Re:Happy Meal Ban: McDonald's Outsmarts San Francisco
by InclinedPlane on Wednesday November 30, 2011 @11:06PM
(#3298259)
I am dumfounded that beliefs such as these have such a strong and widespread hold these days.
This is a puritanical mindset. A mindset of the evil of sin and the necessity of combating sin through the coercive power of the collective. It is no less dangerous than puritanical religion ever has been (witch-hunts and all). This belief system escapes notice as a puritanical, regressive ideology because it does not come bundled in the familiar forms: married to a social conservative longing for the past or embedded within the larger structure of a religious belief system replete with supernatural pantheons and creation myths. But in the end it works out to the same thing: the institutionalization of morality. And as always it will end with the same results: repression, subjugation, abuse of power, and misery.
If you decide that individuals do not have the liberty to decide their own diets and take care of their own personal health then where do you draw the line?
This is a puritanical mindset. A mindset of the evil of sin and the necessity of combating sin through the coercive power of the collective. It is no less dangerous than puritanical religion ever has been (witch-hunts and all). This belief system escapes notice as a puritanical, regressive ideology because it does not come bundled in the familiar forms: married to a social conservative longing for the past or embedded within the larger structure of a religious belief system replete with supernatural pantheons and creation myths. But in the end it works out to the same thing: the institutionalization of morality. And as always it will end with the same results: repression, subjugation, abuse of power, and misery.
If you decide that individuals do not have the liberty to decide their own diets and take care of their own personal health then where do you draw the line?