When I heard that the Hostess cake company was going out of business, I simply couldn’t believe it was true.  As a child of the 1970s, I had grown up consuming all manner of Hostess products:  Ding Dongs, Sno Balls, Ho Hos, Donettes, and Suzy Q’s—to name but a few.  I must confess that in my youth I also ate more than my fair share of that fuffy white bread in which anything wholesome or healthy had been stripped away in our incessant American quest to turn a nutritious food item into something that even starving rats would refrain from eating if they had any other options. 

And then there’s the Twinkie—a product so unnatural that it has been claimed that it can last on the shelf for years.   Already I image that hoarders are buying up as many of these tasty treats as they can find in an attempt to forestall that inevitable moment when the Twinkie will be no more.

What a shame that will be, too.  When there are no more Twinkies, where are we Americans going to find any product that so artfully combines everything that is bad for you in one conveniently wrapped product?  Where are we going to acquire our daily doses of partially hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors, and high fructose corn syrup? How can we possibly find another treat so completely empty of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and protein (all the things that keep us frail human beings alive)? And at such a reasonable price, too!

The Twinkie, like other Hostess products, belongs to that strange period from the 1940s-1970s when Americans became so caught up with the magic of processed foods that they lost sight that food should be nutritious as well as tasty.  Generations were raised to think that all real food must come wrapped in plastic with a corporate logo stamped on it. 

If you weren’t part of that mass-production generation, you can’t possibly know how lucky you are to be living now.  Over the past decade, many Americans have turned their backs—and closed their wallets—to the kinds of garbage that companies like Hostess have been trying to pass off as food.  We’ve seen the amazing growth of the organic, local, and whole foods moments in the United States and have also witnessed the success of food chains like Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Fairways, which specialize in providing food that our great-grandparents would recognize as such.

There might be some among us who mourn the passing of a company like Hostess.  But I am perfectly content to see this company and everything it has represented disappear.  Before it does, however, I’m determined to partake of one last Twinkie for old time’s sake.  The Twinkie, after all, is like that annoying friend who constantly got you into trouble when you were young, but was always a blast to hang around with.  Then your friend was sent off to the boy’s reformatory and you never saw him again.  You were certainly much better off without him, but you continue to wonder what sort of character defects you must have possessed to find him so appealing in the first place.

Farewell, Twinkie.  The world will be a much better place without you around.  But we did have some fine times together back in the old days, didn’t we! 

Rest in peace.

I’ve got to acknowledge that my moral perspective has gotten much more restrictive in recent years than it was when I was younger.  As a college student, I had a wonderful, idealistic moral vision that was founded upon the radical altruism of the Gospels, the progressive social activism of the 1960s, and the example set by the great social exemplars of the 20th century—Gandhi, Bishop Romero, Martin Luther King, and Ralph Nader, in particular.  Back then I honestly believed that selfless compassion for those in need was possible and that through collective sacrifice we could transform the world into a much better place.

As I entered middle age, I began to recognize that there was little likelihood that I would ever become a saint and that personal and collective sins are not quite so easy to eradicate as I had assumed they were.  My moral position at this point is the happy mean between the Christian altruism of my youth, which I now find far too idealistic to implement in any kind of meaningful way, and the libertarian ideology which is running rampant throughout the United States, and which I find abysmally devoid of any concern for the common good.  I call this approach the Ethics of Quid Pro Quo and wrote about it in an earlier piece.  

In a nutshell, my position is that real reciprocity is the key to authentic moral interaction with other human beings.  Our obligations extend to autonomous others to the extent that they have entered into a relationship with us in which there is a balance between what is given and what is received.  Those who take without ever giving are moral pariahs who ought to be shunned; and those who give without ever expecting anything in return are moral fools, who almost deserve to be taken advantage of.  In the balance between the quid (that which is given) and the quo (that which has been received) a true moral relationship is formed in which the mutual needs of the parties involved are recognized and respected, and as a result both parties are morally and existentially affirmed through their interactions.

I’ve come to believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with expecting others to reciprocate in some form when we care for them or do some act of kindness for them.  The expected reciprocation (the quid) should be roughly comparable in significance to the initial act (the quo), although, depending on the specific circumstances of the other, the act of reciprocation can at times be as minimal as an expression of appreciation (a sincere and heartfelt “thank you,” in other words).  I also think that it is a sign of decent moral character to consider how to reciprocate—and to what extent to reciprocate—when one has been treated kindly or generously by another person.  The person who never thinks about reciprocating at all is either a moral imbecile, and therefore not responsible for his actions, or, as I’ve already indicated, a moral pariah, who is best not associated with by anyone but the most committed masochist. 

