Could Diets Actually Be A Good Thing?
posted on: August 06, 2018. posted in: Nutrition
I don't know if you've noticed the rise in the number of "Flat Earthers" these days?
Those people who truly believe that the earth is flat, in spite of the wealth of evidence to prove it is round?
It doesn't matter what evidence you put to them, and how compelling that evidence is, they put their fingers in their ears and they say...
"Blah blah blah! We don't care! The earth is flat!"
You can show them videos from space.
You can show them night and day.
You can show them luna eclipses.
You can show them ships disappearing on the horizon.
You can show them that the sun, the moon and all the other planets are quite clearly spherical...
But the earth?
In their minds IT'S FLAT.
And always will be.
Why?
The answer has repeated itself throughout history, and no doubt will continue to repeat itself for centuries to come, because it's something hard wired into being human.
You ready?
Human beings bond over ideas, even when those ideas have no evidence, research or logic to support them.
This is because tribes who are united by a shared idea are more likely to cooperate, survive and reproduce, even if that idea is fundamentally flawed.
So "ideas" are key to our species survival.
Our brains don't care if the idea is true.
Our brains just want an idea to latch onto.
We are here today reading this post because millions of tribes have bonded over 1000s of bad ideas, flawed ideas, even monumentally ridiculous ideas throughout history, enabling them to cooperate, survive and reproduce.
If these ideas never existed it would have been every man and woman for themselves, an all out war between individuals, and our species would have been extinct long ago.
So notice how I wrote...
"Blah blah blah! We don't care! The world is flat!"
Rather than...
"Blah blah blah! I don't care! The world is flat!"
Ideas only grow and flourish and eventually become ideologies and religions when many people come together in their shared belief in that idea.
In this way, ideas become a kind of "social glue" that connects people and makes them feel significant. And that significance is the brain's way of keeping people hooked on an idea, much like being hooked on a food, because it fuels cooperation, rather than movement.
Calories fuel our bodies.
Ideas fuel our minds.
So any evidence presented to a tribe that proves their idea to be flawed is resisted and ignored as it poses a threat to their tribe, to their connection, to their significance and ultimately to their SURVIVAL.
It's a case of...
"We will continue to believe this, because we believe this and that idea makes us who we are. Without this idea we are nothing."
People die fighting for bad ideas.
People blow themselves up for bad ideas.
And you know where this is going.
Diets are simply BAD IDEAS.
Where traditional ideologies and religions are fading out, "the diet" has become an opportunity for people to connect and feel significant through a modern day shared idea - whether that idea be cleaning eating, counting syns or claiming you've eliminated all sugar.
You can provide dieters with evidence to prove that processed food can be healthy, syns don't actually exist, or that it's impossible to eliminate all sugar.
You can scientifically prove their diet ideas to be flawed, and to be as ridiculous as believing the world is flat or that the moon is made of cheese...
But they will resist and ignore that message because it poses a threat to their connection, to their tribe, to their sense of significance and their survival.
This sadly means that diets are here to stay.
For as long as human psychology is hard wired to bond, connect and cooperate over ideas, the door will be open for humans to bond, connect and cooperate over BAD IDEAS.
We just have to feel lucky and grateful that we live in a country where we are latching onto ideas like "the world is flat", or "syns are in our food", or "cutting all sugar is healthy"...
Rather than ideas like "women with warts should be burned", or "babies born on a full moon should be drowned", or "people who believe in other gods should be murdered".
If diets are replacing such evil ideas that have brought so much pain and injustice throughout the centuries...
Maybe diets are a good thing?
Liam
