March Fifth, I dreamt. A raven reeled in front of me. Wore a neck-chain, blinked blue eyes. Startled, I started to swat. "Stop. She wants to feed you", says a voice. My arms sank. I opened my mouth. Quickfood sure-aimed shot from her beak. She fluttered and fanned, her wings fell feather warm on my naked neck.
From G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
"The old hypocrite . . . was a [person] whose aims were really worldly and practical, while he pretended that they were religious. The new hypocrite is one whose aims are really religious, while he pretends that they are worldly and practical. .... It is a fight of creeds masquerading as policies."
"The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future. Evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no more light than an owl."
"The modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. .... The goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity. Futurity does not exist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of [human]kind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our fore[bears]. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking at our door. The future is a blank wall on which [I] can write [my] name as large as [I] like. .... I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity."
"These colossal ruins are to the modern only enormous eyesores. He looks back along the valley of the past and sees a perspective of splendid but unfinished cities. They are unfinished, not always through enmity or accident, but often through fickleness, mental fatigue, and the lust for alien philosophies. We have not only left undone those things we ought to have done, but we have even left undone those things that we wanted to do."
"It is very currently suggested that the modern ... is the heir of all the ages, that he has got the good out of these successive human experiments. .... Is it really true that you and I are two starry towers built up of all the most towering visions of the past? Have we really fulfilled all the great historic ideals one after the other, from our naked ancestor who was brave enough to kill a mammoth with a stone knife, through the Greek citizen and the Christian saint to our own grandfather or great-grandfather, who may have been sabred by the Manchester Yeomanry or shot in the '48? Are we strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them? Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared?"
"This is, first and foremost, what I mean by the narrowness of the new ideas, the limiting effect of the future. Our modern prophetic idealism is narrow because it has undergone a persistent process of elimination. .... The need here is a need of complete freedom for restoration as well as revolution."
"We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. .... The really courageous [person] is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be."
"There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, 'You can't put the clock back.' The simple and obvious answer is 'You can.' A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed."
The Anxiety to Act - the Fear of the Iroquois
In preface, I will say that my posts (and Woof-Log) are not prepped to advise vegans and vegetarians, nor are meant to lure such people into bison cook-outs over prairie bonfires (i dream of them). Nor have I yet examined the ethics behind not eating things that move (faster) versus things that don't. Or things that feel (we think) more pain, and those that feel less.
I do feel free to say this, however. ANYONE could change the way i eat now, depending on what came out of their mouth, and how the application of that wisdom (not necessarily their own) countered or complemented my own dining experiences. I will also say this: I think that's the only healthy, self-charitable attitude to have.
This mode of conviction I strive for - a belief with foundations broad enough to allow me to ALTER the non-essential elements of that belief. I think nutrition and eating are, in the bigger scheme of things, fairly petty concerns (i've modified my own diet by degree for years). They must be altered, even as life must be altered. Yet how cannily do comestion's misapprehended nuances mirror the same nuances we encounter in real life. Simplicity is gain, but only following experience's painful complexities.
To point out a general trend among people who conclusively rule out other diets (or beliefs) based on individual, relative, or esoteric experience: They've rarely tried more than a couple of things (in unvaried combination). They have not experimented with enough variously weighted synthesizing (or non-compatible) factors in order to isolate out the causes of their bliss or mal-reactions. I hear many people point-blank refuse to eat raw vegetables because this 'upsets their digestion' (well, lifting weights makes you sore...) Eating raw vegetables, eating meat, eating oatmeal (where, how often, how much, why, what type, with what) can only lead us to unknowables if we do not attempt to formulate any beliefs in the matter, and do not remain flexible in our experimentation. We must not, in helpless defeat, fall under the delusion that each lifestyle and each diet is relative -- all equally worthy and equally healthy. Activate your will. Employ your freedom. Learn, and live.
Do not settle on freewill/freedom at the expense of that which freewill/freedom strives for: Wellbeing beyond our own devices and knowledge. Such wellbeing may well be beyond our ability - that's no reason to discount the truth of such wellbeing. We must strive to ADAPT to what will lead to greater optimum health, find the willingness to so adapt, and alter diet proportion and content in such a way which allows us to adapt. In this case, ancient humans, forboding like the Iroquois, are not our enemies. They are our very selves which we have misread, misjudged, and perversely subverted. We must not, as G. K. Chesteron warns for modern minds, be "forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue, not unmixed with terror, with which [we] regard the past." [What Is Wrong with the World ]
A similar esotericism, one with no focus on potentially achievable IDEALS, influences people's reactions to beliefs AND foods of all sorts. We are afraid of death, but we do not know how to die. We are afraid to kill, but we do it daily. We fear disease, but we have lost the art of ease. We mistake our existential journey for pain and pleasure. But we still cannot muster the courage to eat.
