"All Natural"

[Silent3]

Okay, this is going to be a bit of a rant.

This is not in response to any particular thread here. In part, it grew out of something from another thread on an entirely different web site, but it's also in response to things I've read on DU concerning vaccines, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, etc. What is it I feel like ranting about?

NATURAL = GOOD!
ARTIFICIAL = BAD!

This might sometimes be true. There might even be some good reasons to think that our bodies TEND to react better to things which have developed in nature, and which therefore MIGHT be closer to substances to which our bodies have evolved to tolerate well. It's a damn ridiculous assumption to make in the extreme, however. Sea snake venom and belladonna are "all natural", and they sure as hell aren't very good for you. And if you think it's not fair using poisons to make a point, why would you imagine that everything in nature is either clearly poisonous or clearly wholesome, without a whole range of healthiness in between?

Why is it that all it takes is a hint that there might be a report that one single study might be released linking Drug X or Artificial Additive X to cancer (It's practically always cancer, isn't it? Hardly ever liver damage or reduced night vision or whatever. Why?) to have people raging against X, advertising and cashing in on X-Free products, condemning the greedy bastards who sell X for having absolutely no concern for anything other than the corporate bottom line when they push this POISON! down our throats, etc. etc.?

Why is it that the very same people likely to react to X in such a way, when X has probably been developed and tested for safety and effectiveness over a span of years and numerous studies, are also the very same people who'll gobble up anything deemed "natural" or "alternative" or "holistic" or "homeopathic", WITHOUT ONE SHRED of documented evidence in its favor beyond uncorroborated anecdotes and a book written by some self-styled health guru who's clearly got a profit motive for pushing his or her cure du jour?

Now, I hope no one takes what I have to say here as a call for complacency or unquestioning satisfaction with the status quo. We should fight, and fight hard, to fix many things which have gone wrong in the health care system, the drug industry, and in our lifestyles in general. I'm also sure that there are plenty of truly useful and healthy things out there which are deemed "organic" and "natural", etc. I'd just like to see a little more recognition of how good things are in many ways, and a little more balance when it comes to the science vs. nature debate. I think people too often lose all perspective on these matters, and rush to throw out the baby along with the bath water.

For the most part, we're living longer and healthier lives than we ever did in the historic past. We've got to be doing something right.

Of course, a big part of what we're doing right is pretty simple: modern sanitation practices and a large, very safe food supply. (Yes, compared to the past, even with all of the media sensationalism over the occasional E. Coli outbreak or melamine contamination, food is MUCH safer today than it has been historically.) Reducing starvation and the spread of disease does wonders, and can claim quite a bit of credit for most of the general health improvements we've seen over the past hundred or so years, before you get to other more elaborate advances like MRI machines and vaccines and heart bypass surgery.

But where's the evidence that "all natural" is all good? Where's the evidence that damn near anything that ails you can be cured by eating right, exercising, and the occasional herbal extract? I see no evidence for that whatsoever -- only a lot of blind faith in "nature", and an incredible willingness to blame any health problem on some unspecified "toxin" or "toxic effect" of living in this bad, bad, evil unnatural world we've created, to blame some deviation or other from The Wisdom of Nature.

Yet, if you go back into the not too distant past when nearly everyone exercised strenuously because daily life required it, and the only foods available were "all natural", and there was no diesel exhaust in the air, and no fluoride in the water, and medicine meant nature's own herbs and leeches, average life spans were half, or less than half, of what we enjoy today. Survival rates of infants in the All Natural World were atrocious.

Mixed in with legitimate complaints about the flaws and excesses of modern medicine and the modern food industry is an unfounded, mystical idea of health as a matter of "balance" of animistic "energies", as a matter of "purity". In this popular culture mindset concerning health, "natural" means pure and good, "artificial" means impure, toxic, and bad.

You know what a "natural" balance really is? It's having your population kept in check by disease and predation and periodic droughts and famines. That's real nature for you. The idealized healthy all-natural life of popular culture does not and has never existed in nature! I'll happily take "natural" cures and prevention and food sources when that's the smarter, more efficient choice. But, you know, sometimes pills and the machine that goes "ping!!!" are better than nuts and berries. Sometimes it's better to feed a million people with food sprayed with pesticides rather than only feeding a hundred thousand with "organic" food. Sometimes science and technology are the good guys.

As for cancer (which is always the big bogeyman) a lot of the cancer we see these days is simply because we're now living long enough so there's more time for cancer to develop within us. We suffer other "diseases of abundance" too. You can "blame" science for that abundance which clogs our arteries, I suppose, and "blame" science for removing drudgery from our lives, which ends up making us flabby, but don't forget to save a little blame for nature too. It's natural to eat as much as you can of the richest foods you can find, because in a natural world, such abundance is rare, and you've got to jump at such opportunities. It's natural to put out no more physical effort than you need to, because effort expends calories, and calories are, in nature, a precious commodity which must be carefully preserved. The downside risks of too little exercise are too rare a condition in the natural world for us to have evolved to cope with the problem of such luxury.

Running five miles in circles to nowhere in particular, then fighting your cravings for sweets and fats afterwards, is far from "natural". It might be "natural" in the sense that you can do it using only the body nature gave you (well, augmented with computer-designed running shoes, sunblock, and an iPod, of course) and foods only found in nature, but behaviorally speaking, it's a very artificial solution to the problems of abundance.

We have to face the fact that what we really want -- very long, healthy lives, for as close to 100% of the human population as we can get, free from disease and aches and pains and blemishes and bad breath and head lice, etc. -- is one of the most unnatural things we could hope for. Science might not have all the answers yet, and maybe it won't ever provide all of the answers we might hope for, but clearly science has done us a world of good too.

The vision of a beneficent Mother Nature, radiating purity and wholesome goodness and "positive energy", is a fictional creation, something only a well-fed, comfortable society with a lot of leisure time, living off the benefits of science, has the luxury of imagining. The real Mother Nature is a bitch, and you're lucky when she simply lets you live.

[durtee librul]

1. We're just better preserved now, that's all.

"...For the most part, we're living longer and healthier lives than we ever did in the historic past. We've got to be doing something right."

We are also fatter and more disease prone now as well. I agree with some of your rant (better living thru chemicals or does that show my age? LOL!!), but I do tend to think we have overdone a lot with the 'enhanced' foods we have.

If we can get more corn kernals off an ear of corn without causing any damage to the environment or ourselves, then I'm all for it. However, with the current FDA and AG depts and their lyin' thievin' ways, I'm not sure anymore.

[Aviation Pro]

2. I recently had surgery to remove some stuff.....

...and the surgeon loaded me up with Percoset and some Oxycotin derivative. I immediately shredded both (I know, I should have sold them to Limpballs for some "cabbage"). I did take Tylenol when I felt uncomfortable but I healed very quickly and the stitches were removed less than 10 days after surgery.

