Greed -Nutrition
Bio Sociology as a discipline gives human beings the opportunity to be inquisitive of behavior and things in their environment. Every behavior and action traces its way back to the human anatomy and the environment. The act of greed did not find its way in the modern society without some prehistorical conditions attached to it. Presently, biology has worsen human greed making it difficult to distinguish greed and self-love as regards to healthy living championed by proper nutrition in the modern life.
Mimetics of Greed
In his wok in examining various aspect of the biologic and information theory, Rhymer (2003) presents a scenario explaining the Pleistocene era where it all started. According to him, human greediness is hard-wired in the genetic makeup and has been successfully transmitted from one generation to the next. He further argues that imitation remains the only way through which culture is transmitted via vital units he termed as meme in his piece.
Whereas the modern society classify a greedy person as one amassing wealth leaving others to compete for remaining portion, the Pleistocene era placed human beings in a life and death situation. Human beings were competing with scavengers for the available food. The competition led to a culture of looking for and storing surplus food for the future. A greedy human-society thrived and lead to the modern humankind who now uses nutrition as an excuse to greed.
After years of successful acquisition of scientific knowledge and the ability to find various ways to improve human life, biology has dominated the human body as a science trying to provide alternative ways to improve the human life. Nutrition came to life as an attempt by scientists to better human life and solve human health challenges. Today everybody wants to be healthy and every action always has a nutrition tag. Greediness has fade away and anyone who could have been labelled greedy in the ancient time is now considered conscious of their health, much thanks to the modern biology.
According to Spradlin and Porterfield (2012), environment offers an exceptional ground for healthy human interaction. They posit that there is no life without interacting with the environment and from time to time collecting information and organizing them in such a way to improve survival mechanism lest human being face extinction.
An observation of the modern human beings depicts a society competing against each member just to increase their chances to remain relevant and live a happy and healthy life. Children and closely monitoring the actions of their parents and are also engaging in weak form of competition among themselves to prepare them to face the real world once their parents become of age. The actions of the children complements Giddens and Griffiths (2006) point of view that culture is not only genetically transmitted but also learnt.
A close insight of the competition they find themselves in paint a picture of a society on the move to be healthy and stronger than the other competitor. Examining an example of school children from different family upbringing poor and wealthy background, each group has their own unique way to stay healthy and compete favorably. Every tactic to implement this vital biologically induced healthy standards is only known to each child or a group of children who consider themselves equal in a societal point of view.
Modern greediness attaches more emphasis on the need to stay healthy by practicing on observing recommended nutritional practices. This has led to individuality concept discussed by Spradlin and Porterfield (2012) that highlights how a series of relationship begins with oneself. They discuss that the way one perceive things in the environment which they are part contributes a series of harmonic relationship. It is from this relationship that will translate to the overall behavior when one joins a group or become part of a temporary family such as those witnessed in religious environments, learning institutions among others.
Judging from the individuality concept above, human beings begin to act after evaluating activities and possible actions that first benefit them. Such acts of individuality are witnessed in daily human groups and teams where individuals evaluate and approve only cause of actions that stand to benefits them in their social life- the new 21st century greed.
Although Bio Sociology in relation to greed and nutrition provides a sound explanation on human behavior and how they have distanced themselves from the Pleistocene era and embraced the 21st century way of life, it fails to come up with a satisfying scale to measure quality of life. It has camouflaged greediness into living a sustainable life. Moral values such as sharing what one has with one another is completely fading away. The Bio Sociology focuses on individuality something that was unheard of in the previous centuries where people lived together and enjoyed things communally.
It has brought a culture of self-consciousness which has contributed to some of the major economic problems human beings have to face each sunrise. Problems such as corruption, inflation, and other unhealthy business practices such as hoarding are all product of Bio Sociology imbalances. Everyone wants to have plenty and outshine their neighbors and friends and this has contributed to major sociological problems witnessed in the modern society that were unheard of in the past.
References
Giddens, A., & Griffiths, S. (2006). Sociology. Cambridge: Polity.
Rhymer, S. (2003). MIMETICS: A Bio Sociological Model of Culture. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from https://blackcampbell.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/mimetics-paper.pdf
Spradlin, W. W., & Porterfield, P. B. (2012). Human Biosociology From Cell to Culture. New York, NY: Springer New York.
