One of the things that drives me crazy is the people who are constantly saying we need to go back to our roots, eat, sleep, and live like Amazon tribes or Neanderthals. If you do any research at all, this is just a ridiculous concept. Especially when you the are also encouraging people to reject modern medicine in favor of "natural" medicine. Now I understand that our current modern medical establishments are rife with issues, and I'm not denying or excusing that. But let's just address basics, life expectancy, only about 20% of Neanderthals made it past 40 years of age, and the average life expectancy for modern Amazonian tribes is 53 years. Being that I am now 42, I'd like to live a little longer than that, and the reason I can is MODERN MEDICINE, access to clean water, good and plentiful food, living indoors when it's too cold or hot, working jobs that aren't as physically demanding. Telling people that if they go back to some kind of traditional past lifestyle, that they will live a healthier happier lifestyle is a falsehood and a dangerous one. Get medical advice from a medical professional, who bases their research on science, not some person on YouTube who bases their ideas on things that seem true to them.
My wife has a rare form of angiosarcoma. The prognosis is normally very bleak. After other treatments had failed, she was put on a clinical trial with an experimental drug - a genetically modified virus designed to attack cancer cells. The cancer is literally disappearing, week by week.
There's nothing "natural" about any of this. We didn't do our own research.
@RickiTarr the whole point of evolution is to build you to reproduce. after you pass that viable age, nothing the “paleo experience” wired into your genes will help you, and neither will replicating [sic.] the environment that did that wiring. full stop.
Seriously, this is great - unfortunately, I think the take-away from this will some people will start marketing their products differently - instead of "Live like a Neanderthal!" they will now be titled "Live like a SMART Neanderthal!"
It's like people following the Paleo diet - supposedly, proponents of the diet knew what humans ate over 10,000 years ago.
@RickiTarr Yes, one of the attractions of conspiracy theories is 'being in the know' and differentiating yourself from other people.
I have to admit, I can kind of understand the appeal and mechanism behind it - you found out something and share it with others becoming a Prometheus like figure that you were able to find this special information.
@RickiTarr@Badger_AF I always felt conspiracy theories is a kind of expression that something isn’t right. People feel it but lack ways to express and understand it. So they fall prey to stuff like “it’s the Jews!” or “it’s cultural Marxism!”
We all feel that something is wrong and we’re not supposed to be living like this, spending our energy, bodies, and mind to make some rich asshole richer while they pay us crumbs.
@alfa_vuk@Badger_AF It's just other people realize this too, people who don't have humanity's best interests at heart, so it's easy for them to say, The problem with society is Homosexuals and Immigrants and if we get rid of that problem everything will be fine. Because they don't want people to look too closely at the actual problems, like you said, wealth inequality.
@Badger_AF I think we've all fallen prey to it to some extent, I know I have. I think we want the answers to be simple, but they're not. Other than rich people needing to pay their taxes, that is a simple way to make the world better lol
@RickiTarr Another point - hunter/gatherer and subsistence farming simply CAN NOT SUSTAIN 8 BILLION PEOPLE. Hell, "Organic" and "Non GMO" farming can not sustain 8 billion people. I don't care HOW good your farming methods are, without fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, your yields drop. A LOT.
So when you're trying to preach some "return to nature" bullshit, you're basically saying that you want a world that can only grow enough food to support 1-2 billion people. And how confident are you that you/yours deserve to be one of those 1-2 billion who are allowed to eat?
@RickiTarr There's a DEEP rot of implied racism and eugenics and hoping for "The end of the world as we know it" to take care of the "undesirables" within that community. Of course, they always figure they're going to be one of the "chosen ones" or "lucky ones" who know how to survive the collapse ...
It gets right to the heart of what has always bothered me about these 'prepper' types. They believe they will be chosen and that most of the rest of us will die because we are somewhat 'useless'. A core belief of fascism.
Yes to all of this. Also! Human ancestors were communal! This idea that we were ever just operating as individuals out there taking out mammoth with the strength of our raw brawny brawn is ridiculous. We literally survived by cooperating as a group. That's like, our main adaptation. But most of the preppers I've known really seem to romanticize the myth of rugged individualism.
@RickiTarr Just seeing this now. Hate to be the ‘well, actually’ guy but I’m afraid I have to step in and say that actually the meat does taste better when you’ve had to fight for it. Sure, we lost Grod and Urghurgh and Gahka perished from secondary injuries on the way back to the camp, and wolves got Hurgh and some others (I still haven’t evolved the ability to count numbers over four, haha!) while we were gone, but do you know what? That mammoth tasted better than anything you’ve ever eaten.
@SemAntiKast Oh, that is one of those annoying ones, because it can be easily disputed with 2 minutes of research! People just don't actually want to know.
@RickiTarr I, for one, cannot imagine life without running water or sewage systems, much less without water heaters or washing machines or stoves and oven ranges. Even at my poorest times I still had access to these and the many other conveniences of modern life. I am NOT giving these up so I can haul my own water and chop my own wood.
