Obesity and friendship

As reported in the Chicago Tribune, a study has found that

obesity tends to spread through social networks…. [A] person’s chances of becoming obese increase dramatically after a close friend or relative fattens up. The same thing happens when someone close slims down.

The authors of the paper speculate the reason is “the spread of norms from people to people. People change their minds about what constitutes an acceptable body mass index” as their close friends gain or lose weight, said co-author Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School.

I am shocked, shocked, to find out that people’s notion of what is normal and acceptable is influenced by what their friends and peers think is normal and acceptable.

But it’s true. There’s even a name for it. It’s called HUMAN SOCIETY.

Human society can be degraded and slovenly, it can be upright and productive, and everything in between. It all depends on what are the norms and standards of the society. Therefore the kinds of norms and standards a society has are of supreme importance. Therefore liberalism, which assumes that people—children as well as adults—are capable of producing their own norms and standards without leadership, examples, and religious and national traditions, is a form of idiocy. If human individuals are to have good standards, the general society in which they live must have good standards. If the general society is to have good standards, there must be intact families and functioning institutions, inherited traditions and ideals, and a leadership class that embody, transmit, express, and exemplify good standards. Without such a cultural/moral structure in place, people’s only source of norms will be their unformed shapeless friends—and the tyrants that will inevitably arise to rule this anomic mass of humans.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 27, 2007 09:53 PM | Send