The strange link between obesity and corruption

Not so strange... there is a name for that common phenomenon that underpins corruption and obesity: wetiko.

"Wetiko is a cannibalizing force driven by insatiable greed, appetite without satisfaction, consumption as an end in itself, and war for its own sake, against other tribes, species, and nature, and even against the individual’s own humanity" (Paul Levy) https://www.innertraditions.com/blog/wetiko-in-a-nutshell

I believe we mostly live under the illusion that mind and body, us and the rest of the world are separate things. Body and psyche, us and our environments, exist in dance of co-creation and self-destruction. Few see clearly the world as a mirror, via the schemes of our own psyche or the rhymes of our own actions. If you live with insatiable appetite, you create greed and craft the adversarial and hostile reality that you live in and experience. That conflict creates all kind of diseases of the body or psyche. You need to accumulate and control, prepare for survival, because you see perils everywhere you look... you are alone in a hostile world.

If you look with enough attention, that same force is the conflict in the world and within us that Jiddu Krishamurti talked extensively about.

(There are other ways to live our lives. More joyful ways.)

Reminds me of the "Big Man" concept [0], both in terms of literal bigness but also in the terms of how corruption might make it easier to spread largesse and gain unofficial political power.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_(anthropology)

I would caution us all not to interpret this as “obese people must be corrupt” (when it’s more a discussion of correlation not causation in either direction).

My kingdom for a dataset that included more countries than just the old soviet bloc. If this correlation holds true, it would rear its head no matter the geographical region.