Author: Darryl Penney

Chapter 16: Is It Time for a New Religion?

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Chapter 16

Is it Time for a New Religion?

 

 

Is the application of super-eusociety compatible with existing religions? Well, we have discussed super-eusociety, but what is a religion? The major religions are very old, as shown by the following table.

Origin of Religion – Important Dates in History:

  1. 2000 BC: Time of Abraham, the patriarch of Israel.
  2. 1200 BC: Time of Moses, the Hebrew leader of the Exodus.
  3. 1100 – 500 BC: Hindus compile their holy texts, the Vedas.
  4. 563 – 483 BC: Time of Buddha, founder of Buddhism.
  5. 551 – 479 BC: Time of Confucius, founder of Confucianism.
  6. 200 BC: The Hindu book, Bhagavad Gita, is written.
  7. 2 to 4 BC – 32 AD: Time of Jesus Christ, the Messiah and founder of Christianity.
  8. 32 AD: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
  9. 40 – 90 AD: The New Testament is written by the followers of Jesus Christ.
  10. 570 – 632 AD: Time of Muhammad, who records the Qur’an as the basis of Islam.

(AllAboutReligion.org)

 

A multitude of new religions, or variants have been started over the last 1500 years, far too many to list here, and such a list can be found on Wikipedia, List of founders of religious traditions. So, what is a religion, and why do we have them?

 

‘Since Paleolithic times each tribe – of which there have been countless thousands – invented its own creation myth…. The creation stories gave the members of each tribe an explanation for their existence. It made them feel loved and protected above all other tribes. In return, their gods demanded absolute belief and obedience. And rightly so. The creation myth was the essential bond that held the tribe together. It provided its believers with a unique identity, commanded their fidelity, strengthened order, vouchsafed law, encouraged valor and sacrifice, and offered meaning to the cycles of life and death’. (The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson, p 8)

 

From above, creation myths define a tribe and apparently are necessary to the tribe. So necessary that they could be considered a factor of survival of the group. This is not unexpected when one considers that eusociety, for insects, needs a nest that can be defended as well as the ability to survive the foraging of food from around the nest. For humans we need extra factors, namely, a nest, preferably that will provide protection from the weather and wild animals, and can be warmed by a fire as well as a creation myth to further bind the tribe together.

 

‘People are prone to ethnocentrism. It is an uncomfortable fact that even when given a guilt-free choice, individuals prefer the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion. They trust them more, relax with them better in business and social events, and prefer them more often than not as marriage partners. They are quicker to anger at evidence that an out-group is behaving unfairly or receiving undeserved rewards. And they grow hostile to any out-group encroaching upon the territory or resources of their in-group.’ (p 60)

 

Obviously, groups are crucial, but they have limitations, as the following shows. ‘Human infants, to acquire large organized brains and high intelligence, must go through an unusually long period of helplessness during their development. The mother cannot count on the same level of support from the community, even in tightly knit hunter-gatherer societies, that she obtains from a sexually and emotionally bonded mate.’ (p 253)

 

 

The reason for the need of a creation myth could be ethnocentralism as a means of holding the tribe together, and further, ethnocentralism is another word for (a very) extended family. But an extended family has practical limitations. The surrounding foraging area will only support a limited population and over time, what happens to the children produced by the group in light of the following. ‘The Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting, is a hypothetical psychological effect through which people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives become desensitized to later sexual attraction. This phenomenon, one explanation for the incest taboo, was first hypothesized by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891).’ (Wikipedia, Westermarck effect) Further, the Westermarck effect has been around for a long-time. ‘In all the social nonhuman primate species whose sexual development has been carefully studied, including marmosets and tamarins of South America, Asian macaques, baboons, and chimpanzees, both adult males and females display the “Westermarck effect”’ (The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson, pp 200-201 )

 

So, how do small groups prevent inbreeding over extended periods of time? ‘Among apes, monkeys, and other nonhuman primates, the method is two layered. First, among all nineteen social species whose mating patterns have been studied, young individuals tend to practice the equivalent of human exogamy. Before reaching full adult size, they leave the group in which they were born and join another…. their departure appears to be entirely voluntary.’ (p 200) The second effect is the Westermarck effect.

