According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, gluttony is defined as:
1: excess in eating or drinking
2: greedy or excessive indulgence
The first definition is the go-to one for anybody describing gluttony. Indeed, a ‘glutton’ would be described as someone who consumes in excess without consideration for nuance and niceties.
The second definition is the reason I’m writing this piece. To start, I was struck by the thought:
Could the majority of people in first-world (and possibly non-first-world) countries be described as gluttons?
I wondered this because my basic understanding of gluttony was based on the gluttonous subject’s non-awareness as he or she consumed at will, essentially rendering the world beyond their individual contexts essential only in terms of whether it could or couldn’t offer them continuous sustenance.
We live in a world that has seen the majority of first-world (and, minus statistics but based on a good hunch, many non-first-world) country dwellers take up high-technology on an unprecedented scale. I doubt there still exist parts of the world where people do not have relatively cheap and easy access to the internet, which means they have literal digital universes to consume at will.
This global smorgasbord of digitalia – hardware, software, and consumable product-wise – offers all consumers the capacity to, per Merriam-Webster’s second definition of gluttony, partake in greedy or excessive indulgence. If greedy or excessive indulgence translates to us finding ourselves put out in any way when asked to surrender screen time to be with our kids, help out friends, or simply give a damn about the world beyond whatever TV series we’re watching, I’m afraid I’m a glutton. And if I – someone who’s sufficiently aware to publicly admit that he’s gluttonously inclined – can say that, it begs the question of how many people alive today do not realize how gluttonously-oriented their lives are, which in turn propagates the dissolution of nuance and niceties in an increasingly gluttonous world.