Oh Boy

Sunday afternoon. What to write about? What have I done recently? I read a book. I did some running. I went to work. While on my run I thought about the universe. I thought about ethics. I thought about human evolution, about human nutrition, and implications on both, and I thought about human development as people and a nation and a species and a race. I watched some Star Trek. I did some house cleaning, some food preparation. I thought about going out to "research" new trail shoes, or get a book, or do something. I've tried to work through a sore throat and resulting voicelessness.

The book was called Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy. Suppposedly, it is a satirical approach to self-help books. It was written back in the earlier 80s. My opinion is somewhat mixed, but overall I wasn't amazed by it. Perhaps if I read it when it was more contemporary, I would have a better context for the author's allusions and have context for his jokes. But I kind of felt he was a bit pretentious and projected some of the arrogance he seemed to distain. And his reflections on the "self" and self-consciousness didn't really go anywhere and end up just making you feel depressed, hopeless, and estranged.

So I did do a lot of thinking on my run. I guess it focused a lot on obtaining knowledge, the application of the knowledge, the implications of doing so etc. (I feel like that explanation is too broad, or vague. And my thinking was so scattered-brain, I know that description doesn't fit everything). But most of it was surrounding thoughts on evolution.

I will use nutrition as a starting point (I don't like the layman interpretation of the word diet, but I'll use it). I follow a vegan diet. An opposite, is the Paleo diet. Both take some founding in human biology/physiology and/or evolution. Broadly, it's believed that in the early stages of human adaptation, we followed a certain diet. That certain diet should be the ideal diet for humans now, and therefore we should revert back to that diet.

Veganism believes that a plant-based diet is the best way to go back to that earlier diet. I've heard the lactase gene was relatively "new" adaptation, suggesting that early humans did not consume milk. The Paleo diet states that early humans were hunter-gathers. Our bodies were not suited to digest cereal grains, and our diets primarily consisted of meats, vegetables, and fruit. I think both diets tend to fall back on a premise that our bodies are relatively unchanged on the evolutionary scale, and that we should stick with the "tried and true" methods (aka diets) of the past. Veganism is slightly different, since it removes meats because, essentially, our current meat supplies (cows, lambs,  pigs, poultry, fish, etc.) have been so altered that they not longer represent their "original" forms, and furthermore are treated in a cruel manner that should not be tolerated by consuming them.

My thoughts then turned to the idea of what evolution is and means. Are humans no longer evoluting? Are we capable of further evolution? Sure, we haven't been around that long, but if we have "evolved" a lactase gene, doesn't that mean we do adapt to our environment? Are we capable? If evolution follows Darwin's natural selection and survival of the fitness? Do we not have "Social Contracts" that allow for the propagation of less desirable traits? Of the weak?

Back to nutrition. If humans are a product of nature, if human intelligence is a product of nature, are not our technology (fire, metallurgy, chemistry, computer. etc) a product of nature? But yet, hasn't it stopped/arrested the so-called balance of the world? Or perhaps it's indicative that our understanding of that balance is flawed since we cannot account for our disruption of it. Nature begets intelligence, which becomes self-aware of nature, intends to apply intelligence to understand nature....

Ok, so really back to nutrition. If we are still a part of nature, and our technological, agricultural, industrial products are thus within nature, then can our usage of hormones, preservatives, processing really be perceived as a bastardization of nature? What of the imbalance of nature? We end diabetes by cutting sugar and adding preservatives, now we have cancer. We end world wide hunger and now are overpopulated, so we must produce energy efficient foods and thus use grains.

I don't know where I'm going with any of that. And I'm tired of typing about it. I think I'll watch more Star Trek: The Next Generation. I've almost half way through the 6th of 7 seasons. I worked some on my resume because I may be applying to an Aquatics Director position in Raleigh (for when my temporary job now ends). But I'm also interested in starting this book I found about life as an EMT. Yeah, that's still rearing it's crazy head.

Soundtrack:
"Dear Death Part 1" and "... Part 2" by Emery