(Or an essay on
Americans being extinct
but just don't know it yet)
17 February 2006
Want a demonstration that the so-called “real world” is just an illusion?
The primary title of this essay is a reference to the 1999 science fiction film, The Matrix, where most of humanity has been trapped within an artificially created reality.
Long before then, philosophers debated the “brain in a vat” concept: How would you know if the world you experience is actually real versus stimuli to just your brain?
Consider for the moment that we merely lack an appropriate metaphor or description of such a truth.
The food that most Americans and most post-industrialized nations eat is actually killing them. In fact, evidence would suggest that they’re well on their way to extinction but just don’t know it yet– much like a large corporation that fools its investors, management and regulators into believing that it’s still viable when in fact it’s bankrupt.
Just as the executive staff of certain now-defunct companies managed to maintain an illusion by which everyone else somehow deferred the actual ceasing of business, so too the food you’ve probably been eating should have killed you already.
But it hasn’t.
You’re still here. Ultimately, this demonstrates that the real world is all just an illusion.
That is, your reality isn’t actually real. At least, it isn’t any more real than a dream or fictional movie or a cartoon.
It’s only real because you make it real. You want it to be real. You need it to be real… but that’s a matter for another day.
Try this simple exercise. Go into a typical grocery store, or for most people, just go into your own kitchen. Grab a few packaged foods and read the ingredients. You’ll find soy, soy lecithin or some other variation in a large number of products. Soy is everywhere, right according to plan.
There’s an interesting history for the soybean. Farmers tend to use it for a few specific purposes. Those who are familiar with American history might recall that George Washington Carver cultivated the peanut and soybean for finding products to make out of these utilitarian crops. Previously, peanuts and soybeans were only to replenish soil nutrients in years between harsh primary crops like cotton.
The second reason that your food should have killed you is two-fold: much of what you’re probably eating isn’t actually for nourishment.
Soy fattens livestock and destroys their thyroids.
For those unfamiliar with the thyroid, it’s a gland that regulates your rate of metabolism and maintains proper functioning of many bodily systems. When disrupted, people and animals alike either become ultra-thin or obese.
Like everything else, however, almost anything in moderation is fine. Moderation would mean occasionally having some soy product as a condiment, much like traditional Asian use.
(There has been quite a bit of confusion about historical use of soy. It was eaten only by the poorest in Asian countries, and even then, only after fermented such as in miso or soy sauce– not as a meat substitute. The hippies were wrong; get over it.)
Follow the money, especially in studies that claim no adverse effects on how soy effects thyroid.
It’s also important to validate that proper processing and handling techniques were used in the various studies of the “competition” such with coconut oil versus vegetable oil.
Funny: we mock Impressionist era artists for sucking on their paint brushes for moistening. Yes, we now know that the lead and other minerals in their mixtures are in fact toxic, but they didn’t. Then again, they knew that the other ingredients were just vegetable oils, egg whites, etc., so it must have been safe, right?
In fact, you probably eat lots of vegetable oils…
Other than olive oil, the rational person probably never ingested the stuff, so people of the day would have been laughing at those artists for that reason.
In the late 1800’s, they didn’t consume much vegetable oil. Why? They had other names for it: lacquer, fuel.
Until mineral oils became readily accessible (i.e., processed to be potent and stable enough for handling, transport, etc.), people lit their lamps with animal fats and vegetable oils.
Consider this. Your grandparents (or perhaps great, great grandparents) born in the late 1800’s didn’t have non-stick fry pans. “Teflon” was only re-invented as a product for cookware around the second half of the twentieth century. The product grew in popularity because vegetable oils and margarine kept destroying otherwise fine pans that were a relatively unchanged technology for hundreds of years.
When cooking with lard (assuming the animal was healthy and the processing relatively minimal– a big assumption these days, mind you) things just don’t really stick. The little that does, however, a little warm water for 10-20 minutes does the trick.
But that’s not patentable, so it doesn’t make much money for today’s corporations that, by court precedence, are required to “maximize shareholder value.”
But all that’s moot, anyway.
Legends describe the occasional yogi subsiding on one small bowl of rice every now and again.
Others tell of monks stripped to minimal modesty in mountain snow and the snow starts melting around them– only around them– such that one can see steam rising.
What’s going on? They’re effecting their reality.
Just as the corporations that prefer greed to playing well with others are redefining today’s society and are in effect messing with humanity just to meet next quarter’s revenue predictions (up, at least 2.3% higher– by the way) so too they are creating their own reality. It’s just that they’re taking the rest of us with them.
While lacquer reformulated into food just happens to coincide with increasingly higher cancer rates, it also happens to have been commercially introduced into the human food supply just after vegetable oils were displaced in the market place by mineral oils, such as kerosene for fuel.
Oh, sure, they’ve reformulated the processing techniques, making it all safe for human consumption– right?
Well, that depends. Most cottonseed oil, for example, in the US is categorized as a byproduct of an industrial non-food crop.
Chemical agents are required to expel oil from vegetables in order to make quantities suitable for a viable business venture. Many of these chemicals are non-food solutions or compounds that aren’t regulated as food. They aren’t listed on the ingredients list of that box of microwave pizza.
Many of the chemicals used in such processing are actually known to be toxic, especially those used for soy. (Did you know that unprocessed soy smells so nasty that there are chemicals used to just control the stench?)
While sucking on their paint brushes, those Impressionists are laughing at us now.
Unless you are persistent and continually check and re-check ingredients of food you eat and research products you use, you might just be contributing to your own demise.
But most people are lazy. It’s easier to have someone else do the thinking for you. After all, you can trust the government to protect you– right?
Sure… Large corporations and industrial trade groups have your best interests at heart. That’s why these organizations have their lobbyists installed in government oversight agencies.
Similar to those monks in the snow, these organizations are shaping reality for their members– by effecting the laws. (Just research the history of Canola oil becoming approved by the US for an example.)
Reality is malleable. Real is an illusion.
Then again, maybe this notion of just what is real is all just a “myth”.
References:
[1] The title of this essay was adapted from a quote in 1999 movie, The Matrix Actual line is from Morpheous to Neo during training, “Do you think that’s air you’re breathing now?”
[2] Back To Eden, by Jethro Kloss, first published 1939.
[3] First book with stupid title due to marketing department: Eat Fat, Lose Fat: Lose Weight And Feel Great With The Delicious, Science-based Coconut Diet, by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon; © 2004 Hudson Street Press; ISBN: 1594630054
[4] Second book with stupid title due to marketing department: Eat Fat Look Thin: A Safe and Natural Way to Lose Weight Permanently, by Bruce Fife; © 2002 Healthwise; ISBN: 0941599523