0 comment Saturday, June 7, 2014 | admin
From an anonymous post at AmRen:
''Consider this. One cannot turn on a television for five minutes without seeing sophisticated brain washing techniques that often have a blatantly anti-white message. The tsunami of this brainwashing is both relentless and insidious. And quite sophisticated�.evolving over time. And TV is just one of the sources we all come into contact with every day.
I propose that the ONLY difference between a liberal and a conservative, a communist and a white nationalist, is that person�s innate resistance to brain washing. Further, resistance is not immunity. You might want to think about that, CAREFULLY, when noticing that others are brainwashed. They don�t know it. And neither do you. A big part of doing something about this is first noticing it in yourself and dismantling attitudes, philosophies and beliefs (not to mention behaviors) that were put there by someone else. You won�t like the amount you find.
Divide and conquer is a technique as old as warfare itself. And part of the point of this brainwashing is divide and conquer.''
We've discussed these things here repeatedly, but it is still worth talking about.
I think the comments are true, obviously.
However, the hypothetical leftist/multiculturalist would counter (if he made any argument at all, beyond shouting 'racist!') that in fact it is not his side which is brainwashed, or which is actively brainwashing the public. He/she/it would say that it was in fact the older generations who were brainwashed into believing in race, especially in racial differences, and brainwashed into living by the old standards and loyalties. No, he would insist that today's schools and media are simply deprogramming people from their old-fashioned, atavistic, 'sexist, racist, and homophobic' delusions.
I often refer to the content of most of the media as being propaganda, and its relentlessness is getting more and more obvious by the day. And I've wondered if the theory this anonymous commenter posits is true: how is it that some seem to fall prey to all the propaganda, behaving like prey 'charmed' by a cobra, while others -- like those of us here, presumably -- seem resistant to it? Is there just an innate personality type that is resistant to propaganda and behavioral conditioning?
I would guess that it is not a resistance to being taught as such; it does not represent an inability to learn. It seems to be an independence of mind, or a stubbornness, as opposed to the gullibility of those who sit transfixed watching Oprah or CNN or yes, even Fox News, and simply absorbing everything fed to the audience.
Perhaps too it could represent the more ''dependent'' personality type, the type which is more susceptible to peer pressure or to following leaders. There is certainly no shortage of that personality type in our country today.
But the fact that those who follow the prevailing belief system see the world in such a radically different way than those of us who have resisted the 'brainwashing' is the source of the intractable differences between the two factions in this country.
The 'divide and rule' strategy is obviously at work here.
The media's message seems to have been ratcheted up considerably; are the media masters simply oblivious to the growing resistance that their aggressive propaganda is starting to provoke, or is this, too, part of the plan? Are they hoping to provoke some kind of rash behavior, or are they attempting, just short of violent provocation, to flush out and identify those who won't be 'assimilated' and who are therefore the enemy?
If they want to continue their insidious shaping of people's thoughts and opinions and feelings, they would seemingly want to make it more low-key so as not to arouse resistance and antagonism. But I don't think they are that inept. I think there's a method to their madness.
It does seem that some are just naturally more resistant, but what, then, explains the few who suddenly wake up to the fact of their being conditioned and manipulated?
I can only really speak for myself, but in my case, there was a strong core of the old ways of thinking and believing, instilled by my parents and the society that prevailed in my early years, and that basic core re-asserted itself when things reached a certain tipping point for me. I don't know if something similar is possible among those who never had the old-fashioned ideas and ideals imparted to them in early life. There are generations who have known nothing other than the present order of things.
Our anonymous friend from AmRen also makes the point that resistance to the propaganda is not the same as immunity. I do believe that many people on our side still harbor vestiges of the post-1960s politically correct mindset, and that it is so all-pervasive that those who retain these ideas are not conscious of it, just as Anonymous says. I've made this argument before among certain people, namely those on the right who detest 'baby boomers' yet whose language, attitudes, and lifestyles are all straight from the Woodstock tribe's playbook. Example: people who have libertine lifestyles (casual sex, cohabitation, support for abortion, porn, and 'deviant' sexual preferences), and people who generally loathe their elders and all things pre-modern.
If the baby-boomers were the fount of all evil, why not renounce everything they believed in and promoted? But no; the baby-boomers have whole generations following in their misguided footsteps.
Libertarianism, with a small or large ''l'', is also something that really had little widespread influence before the babyboomers' era. Before that, it was rather an obscure philosophy. And lest someone tell me that libertarians are insignificant in the overall picture, they have had an enormous influence on Republicans; for instance many FReepers believe in legalized drugs, tolerance of homosexuality, open immigration, etc., based on libertarian principles. This would have been unthinkable even back in Reagan's day. It isn't your father's Republican party anymore.