 

These effects ‘are the “epigenetic rules”, which evolved by the interaction of genetic and cultural evolution that occurred over a long period in deep prehistory. … they determine the individuals we as a rule find sexually most attractive. They lead us differentially to acquire fears and phobias concerning dangers in the environment, as from snakes and heights; to communicate with certain facial expressions and forms of body language; to bond with infants; to bond conjugally ….Most epigenetic rules are evidently very ancient, dating back millions of years in our mammalian ancestry. Others, like the stages of linguistic development, are only hundreds of thousands of years old. At least one, adult tolerance to lactose in milk and from that the potential for a dairy-based culture in some populations, dates back only a few thousand years.’ (pp 193-194)

 

Is it Time for a New Religion? That is the question that we would like to answer, but it depends on some of the attractors above. So using the Mathematics of the Mind, and starting with the creation myth, let’s look at where the above leads us.

 

All tribes have creation myths and they are an epigenetic part of us, just as fear of heights and snakes are part of us. But some of these epigenetic programs that are part of us are, probably, hardwired, such as jumping back when you glimpse a curved branch. This reaction is probably part of the muscle-ganglion-muscle automatic system that reacts when you touch a hot surface. It is automatic, instinctive and fast! Consider a fear of heights. This is deep seated and requires the application of great care to overcome or suppress it. It takes a lot of willpower to overcome the fear. Another culture that is extremely important to us is the creation myth, which no doubt evolved to maintain the integrity of the group. It is so important that, from above, every tribe has one.

 

On the other hand, whilst every tribe has one, they are all (more or less) different. In other words, it is important to have a creation myth, but it does not matter what it is! After all, every tribe has (probably a different) one! To show the fact that a creation myth is necessary, but its content is not important, consider the following. In effect, every offspring of every tribe, in other words, everyone, has to change their belief to a new creation myth when they move to a new tribe! I have previously wondered why people, so easily change their religion when they marry outside of their faith. It is the fitting-in that is important!

 

Some more ‘proof’. Why are all the religions that are so old, so out of date, still around and still practiced by so many people? ‘The illogic of religions is not a weakness in them, but their essential strength. Acceptance of the bizarre creation myths binds the members together.’ (p 259) So, the question is answered, we do not need a new religion, because any of the religions will do! Notice that the multitude of new religions have not been able to oust the initial major religions.

 

That is the simple answer, that any religion will do, but if we take into account more attractors, things change, and we should be looking for predictions using super-eusociety. Eusociety is competition between nests (or families), whilst super-eusociety is competition between countries which fall under one government. It does not matter if there is only one global government provided that it implements survival of the best. The case of separate countries is more likely in the foreseeable future.

 

Women, given access to super-eusociety, have the choice of changing their racial characteristics (over very few generations). They have the choice to move out of arranged marriages if they choose, assuming that the government provides adequate wages, accommodation etc. Radical preachers cannot compete with successful businessmen or professionals as prospective fathers, and women can sideline their effect. Why would the women want to be restrained by unusual clothing styles when they are guaranteed safe accommodation for them and their children by the government.

 

Currently, under eusociety, countries are pushing multi-culturalism, because, I believe, it cannot be handled easily. Under super-eusociety, the means is available to bring back the ideal that a country is an entity. Consider the following. A survey conducted last year by the French Institute of Public Opinion found that 43 per cent of respondents believed France’s 5 million Muslims represented ”a threat to French national identity”. Just 17 per cent said the Muslim minority enriched society. A large majority of those surveyed, 68 per cent, blamed problems with immigrant communities on Muslims who refused to integrate.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 10/6/2013)

As I have said previously, the decision about children is up to the mother-to-be, and each woman has the right to be able to make that decision without being influenced by members of her family, her religious group, the government etc. If she makes the decision, it is survival of the ‘best’, whilst if one of the other groups makes the decision, it becomes eugenics, with all the negative connotations associated with the word. Survival of the best is scientifically acceptable, as part of super-eusociality, and religions are not in the business of going head-to-head with accepted scientific thinking. From above, they do not need to!

