential elements in our survival: food, water, shelter, and...gas??

The other day I was riding the metra and I saw an ad that was so disturbing I just had to mention it in my blog. Well, the saddest part of the ad was that it is starting to become a truth in our society (at least in the US). The ad was a picture of four things: a bottle of water, some fruits and vegetables, a character drawing of a house, and a gas pump. In case you can't figure it out, this ad was claiming that in addition to food, shelter, and water, gas has now become an essential element in human survival. And while this ad struck me as very disturbing at first, after thinking about it for a few minutes I started to see how this has become a sad truth for so many people. Especially since there are people fighting a war and dying just to claim their share of the "wealth". Not too long ago wars were fought to claim land and thus gain power to build shelters for their people. Now-a-days oil is used as a means to gain power, but now that power is used to light our suburban houses and move our 8000 lbs SUVs. Will we ever learn or will we simply keep "modernizing" our wars to justify them? The world may never know.

The hunger virus

Recently I haven't been getting hungry around meal times. It seems that when I forget about a meal I'm not hungry. The only conclusion that I can come up with is that I must not need to eat when my culture tells me I need to (3 times a day, morning, noon, and night). That brings me to an interesting question: Why does everybody seem to get hungry around the same time? You would think, being that everyone's uniquely different, that we would all eat at uniquely different times. I think what I'm getting to is that maybe the thought that you are hungry is as contagious as a cold. That's the only thing that seems logical right now. Through Christian Science we learn that contagions are actually "passed to us" due to our fear of them. In other words, when one person sneezes we are unconsciously (or sometimes consciously) convincing ourselves that that person is sick and that we will now become sick too. Maybe the same thing comes through with hunger. It's this "contagion" (among other things) that contributes to American's present day problem with obesity. We need to decide when we are hungry, and not when the advertisements or other people subconsciously tell us that we are hungry. We need to decide what is good to eat and not let the media convince us that by eating a double-cheeseburger everyday we will be cool (or even manly as new Hardee's ads about their Angus burgers seem to claim) But until we become independent thinkers who make our own conscious good decisions Americans will eat ourselves into obesity.