A more obvious example of people retaining vestiges of the propaganda is the racial fawning among Republicans. Much as most of them denounce liberals, they agree with liberals in more ways than they seem to recognize, and they are thus at odds with their own forefathers' views, and any kind of 'conservative' principles.
Another example: feminism is now defended fiercely by many ''conservative'' and Republican women. I am always stunned by the number of ''conservatives'' who approve of women in combat, or who will defend the co-ed military generally, making it a question of patriotism: ''There are some wonderful patriotic women who want to defend their country, and some of 'em are just as strong and courageous as men; would you deny them the right to serve their country?"
I am afraid Anonymous is right. I suppose most of us have some remnant of the propaganda that has taken root in our minds, and which we unconsciously cling to, without thinking about it.
But suppose we could, somehow, miraculously, have our heart's desire, and have all the forced innovations and social experiments reversed. Suppose we could push the reset button. With as much of the PC propaganda now firmly established in our minds, and in our customs and institutions, I think we might easily return, by degrees, to where we started, in this multicult dystopia.
Of course there is a very vocal faction among us that always insists ''there's no going back. The past is dead and gone, and good riddance to it.'' Of course we can't enter a time machine and go back to the past. But is it not possible to at least look to our past, and reclaim those things that worked so well for us, the essential things that made our people and our country such a good place? Obviously I believe that it could be done. What I believe is not possible, nor desirable, is to start out with a totally new social experiment, in which we wipe the slate clean like the Jacobins did, jettisoning all the old traditions. I am afraid that is what a number of people on our side desire.
But that dispute is a topic for another post.
Thoughts?
''Consider this. One cannot turn on a television for five minutes without seeing sophisticated brain washing techniques that often have a blatantly anti-white message. The tsunami of this brainwashing is both relentless and insidious. And quite sophisticated�.evolving over time. And TV is just one of the sources we all come into contact with every day.
I propose that the ONLY difference between a liberal and a conservative, a communist and a white nationalist, is that person�s innate resistance to brain washing. Further, resistance is not immunity. You might want to think about that, CAREFULLY, when noticing that others are brainwashed. They don�t know it. And neither do you. A big part of doing something about this is first noticing it in yourself and dismantling attitudes, philosophies and beliefs (not to mention behaviors) that were put there by someone else. You won�t like the amount you find.
Divide and conquer is a technique as old as warfare itself. And part of the point of this brainwashing is divide and conquer.''
We've discussed these things here repeatedly, but it is still worth talking about.
I think the comments are true, obviously.
However, the hypothetical leftist/multiculturalist would counter (if he made any argument at all, beyond shouting 'racist!') that in fact it is not his side which is brainwashed, or which is actively brainwashing the public. He/she/it would say that it was in fact the older generations who were brainwashed into believing in race, especially in racial differences, and brainwashed into living by the old standards and loyalties. No, he would insist that today's schools and media are simply deprogramming people from their old-fashioned, atavistic, 'sexist, racist, and homophobic' delusions.
I often refer to the content of most of the media as being propaganda, and its relentlessness is getting more and more obvious by the day. And I've wondered if the theory this anonymous commenter posits is true: how is it that some seem to fall prey to all the propaganda, behaving like prey 'charmed' by a cobra, while others -- like those of us here, presumably -- seem resistant to it? Is there just an innate personality type that is resistant to propaganda and behavioral conditioning?
I would guess that it is not a resistance to being taught as such; it does not represent an inability to learn. It seems to be an independence of mind, or a stubbornness, as opposed to the gullibility of those who sit transfixed watching Oprah or CNN or yes, even Fox News, and simply absorbing everything fed to the audience.
Perhaps too it could represent the more ''dependent'' personality type, the type which is more susceptible to peer pressure or to following leaders. There is certainly no shortage of that personality type in our country today.
But the fact that those who follow the prevailing belief system see the world in such a radically different way than those of us who have resisted the 'brainwashing' is the source of the intractable differences between the two factions in this country.
The 'divide and rule' strategy is obviously at work here.
The media's message seems to have been ratcheted up considerably; are the media masters simply oblivious to the growing resistance that their aggressive propaganda is starting to provoke, or is this, too, part of the plan? Are they hoping to provoke some kind of rash behavior, or are they attempting, just short of violent provocation, to flush out and identify those who won't be 'assimilated' and who are therefore the enemy?
If they want to continue their insidious shaping of people's thoughts and opinions and feelings, they would seemingly want to make it more low-key so as not to arouse resistance and antagonism. But I don't think they are that inept. I think there's a method to their madness.