All healing takes is a little discipline and faith that the human body is a marvelously engineered machine.

[karlrschneider]

4. "engineered"? Who engineered an organism that has backward eyeballs,

a spine more suitable for walking on 4 limbs, and an opening that has to accommodate both elimination and reproduction? And unlike the common kitty can't jump to its own height? A pretty shitty designer, I would say.

[Aviation Pro]

6. The same natural evolution that was bright enough.....

...to reverse the image past the focal point and show correctly in the brain. Here's the anatomy and you should know better as a pilot... :-)

[Silent3]

9. That's an example of brilliance?

As if it takes some marvelous trick to flip the image? As if any "flipping" is necessary at all? It's easy to be astounded by nature when non-astounding things do the trick for you.

[karlrschneider]

10. Haha...that's neat. Actually, I worked for Coburn Optical both as chief pilot and

also as an engineer for 20 years. I designed about a dozen machines to manufacture & process ophthalmic lenses. Not kidding, it's true. My boss was O. W. Coburn, father of our now-Senator Tom who I flew around the country for years since he was in high school. Feel free to contact him and ask if you think I'm bullshitting ..I'm not :-)
He's still a friend even though we disagree on 99.9% of political issues. \


edit: It didn't escape me that you noted it as 'natural evolution' :D

[FloridaJudy]

49. Actually, the octopus has a more sensible arrangement

The blood vessels that nourish an octopus' eye run behind the retina. It makes visual accuracy less chancy. A pretty good argument against intelligent design, IMHO (along with the disastrous anatomy of the human gall bladder).

[Silent3]

62. The blindspot we have in our eyes...

...also stems from the bass-akwards "design" of the human retina, as well as an increased risk of problems like retinal detachment.

[WhollyHeretic]

14. So if healing just "takes a little discipline and faith"

What did you need surgery for? :D

[Warpy]

17. Most people have their stitches removed in a week to ten days

if there are no complications. Major surgeries require narcotics so that people are able to tolerate the pain well enough to begin walking, something that is essential to avoiding complications and speeding recovery.

In 25 years of surgical nursing, I had ONE patient who was able to cope 24 hours post op with only Tylenol after major surgery. The rest who tried could do so only if they remained rigidly still in bed, something that would have led to pneumonia, blood clots, and a host of other problems.

Faith and discipline, my ass.

[Aviation Pro]

33. Soooo....narcotics are the only way to cope....

...beg to differ, but I used no narcotics during recovery. The pain was tolerable and it was major surgery. And, yes, one Tylenol a day soothed the micro-pain.

Bottom line, most American baby boomers are weak and thank God their parents are the ones who went through the Depression and WWII (otherwise we probably wouldn't have survived as a country).

[Warpy]

61. Do you know what major surgery is?

It is whenever either the thoracic or abdominal cavity is opened.

Opiates and synthetic pain drugs are a tool. As I said, I had one patient in 25 years of surgical nursing who was able to turn them down and still manage to walk and do his stretching exercises well enough. The other many hundreds of patients required opiates, and still it was very difficult for them.

It must be wonderful to be such an innately superior human specimen.

[eridani]

44. Having a high pain threshold is a physical fact--

--and a part of normal human variation in this trait. It isn't a moral virtue. Howsabout if you stop saying that having a high pain threshold makes you courageous and disciplined, I'll stop saying that having a low pain threshold makes me kinder and more empathic, 'kay?

[LeftishBrit]

60. Good for you; and it makes sense not to take medications unless one needs them, but...

to say that 'all healing takes is a little discipline and faith' is a bit insulting to the many people who have serious long-term medical disorders. Discipline and faith will not cure cancer or AIDS or multiple sclerosis or congenital heart disease. The suggestion sounds a bit like 19th century arguments that it's impious to use pain relief because it's going against the will of God.

[karlrschneider]

3. "Nature" whatever that is, has no particular interest in assisting humans.

Which is to say I mostly agree with your exposition (I don't think it's a rant, even) There are more than a few DUers who will go to great lengths to defend science when it's juxtaposed against, 'creationism', for example, but recoil in horror against it when it explains falling buildings in New York according to basic physics, or when it shows how 200 mile per gallon cars are impossible. I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone though, given the access here to anyone from genuine rocket scientists to semiliterate basement dwellers (both of which are often the subject of derision.)

[The Straight Story]

15. Best reply so far - and I agree with it, and besides...

We are natural, our brains are, and what we create with them is therefore natural eh ;)

What IS nature anyway? I hear it tossed about a lot, but not sure I get when some people use the term.

Again, nice post - if there was an anti-ignore list I would put ya on it :)

[karlrschneider]

16. Thanks. I regularly piss off some DUers whose purity test I often fail. :-)

And that's fine, I'm not here to make everyone happy. What fun would -that- be? :D

[Aviation Pro]

5. One other point....

...the appearance of the awful, awful diseases may be directly related to our longer lives. 100 years ago, diseases of aging were probably few and far between because people didn't live long enough to be afflicted by them.

[Silent3]

7. That goes right to my point

There's no reason to suspect or imagine that our "marvelous" bodies have the slightest clue how to cope well with being a hundred years old, no reason to suspect that there's any mere program of exercise and natural foods which will unlock some hypothetical mystical ability to heal everything that ails your centenarian body.

[toddaa]

8. Ricin is all natural

It's far safer than anything made by Glaxo Smith Kline or Merck.

Because it's all natural.

[Odin2005]

11. Great post.

Ludditism sucks. Period. That's all this "natural is good and artificial is bad" rhetoric is, ludditism and technophobia mixed in with anti-rational New Age romanticism. The great blessing of technology is that it lets us escape from the tyranny of the natural environment and take control of our own destiny. Transhumanism and Technogaianism are our future, ludditism and technophobia will only lead to misery.

Transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated >H or H+) is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, ageing and involuntary death. Transhumanist thinkers study the possibilities and consequences of developing and using human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies for these purposes. Possible dangers, as well as benefits, of powerful new technologies that might radically change the conditions of human life are also of concern to the transhumanist movement.<1>

Although the first known use of the term "transhumanism" dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s, when a group of scientists, artists, and futurists based in the United States began to organize what has since grown into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman."<1>

Transhumanist foresight of a profoundly transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and critics from a wide range of perspectives. Transhumanism has been described by a proponent as the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity,"<2> while according to one outspoken opponent, it is the world's most dangerous idea.