@RickiTarr I am a product of incremental advances in medicine. I was born right at the start of my first heart/lung problems being treatable, which allowed me to live long enough for the follow up condition to be manageable thanks to modern medicine. Modern medicine has done everything it can to try to save me. It is the insurance companies that have tried to kill me and the prescription drug makers who have tried to price me out of life. I got a chance at life because of modern medicine.
@RickiTarr I am not even exaggerating what my insurance life has been like, and not even just on myself. During each childs birthday week, my parents would tell details about their early life. Coming from a family where both sides are #neurodivergent, and where a significant piece of my Dad's family likely has #autism, they probably overly shared with those stories. Never in a shame the child kind of way where parents are resentful of children who has a rough birth. (continued next msg)
@RickiTarr It is more in the "explain in as many details as possible because that is the only right way to do it," that I very much do myself. There are details that I still don't know, but I do know that my parents basically spent my first year fighting with their insurance to pay for my treatment, or fighting with them to give me FREAKING oxygen tanks so I could safely go to appointments. I have never asked how much they had to pay out of pocket, but the full price would have bankrupted them.
@RickiTarr whatever they had to pay, and the mental stress everything put on them, had clear long term impacts on both of my parents, but my Dad most especially. I don't know the details, but I have been told by other family that my Dad had some sort of mental breakdown, and he was on the verge of being homebound, similar to his mother and grandmother. My mother convinced him that it was an unacceptable option, and he worked outside of the home, but the stress changed his personality for decades
@RickiTarr my parents have had many creative streaks in my life, but it was especially prevalent before I was born. The first computer I used was a Sanyo MBC-550, that my parents played with together. My dad even built a primitive interface that the computer would boot into for the kids, making it easy to access programs. It had a profound influence on me, and I can thank my love of computers partially to it. But it was all built before I was born, and he never did anything like it after.
@RickiTarr
I'm a firm believer in modern medicine and happily vaxxed. However I also resent that capitalism expects me to be productive during winter when my body very clearly just wants to curl up in front of a fire. In more agrarian times, that would be the expected thing.
The very minor silly thing that drives me batty about it at the moment is that manufacturers sell these people "paleo" foods in chocolate flavors.
I'm sorry, what!?
Do the believers think that paleolithic Cro Magnon or Neanderthal men - you know in their imagination it's always European men - were setting up transatlantic trade routes with South America to get cacao beans and then refining them into chocolate?
@RickiTarr Eating well means fresh veg free from pesticides etc, but that's mainly for richer people, or growing your own...very very time-consuming and that too presumes you have land to do that. Catching your own food...yeh, right...I do know how to do a bit of poaching and foraging...I had to learn on the hoof during a period of extreme poverty in rural France. All you can do is your best to stay healthy, fit and informed.
@RickiTarr
Totally get the resistance to holier-than-thou purists. Also, living in a tent in the woods, I feel more connected and balanced than I did with most modern conveniences. I still benefit from modern developments, but in general, for me now, less is more. Granted, my lifestyle is not for everyone, but it is for some of us. Also it’s my understanding that most native cultures, more about balance with all of life, consider themselves to have been better off before colonialist “progress.”
@RickiTarr "You should eat a traditional paleo diet" they say, ignoring that agriculture has changed the shape of our mouths and that's why we have those "extra" wisdom teeth now, because we don't have to chew/grind tough foods nearly as much as our ancestors did
Remember that time in Battlestar Galactica when they found the planet and decided it was so awesome they were going to give up all their modern medicine and stuff, and live on the planet, and round up all their ships that had sustained them for decades and fly them into the sun and make stone tools instead?
People who think that life in pre-industrial, pre-scientific societies was so fucking wonderful should sell off all their shit, donate all their money to charity, then go live someplace like Borneo or Pitcairn Island AND TRY IT.
Or, you know, they could just STFU. I'd be fine with that, too.
@RickiTarr people need to remember the case of Albert Alexander, one of the first people to be treated using penicillin. He died, because they ran out of the very limited experimental quantity available ... from a severe infection caused by a scratch from a rose thorn.
Shit like this HAPPENS when you don't have modern medicine.
Is it perfect? Of course not. But it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
@RickiTarr I remember a human evolutionary biologist explaining, after being asked about paleo fads, that Neanderthals didn't have a diet; they literally ate whatever they could to not die, which, due to ease of immediate access and overall distribution, meant vegetables and seeds and plants. Also, a gourd aint' going to tear out your throat or take days to hunt, so much safer for life and survival regarding energy expenditure.
@RickiTarr
It's a weird knee jerk overreaction to very real issues with modern life.
Like yes, we should eat less shitty food and should turn off the TV and exercise more, but no, we shouldn't go back to subsistence living where we have to track animals through the forest for weeks to take them down and then eat them.
Add comment