 

Surely, the benefits of the government supporting, with the aid of members of the churches, as happens with the aged-care industry, the disadvantaged (women and their children) by paying them a considerable amount of government money is to everyone’s advantage. It would be nice to think that

the disadvantaged women would gradually be phased out, but I am sure that there will always be enough to keep the churches’ busy! But, and this is the point, these (previously) disadvantaged women are taught how to produce a superior child that will be an asset to the country and at the same time (gradually) unify the country by breeding with (or incorporating) ‘regression to the norm’.

 

A country is stable with several different religions or sects under eusociaity (from above), but there is often violence between the sects. Super-eusociety tends (over a few generations) to reduce sectarianism by instigating the movement of women to the religion and ethnicity that appeals to them. The government has to allow them that choice. Once early childbearing is over, they could marry and that would allow the excess males to take their place in the world. This is in line with the emotional state of males versus females, where males are often seven years older than the females at marriage. It also brings childbearing to the early years when learning is taking place instead of putting children off until it may be too late.

 

 

One further point, is that our genes are stuck in the Paleolithic. Whilst groups carry our genes forward and allow them to progress and keep track with our environment, our environment is moving too fast. Super-eusociety allows the genes to change rapidly, in fact so rapidly that the genes will always be able to keep up, because the females have to be healthy enough to fall pregnant and the selected male has to be seen to be healthy. But, do we want bodies that can exist on the ‘cheapest’ amounts that (often) cause sickness and a short life, or do we want a well-nourished body and a long useful life? The question is considered in later chapters.

 

 

postscript: ‘I belong to the group of scientists who do not subscribe to a conventional religion but nevertheless deny that the universe is a purposeless accident. The physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact. There must be a deep level of explanation.’ (Paul Davies, The Mind of God, quoted in The Loom of God, C. A. Pickover, p 45)

 

I have quoted the above because it needs an answer and as a postscript it can be condensed. The Big Bang has a certainty of one because it occurred, and came out of a probability space of creation of Big Bangs and we are dealing exclusively with probability spaces that ONLY contain a logic operator, by assumption. This space is indeterminate unless a mind is measuring or observing anything in it, which only occurs with evolution.

 

The logic that we use, and indeed all organisms with two or more nerves in their brain, is not formal logic (true/false), but the logic of the universe, which I call the Logic of the Half-truth and contains elements of time (causation) and chaos.

 

The Half-truth is: true, false, true some of the time and false the rest of the time (causation) and true and false at the same time (chaos, indeterminacy)

 

It is the only ‘dimension’ of the universe and creates Big Bangs, our language, the logic of our action etc. In fact everything except space-time. Thus, I postulate that EVERYTHING occurs within these 5 ‘dimensions’ and can be described by them.

 

Space-time (interval) arose out of the necessity to catch prey or avoid predation and is unique to all the larger organisms and is heritable. Because of the particular architecture of the brain of ALL sensing organisms, that created Theory of Mind and we can sense each other and lead to herds that offer protection etc. The proof is that if they do not sense each other they will be eaten, and have automatic defences against bacteria etc.

 

We have evolved a reality in the probability of existence! Notice that magic (unexplained occurrences) occurs when reality is not complete and our brain/minds go to great lengths to create reality, such as filling in for our nose because, the closer to a reality, the better that we confabulate, and the better we guard against predators.

 

Notice that the Mathematics of the Mind uses the five dimensions, that mathematics and Chaos Theory are special cases, that Big Bangs occur naturally, that God must be the God of Truth or a natural occurrence, that all the beauty that we perceive, we perceive only because of our mind. Our mind ‘pulls’ the indeterminacy ‘down’ using the Logic of the Half-truth and converts it to the ‘best’ form for us to confabulate. It is all quite simple.

 

Chapter 16: Is It Time for a New Religion?

Chapter 6: Dancing, Nutrition, Poker Machines, Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics

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Chapter 6: Dancing, Nutrition, Poker Machines, Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics

 

Three different type-faces have been used to try to differentiate three patterns.

 

We are patterns of molecules that grow from other patterns of molecules (called DNA). So how can we define our place within these patterns? Well, we can start anywhere because all of life’s patterns are linked.