Technogaianism (a portmanteau word combining "techno-" for technology and "gaian" for Gaia philosophy) is the stance that emerging technologies can help restore Earth's environment, and that developing safe, clean, alternative technology should therefore be an important goal of environmentalists.<1><2>

This point of view is different from the default position of radical environmentalists and a common opinion that all technology necessarily degrades the environment, and that environmental restoration can therefore occur only with reduced reliance on technology. Technogaians argue that technology gets cleaner and more efficient with time. They would also point to such things as hydrogen fuel cells to demonstrate that developments do not have to come at the environment's expense. More directly, they argue that such things as nanotechnology and biotechnology can directly reverse environmental degradation. Molecular nanotechnology, for example, could convert garbage in landfills into useful materials and products, while biotechnology could lead to novel microbes that devour hazardous waste.<2>

While many environmentalists still contend that most technology is detrimental to the environment, technogaians point out that it has been in humanity's best interests to exploit the environment mercilessly until fairly recently. This sort of behaviour follows accurately to current understandings of evolutionary systems, in that when new factors (such as foreign species or mutant subspecies) are introduced into an ecosystem, they tend to maximise their own resource consumption until either, a) they reach an equilibrium beyond which they cannot continue unmitigated growth, or b) they become extinct. In these models, it is completely impossible for such a factor to totally destroy its host environment, though they may precipitate major ecological transformation before their ultimate eradication. Technogaians believe humanity has currently reached just such a threshold, and that the only way for human civilization to continue advancing is to accept the tenets of technogaianism and limit future exploitive exhaustion of natural resources and minimize further unsustainable development or face the widespread, ongoing mass extinction of species.<3> Furthermore, technogaians argue that only science and technology can help humanity be aware of, and possibly develop counter-measures for, risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth such as a possible impact event.<2>

One controversial example of technogaian practice is an artificial closed ecological system used to test if and how people could live and work in a closed biosphere, while carrying out scientific experiments. It is in some cases used to explore the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and also allows the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. <4> The most advanced technogaian proposal is the "terraforming" of a planet, moon, or other body by deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, or ecology to be similar to those of Earth in order to make it habitable by humans.<5>

Sociologist James Hughes has identified technogaianism as a current within the democratic transhumanist ideology and movement.<1> He mentions Walter Truett Anderson, author of To Govern Evolution: Further Adventures of the Political Animal, as an example of a technogaian political philosopher;<6> argues that technogaianism applied to environmental management is found in reconciliation ecology writings such as Michael Rosenzweig's Win-Win Ecology: How The Earth's Species Can Survive In The Midst of Human Enterprise;<3> and considers Bruce Sterling's Viridian design movement and Alex Steffen's Worldchanging blog to be prominent technogaian initiatives.

[fed-up]

12. heck when we're done trashing this planet we can always find another...

[Silent3]

13. Trashing the planet...

...has exactly what to do with the post you responded to?

[Odin2005]

19. The "Deep Greens" always trash us pro-technology Geens in that manner.

[Silent3]

21. Just to play devil's advocate for a moment here...

...I should state that I'm not exactly what you'd call a "technological optimist". I'm quite willing to admit that we often lack wisdom in the way we've used the technology developed from science. I don't think it's very likely that we'll ever manage to completely kill ourselves off (although that's in the realm of possibility), but I do often wonder if we'll manage to solve some of the big problems we've created soon enough to avoid a massive die-off of humans and other life on this planet.

The things the "transhumanists" dream of could be a long way off if we undergo a major population crash before we can get there. And, on a selfish note, even if we don't f*ck up too badly in the near term, I'm not that sure we'll get to the kind of life-extending technology the transhumanists talk about soon enough to matter for me personally.

It might be a whole lot better for the planet to stop having so many children, and slowly work our population back down to a billion or fewer before we start living indefinitely long lives. Then again, if we have the technology to reasonably sustain several billion people without "trashing the planet", especially if we can start sending people off into space and start colonizing other planets (I love the idea of terraforming Mars, if we can actually pull off such a feat), then sooner rather than later for major life extension sounds very, very good to me. (How about next Thursday? No sense cutting this close! :) )

For all of the potential and actual problems which arise from science and technology, we've got a fighting chance to break free from the ignorance and privation and limitations of a purely natural world, and taking that chance is quite well worth it, much better than looking backwards to an romanticized "natural" past which never really existed.

[The2ndWheel]

22. That future won't exist either

"we've got a fighting chance to break free from the ignorance and privation and limitations of a purely natural world"

No, we'll always be fighting that fight, and this war can never stop, because if it does, thanks to those laws of physics, we'll begin to "lose". So we can never "break free" from it, as it can never be enough. We're always going to be playing catch up. Whatever solution we come up with will only create a bigger and more complex problem that we have to attempt to break free from.

Not to mention the control you would need over every aspect of life to keep the war going. Not only the human brain, but anything that isn't predicatble and is imperfect, and then eradicate anything that takes energy away from the primary goal. Basically you have to stop evolution and kill diversity.

[Silent3]

23. The only unavoidable loss dictated by the laws of physics...

...is entropy, and the eventual heat death of the universe. Maybe I shouldn't be so "short sighted", but we're a few billion years away from having to worry about that little problem.

In the meantime, I never said anything about a "war". "Fight" and "war" are not the same thing. I'm talking about a struggle for achievement, and for freedom from the unpleasant parts of the natural world, not against nature. They goals I have in mind won't be easy achieve, and I'm sure we'll create new problems as we try to solve old problems -- but so what? That's what makes life interesting. I don't see where your certainly comes from that the only thing we can possible end up doing is digging ourselves deeper into trouble, or that doing anything good for ourselves means taking on everything.

Besides, big trouble is inevitable. Most species go extinct. Not just extinct, but completely extinct without leaving descendants either -- they end up as final twigs in the tree of life, not ending simply by branching. Perhaps you can happily resign yourself to these "cycles of life". Of course, if you had your way about all of this, you'd never even have been aware of any cycles of life at all beyond the small-scale cycles of life and death you directly could witness in your 20-30 years life span, lying under the stars at night without the slightest idea of what they are.

For all the mess we've made of the ecosystem, we also have the best chance of becoming the first species to be able to defend life on this planet as has never before been possible -- we're the first species with any hope of being able to deflect a large asteroid on a collision course with this planet.

Perhaps we haven't shown nearly enough concern for life, but Mother Nature doesn't give two shits about life. She'll just as happily slam a huge asteroid into this planet which wipes out half of all life as send a bigger, faster one which annihilates all life altogether, down to the last bacterium.

[The2ndWheel]

24. Well if we start living forever, and colonizing other planets

you might want to start looking that far.

""Fight" and "war" are not the same thing"

Agreed. But this isn't a simple fight.

"I'm talking about a struggle for achievement, and for freedom from the unpleasant parts of the natural world, not against nature."

Do we get to not pay the taxes that fund the war, but that do fund education and health? The shame is that we don't get to pick and choose, in either case.

"I don't see where your certainly comes from that the only thing we can possible end up doing is digging ourselves deeper into trouble, or that doing anything good for ourselves means taking on everything."

At a certain point it becomes digger ourselves deeper. Diminishing returns and all.

In terms of taking everything on, what don't we have to control in order to achieve the end?

