1/ A powerful way to illustrate why Integralism is crucial can be seen in American food culture. I've talked at length about how the Pineapple supply chain is illustrative of this.
https://twitter.com/Integral_Muck/status/1024747112876199936
Muck Farmers are lucky in this regard; we get physical activity, sunlight, proper sleep cycles, and although sometimes the work is tough, we don't get obese. Our environment inclines us to better health. 
Imagine you’re stuck in a chair all day, away from sunlight, given the opportunity to eat donuts, potatoes cut into strips, soaked and cooked in oil, and sugar water to drink. That environment does not incline you to health.
No surprise, Obesity is the biggest crisis in the United States. And it seems so simple. "Eat less, move more.” This is what can be called the “bootstraps” approach, with no specific direction, just general guidance for the individual.
Over 60% of people in the United States are obese or overweight. Is it so simple as to say that these people are all simply stupid or self-destructive?
The "food environment" is absolutely hostile. In Modernity, we are flooded with cheap, processed carbohydrates and seed oils, because 1) our bodies were designed to be very good at survival in storing excess energy...
and 2) those foods happen to be cheap and tasty. Note that the ultimate end in mind has been chosen on behalf of the consumer by supposedly blind forces - the tastiest and cheapest. The basest of ends.
As far as food culture, we should be taking individual and local efforts now to clean up the obesity crisis in America. For sure, we should be pushing for greater education of our families and friends with regard to Nutrition.
However, those sorts of efforts will have essentially no effect on the society as a whole and will sacrifice many individuals to the collective forces which we refuse to harness.
They do not affect the environment which gets people obese in the first place. Because the food culture is not oriented to man’s ideal end, it destroys him despite strong individual efforts.
Americans do not have a weight loss problem. They have a problem in maintaining weight loss. Most people try to lose weight. Very few keep it off.
“Less than 20% of individuals that have attempted to lose weight are able to achieve and maintain a 10% reduction over a year.” - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Our food culture has run aground of Biology. Biology says:
“The preponderance of evidence would suggest that the biological response to weight loss involves comprehensive, persistent, and redundant adaptations in energy homeostasis…”
“…and that these adaptations underlie the high recidivism rate in obesity therapeutics. To be successful in the long term, our strategies for preventing weight regain may need to be just as comprehensive…”
“…persistent, and redundant, as the biological adaptations they are attempting to counter… Two critical points emerge from … the interplay between these pressures affecting body weight.”
“Initially, our biology, or this homeostatic system, is actually working for us in an attempt to minimize the impact of obesogenic environmental and behavioral pressures... metabolic conditions after weight loss…”
“…may not be the same as they were prior to gaining the weight in the first place. Instead of working in our favor to prevent weight gain, biology becomes one of the driving pressures that underlie weight regain.”
In other words, once the body has adapted to a higher fat state, losing that fat is incredibly difficult. Your body is now fighting you. You are fighting your own physiology as well as the food culture. Most lose.
Do you see what happened, friends? The culture creates a situation in which you fight not only your food environment, but your own body in the name of “individual freedom” in policy.
Meanwhile, organizations which really do know the truth about Nutrition and could help remake food culture with time send out press releases and are targeted by liberal capitalism’s lobbyists.
And although the USDA has been wrong (and corrupted!) in its recommendations in the past, its modern recommendations are quite useful (although they are still heavy on the grains).
The Church in America is in a similar state. It has grown fat and used to its anesthetizing, liberal environment where as long as they avoid being controversial, they are courted for the Catholic vote.
Catholicism does very well as a companion to policy or as a persecuted minority; not the squishy middle. Integralism is not perfect because humans aren’t, but it infuses communal forces with good rather than that of the highest bidder.
Integralism argues that we orient ourselves & and our culture to the correct end, or both are undermined. We do not pick one or the other – it must be both.
As the Salt and Light of the world, we are responsible for both our own actions as well as the environment we allow to exist. Integralism as a philosophy is inevitable once we deconstruct excess individualism.
We should see our individual lives as part of a communal mosaic, influencing the whole; not as an end in itself. We must find the balance between individualism and communalism that Integralism seeks.
If Faith is in decline, is it because the environment is inherently hostile to such practice?
Suburban life where you don't know most of your neighbors was never the design. It is an aberration.
Suburban life where you don't know most of your neighbors was never the design. It is an aberration.
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