To draw your attentions back to meat: Regardless of one's ethics about eating meat, and barring unfavourable medical maladaptations, very few peoples worldwide have any innate biological aversions to meat ingestion and utilization. The opposite pattern holds: It is the one food the human body most readily recognizes and uses. Sushi passes from lips to anus with much greater ease than peanut butter. Sushi and peanut butter TOGETHER, however, synthesize about as well as Nihilism and Christianity. Strangely, solemnly, sacrificially, it seems that by some past mischance or misdeed, our 'herbivorous planet' grew into a carnivore - and we still reel under the weight of that legacy. Another solemnity seizes me - that life must die in order for life to live. That is the one lesson, no matter what we eat, which fewest learn. It is the most important thing to learn about food.
More mundanely, people will NOT feel good eating meat if (1) it is combined with too many starches, particularly hybrid or refined ones (2) it is a small element in a diet in which the bulk of the calories come from carbohydrates or from a fairly high dose of them (40-80%) (and this regardless of what kind of carbohydrates they are) (3) if raw veggs do not complement their diet (4) if their digestive systems and metabolisms have been given no chance to adapt to the change; create new enzymes and different proportions of enzymes, etc. (though animal dairy is not basic or ancient to human health, the body can learn to make lactase to deal with unruly lactose. I advise mother's milk.) (5) if blood sugar regulation and insulin production have been given no time to re-normalize (6) if they do not feel at peace about the IDEA of eating meat, or feel psychological loathing during the process.
To persuade or dissuade, that is no art without a contents for persuasion or dissuasion.
-Paleo-Nate
The following taken from Chris Gupta's informed webpages at http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2006/03/27/the_benefits_
of_saturated_fats.htm
which, in this case, derive from Mary Enig's and Sally Fallon's book The Skinny on Fats http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/skinny.html#benefits
The Benefits of Saturated Fats
The much-maligned saturated fats which Americans are trying to avoid are not the cause of our modern diseases. In fact, they play many important roles in the body chemistry:
* Saturated fatty acids constitute at least 50% of the cell membranes. They are what gives our cells necessary stiffness and integrity.
* They play a vital role in the health of our bones. For calcium to be effectively incorporated into the skeletal structure, at least 50% of the dietary fats should be saturated. (38)
* They lower Lp(a), a substance in the blood that indicates proneness to heart disease. (39) They protect the liver from alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol. (40)
* They enhance the immune system. (41)
* They are needed for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids.
* Elongated omega-3 fatty acids are better retained in the tissues when the diet is rich in saturated fats. (42)
* Saturated 18-carbon stearic acid and 16-carbon palmitic acid are the preferred foods for the heart, which is why the fat around the heart muscle is highly saturated. (43) The heart draws on this reserve of fat in times of stress.
* Short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids have important antimicrobial properties. They protect us against harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.
The scientific evidence, honestly evaluated, does not support the assertion that "artery-clogging" saturated fats cause heart disease. (44) Actually, evaluation of the fat in artery clogs reveals that only about 26% is saturated. The rest is unsaturated, of which more than half is polyunsaturated. (45)
Quoting an affluent:
"Yeah but she said, yeah but she says she, No, said that next week, or she, that she has got, she has got doctors' appointments all week that week, she says" (average acceleration, with outbursts)
By way of contrast, hear a Madison, WI street bum:
"It had a sort of relish taste, rather like pesto relish." (recorded 12 December 2006 at Williamson and Baldwin)
December 2nd, I dreamt. whitesky on northern fields. dusking over lakota savannah. sunlight to greylight. waited and watched under oak tree on hill. hungry. a great black wolf, a she-wolf, brought me food. piece by piece, she fed me. loping, she-lupus came and went. tossle-maned, raven-fell, tangle-thick, she lay near me. side by side, we shared and ate. she sought me, warmed me, braved me, outloped me. in dark of night, she turned to woman with thick black hair and whitesky skin. do not know her. never saw her in waking life. hope we will share more carcasses. jehovah jireh.
Middan-geard /mId.dan-yayrd/ = Middle Enclosed Region, Middle Garth, Middle Earth
Below follows excerpt from J.R.R. Tolkien's narrative poem The Lay of Leithian (an early Tale of Tinúviel) as it appears in The Lays of Beleriand in The History of Middle Earth III :
All eyes were quenched, save those that glared
in Morgoth's lowering brows, and stared
in slowly wandering wonder round,
and slow were in enchantment bound.
Their will wavered, and their fire failed,
and as beneath his brows they paled,
the Silmarils like stars were kindled
that in the reek of Earth had dwindled....
Then flaring suddenly they fell,
down, down upon the floors of hell.
The dark and mighty head was bowed;
like mountain-top beneath a cloud
the shoulders foundered, the vast form
crashed, as in overwhelming storm
huge cliffs in ruin slide and fall;
and prone lay Morgoth in his hall.
His crown there rolled upon the ground,
a wheel of thunder; then all sound
died, and a silence grew as deep
as were the heart of Earth asleep.
. . . .
....Morgoth groaned
with voice entombed, like wind that moaned
in hollow caverns penned and bound. [4086-4168]
Calm and comely
hum on wing,
plush on plume,
filigree flush.
Fetterless fly,
sighless sing.
-Paleo-Nate, August 2006