 

At a Social dance-night, I suggested a change in the dance program. The reply was, ‘we have been doing it this way for 25 years and we are not changing!

 

Over the 10 years that I have been attending, we have lost many facilities, and perhaps it is time to see what changes are necessary to keep the Social Dance viable in the long-term.

 

Quantum Mechanics tells us that a subatomic particle has position and velocity and that measuring one affects the other, because our measuring stick, perturbs the particles.

 

The result of looking at this remark will bring some surprising philosophical patterns into the picture!

 

The subject of ‘Change Mechanics’ stresses that people, in general hate and resist any kind of change in their life, and this is hardly surprising as ‘resistance to change’ has been a fundamental part of our existence for the last 3,000 million years. Offspring are our agents of change!

 

‘Key to the Club’s success will be continuing to provide what our members want and need’ President’s address, Canberra Southern Cross Club News, Winter 2012.

 

Even sub-atomic particles are patterns! If we measure them, as particles, they turn out to be particles. If we measure them as waves they turn out to be waves.

 

Older long-term dancers often drop out (permanently) because they can’t cope with the dances after (what appears to be) mental degeneration. This is most distressing, and we have all noticed it!

 

This state of affairs is particularly deplorable as research exists that dancing, (of the nine pursuits considered) can ameliorate (at the least) or stop the progression of the problem. Further, research indicates that three conditions must occur simultaneously for benefit to occur, namely, social contact, physical exercise and mental exercise.

 

For Change to occur, we need (1) a ‘Change Director and (2) a ‘Change Agent’ to push it through in the face of the usual resistance to change, (3) a ‘Worthwhile Goal’ and (4) a ‘Carrot and/or Stick’ for ‘just in case it’s needed’.

 

Research has shown that the faster that you function and the more that you exercise, the ‘younger’ you are! Where ‘real’ age is some function of chronological age plus functional age plus biological age.

 

Currently we have the ‘Alzheimer’s epidemic’, the ‘Obesity epidemic’, the ‘Asthma epidemic’, ‘Heart problem epidemic’, ‘Cancer problem epidemic’, ‘Gambling problem’ etc. The first three are of very recent origin, whilst the next two are less that 100 years old. Would preventing these epidemics be a big enough ‘carrot’?Would public anger at the club’s use of poker machines be a big enough ‘stick’?

 

The Clubs around Canberra and Queanbeyan can be rated by a number of criterion. Firstly, consider free accessible dance floor and ‘live’ band or ‘canned’ dance music. Queanbeyan has two Bowling Clubs with large dance floors and bands, one or two nights a week.

 

Secondly, the Queanbeyan clubs, to which I refer, are ‘bowling’ clubs, whereas the Woden clubs (as an instance) are purely ‘social’ clubs. Thirdly, the Queanbeyan clubs are ‘poor’ compared to the Woden clubs (as an instance). Notice that the Canberra Southern Cross Club runs six venues!

 

Patterns are all around us and they only have ‘meaning’ when measured or ‘recognized’ in an appropriate way. The problem is to find that way!. The relationship between position and velocity, above, contains time, implicitly.

 

The patterns that surround us are time dependent, and often cyclical, such as the seasons which change throughout the year. We need to define who we are in time.

 

Our genes are still set in the ‘hunter gatherer’ era of about 10,000 years ago. When we needed food, we walked to find it. We cooked at low temperatures in skins heated by hot stones. The food was fresh (as there were no refrigerators although many seeds and fruits were dried), and we lived in caves on dirt floors that had been tenanted for tens of thousands of years.

 

We sat around a fire for warmth, for protection from wild animals, and heated the stones for cooking in it and talked and danced around it. The fire that was such a big part of our life, just as the sun was. Perhaps ‘devotion’ to fire became ‘hard wired’ into our genes, because if someone did allow it to go out, they may well have been eaten by predators and thus not have passed on their genes!

 

Also, clubs are allowed to trade in ‘addictive’ substances such as poker machines and alcohol with the government ‘looking over their shoulder’. Any ‘shortcomings’ in performance or dis-advantaging a particular segment of their membership should lead to questions being raised by our politicians.