"Perhaps you can happily resign yourself to these "cycles of life""

"big trouble is inevitable"

It's a process, but yes, I'm getting there.

"For all the mess we've made of the ecosystem, we also have the best chance of becoming the first species to be able to defend life on this planet as has never before been possible -- we're the first species with any hope of being able to deflect a large asteroid on a collision course with this planet"

So that we can continue on messing up the ecosystem. 6 of one...

"Perhaps we haven't shown nearly enough concern for life, but Mother Nature doesn't give two shits about life. She'll just as happily slam a huge asteroid into this planet which wipes out half of all life as send a bigger, faster one which annihilates all life altogether, down to the last bacterium."

That is war. Hell, pre-emptive war. We have to defeat the enemy to save ourselves from it. We have to stop evolution and kill diversity. Nothing short of that will allow us to live forever and reach the stars. There can be nothing left that can stop us from doing that, thus this is not simply a fight with a black eye and a bloody nose. It is a war of extermination. Post-humans vs. existence. Only on pay-per-view, for just $59.95!

All this being said, we're already on this path and not stopping. So everyone has to hope your ideas work. If they don't, we got a hell of a mess. Far too much has been invested to not keep going. Everyone has to hope that everyone can have everything. The fear of the enemy has already taken hold. If we don't finish this war, we might die. It might come and get your children. We have to fight it everywhere, so that it can't get us everywhere.

[Silent3]

25. Ridiculous overstatement

The fear of the enemy has already taken hold. If we don't finish this war, we might die. It might come and get your children. We have to fight it everywhere, so that it can't get us everywhere.

I'm happy with winning a few of the battles (if you must INSIST on a war analogy) and reaching something akin to a "negotiated peace". Of course, such analogies are pretty rough when you're talking about the natural world -- which, while it contains intelligent life, shows no signs of acting in a coordinated fashion as an intelligence in its own right.

How the hell is ducking an asteroid a "war of extermination"? Bad, bad us for being a big meanie and not letting nature hurl her big rocks wherever she likes? Yes, terribly intolerant of us! And so selfish of us to not give hypothetical new life evolving from our own ashes a chance to come into existence.

And where does this idea of yours comes in that crushing all biodiversity is an INEVITABLE cost of carving out a comfy, safe existence for ourselves? Someday we might (this is "we" in a pretty abstract sense of our intellectual descendants) live as bit streams inside powerful computers buried deeply inside planets and moons, interacting with the world around us through remote devices, all of us (if we're even distinct individuals anymore) safely backed up on several worlds at once, making no more impact on the environment than the drawing the power to run those computers (which might not have to be very large at all) and the material resources needed to build and maintain such computers and our robotic extensions.

The so-called "natural world" could easily go on around us while we lived in such a state of existence, with no need at all for us to contain or regulate or de-diversify it or control it in anyway, save for staving off the occasional possible physical threat to our machinery, which, because of back ups, could often be treated as expendable anyway.

All this being said, we're already on this path and not stopping. So everyone has to hope your ideas work.

So if you're already admitting that "we're already on this path and not stopping", what precisely is your point? Just to bemoan the terrible, terrible future ahead of us because we aren't "wise enough" to bury our heads in the sand and surrender to the whims of pre-human-intelligence nature?

As another poster pointed out, we humans are products of nature after all. Whatever we do IS what nature is doing. It's sometimes useful to distinguish the products of the human mind as being "artificial", in contrast to everything else which happens being called "natural", but that's not a real or deep distinction if you're trying to look at the big picture, as you claim to be doing.

[The2ndWheel]

27. Says who?

Just joking.

"How the hell is ducking an asteroid a "war of extermination"?"

It's coming for us, we're going for it. Only one can win. There can be only one Highlander. Two men enter, one man leave.

"And where does this idea of yours comes in that crushing all biodiversity is an INEVITABLE cost of carving out a comfy, safe existence for ourselves?"

So living forever on all the planets is just a comfy little existence?

Just look at the way we live today. Look at agriculture(everything contains the same two or three crops). Look at factory farms.

"Someday we might (this is "we" in a pretty abstract sense of our intellectual descendants) live as bit streams inside powerful computers"

Were you bringing that up as a positive event?

"The so-called "natural world" could easily go on around us while we lived in such a state of existence, with no need at all for us to contain or regulate or de-diversify it or control it in anyway, save for staving off the occasional possible physical threat to our machinery, which, because of back ups, could often be treated as expendable anyway."

Except that wouldn't those threats be everywhere, since we would allow the rest of life to be there?

"So if you're already admitting that "we're already on this path and not stopping", what precisely is your point? Just to bemoan the terrible, terrible future ahead of us because we aren't "wise enough" to bury our heads in the sand and surrender to the whims of pre-human-intelligence nature?"

Pretty much. Resistance, after all, is futile.

"As another poster pointed out, we humans are products of nature after all."

But we want to reverse that.

We don't want to be part of nature. If we did, we wouldn't pick and choose the good parts. You have to live with the whole thing. Sort of like another person. They're not perfect, and you take the good with the bad. Whatever we end up calling good and bad.

That's the crazy thing about life though. The fact that you and I have two different ways of seeing the world is actual diversity. The fact that it's possible to even contemplate downloading ourselves onto computers, or not, is diversity. If everyone becomes a computer, that's a lack of diversity. If everyone cannot become a computer, that's a lack of diversity. But if some become a computer, and others don't, and since each is just trying to create a comfy and safe world for itself, what happens? You can look at governments and corporations the same way. There can't be two governments and still have an America. Eventually there can't be two corporations providing the same services.

We have no destination, but we're all trying to get there. Sometimes as quickly as possible. That's why I'm not much of a fan of time. It's too directional, especially digital clocks. They're not even round anymore, they're just relentlessly pulling us in one direction.

Maybe we should download ourselves. Maybe we shouldn't. I guess that's why diversity means conflict. Small scale(just a fight), or large(organized war).

[Silent3]

30. I still can't get where you're coming from.

You seem vaguely resentful of something, pretty much resigned to something, vaguely couldn't-give-a-damn, and... just plain old vague, maybe a little loopy too, especially when you talk about not being "much of a fan of time".

I suspect you meant that mostly as a smart ass comment, but it still gives me the feeling there really isn't any situation that would make you happy. If time itself really does bother you, you're pretty much doomed for discontent.

So living forever on all the planets is just a comfy little existence?

It can be a big, expansive, fulfilling existence in one sense. But it can also be an environmentally low-impact existence.

Don't take my sci-fi-ish living-as-software example too literally. I merely brought it up as an example of a possible future, to show that an environmentally low-impact existence, which is still safe, secure, and prosperous, is a conceivable thing. Now if you're going to be so insane about what you consider "impact" -- like daring to stop an asteroid on it's (rightful?) collision course with the planet, I can't help you much there, nor do I care to.

Except that wouldn't those threats be everywhere, since we would allow the rest of life to be there?