It does seem that some are just naturally more resistant, but what, then, explains the few who suddenly wake up to the fact of their being conditioned and manipulated?
I can only really speak for myself, but in my case, there was a strong core of the old ways of thinking and believing, instilled by my parents and the society that prevailed in my early years, and that basic core re-asserted itself when things reached a certain tipping point for me. I don't know if something similar is possible among those who never had the old-fashioned ideas and ideals imparted to them in early life. There are generations who have known nothing other than the present order of things.
Our anonymous friend from AmRen also makes the point that resistance to the propaganda is not the same as immunity. I do believe that many people on our side still harbor vestiges of the post-1960s politically correct mindset, and that it is so all-pervasive that those who retain these ideas are not conscious of it, just as Anonymous says. I've made this argument before among certain people, namely those on the right who detest 'baby boomers' yet whose language, attitudes, and lifestyles are all straight from the Woodstock tribe's playbook. Example: people who have libertine lifestyles (casual sex, cohabitation, support for abortion, porn, and 'deviant' sexual preferences), and people who generally loathe their elders and all things pre-modern.
If the baby-boomers were the fount of all evil, why not renounce everything they believed in and promoted? But no; the baby-boomers have whole generations following in their misguided footsteps.
Libertarianism, with a small or large ''l'', is also something that really had little widespread influence before the babyboomers' era. Before that, it was rather an obscure philosophy. And lest someone tell me that libertarians are insignificant in the overall picture, they have had an enormous influence on Republicans; for instance many FReepers believe in legalized drugs, tolerance of homosexuality, open immigration, etc., based on libertarian principles. This would have been unthinkable even back in Reagan's day. It isn't your father's Republican party anymore.
A more obvious example of people retaining vestiges of the propaganda is the racial fawning among Republicans. Much as most of them denounce liberals, they agree with liberals in more ways than they seem to recognize, and they are thus at odds with their own forefathers' views, and any kind of 'conservative' principles.
Another example: feminism is now defended fiercely by many ''conservative'' and Republican women. I am always stunned by the number of ''conservatives'' who approve of women in combat, or who will defend the co-ed military generally, making it a question of patriotism: ''There are some wonderful patriotic women who want to defend their country, and some of 'em are just as strong and courageous as men; would you deny them the right to serve their country?"
I am afraid Anonymous is right. I suppose most of us have some remnant of the propaganda that has taken root in our minds, and which we unconsciously cling to, without thinking about it.
But suppose we could, somehow, miraculously, have our heart's desire, and have all the forced innovations and social experiments reversed. Suppose we could push the reset button. With as much of the PC propaganda now firmly established in our minds, and in our customs and institutions, I think we might easily return, by degrees, to where we started, in this multicult dystopia.
Of course there is a very vocal faction among us that always insists ''there's no going back. The past is dead and gone, and good riddance to it.'' Of course we can't enter a time machine and go back to the past. But is it not possible to at least look to our past, and reclaim those things that worked so well for us, the essential things that made our people and our country such a good place? Obviously I believe that it could be done. What I believe is not possible, nor desirable, is to start out with a totally new social experiment, in which we wipe the slate clean like the Jacobins did, jettisoning all the old traditions. I am afraid that is what a number of people on our side desire.
But that dispute is a topic for another post.
Thoughts?
Labels: Counterculture, Cultural Marxism, Media Bias, Political Correctness, Propaganda
0 comment Monday, May 19, 2014 | admin
This may fall under the SWPL (Stuff White People Like) category, but according to The Guardian, the latest 'eating disorder' is orthrexia:
The condition, orthorexia nervosa, affects equal numbers of men and women, but sufferers tend to be aged over 30, middle-class and well-educated.
The condition was named by a Californian doctor, Steven Bratman, in 1997, and is described as a "fixation on righteous eating". Until a few years ago, there were so few sufferers that doctors usually included them under the catch-all label of "Ednos" � eating disorders not otherwise recognised. Now, experts say, orthorexics take up such a significant proportion of the Ednos group that they should be treated separately.
"I am definitely seeing significantly more orthorexics than just a few years ago," said Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association's mental health group. "Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food but orthorexics can be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly 'pure'."
Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.
The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished. Their dietary restrictions commonly cause sufferers to feel proud of their "virtuous" behaviour even if it means that eating becomes so stressful their personal relationships can come under pressure and they become socially isolated.''
Well, I am reluctant to designate every problem or quirk people have as a ''disorder'' requiring mental health treatment, and most of us would say that eating healthy is a good and desirable thing, but it is a fact that there can be too much of a good thing. Moderation, even in concern for one's health, is appropriate. But it seems some people go overboard with whatever they do, making it the focus of an excessive interest, or a source of fear.
