Navel-Gazing vs Exploring Aggregate Options. A Metaphor. The Paleolithic Aggregate_Brain Diet.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

I this what "nature intended?" Or, like capitalism, is EVERYTHING we come across just a statistical blip in the path of "Context Nomads" .... and "nature" didn't give us any instruction other than to survive (even ourselves)?

That brings up an analogy.

The Paleolithic Aggregate_Brain* Diet

To avoid you know what.

This is just one part of a bigger spectrum of tasks: ... HOW do we get people to KEEP exploring their (personal PLUS aggregate) options?

Hint, adequately provision the components (individuals) AND exhort them to do something other than just brainlessly over-consume whatever they initially market to one another.

Beginning minds start out over-consuming, yet growing minds soon graduate to lean exploration of insanely exhilarating options (personal plus aggregate).

Here's a quick example, below, featuring another review of evidence for human adaptation to low-grain diets (any combo of veggies/fruits/meats, plus occasional seeds thrown in).

Current uber-capitalists won't like this either, since they "don't do nuance".

Note that this data is curated & promoted by the USA NIH NCBI - National Center for Biotechnology Information. Think of it as analogous to Fed_Data, for Public Health, not economic data.

Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity

Ian Spreadbury, GIDRU WingKingston General Hospital76 Stuart StreetKingston, Ontario K7L 2V7, Canada(613) 549-6666 x6520is15@queensu.ca

My synopsis (for those intimidated by non-economic, discipline-specific jargon):

Sure, grains/milk/cheese let large populations of humans occupy nutrient-poor regions, yet such high-density nutrients need never be eaten in more than micro quantities.

Note: I'd emphasize LOW-GRAIN, not no-grain. Even foragers find whole grains periodically.  

This fits into the general story of over-utilization.
We no longer know how little we need .... even while advertisements exhort us to over-use EVERY form of food (& other commodities, even fiat IOU numerals themselves).

Face it. Humans everywhere are bored. Not just Americans. There's more to life than consuming random stuff that advertisers ("pushers") encourage one another to over-consume. That covers more than just food.

What minimum food supply will get humans to the moon? How about to Mars? 

... 

How about to the future?

Analogously, what dynamically right-sized-commodity-supply will get homo sapiens to the future?

It's worth asking every 10-yr old worldwide these questions, so that they're primed to be interested in SOMETHING besides just over-consuming ... i.e., uselessly hoarding ... like the Koch brothers, or Warren Buffett, or all sociopaths, er, "billionaires."

Of course we can go somewhere from here. Where?

Just where advertisers suggest?

Or something beyond current imaginations? Surely there's no point in limiting ourselves. Instead, let's adequately provision our grandchildren, and overweight them with aggregate options, not just fat cells or hoarded public fiat.

Ever see an advertiser advertising tomorrow? Or just what feebly small amount they can imagine today? The difference is bigger than our Output Gap, it's our grandchildren's Options Gap.

This is, after all, just one of many necessary but not sufficient steps to take. Every human could and probably should, by age 10, grasp the Anti-Hypocritic Oath: "First, Do No Harm, Personal OR Aggregate." There are plenty of subsequent challenges, and we don't want to get in the way of all of those, current or as yet unrecognized.

Sure we've found ways to fix that. And we've also found ways to go too far. 

Can't we just fix that too? You'd think so, if more of us would only think, more often ... about how little matters, long term, ... instead of mindlessly spouting advertising to one another, without thinking ... and listening to advertising, again without thinking.




* For those with un-exercised imaginations, the intelligence of a "brain" depends on the organized inter-connections of all the neurons it contains (developed by practice). A GroupBrain depends on the patterns of discourse exercised among all the citizens of that group. Capiche? Imagine if Americans knew more of what Americans know to matter. That requires group practice, to whittle down how little matters to successive, fleeting contexts. We can only get there by selecting to practice, enough, on an aggregate scale.