What big threat is a polar bear, a crocodile, or a malaria-infested mosquito, to an underground computer complex? Maybe if in a few million years the polar bears and crocs start learning how to drill tunnels and wield blow torches, we might have to intervene to protect ourselves, but so what? Other than the fact that we can protect ourselves in more sophisticated ways than other creatures, fighting to survive IS the way of nature, not counter to the way of nature.

The first photosynthetic plants didn't give a damn they were poisoning the whole planet by indiscriminately pumping that awful corrosive stuff we call "oxygen" out into a perfectly fine atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and whatnot, an atmosphere which the rest of life was perfectly content with at the time. They wreaked havoc on the ecosystem of their day, and probably killed off a lot of their own kind in the process. We're certainly no worse for the planet than those first plants were, and at least we have a chance to think about what we're doing and minimize the impact we have on other life.

You're acting as if the first obligation of conscious awareness is to let yourself die off and not get in the way of dumber, or even non-sentient, things.

There can't be two governments and still have an America. Eventually there can't be two corporations providing the same services.

That makes absolutely no sense as an analogy to anything I've said. I might figure it out if I can guess the right set of black-or-white extremes presupposed behind what you're saying, but I'll leave that up to you to explain if you care.

[The2ndWheel]

65. Is there a situation that makes you happy?

"I suspect you meant that mostly as a smart ass comment, but it still gives me the feeling there really isn't any situation that would make you happy. If time itself really does bother you, you're pretty much doomed for discontent."

If there is, then you're not for progress. You're for going up to a point and then just stopping.

I don't know what time is, but it isn't found on a clock. That's the part that bothers me.

"fighting to survive IS the way of nature"

So we can never have a safe and comfy existence.

"That makes absolutely no sense as an analogy to anything I've said."

It's analogy to diversity. Diversity causes conflict. If you want a completely safe and comfy existence, diversity must be destroyed. There can't be two competing organisms, governments, corporations, etc. To take your sci-fi-ish vision again(like Kurzweil and the rest), there would have to be only one downloaded consiousness. Two or more would end up causing conflict, and thus not comfy and safe.

"You seem vaguely resentful of something, pretty much resigned to something, vaguely couldn't-give-a-damn, and... just plain old vague, maybe a little loopy too"

I think we both would fall into that category. Different pages, same book. That's the problem with being human though, the imperfections.

[Silent3]

69. Have you ever heard of this lovely thing called "a shade of gray"?

"fighting to survive IS the way of nature"

So we can never have a safe and comfy existence.

Did I ever say absolutely safe? Did I ever say absolutely comfortable?

You can put yourself in a position where you don't have to fight very often, and the fights are pretty easy to win. You might even want every struggle to be too easy -- life could get awfully boring that way.

I remember a former colleague of mine saying something like (and I'm paraphrasing wildly -- this was from many years ago, "I don't want life to be free of all problems. That'd be boring. I just want interesting problems, like solving a mystery in physics or figuring out how to get to another planet. I can easily live without worrying about my next meal, needing eyeglasses, or having headaches and diarrhea."

Further, one can "fight", in the sense of "struggle", to reach cooperative rather than competitive solutions. In fact, I'd say that's one of those things that fits into the category of "interesting problems".

It's analogy to diversity. Diversity causes conflict. If you want a completely safe and comfy existence, diversity must be destroyed.

You're the one who's pulled "completely" out of the air.

I'm neither suggesting nor recommending any absolutes here, only the idea the it's worth recognizing the value of science and technology in improving our lives, and instead of giving up and climbing back into the trees, trying to create a world for ourselves with more interesting and enjoyable challenges, and fewer ugly and tragic problems.

[Odin2005]

29. There NMN goes on her lunatic rants again...

[Silent3]

31. So I should just call it quits...

...and consider this a hopeless case? :)

[Odin2005]

40. Yes.

In any thread that has anything to do with progress and technology she pops up and yaps on and on about moronic misapplications of complexity theory towards history. It's annoying. :banghead:

[The2ndWheel]

64. Hey, I love you too Odin

Long time no talk. And I'm a guy.

[Odin2005]

18. You obviously didn't read the technogaianism article.

:eyes:

[Matsubara]

20. Technically, everything is natural.

A pesticide made from petrochemical byproducts is just as natural as distilled rice vinegar if you ask me. They both come from nature.

And I agree with your post. The notion that something must be "healthful" just because it came from a pretty green herb, and something must be bad, just because it was synthesized from compounds in a lab, is absurd.

Thank you for your ignorance-dispelling post.


Reminds me of one time when I got a laugh from seeing a package of "organic" sea salt in a health food store. Um, hello! "organic" implies it was ALIVE at one time or another, last I checked, sodium chloride was inert.


My wife has bought into the whole "organic" thing, hook, line and sinker.

[Bucky]

26. Damn. I thought this thread would have nudie pictures.

[TZ]

28. K+R for you

Again, good job my friend. I couldn't have said it any better.:hi:
:kick:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

32. Awesome Post. Couldn't Find A Thing To Disagree With. Well Said And Point Well Made.

[Sapere aude]

34. Well you have to make choices for yourself. We are not all alike or do we like the same things.

You make a choice and you live with it. I'd choose natural over artificial anytime I have a choice. That is me. You are you. We live with the outcomes of our choices and we can't choose for each other.

[Silent3]

36. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

Now, do you have anything pertinent to say, beyond the blazingly obvious fact that different people make different choices, about the merits of thinking everything "natural" is automatically better than anything artificial (and, puhlease! spare me the de rigeur "better for me", as if that explains a damn thing), if what people seek to accomplish via "natural" food and medicines are in fact natural goals, and where this steadfast belief comes from that all we have to do is get all of the "unnatural" stuff out of the way in order to live long, healthy lives, since long and healthy lives were a rare thing when all-natural was the only game in town?

[BrklynLiberal]

43. self-delete

[Sapere aude]

66. In the study of yoga and other practices, natural things have life force in them

that you bring into your being where processed and unnatural things do not have this life force but are dead. So to increase the life force in your body you increase the amount of natural things.

Now there were many things that resulted in shorter life spans in the past and there is no correlation between longer living or shorter living and the amount of natural things people took into their bodies.

Your response to my post is rather asinine I think! What I was getting at was that if you believe in the life force idea I talk about your choice would be to take in mostly natural things. If that is not what you believe then possibly it wouldn't be a choice you would make. For me I believe in the life force idea so I think your premise is full of shit!@ So are we even with the put downs and insults yet?

For an experiment, take a tomato and plant it and take a dead chicken or some unnatural food and plant them. Come back in a few weeks to see what you get. Possibly the tomato will have grown into more tomato plants the chicken and unnatural things would have rotted. That is because the tomato has life force in it.

[TZ]

70. decomposition is natural

its various microorganisms and bugs feeding off the dead chicken. Its part of the life cycle. To claim thats "unnatural" is really absurd.