And I definitely know, and have known, people who would fall into this category. Most often it is seen among women and adolescent girls, although I am sure there are some men who become 'orthrexics' too.
This trend is one that has been present in our society for several decades, although it seemed to really take off during the 1960s and 70s, with the counterculture. Those who were part of that movement tended to dabble in Eastern religions, which often prescribe vegetarianism as not only healthier, but as being spiritually advanced. 'Meat is murder' as the vegetarians like to say, and eating meat is barbaric. So the Guardian article is not far off , in describing foods as being seen as ''good'' and ''bad'' or that some kinds of dietary habits are virtuous. These 'orthorexics' may not believe in God, or may believe in countless small-g 'gods'. They are often scoffers at Puritanical concerns with sexual morality, but the orthorexic morality centers largely on food and/or fitness. Not every 'orthorexic' is especially fit, but oftentimes they are exercise fanatics as well as food fanatics.
One of the books of the counterculture era that had a part in this trend was a book called Sugar Blues, by William Duffy, which appeared in 1975. After that, most young people and many older people became convinced that sugar was the most evil substance one could ingest. I heard many believers say that 'sugar is more addictive than cocaine.' Sugar was blamed for all manner of physical, emotional, and behavioral problems, most notably 'hyperactivity' in children. Many parents to this day insist that sugar is to blame for their children's rowdiness or restlessness. However studies done in reputable institutions debunked that idea, though it's useless to tell believing parents that. They will insist, loudly, that their children do misbehave after eating sugar.
'The latest group to join the debate is the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, which recently released a report charging that the government, professional agencies and the food industry have been ignoring evidence that diet affects behavior. However, the majority of studies so far haven't found a connection, and most in the medical industry maintain there is no known link between sugar and hyperactivity.
Still, many concerned parents feel certain they've seen a cause-and-effect relationship between sweets and rowdiness. Admittedly, more research would be needed to completely rule out the possibility of a link, but there are many plausible reasons other than sugar why a child may be bouncing off the walls.''
That last phrase 'bouncing off the walls' is one that parents invariably use when describing the behavior of their children following an ingestion of sugar.
Other evidence continues to discredit this idea but it does not convince parents or adults who believe that they themselves are also made 'hyper' by sugar.
The notion of a connection was first promulgated by an allergist named Benjamin Feingold back in the 70s, but by the time I was in a well-regarded graduate program in Education back in the 80s, we were taught that the Feingold Diet, which purported to treat hyperactivity by diet, was discredited and considered of no value. But it still lives on.
The latest trend in food faddism seems to be that people are diagnosed as having 'gluten intolerance', which requires a very restricted diet. I am wary of this, as it suddenly seems to be something of an 'epidemic.' Googling the subject brings up a lot of hits which seem to be to what I would term 'food faddist' websites, with idiosyncratic ideas about nutrition and health. But one wonders how many people are being diagnosed with this condition now, and how real this seeming 'epidemic' is.
Personally I have learned to take all these food scare stories with a huge grain of salt (and yes, I know salt is supposed to be bad for us.) Please notice that every day on the ''news'' or in your dead tree media, there will be the usual nagging stories about the harm done by this food or that food, and scolding articles about what we must eat in order to live longer and lose weight and slow down aging and 'feel better about ourselves.'' These are all the health equivalent of the Christian 'what must I do to be saved?' pieces. These sermons, however, promise only to extend our natural life for a few years, though occasionally there is the crackpot article about how in the future we will all be immortal, if we eat and exercise properly, and if all-knowing ''science'' finds a way to halt aging altogether. This is, I think, what many of the orthorexics are thinking of: the issue of human mortality. Many of the fussy eaters I know are obsessed with not getting old and dying. They are looking for the fountain of youth and hoping 'science' will grant them immortality.
However, for many women and girls, it isn't anything as profound as that; most just want to get thinner and stay thin. Getting fat is the fate worse than death.
I know of anorexic or bulimic young women for whom eating and food occupy their every thought. This is sad, and it's simply a distortion of the 'orthorexic' lifestyle.
As for all the food nags in the government and media, I notice they often cancel each other out, as a study reported one week will be contradicted by another study announced the next week. How can anyone know which to believe?
It seems that "all things in moderation -- including moderation", is the best motto in life.
As I noted at the beginning of this piece, the concern or even obsession with healthy eating, or fitness in general, is very much a SWPL thing. According to the official SWPL list, 'hummus' and 'whole foods and grocery co-ops' are among the Stuff White People like.
