I've come to realize that sugar is the devil.

Sugar was only a naturally occurring compound at first. Then it was crystallized in India, in around 350 AD. After that, greed took over. It's been milked as a lucrative money-machine by capitalist networks through the ages. Now it's responsible for a host of unnatural diseases because of its overuse.

The tongue naturally has sweetness sensors built in. But before its refinement and subsequent overproduction, sugar was not present in any natural food (besides honey) in such concentrated quantities as corn syrup, white, or powdered sugar.

Sweetness would basically have mainly been present in things like fruit, or sweet potatoes. Before the industrial sugar boom, sugar cravings only would have led you to eat fruit! Before it's refinement, not many things you ate were sweet.And if they were, not excessively so.

Now, sugar, cheap, abundant, and readily available,  has been used to sell all kinds of products. Sugar was the defining factor in the early American cereal wars. Originally, breakfast cereals were healthy. Cornflakes and granola, were made from hearty, high-protein, nutritious grains. But to win the American consumer, cereal giants started sugar-coating everything--literally. Now most every cereal you eat is sugar coated. You don't think about it now, but it wasn't always the case.

Sugar is an example of how the manipulation of a natural urge can produce addictive, destructive, unnatural results. Now, even small children are developing diabetes. Obesity has been an epidemic for some years now.

But sugar isn't the only example of how unnatural manipulation of natural urges results in addiction and destruction. There are many types of sugar. And unfortunately, supercapitalist practices are usually at the root of their existence.

If we look at sugars as the manipulation and mass production of anything that plays on a natural urge, then we'd see...that there's sugar everywhere!

Could porn be the unnatural manipulation of the sexual urge?
(When in real life do you see women begging to catch a load in the eye?)

Could casinos be the manipulation of the hope/risk tradeoff urge?
(Except there, there's good music, bright lights, and lots of alcohol!)

Could orgainized combat sports be the manipulation of excitement/bloodlust?
(Where else would you ever see to roided up dudes trained in every martial-art imaginable, beat eachother to bloody pulps?)

Could all manner of advertising and popular media be a manipulation of hope?
(Commercials, TV shows, music videos and the like, all create false realities that drive us, but that most people could never really attain. Example: When have you ever walked into a club where everybody drives Lexes, and there are ten models standing around waiting to be doused in champagne?)

With all these things, the urge has been manipulated, by producing something that is the multiplied form of a product, substance or idea that could never be found in reality. It's the proverbial carrot in fron of the donkey's nose. But this carrot is on steroids. It's bigger, oranger, and jucier than any carrot that could ever really grow. The only thing is--we're all the donkeys.

My thing is this: Watch out for sugar. That shit'll kill ya.