[Sapere aude]

72. I was talking about life force in the tomato as apposed to the non existence of life force in

a dead chicken and in processed foods. Eating foods that have life force increases the life force in your body. Eating foods with no life force takes more of your body's energy to deal with and thus reduces the life force in your body.

Now many people don't agree and that's OK.

[Silent3]

76. Whew! It's a good thing it's "OK" for many people to disagree...

...because you're babbling nonsense.

And yes, you fully have every right in the world to babble nonsense. Telling you your nonsense is nonsense is also fully within my rights, and doesn't take away your right to believe it or spout it -- a disclaimer that should belong to Captain Obvious, but for some reason seems to need frequent repetition on the internet, where large numbers of people apparently can't tell the difference between criticism and censorship, can't tell the difference between someone saying they're wrong and being told the have "no right" to believe a thing.

It's quite often those who defensively state obvious things about different people believing different things who suffer from the aforementioned confusion.

As for "life force", at best you have a rough analogy which kinda sorta works if you cherry pick supportive examples, and make sure you don't follow up on this vitalism theory with anything dangerous, like careful thought, analysis of available knowledge to the contrary, and, God forbid, actually subjecting your ideas to any sort of rigorous testing.

Vitalism was an understandable conjecture a couple of hundred years ago or so, perhaps, before anyone new anything much about cell structure and biochemistry. Then again, so was "phlogiston" theory, before much was known about chemistry or thermodynamics.

[Silent3]

71. It's because of a thing called "seeds".

Tomatoes have evolved, as have many plants, to propagate by having their fruit dropped into or onto the ground, or by enticing animals to eat their fruit, and thus spread the seeds therein as uneaten portions of the fruit, or to spread the seeds via animal feces. Chickens have developed a somewhat different method of reproduction. Twinkies, so far as I can tell, don't breed at all.

The obvious differences of reproductive anatomy, or total lack thereof, far better account for what happens when one thing is stuck into the ground compared to another than does invoking some silly "life force" concept. We might not know every single step in the process by detail, but the physical and chemical make-up of a tomato seed provides a much better explanation -- an explanation that leads to deeper understanding of not only the thing studied, but of other similar things, leads to new interesting questions, and to possible useful applications of knowledge gained -- than does primitive animism or vitalism.

If your "life force" idea has any merit, you should be able to isolate some of this life force, imbue twinkies and dead chickens with it, plant them in the ground, and grow twinkie bushes and chicken trees.

Best of luck.

[TZ]

39. Anthrax is a naturally occuring bacteria.....

Yet somehow I think most people would choose NOT to get Anthrax, don't you think?:)

[Silent3]

55. Well, as long as it's anthrax, straight up...

...and you don't go trying to sweeten it with aspartame... ;)

[semillama]

63. I choose this Anthrax

[Cha]

53. I think your post is very

pertinent and I agree..obvious or not, it had to be said.

[slowry]

35. Eh.

While I despise "holistic" stuff, as I do astrology, tarot cards, comet pills, etc., I find the "Nature hates you" meme a bit depressing, and inaccurate. Sometimes it's worth stepping back and appreciating that, despite all the horrible things which could happen to us, we evolved alongside what we call "Nature" and it has served us well, even providing us with brains, so we can figure out all its flaws, and call it a bitch :eyes:.

[Silent3]

37. I never said nature hates you...

...but nature is indifferent to your survival, or even the survival of life itself.

I also don't think nature is capable of taking offense at might smart-ass "bitch" remark, either. :) I only used the word for satiric effect, to contrast the all-too-common, but quite unrealistic, vision of an actively benevolent, caring, life-infusing force.

I love the natural world in many ways, and I'd like preserve it much better than we're currently doing now. I'm just making the point that not everything natural is good, not everything man-made is bad, and we've got to be ready to look at things on a case by case basis, without ridiculous romanticizing of nature, and without excessive demonization of science and technology, clouding our decision making process.

[RiDuvessa]

38. I can't tell you how many times I've thought the same thing.

You phrase it all very well. I have had so many of these discussions with people. It drives me crazy. The people that tell me that margarine is "one molecule" away from being poison. The people that tell me vaccines are evil. The people that tell me such and such herbal extract/vitamin/natural food is the answer to all health problems. The people that say aspartame is evil. And there are almost no actual scientific studies that validate these viewpoints.

When I think of all the people who used to die because of the natural balance, from smallpox and measles epidemics, all the children that used to die before they turned ten, I wonder if any of these actually talked to their grandparents. Mine used to tell me stories of quarentines and friends they had that died and kids that grew up poorly because they didn't have enough to eat. All stuff that was ended mostly by unnatural means.

This is not to say that all progress has been good, but too many people think that stuff is bad because it is new and "not natural"

[Matsubara]

46. I have to take exception on aspartame.

I don't believe that aspartame is highly toxic on it's own (although complaints of headaches and memory loss by users are widespread). BUT...

My problem with aspartame (and all artificial sweeteners) is that it tends to have the opposite effect that it's supposed to.

Consuming aspartame fools the brain into thinking a sugar rush is coming, throwing insulin levels out of whack and tends to make people crave more sweets.

It DEFINITELY happened to me. When I stopped drinking "diet" drinks, I stopped craving sweets and lost 60 lbs. (not just from quitting diet drinks, but I believe it helped a lot in controlling my eating).

I have heard TONS of anecdotal stories from people who lost weight after QUITTING diet sodas, or who were mystified when they GAINED weight after starting drinking them.

[BrklynLiberal]

41. If I believed that all the companies that mfr drugs and other chemicals that they sell to the public

were truly interested in the welfare of mankind, and not the bottom line, I might be able to see some validity to your point. In this day and age, all that matters is the bottom line, and therefore any "side effects" or negative information about those manufactured products are hidden from the public, so we are not allowed to be informed consumers, and make a decision about the use of these products with the full knowledge of what they will do to us.
Progress is a wonderful thing....but when it is manipulated and controlled primarily by those looking to make as much money as they can off the public, I would say it is in one's best interest to always be skeptical, and make sure you know everything you can about anything you put into your body.
Always question "studies" and other reports that guarantee the safety of products. The first question should be "Who sponsored this study?"
Anyone who unquestioningly puts their life and health into the hands of another without doing some of their own research will very likely end up regretting it.

Most of the problems and illnesses that these new products "cure" were caused in the first place, by some other man-made product or chemical that was put into the water, the air or in some other way polluted our lives.

[eridani]

47. And peddlers of "natural" remedies are not at all interested in the bottom line

Right. And I'm Marie of Roumania.

[slowry]

48. Would you like some barn with that strawman?

That is literally all I could come up with. I don't got jokes :(.

But, yeah, I didn't read anything like that in the above post...

[BrklynLiberal]

50. Uh- Did you post this response in the right place?

I see nothing in my post that could result in this reply.