 

A new theory, a new point of view or a better way of doing things should not conflict with the known provable facts but should embrace them, as well, as being able to predict new outcomes that can be tested.

 

‘Alzheimer’s epidemic’: from above, research exists that dancing can ameliorate the progression.

‘Obesity epidemic’: In the Palaeolithic, this would not have occurred because the ‘addictive’ salt, fats and carbohydrates were in short supply.

 

Heart problem epidemic’: again, no processed foods and plenty of exercise and sunshine.

 

‘Cancer problem epidemic’: is a little less obvious. Before the present oxygen atmosphere with its ozone layer that stopped much of the radiation, bacteria had developed the ability to repair damage caused by these particles (or waves). We still have that ability within our cells, provided that they get adequate nutrition. Also, we have other means of dealing with cancer through eating the foods from the Palaeolithic. (Foods that Fight Cancer, by R. Beliveau and D. Gringas)

 

‘Gambling problem’: we will probably always have ‘problem’ gamblers, but why are so many ‘ordinary’ people being ruined by poker machines? My current dancing partner has a brother that lost ‘half a million’, and my previous dancing partner lost her marriage when her husband lost ‘4 houses’. Is it due to the actions of the casinos and clubs? If it is, should politicians manage better?

 

From above, the Queanbeyan clubs are ‘poor’ compared to the Woden clubs (as an instance). In other words, are the ‘rich’ Clubs (1) providing less of the services that the members need, or (2) more efficient at producing income.

 

(1) The ‘poor’ Clubs (at least those mentioned), provide more dance facilities, and only government oversight can regulate to determine the level of dancer’s access across the clubs. Sufficient (low-cost) dancing activity keep people out of high maintenance dementia beds!.

 

(2) being more efficient is good for everyone, but being more efficient at extracting profits through the poker machines is not, and I suspect that the larger clubs are using some degree of ‘psychology’ to achieve this. Perhaps the makers of the machines are building in excessive ‘glitz’!

 

In the Palaeolithic cave, the fire was the centre of attraction (as outlined above) with religious (and perhaps genetic) overtones with the dark sleeping quarters at the back. The Canberra Southern Cross Club has a restaurant at the front, with general seating in the far end and no dancing or band facilities. This is a ‘dead’ area. The poker machine room is glitzy, bright with lights and noise. The whole room is ablaze like a fire! This equates to the Palaeolithic ‘fire-place’! And, people are drawn to this bright noisy place because that is where the action is, as well as it possibly being ‘in their genes’ (literally!). BUT, there is absolutely nothing to do there but to play the poker machines!

 

To repeat, a new theory, a new point of view or a better way of doing things should not conflict with the known provable facts but should embrace them, as well, as being able to predict new outcomes that can be tested.

 

Here is the prediction! We need to move the ‘centre of attention’, from the poker machine area to the dance floor area by providing seating with music and dancers to watch (and emulate!). People need to be involved physically as well as mentally and socially. The Hellenic Club does this on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It is well known that the club’s don’t make money out of dancers because they can’t drink alcohol and dance properly and safely!

 

The poker machine area should be painted a restful colour, such as green, with subdued room lighting and the machines with their ‘sound’ turned off and their lighting ‘downplayed’. The result would be people moving to the dance floor and the number of ‘problem’ gamblers reduced. People can still gamble if they want to, just as they could give their money away to passers-by, but the ‘push’ to the machines has been replaced by a ‘pull’ away to the ‘healthy’ dance floor.

 

A trial of this nature would take only a few days and be cheap to implement. I can’t imagine many people sitting in the gloom watching some numbers come up with a sticker saying ‘this machine pays back 90% of the money that you put in (in the long-term)’! Even I remember the time when these stickers were (actually!) used on the A.C.T. machines! What happened to them?

 

This gradation would provide a level of ‘mix’ of ‘drab’ versus ‘glitz’ that our politicians could judge to be an acceptable point of compromise between the clubs and government, and form the basis of legislation.

 

These changes, using the ‘carrot’ to draw people to the dance floor and the ‘stick’ to prompt the less committed gambler away from gambling is easy to legislate for. It would only need a government sponsored person to oversee everything: provision of an accessible (even moveable) dance floor, a bit of ‘glitz’ and ‘canned’ music on a continuous basis.