As I contemplated how this ethics of quid pro quo might be implemented, I began to wonder what exactly our obligations are towards those who are not able to engage in the kind of exchanges demanded in this kind of moral system.  The answer quite simply is that, if an individual is incapable of truly reciprocating because of mental or physical incapacity or limitations (the seriously mentally or physically disabled or ill) age (young children), lack of free will (animals), or by virtue of the fact that they do not yet exist (future generations), then, individually and collectively, we have an obligation to work for the good of such individuals regardless of whether or not they can reciprocate.  Once again, however, we must be careful not to demean such individuals by automatically assuming that they are completely incapable of any sort of reciprocity at all.  Young children, for example, are able to give back much more than we typically assume and should be trained from a very early age to contribute to the good of their families and to the larger community in whatever way they are capable.

I also think that it has been a mistake of otherwise well-intentioned liberals to treat the economically disadvantaged as though they lacked the ability to either care for themselves or provide some service in kind for the public generosity bestowed upon them.  When charity, for example, is given to the poor in the form of food stamps or below cost public housing, with no expectations of any kind of reciprocating action on those receiving it, we treat such individuals as though they were not fully autonomous and therefore not quite as human as we are.  It really is an insult to their dignity as human beings, and does little more than make the distributor of charitable offerings feel morally superior to those who are the recipient of his or her largesse.  On the other hand, a well-constructed workfare program—and I’m not sure that such a thing actually exists right now in the United States—asks recipients of taxpayer support to give something back to the lager community, and in doing so allows those individuals the dignity of feeling like full participatory members of that community.  

One should not assume that my focus on reciprocity in moral actions means that I reject the value of charity completely.  There are those towards whom charity is certainly appropriate.  Victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines, for example, deserve our sympathy as well as our financial and emotional support; the same is true for those who fall victim to circumstances beyond their control (sickness, disability, mental illness, etc).  We have an obligation to individually and collectively care for such individuals, if they are not able to care for themselves.  And this is true, even if they are strangers who might never be able to repay our generosity in any meaningful way. 

I’m always amazed when I pass a home in the area where I live that looks like its owners are vying with the Beverly Hillbillies for garish opulence.   It’s not just the bad taste that many of these overblown suburban monstrosities typically evidence—although I must confess that most do disgust my sense of aesthetic propriety—but it’s the waste of resources needed to build and sustain such housing that really troubles me. 

The McMansion trend around the country was one that boomed during the period in which oil and gas were cheap and mortgages were being offered to anyone who could sign on the dotted lines.  The eighties and nineties saw the peak of the McMansion trend with developments springing up overnight in what was formerly farmland and older homes being razed to make way for newer, more ostentatious structures. 

Just to give you some idea of how big our homes have gotten over the past fifty years, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), in 1950 the average house size was 930 square feet; in 2007 it was 2,521 square feet.  The average home, therefore, almost tripled in size during a period which saw average family size shrink.  More toilets for fewer people seemed to be the mentality up until recently.   

But, thankfully, the trend towards “bigger is better” appears to be changing now that Americans are finally becoming aware that the costs of heating, cooling, and maintaining huge homes in a period of economic uncertainty and rising oil prices is not all it’s cracked up to be.  In fact, there seems to be an anti-McMansion trend out there on the part of prospective homeowners.   The real estate website Trulia.com recently reported that more than half of Americans say that 1,400 to 2,000 square feet would be their ideal home size—still larger than the typical home of the 1950s but nothing like the garish monuments to conspicuous consumption that were becoming the suburban norm in the 1990s.    Current trends seem to be bearing out this downsizing paradigm:  In 2010, the average home size dropped to 2,377 square feet and it is predicted to fall to around 2,140 square feet by 2015.

The high cost of heating and cooling homes is certainly driving this trend.  But we should not underestimate the desire of younger Americans in particular to live much more sustainable lives than their parents.  Indeed, smaller homes are not the only things that are currently in vogue:  new homes are also being built using recycled materials, making use of passive solar designs, and often come equipped now with water conservation devices and Energy Star appliances.  It’s not that home builders are suddenly becoming more ecological; it’s that they realize that green home design has become attractive to prospective home buyers.

There are other advantages to owning a smaller home, besides the ecological benefits.  Smaller homes are typically more affordable than larger ones, which means that you can pay off your mortgage much quicker.  A smaller house also means less to clean and maintain, which gives homeowners time and more money to do other things.  Finally, because space is limited in a smaller home, homeowners are less inclined to give in to consumeristic spending urges, because there just isn’t the space to store unnecessary stuff.  Again, this means more money in the homeowners’ pockets and less stuff that will eventually end up in a landfill. 

As someone who believes that any living space over 1,500 square feet is a colossal waste of space and precious resources, I’m delighted that Americans are finally coming to their senses.  Now if we can just get rid of those damn SUVs!