[eridani]

58. It just so happens that peddlers of "natural" remedies--

--are every bit as prone to bullshitting in the service of profits as Big Pharma.

[BrklynLiberal]

77. What made you think I was talking only about big Pharma???

Did I limit my comments in anyway?

[eridani]

79. OK--maybe I was conflating your comments with those of other people

Sorry.

[TZ]

51. actually there are lots of places to find info on safety studies

They are not "hidden" per se. The media never bothers to publicize them, really. FDA, CDC,NIH,NIAID, NTP (National Toxicology Program) are all really good websites to find that kind of info. Too many people try to throw the baby out with the bathwater because of a few bad eggs. There are plenty of manufactures/corps who do produce good products despite themselves, even. Just because a company is profitable does not necessarily mean its not putting out a good and safe product.

[Silent3]

52. You have a valid point, but...

...part of what I'm saying is this: Where's that same skepticism when it comes to so-called "natural" foods, supplements, and medicines? In most cases there, you can't question the studies... because there are no studies at all!

Have you ever wondered how many natural foods, oils, extracts, etc., would fare if subjected to the same testing as artificial stuff? If mice and rats were force-fed ginseng or valerian root or paprika at 1000 times and ordinary dose/serving for weeks, months, years? Shrimp and peanuts are "all natural", but it doesn't look like Mom Nature did very good safety testing on those products.

Crimson Dye #747 "linked" to "possible" increase in cancer: Bad, bad, eeeevvvilllll food industry!!!!
Kid killed outright by a trace of organic peanut butter accidentally left on the edge of a plate: Nature good! Must be some terrible aspect of modern living that made the poor kid die from good, wholesome, natural peanut butter!

(The second thing here could even have a kernel of truth -- but just a kernel. Deadly food allergies have been a long time, but we might see more of them now for an ironic reason: too much cleanliness. There's a good chance that over-doing modern sanitation -- which has unquestionably saved and extended many lives -- can lead to young children whose immune systems fail to completely develop, which then leaves more of them susceptible to dangerous allergic reactions later in life.)

There's healthy skepticism, and that's very good to have, but it can be taken to an extreme where it becomes suspicious hostility by default, and an expectation for artificial products to meet impossible standards of safety and certainty that Mother Nature herself is never, ever held accountable to.

[FloridaJudy]

68. Actually, the Germans have done some extensive testing

of various herbal remedies. I used to have a copy of the PDR (Physicians Desk Reference) for herbs, and it incorporated the results of European studies done on various folk medicines. Ginseng - for example - appears to be an extraordinarily safe if minimally effective anti-depressant (the Europeans did indeed force-feed it to rats!), and other herbs show great promise for treating various ailments. There are other herbal remedies that are dangerous as hell: anyone taking comfrey internally is risking a host of grim long-term health effects. I also expect the Borgia's rivals were intimately acquainted with the effects of nightshade and wolfsbane.

There used to be a company whose motto was "Gentle as Nature", which always used to puzzle me. Benign as foxglove? Compassionate as a tsunami or a black widow spider? Soothing as nettles or poison ivy? I always thought that was an unfortunate choice of a motto.

[eallen]

42. Mostly agree. But eating right and exercise will cure a lot....

No, not everything. And not for everyone. Given those qualifications, that simple recipe would prevent a large fraction of high blood pressure, diabetes, and related modern ailments. There's a bit of an irony in that we suffer the ailments of plenty, not the ailments of the past. Not everything natural is good. And many things of artifice are healthy.

But not all. In criticizing a false ideology, be careful not to propagate its mirror image.

:hippie:

[BrklynLiberal]

45. Where peole live longest and why..

http://www.nohypehealth.org/dakoma.html

Another article.

Okinawa – an island off Japan – may hold the secret to a long life. The people of
Okinawa have the longest life expectancy of any country in the world. Why? Well, it
may have to do with something called the Okinawan diet.
IT'S A SHANGRI-LA OF SORTS. OKINAWA HAS MORE 100-YEAR-OLDS THAN
ANY PLACE ON EARTH AND A LIFE EXPECTANCY OF 81.2 YEARS. IN
OKINAWA YOU'RE CALLED A CHILD UNTIL YOU'RE 55 AND GET A PARADE
WHEN YOU TURN 80. BUT IT'S WHAT THESE PEOPLE EAT THAT RESEARCHERS
THINK IS THE RECIPE FOR A LONG LIFE.
<snip>
AND WHERE WILL ALL THESE FOOD FACTS GET YOU? NOT ONLY LIVING
LONGER, BUT HEALTHIER. OKINAWANS HAVE 8O PERCENT FEWER HEART
ATTACKS THAN AMERICANS. BREAST CANCER AND PROSTATE CANCER IS SO
RARE THEY'RE UNHEARD OF. OBESITY TOO, AND
SENILITY AND DEMENTIA, EVEN AMONG THESE OLDER INDIVIDUALS, IS
ALMOST NONEXISTENT. THESE HEALTH BENEFITS ARE INTRIGUING, BUT
THE OKINAWAN DIET MAY BE HARD FOR AMERICANS TO SWALLOW.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/pulse/scripts/01_02/fyi_-_okinawan_diet.pdf

[Silent3]

54. The thing is...

Would just that diet alone have given them such long life spans? If you go back 150 years, and take away all of the other benefits of modern living, did the "all natural" approach serve them so well?

Also, do Okinawans benefit, at least in part perhaps, by some genetic advantage they might have compared to the general population of humans?

I don't doubt that we can do a lot to improve our health by changing our eating habits. I never said everything about modern life was great, and specifically mentioned diseases of excess.

Also, let's put this in perspective...

Average Okinawan life expectancy: 81.2 years
Average US life expectancy: 77 years

While 4.2 years is nothing to sneeze at, I'm not quite so sure that I wouldn't rather live 77 years eating like an American, rather than spend 81 years eating like an Okinawan. There's more to life than quantity of years! :)

[kickysnana]

56. Research says Boomers will not live longer than their parents..

Was posted on DU some time ago. I hear you about the "natural" cult though. The problem is the tainted and untested crap we are being fed.

Neurological disease is much, much higher in those born after 1940 and when the undiagnosed, untreated Lyme Disease rears its ugly head when people's immune systems start to flag, watch out! Active Lyme disease has been shown to be as debilitating as chronic heart failure. Early Alzheimer's everybody? Swiss research McClusky in Vancouver is one paper away from proving spirochetal cause for most non-inherited Alzehimers.

Seventh grade health class. Untreated syphilis will cause you to become very ill, your teeth will all fall out, you will go mad and then your immune system will fail. Same progression for Lyme. Only thing keeping this from becoming evident is the 4 weeks of antibiotics people get form time to time now gives people a few months or weeks of respite. It takes 20-30 years off of your life.