 

I feel that I should apologize for the round-about derivation of something that is so obvious (in retrospect), but this often happens when ‘we see the light’. But, so much of our modern living competes with who-we-are in reality that a ‘workable’ solution is often obscured, or requires a ‘balance’ with other solutions.

 

 

 

Chapter 6: Dancing, Nutrition, Poker Machines, Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics

Chapter 2: The Philosophers’ Stone

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Chapter 2: The Philosophers’ Stone

 

The philosophers ‘ stone or stone of the philosophers (Latin: lapis philosphorum) is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals such as lead into gold (chrysopoeia) or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal in alchemy. The philosophers’ stone was the central symbol of the mystical terminology of alchemy, symbolizing perfection at its finest, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss. Efforts to discover the philosophers’ stone were known as the Magnus Opus (“Great Work”). (Wikipedia, Philosophers’ stone)

 

This quotation states a stone, but why a stone? Perhaps stones had an aura of the mystical about them that was carried through from the religions of the Ancients, or, perhaps there were not many natural substances that could be used as a representation during the Middle Ages.

 

The following quotation shows that the search has been a long one and worldwide. ‘The most authoritative modern view is that gunpowder was first made in China, in the middle of the ninth century AD, by Thang alchemists who were actually looking for the elixir of immortality’. (The Big Bang, G. I. Brown, p 4)

 

Perhaps the search has been with us from the beginning when an ancestor picked up a stone to ward off a charging predator, and a lucky throw could have lengthened his life! Perhaps the Philosophers’ Stone is another name for Technology.

 

The second part, that rejuvenation, perfection at its finest, enlightenment and heavenly bliss sound like knowledge based solutions and are similar to the subjects that are considered in this book. The search for the Philosophers’ Stone has been replaced by the search for technology, but the Philosophers’ stone was a shopping list or wish list from the beginning of humanity.

 

There are two obvious concepts, firstly that the wish list has existed for a long long time and secondly, it contain social aspects. The idea that technology has taken over the properties of the Philosophers’ stone is false, to a certain extent, because social aspects loomed large in historical times and technology is wanting in these areas. Certainly technology has blossomed, but it does not consider or cover the whole wish list of the Ancients. This is apparent in the problems that we have today, such as the obesity epidemic, over-population, lack of resources, global warming etc.

 

There is no general or large appreciation of humanity in technology, but it could be considered that the wish list of the Philosophers’ stone requires both technology and the social logic of the half-truth. So, let’s write that as an equation:

 

The Philosophers’ stone (of humans) = Technology + social aspects (of our humanity)

 

Mathematically, this is nonsense! You can’t add apples and oranges, but in the Mathematics of the Mind, you can! Put another way, when humanity is applied as a condition on General Mathematics, the result is the Mathematics of (our) Mind. Similarly, when humanity is applied to the Logic of the Half-truth, the result is the Laws of (our) Life, which is derived in the next chapter.

 

It will be shown that the scientific/technology/innovation side of the stone mirrors the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction. This simple ‘roadmap’ shows the context of the book and defines our path, that the world as we know it has become unbalanced, simply because we (usually) consider only part of General Mathematics, that which we call mathematics and part of Logic of the Half-truth which we call formal logic.

 

postscript: a roadmap is a guide and not really understood until the journey is over, so this postscript assumes that the book has been read and this roadmap shows how the concept of the Philosophers’ stone lies in the modern world.

 

Taking the break-down of the Philosophers’ stone that the scientific/technology/innovation side of the stone mirrors the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction was meant to be a broad generalization because the concepts had not even been defined. I was indicating the similarity that appears between the concepts in current use and the concepts that I was to introduce.

 

I want to show the relationship between the two concepts, especially that the scientific/technology/innovation is a special case of the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction. It has been shown that the mind/consciousness is necessary for measurement (or mathematics) to be applied. Mathematics allows the mind to stand outside of the mathematical process by using theorems to build the mathematical structure.