Earlier in life, I was a vegetarian and shopped at health food stores. Yes, I suppose I might have been an 'orthorexic' at one point, but I grew out of it. But never did I see 'people of color' in the health food stores. The idea of eating organic and avoiding the unhealthy foods is not something that seems important to nonwhites. I can't say why that is, but I think it's pretty generally true. I have known a couple of black women who might have been vegetarians but they were exceptions. It's a White thing to worry about whether one's food is healthy.
That being said, it's a habit that does get carried too far, with some SWPL types seeming to use strict diets to flagellate themselves in a way, as medieval penitents did. I've eaten plenty of 'organic' foods, and some of them are the culinary equivalent of a hair shirt. Much of the healthy food is not at all tasty or satisfying; I am convinced that the people who eat it are ascetics of a sort, who no longer really taste their food, but consume it only because they have to eat something to sustain themselves.
Maybe the people who eat recklessly, who eat all the unhealthy foods with no regard for their well-being or fitness, are people who are simply prone to risk-taking, the gambler types. The orthorexics are people who have somehow substituted dietary fussiness as a kind of self-denying religious discipline.
The condition, orthorexia nervosa, affects equal numbers of men and women, but sufferers tend to be aged over 30, middle-class and well-educated.
The condition was named by a Californian doctor, Steven Bratman, in 1997, and is described as a "fixation on righteous eating". Until a few years ago, there were so few sufferers that doctors usually included them under the catch-all label of "Ednos" � eating disorders not otherwise recognised. Now, experts say, orthorexics take up such a significant proportion of the Ednos group that they should be treated separately.
"I am definitely seeing significantly more orthorexics than just a few years ago," said Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association's mental health group. "Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food but orthorexics can be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly 'pure'."
Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.
The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished. Their dietary restrictions commonly cause sufferers to feel proud of their "virtuous" behaviour even if it means that eating becomes so stressful their personal relationships can come under pressure and they become socially isolated.''
Well, I am reluctant to designate every problem or quirk people have as a ''disorder'' requiring mental health treatment, and most of us would say that eating healthy is a good and desirable thing, but it is a fact that there can be too much of a good thing. Moderation, even in concern for one's health, is appropriate. But it seems some people go overboard with whatever they do, making it the focus of an excessive interest, or a source of fear.
And I definitely know, and have known, people who would fall into this category. Most often it is seen among women and adolescent girls, although I am sure there are some men who become 'orthrexics' too.
This trend is one that has been present in our society for several decades, although it seemed to really take off during the 1960s and 70s, with the counterculture. Those who were part of that movement tended to dabble in Eastern religions, which often prescribe vegetarianism as not only healthier, but as being spiritually advanced. 'Meat is murder' as the vegetarians like to say, and eating meat is barbaric. So the Guardian article is not far off , in describing foods as being seen as ''good'' and ''bad'' or that some kinds of dietary habits are virtuous. These 'orthorexics' may not believe in God, or may believe in countless small-g 'gods'. They are often scoffers at Puritanical concerns with sexual morality, but the orthorexic morality centers largely on food and/or fitness. Not every 'orthorexic' is especially fit, but oftentimes they are exercise fanatics as well as food fanatics.
One of the books of the counterculture era that had a part in this trend was a book called Sugar Blues, by William Duffy, which appeared in 1975. After that, most young people and many older people became convinced that sugar was the most evil substance one could ingest. I heard many believers say that 'sugar is more addictive than cocaine.' Sugar was blamed for all manner of physical, emotional, and behavioral problems, most notably 'hyperactivity' in children. Many parents to this day insist that sugar is to blame for their children's rowdiness or restlessness. However studies done in reputable institutions debunked that idea, though it's useless to tell believing parents that. They will insist, loudly, that their children do misbehave after eating sugar.
'The latest group to join the debate is the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, which recently released a report charging that the government, professional agencies and the food industry have been ignoring evidence that diet affects behavior. However, the majority of studies so far haven't found a connection, and most in the medical industry maintain there is no known link between sugar and hyperactivity.
Still, many concerned parents feel certain they've seen a cause-and-effect relationship between sweets and rowdiness. Admittedly, more research would be needed to completely rule out the possibility of a link, but there are many plausible reasons other than sugar why a child may be bouncing off the walls.''
That last phrase 'bouncing off the walls' is one that parents invariably use when describing the behavior of their children following an ingestion of sugar.
Other evidence continues to discredit this idea but it does not convince parents or adults who believe that they themselves are also made 'hyper' by sugar.
The notion of a connection was first promulgated by an allergist named Benjamin Feingold back in the 70s, but by the time I was in a well-regarded graduate program in Education back in the 80s, we were taught that the Feingold Diet, which purported to treat hyperactivity by diet, was discredited and considered of no value. But it still lives on.
