Today, I came across an interesting diagram from the popular site 4-Block World and I think it captures the psyche of the average happy human quite accurately:
Source: 4-Block World
If you think about it, I am sure you can add plenty of other examples which all end with the same happy chorus:
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They came to our country and took our land. Then they got us turkey. Let’s Eat!
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Some random guys I don’t personally know are throwing a ball around on T.V. One of the random guys took the ball and ran to one end of the ground! Let’s Eat!
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It’s a friend’s kid’s Birthday. We got her a present. Let’s Eat!
You get the picture … The weird thing is, in a very basic, primal way, this obsession with food makes a lot of sense. In the olden days, when man was still hunting and gathering and when food was a scarcity, nothing was probably considered as great and heartfelt a gift as the gift of food, because the giver probably risked life and limb to get it. And since the consumption of food releases glucose into the bloodstream (an almost always satisfying experience), it started to become a part of celebration almost universally.
With the invention of supermarkets. the only life and limb we risk nowadays is in finding parking in the often-jammed parking lot and the hunted and gathered food has given way to mass-produced and agriculturally cultivated “food-products”. Of course the sweeter the better since happy times need to be associated with pleasant-tasting food and nature and evolution has ensured, that we crave sugary foods.
So this is where we are: we have decided that food (particularly the sweet or salty kind) is going to be a part of any happy memory we wish to create or any occasion we wish to commemorate. The bigger question is: what are we going to do differently about it?