[undergroundpanther]

57. THANK YOU!!

Also Did you know Nazis were big time "health nuts"?

Nazis had a "green side" too.REad on..Ask yourselves Sound Familiar?


At the very outset of the nineteenth century the deadly connection between love of land and militant racist nationalism was firmly set in place.

Riehl, a student of Arndt, further developed this sinister tradition. In some respects his 'green' streak went significantly deeper than Arndt's; presaging certain tendencies in recent environmental activism, his 1853 essay Field and Forest ended with a call to fight for "the rights of wilderness." But even here nationalist pathos set the tone: "We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully, so that Germany remains German." 6 Riehl was an implacable opponent of the rise of industrialism and urbanization; his overtly antisemitic glorification of rural peasant values and undifferentiated condemnation of modernity established him as the "founder of agrarian romanticism and anti-urbanism." 7

These latter two fixations matured in the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of the völkisch movement, a powerful cultural disposition and social tendency which united ethnocentric populism with nature mysticism. At the heart of the völkisch temptation was a pathological response to modernity. In the face of the very real dislocations brought on by the triumph of industrial capitalism and national unification, völkisch thinkers preached a return to the land, to the simplicity and wholeness of a life attuned to nature's purity. The mystical effusiveness of this perverted utopianism was matched by its political vulgarity. While "the Volkish movement aspired to reconstruct the society that was sanctioned by history, rooted in nature, and in communion with the cosmic life spirit," 8 it pointedly refused to locate the sources of alienation, rootlessness and environmental destruction in social structures, laying the blame instead to rationalism, cosmopolitanism, and urban civilization. The stand-in for all of these was the age-old object of peasant hatred and middle-class resentment: the Jews. "The Germans were in search of a mysterious wholeness that would restore them to primeval happiness, destroying the hostile milieu of urban industrial civilization that the Jewish conspiracy had foisted on them." 9

Reformulating traditional German antisemitism into nature-friendly terms, the völkisch movement carried a volatile amalgam of nineteenth century cultural prejudices, Romantic obsessions with purity, and anti-Enlightenment sentiment into twentieth century political discourse. The emergence of modern ecology forged the final link in the fateful chain which bound together aggressive nationalism, mystically charged racism, and environmentalist predilections. In 1867 the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term 'ecology' and began to establish it as a scientific discipline dedicated to studying the interactions between organism and environment. Haeckel was also the chief popularizer of Darwin and evolutionary theory for the German-speaking world, and developed a peculiar sort of social darwinist philosophy he called 'monism.' The German Monist League he founded combined scientifically based ecological holism with völkisch social views. Haeckel believed in nordic racial superiority, strenuously opposed race mixing and enthusiastically supported racial eugenics. His fervent nationalism became fanatical with the onset of World War I, and he fulminated in antisemitic tones against the post-war Council Republic in Bavaria.

http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html

[LeftishBrit]

59. Thanks - you're expressing a lot of my feelings!

100 years ago, one-sixth of all British babies died in their first year. I would undoubtedly have been one of them. Childhood mortality rates and life expectancy predictions were disastrous for most of human history. Of course, a lot of this was due to poverty, but even the rich didn't have any certainty of long and healthy life - just think of all the times in history when governments were changed by the early deaths of monarchs and their heirs.

Even in my own lifetime, there have been amazing improvements. When I think of ways in which Fings Ain't What They Used to Be, and how Nostalgia's All Right, But It's Not What it Was, I also think of some of the children whom I've happened to encounter during my work in schools in recent years: the girl born at 25 weeks; the boy who had leukemia at the age of 4; the girl born with a serious heart condition requiring major surgery - and how in the early 1960s, they would have all died. And how my own quality of life has been transformed by treatment that effectively controls my Crohn's disease.

I think that there is sometimes a tendency to extrapolate from findings that 'fast foods' with lots of additives, etc. are less healthy than less processed foods, to the idea that ANYTHING natural is better than anything unnatural. But, after all, it's not 'natural' to cook. Animals eat their food raw. And yet eating certain foods raw increases the risk of all sorts of 'natural' bacteria, parasites, etc.

Mother Nature is not always kind!

[gollygee]

67. I think sometimes natural is better and sometimes not

It depends. If the unnatural choice was created to mimic the natural choice and do it cheaper, the natural choice is probably better. But if the unnatural choice was created because something bad was happening when people did whatever was natural, the unnatural choice might very well be better.

I breastfed, but I also vaccinated. As specific examples.

[Odin2005]

73. Sometimes the artificial thing is both cheaper and better.

Aspirin a good example, it's cheaper and better for the environment to make asprin in labs then to get it from tree bark.

The fear of "artificial" things is mostly technophobia and New Age woo woo.

[gollygee]

74. Sometimes that's true as well

I take each thing and decide based on its own merits

[Solon]

75. Here's another example of natural vs. artificial...

The post you responded to mention breastfeeding, and while most doctors agree that breastfeeding is preferable, it is a good idea for woman to get tested for Mercury concentrations, particularly if they live near coal fired plants or eat a lot of fish. If the concentrations are too high, breastfeeding could be dangerous, in a case like that, formula would be a good substitute.

This is a catch-22 in a way, the natural way, so to speak, may be better overall, but because of artificially produced pollution, it could be made dangerous.

My concerns related to technology are mostly legalistic and practical rather than a phobia. A good example would be GM plants and animals, which are fine and good except when they encourage monocultures in specific areas, are used to allow non-biodegradable chemicals to be used more often, and the legal structure regulating them is somewhat immature.

The big problem, in my view, isn't the technology, but the implementation, rBGH is a good example of this. There was no shortage of milk in the United States before the hormone was injected to increase milk production in cows, and all other developed nations have banned its use because of health problems in those cows. The fact of the matter was that it wasn't necessary to create it in the first place.

Other examples include the Green Revolution, which was the dramatic increase in food production in the past 50 years or so, mostly relying on petro-chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to increase crop yields. These chemicals aren't the problem, the problem is that the use of these chemicals encourage agribusiness to abandon good farming practices, such as crop rotation and planting nitrogen fixers in the soil. Unfortunately, petro-chemical based fertilizers do not last nearly as long as something as simple as manure in the soil. This means that the quality of the top soil has been degrading steadily since the introduction of the Green Revolution.

With oil prices rising, the price of food also rises, not just because the price to transport or harvest that food has increased, but because, when the quality of the topsoil degrades, the need for these fertilizers also increase. This leads to a cycle of dependence, and, when it becomes too uneconomical to produce food on this soil, literally millions of square miles of it will simply be abandoned, and there is a real possibility of a food crash. Much of this soil literally has the consistency of a sponge, that's how degraded it is, and it absorbs little of the nutrients needed for health plants to grow in it, crop yields could be cut in half or more if something doesn't change.

[BrklynLiberal]

78. Greed. Greed. Greed.

The love of money is the root of all evil.