The latest trend in food faddism seems to be that people are diagnosed as having 'gluten intolerance', which requires a very restricted diet. I am wary of this, as it suddenly seems to be something of an 'epidemic.' Googling the subject brings up a lot of hits which seem to be to what I would term 'food faddist' websites, with idiosyncratic ideas about nutrition and health. But one wonders how many people are being diagnosed with this condition now, and how real this seeming 'epidemic' is.
Personally I have learned to take all these food scare stories with a huge grain of salt (and yes, I know salt is supposed to be bad for us.) Please notice that every day on the ''news'' or in your dead tree media, there will be the usual nagging stories about the harm done by this food or that food, and scolding articles about what we must eat in order to live longer and lose weight and slow down aging and 'feel better about ourselves.'' These are all the health equivalent of the Christian 'what must I do to be saved?' pieces. These sermons, however, promise only to extend our natural life for a few years, though occasionally there is the crackpot article about how in the future we will all be immortal, if we eat and exercise properly, and if all-knowing ''science'' finds a way to halt aging altogether. This is, I think, what many of the orthorexics are thinking of: the issue of human mortality. Many of the fussy eaters I know are obsessed with not getting old and dying. They are looking for the fountain of youth and hoping 'science' will grant them immortality.
However, for many women and girls, it isn't anything as profound as that; most just want to get thinner and stay thin. Getting fat is the fate worse than death.
I know of anorexic or bulimic young women for whom eating and food occupy their every thought. This is sad, and it's simply a distortion of the 'orthorexic' lifestyle.
As for all the food nags in the government and media, I notice they often cancel each other out, as a study reported one week will be contradicted by another study announced the next week. How can anyone know which to believe?
It seems that "all things in moderation -- including moderation", is the best motto in life.
As I noted at the beginning of this piece, the concern or even obsession with healthy eating, or fitness in general, is very much a SWPL thing. According to the official SWPL list, 'hummus' and 'whole foods and grocery co-ops' are among the Stuff White People like.
Earlier in life, I was a vegetarian and shopped at health food stores. Yes, I suppose I might have been an 'orthorexic' at one point, but I grew out of it. But never did I see 'people of color' in the health food stores. The idea of eating organic and avoiding the unhealthy foods is not something that seems important to nonwhites. I can't say why that is, but I think it's pretty generally true. I have known a couple of black women who might have been vegetarians but they were exceptions. It's a White thing to worry about whether one's food is healthy.
That being said, it's a habit that does get carried too far, with some SWPL types seeming to use strict diets to flagellate themselves in a way, as medieval penitents did. I've eaten plenty of 'organic' foods, and some of them are the culinary equivalent of a hair shirt. Much of the healthy food is not at all tasty or satisfying; I am convinced that the people who eat it are ascetics of a sort, who no longer really taste their food, but consume it only because they have to eat something to sustain themselves.
Maybe the people who eat recklessly, who eat all the unhealthy foods with no regard for their well-being or fitness, are people who are simply prone to risk-taking, the gambler types. The orthorexics are people who have somehow substituted dietary fussiness as a kind of self-denying religious discipline.
Labels: Counterculture, Food Faddism, Health, Social Trends, Swpls
0 comment Saturday, May 10, 2014 | admin
I've posed that question in various forms on this blog.
The usual answer is that it all started to go wrong in the 1960s.
Lately there has been a spate of articles about the 1960s rebellion, which culminated in a sense in the year 1968. Christopher Hitchens writes about it here.
Here, however, is a piece from TNC on the subject of that era which deals with the origins of the Sixties -- in the Fifties.
The writer refers to a piece from the New York Times Review of Books called 1958: The War of the Intellectuals, by Rachel Donadio.
Donadio tells us of the intellectual intensity of the 1950s, which is a perspective we don't hear too often. So many who think that the New Age of Enlightenment began in the 60s like to exalt that decade and its pretensions by comparing it favorably to the 50s, which is painted in drab colors as an age of oppressive conformity and repression.
There was a lively cultural scene and considerable intellectual ferment in the 50s. Even the popular culture which is decried by many today was a much more genteel and elevated kind than today's popular culture. The debasement which so characterizes today's pop culture was absent then.
But beneath the 'conformist' and mundane surface, there were signs of the coming social revolution. Donadio does not describe these things in critical terms; she simply notes them. For example, the beginnings of the attack on 'value judgments' which is part of the destruction of all discernment and discrimination.
Donadio quotes essayist and critic Dwight Macdonald's essay from 1960 called 'Masscult and Midcult.'
