Taking Things For Granted

Last Sunday, as my mother and I were driving back from Wisconsin, a song came on the radio titled "Christmas Island." This has nothing to do with the island off the coast of Australia, but rather is a Christmas song about celebrating Christmas on a tropical island. Not paying too much attention to the lyrics and focusing more on the title, I began thinking about what it would be like to live on an island where the inhabitants celebrated Christmas every day. In theory, it would be spectacular. We would wake up to stockings and presents every morning, feast every afternoon, and generally have a good time with our extended families. However, I know that this would not last for long. The reason Christmas and other holidays are fun is because they don't happen often. They release us from our daily routine, allow us to eat to our heart's (or stomach's) content, and generally allow us to enjoy the season. If this happened every day, it would quickly lose its appeal for two reasons:

1. It would quickly get old, and eventually you would run out of decent presents (or money) to give people. Also, the ones from past days would pile up.

2. Receiving presents every day creates expectation (along the lines of classical conditioning. Associating an unrelated stimulus to a natural stimulus, like with Pavlov's dogs... "every day when I wake up, more presents appear") and so over time you would become nothing more than a spoiled brat, getting upset if presents weren't there every morning (despite the temptation to break the routine, you would be giving up your presents for that day).

That was when I made a connection: A lot of people are like that with food. The typical spoiled brat is one who goes around being Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka or Angelica Pickles from Rugrats, demanding everything that tickles their fancy and usually getting their way, reinforcing their behavior (through operant conditioning this time. That is, reinforcing a specific behavior through positive and negative reinforcement, or rewards and punishment. In this case, that would add up to: "When I go through these series of actions, I get what I want"). The less-explored side of this is with hunger in general. When those of appropriate means can have food whenever they desire it, the chidren (being typical children) will typically go to mommy and say "I'm hungry" or "feed me" or something along those lines.

Just as the spoiled brat will seem insensitive to those who don't have CEOs for parents, the child who is oblivious to world hunger will seem insensitive to those of lesser means.