But I want more life. Fucker.
What a tweest!!
Then go live in a hut and eat some wheatgrass you hippie.
Interesting little article that came out today:
There is this hypothesis stating we live in a too clean environment. There is this German company called Ovamed, Gmbh who purposefully infect patients with a parasite worm to balance your immune system. Apparently it does wonders with allergies and Autistic kids. It’s been remarked that perhaps having your kids roll around in the dirt (how about just playing sports?) will boost their immune system.
Edit: Who wants to become a System Lord?
[spoiler=Who wants to become a System Lord?]
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With the everlasting explosion of mass media, it’s more essential than ever that parents make sure their kids get some outside playtime everyday. It’s that exposure that helps shore up our bodies’ natural responses to a variety of circumstances.
It’s not so much that we live in a too-clean environment, but that we have a too-limited run of just a narrow slice of that environment, especially in our formative years.
Hell, I was the least-athletic kid on planet Earth. I loved books, movies, and video games. I still dug in the dirt and came home with my clothes covered in mud. It’s fun. Maybe kids just need to be reminded of that.
I used to have this really bitchin’ RoboCop action figure when I was three or four… and I’m pretty sure it’s still buried somewhere in my parents’ yard.
I think it is good for anyone who has lived in a western country to spend at least a few months in a third world country. After spending months using a squat toilet in Africa, I came back to the states and felt horrible from using western toilets. I had to buy some hardware for my bathroom to take at least 1 squat dump a day and it has really helped my feelings of well being. Toilets are un-natural, and I am reasonably convinced that they may cause colon cancer. Another thing I realized while over there is how materialistic and self centered our culture is. Having people offer me food (who can barely provide for their own families) really puts into perspective how selfish our culture really is. The other thing I realized from my time there was how disconnected Western people are from surviving day to day. Most people in western countries would be unable to clean a chicken, process game, or grow enough food to feed their families if they had to. I don’t think this kind of helplessness really bodes well for our future.
It doesn’t. But it won’t really change either. One of the funnier bits about being civilized is that the civilized way of life is considered to be the only worthwhile one. So if it will inevitably lead to hell, we’ll just continue anyway, because it’s the only acceptable way.
@toilets, yes. The lower the better. We’re made to poop squatting, so a really high toilet is basically a recipe for problems. The watering toilet itself is another hilarious civilizational bug that breaks the nutrient loops that should exist in a sane way of living.
Taito/Kromo: Hands down one of the best sci-fi movie of all time imo.
@J-ride: Co-signed. If people have the money/time, that’s an awesome idea.
It does seem like the western culture is about ‘me’ and ‘now’(‘Oh shit, latest i-whatever/sneakers/etc is out, i gots to have it!’) and convenience especially with food. Its like patience is not taught anymore. Why bother learning to cook when there is a restaurant all over the city that caters to all type of dishes? From my experience living in the city, its the immigrants–>turned-US-citizens(naturalized citizens is the term I believe) that somewhat still values patience, humility, selflessness and all that jazz.
Last year I was curious why organic food is so expensive whenever I visit the local Farmer’s Market so for one week for vacation, I volunteered in an organic farm upstate. The work was back-breaking as fuck(so much manual work, 6am-to-6pm errday), no internet access except the 2 books and acoustic guitar I brought and the local workers for company. One of the nights I asked if we can have chicken wings or something for dinner instead of the usual vegetables, we killed/cleaned/cooked one of the hens from the open-range chicken coops. It was one of my best vacation ever. Fellow co-workers gave me the WTF look when I came back.
Funny thing was on my last day, another volunteer arrived to do the same thing and when I asked what’s his profession back in the city, the dudes a private practice lawyer in one of the top law firm. I was like, “Don’t you guys get paid top $$$, why here for a week instead of Bermuda/Hawaii/Miami etc?”, “Meh, I like the simple,down-to-earth vibe of this farm”. It was his second time volunteering there.
TL;DR: Sometimes its the simple things in life that matters.
It doesn’t take a scientist, let alone a study to tell you that the longer you live the higher the chances are of an individual getting cancer.
It doesn’t take a study to also come to the conclusion that sitting down all day in a chair, staring at an LCD device in a closed room with no real fresh oxygen, while eating too much of anything is doing a lot of damage both physically but mentally.
It also doesn’t help that we live in a society where we lose who we are and start identifying ourselves via what terrible job we do.
Modern life is unnatural and modern life makes it really hard to take the necessary steps to balance the good with the bad.
THat isn’t to say, that those diseases come with old age, when in fact, its quite the opposite. ONe just needs to learn how to balance their lives.
lolol, a certain very famous 3s player is a big proponent of the squat shit. I dunno about the colon cancer part (I’d imagine eating lots of processed meats dwarfs any other risk factors) but it most certainly seems less conducive to hernias, and less wiping!
When I was a kid living in Jamaica I’d play in the grass, dirt/mud, swim in the sea, climb trees etc… I’m pretty sure that’s one of the reasons I’m fortunate not to have any allergies to pollen or foodstuffs. Early exposure.
Let your kids go rampin’ people.
You know, something that doesn’t help at all are those so called “studies”. You shouldn’t let your kid do this, or that, because its dangerous, dirty, or anti-social.
Peeps need to simply let loose once in a while and let their kids play in the damn sandbox. Its really sad, when I see a kid trying to be a kid, and mom and dad are always stiffling the child with you can’t do that, it isn’t safe.
Do you want little jimmy covered in dirt and running getting grimey and jumping into the car mudded up shoes dirtying everything?
that’s why little Jimmy is going to have spare clothes.
I read an interesting book a while back called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It’s about a man who has a telepathic conversation with a gorilla named Ishmael. It sounds weird, but Quinn was an anthropologist and the message within the conversation was really intriguing, and it kind of opens up a different way of looking at the world. Really good read if anyone is interested. It’s way too in depth to go into details, but it ties in with the topic of this thread.
Yup, Ishmael is amazing, precisely for the perspective both on culture and some other small tidbits. It’s also entertaining and pretty short, you can easily get through it in a night or two. After Ishmael, Derrick Jensen’s Endgame is pretty decent. The core issue is so simple it gets a bit repetitive at times, but it also makes some interesting observations I hadn’t really thought about because I had approached things from a different perspective.
One pretty heavy book I recently read was The Art of Not Being Governed by James C. Scott. Manages to turn around some fundamental assumptions about civilization pretty well, IMHO. But it’s pretty long and heavy.
There was a thread on a similar topic some months ago, though it’s less individual in scale:
(my contributions start on page 2, warning, they tend to be long)
That guy swam in the Hudson river? He did swim in raw sewage… contaminated with transformer oil (PCBs).
You’d think so, but im living proof of that doesnt always work.