She says
The leveling process taking place in the culture "destroys all values, since value judgments require discrimination, an ugly word in liberal-democratic America," Macdonald wrote. Masscult, he added, "is very, very democratic; it refuses to discriminate against or between anything or anybody."
Macdonald, whose politics were all over the place during his life, was at various times a leftist/anarchist, a Marxist, and by the 50s, a dedicated anti-Communist who puzzlingly, became enamored of the antiwar movement of the 60s, and the New Left. Still, he was in general a social conservative despite his strange political affinities. This seems odd to us now because there are very few social conservatives among the liberal/leftists. For that matter, there are few social conservatives on the so-called 'right' these days, considering how fiscal conservatism and social libertarianism have come to be the norm on the right.
In a sense, Macdonald represents the rather complicated nature of the intellectual establishment in the 1950s. The New Criterion article describes how the supposedly 'conformist' and conservative 50s contained the seed of the counterculture sixties, in which conformity to tradition and the upholding of standards in all areas of life became anathema.
Macdonald and so many other intellectuals of the 50s era, though at first disparaging and disdaining the 'Beat Movement' slowly capitulated to the sixties counterculture and embraced the idea of 'radical chic', fawning over student agitators and black militants.
I suppose the question that ought to be asked is: why was there so little resistance to these pernicious ideas and movements when they came along? How do people make such sudden shifts? It's easier to explain when young people, seeking identity and individuality, eager for novelty, embrace some radical idea or fad. But what of people past middle age, as Macdonald was in the 60s? I suppose his early leftist ideas reemerged, and of course intellectuals and literary types are not necessarily average, typical people of their age and time.
Starting with the intelligentsia, American society was soon seduced by the counterculture, and the effects are still being felt, with the present-day acceptance of 'gay marriage', feminism, obsessive egalitarianism, hatred of all standards and discrimination, and the whole constellation of counterculture ideas.
The article makes another point about the sixties counterculture: there was practically nothing original in it; it was mostly warmed-over Beat Generation standard-issue Bohemian rebellion.
Most if not all the hallmarks of the counterculture were there in the Beat movement: drugs, sexual anarchy, anti-art (art which violates the old norms and esthetic standards), leftist politics, and even the fascination with exotic and outre religions.
And it was already present in a considerable degree in the staid-and-sober 50s. Careful observers of popular culture from that era can see the incipient rebellion even early in the 50s, for example, in the movie 'The Wild One.' Marlon Brando, as motorcycle gang-member Johnny, when asked what he is rebelling against, answers truculently: ''Whaddya got?''
That line is often quoted, especially by sixties types who have made rebellion their life theme.
I like this summation from the TNC article:
In a word, the establishment of the Beat "church" was significant as a chapter in the moral and cultural degradation of our society. Regarded as a literary phenomenon, however, what the Beats produced exists chiefly as a kind of artistic antimatter. It would not be quite right to say that its value is nil, for that might imply an innocuous neutrality. What the Beats have bequeathed us is actively bad, a corrupting as well as a corrupt phenomenon. To borrow an image from the Australian philosopher David Stove, the Beats created a "disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle."
It's very facile to blame the 60s and the 'hippie' baby-boomers who supposedly invented all these corrupting influences which have come to dominate our society. And as a boomer myself, I don't let my generation off the hook. We have plenty to answer for, and I've tried to make some amends for my youthful errors, while some, unfortunately, are as fanatical as ever in theirs.
The rot started, as I have said before, before the 60s, while my generation was in kindergarten, or perhaps sooner. I've mentioned before that the Civil Rights Revolution was well underway when I was a child; it was a fait accompli by the time I was of voting age or even before I was very politically aware.
And the other, perhaps more important part of the process, the social/cultural revolution, was underway much earlier, as well.
Does it matter so much when it began, or who began it? The thing is to recognize where we took the wrong turnings and to go back and retrace our steps, lest we become even more hopelessly lost.
The usual answer is that it all started to go wrong in the 1960s.
Lately there has been a spate of articles about the 1960s rebellion, which culminated in a sense in the year 1968. Christopher Hitchens writes about it here.
Here, however, is a piece from TNC on the subject of that era which deals with the origins of the Sixties -- in the Fifties.
The writer refers to a piece from the New York Times Review of Books called 1958: The War of the Intellectuals, by Rachel Donadio.
Donadio tells us of the intellectual intensity of the 1950s, which is a perspective we don't hear too often. So many who think that the New Age of Enlightenment began in the 60s like to exalt that decade and its pretensions by comparing it favorably to the 50s, which is painted in drab colors as an age of oppressive conformity and repression.
There was a lively cultural scene and considerable intellectual ferment in the 50s. Even the popular culture which is decried by many today was a much more genteel and elevated kind than today's popular culture. The debasement which so characterizes today's pop culture was absent then.
But beneath the 'conformist' and mundane surface, there were signs of the coming social revolution. Donadio does not describe these things in critical terms; she simply notes them. For example, the beginnings of the attack on 'value judgments' which is part of the destruction of all discernment and discrimination.
Donadio quotes essayist and critic Dwight Macdonald's essay from 1960 called 'Masscult and Midcult.'
She says
The leveling process taking place in the culture "destroys all values, since value judgments require discrimination, an ugly word in liberal-democratic America," Macdonald wrote. Masscult, he added, "is very, very democratic; it refuses to discriminate against or between anything or anybody."
Macdonald, whose politics were all over the place during his life, was at various times a leftist/anarchist, a Marxist, and by the 50s, a dedicated anti-Communist who puzzlingly, became enamored of the antiwar movement of the 60s, and the New Left. Still, he was in general a social conservative despite his strange political affinities. This seems odd to us now because there are very few social conservatives among the liberal/leftists. For that matter, there are few social conservatives on the so-called 'right' these days, considering how fiscal conservatism and social libertarianism have come to be the norm on the right.
In a sense, Macdonald represents the rather complicated nature of the intellectual establishment in the 1950s. The New Criterion article describes how the supposedly 'conformist' and conservative 50s contained the seed of the counterculture sixties, in which conformity to tradition and the upholding of standards in all areas of life became anathema.
Macdonald and so many other intellectuals of the 50s era, though at first disparaging and disdaining the 'Beat Movement' slowly capitulated to the sixties counterculture and embraced the idea of 'radical chic', fawning over student agitators and black militants.
I suppose the question that ought to be asked is: why was there so little resistance to these pernicious ideas and movements when they came along? How do people make such sudden shifts? It's easier to explain when young people, seeking identity and individuality, eager for novelty, embrace some radical idea or fad. But what of people past middle age, as Macdonald was in the 60s? I suppose his early leftist ideas reemerged, and of course intellectuals and literary types are not necessarily average, typical people of their age and time.
Starting with the intelligentsia, American society was soon seduced by the counterculture, and the effects are still being felt, with the present-day acceptance of 'gay marriage', feminism, obsessive egalitarianism, hatred of all standards and discrimination, and the whole constellation of counterculture ideas.
The article makes another point about the sixties counterculture: there was practically nothing original in it; it was mostly warmed-over Beat Generation standard-issue Bohemian rebellion.
Most if not all the hallmarks of the counterculture were there in the Beat movement: drugs, sexual anarchy, anti-art (art which violates the old norms and esthetic standards), leftist politics, and even the fascination with exotic and outre religions.
And it was already present in a considerable degree in the staid-and-sober 50s. Careful observers of popular culture from that era can see the incipient rebellion even early in the 50s, for example, in the movie 'The Wild One.' Marlon Brando, as motorcycle gang-member Johnny, when asked what he is rebelling against, answers truculently: ''Whaddya got?''
That line is often quoted, especially by sixties types who have made rebellion their life theme.
I like this summation from the TNC article:
In a word, the establishment of the Beat "church" was significant as a chapter in the moral and cultural degradation of our society. Regarded as a literary phenomenon, however, what the Beats produced exists chiefly as a kind of artistic antimatter. It would not be quite right to say that its value is nil, for that might imply an innocuous neutrality. What the Beats have bequeathed us is actively bad, a corrupting as well as a corrupt phenomenon. To borrow an image from the Australian philosopher David Stove, the Beats created a "disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle."
It's very facile to blame the 60s and the 'hippie' baby-boomers who supposedly invented all these corrupting influences which have come to dominate our society. And as a boomer myself, I don't let my generation off the hook. We have plenty to answer for, and I've tried to make some amends for my youthful errors, while some, unfortunately, are as fanatical as ever in theirs.
The rot started, as I have said before, before the 60s, while my generation was in kindergarten, or perhaps sooner. I've mentioned before that the Civil Rights Revolution was well underway when I was a child; it was a fait accompli by the time I was of voting age or even before I was very politically aware.
And the other, perhaps more important part of the process, the social/cultural revolution, was underway much earlier, as well.
Does it matter so much when it began, or who began it? The thing is to recognize where we took the wrong turnings and to go back and retrace our steps, lest we become even more hopelessly lost.
Labels: Counterculture, Creeping Liberalism, Cultural Marxism, Egalitarianism, History, Social Change, Societal Decay