 

So, I’m going to restate the Philosophers’ stone concept into three columns instead of two by inserting one in the middle. The left hand column remains the same (scientific/technology/innovation) where the mind is outside of the problem, whilst the Logic of the Half-truth/ Mathematics of our Mind/prediction lies on the right side where the experimenters’ mind is swamped by the social needs of the multitude. The middle column is where mathematics works, but understanding needs to come through the Mathematics of the Mind (Chapter 27) and contains the problem ‘fringes’ of the very large and the very small. Problems like relativity, quantum mechanics, existence, reality, the mind is part of the experiment etc. needs the Mathematics of the Mind to view concepts to understand them easily.

 

In other words, the Mathematics of the Mind handles all cases and the above shows how it fits into the current picture of the spread of concepts required by humanity. The Logic of the Half-truth extends formal logic with a ‘completeness’ to enable a reality (or completeness) to evolve out of the possibility of existence.

 

postscript: ‘Any fully programmable computer can simulate any other such machine … conjecture is known as Church’s thesis, named after the American logician Alonzo Church…. All attempts to arrive at a definition of what it means to compute something seem to result in equivalent machines … words for the process of step-by-step development of an idea abounded: “mental process,” “effective procedure,” “algorithm.”’ (Beyond Reason, A. K. Dewdney, p 164)

 

If this quotation represents the current thinking, I have to point out that throughout this book I have been talking about the ninth sense (creativity/consciousness), which our mind/brain has had for a very long time. Computers are designed to insulate the signals that are moving around so that they are not corrupted. Our brains are designed to corrupt the signals to a certain extent, by inducing parts of inter-related thoughts into our consciousness to create ‘creativeness’, and so the brain cannot be compared with a computer.

 

Looking at the concept of the Philosophers’ stone above, it is clear that our mind/brain belong on the right hand side and only ventures into the left hand side with a complete set of axioms as the basis of mathematics and this is because our minds are creative and designed to be creative and this is heritable. I was watching a TV show that said that Stephen Hawking thinks that we will be replaced by robots in the future. I find this very difficult to believe because evolution requires creativity. No creativity means doing the same thing forever, by definition. This is why Church’s thesis must exclude the brain.

 

There is a difficulty in proving Church’s thesis, and that is why it is a conjecture. Computing science is a movement towards a general mathematics but it does not have the ‘rigor’ that the Mathematics of the Mind has, because firstly, Chaos Theory and mathematics are a consistent part and secondly, the mind evolved to create (or be conscious). The first Law of Life states that iteration is a truth because of the evolution producing a solution that is the ‘best possible’ solution because of competition and it is highly unlikely, but not impossible, for a ‘better’ solution to exist. We are relying on 3,000 million years of evolution to produce the ‘best’ solution.

 

The impetus behind quantum computing is the mind (because the wave function collapses through the application of the mind), DNA computing is possible for small problems, but will never produce the spectacular results that evolution and 3,000 million years have produced, without the contribution of a mind. This leads into the question of Survival of the Best because a creative/conscious mind is needed to move in that direction.

 

 

postscript: to illustrate the current scientific thinking: ‘when individual photons are directed at a pair of slits in some otherwise impermeable material. Each slit is equipped with a detector. It has been shown that when the detectors are turned off, the photons pass through both slits simultaneously. But when the detectors are turned on, the photons must “make a choice” about which slit to pass through. This is what is meant by the “collapse” of the photon’s wave function. If further conditions can be placed on a wave function, conditions that correspond to the strictures of a particular problem to be solved, it may be that the wave will collapse in a manner that provides a solution to the problem.’ (Beyond Reason, A. K. Dewdney, p 179)

 

This quotation appears to be hoping that conditions can be applied to the ‘collapse’ of the wave function of the photon, but I believe that the universe is so ‘simple’ in form that it requires a mind to measure the passing of a photon and convert it from indeterminate to determinate. In other words, a probability space having only one logic dimension, compared to the five in the O world and it is unlikely for any problem solving capacity to exist.

 

On the other hand, the instigator of the ‘collapse’ is a mind that has taken 3,000 million years to evolve and has (almost) limitless capacity to create that is the party that produces the result. Something that a computer cannot do! The Mathematics of the Mind involves the mind in the decision-making, and whilst that appears to be ‘cheating’, it is what our reality really is. Our reality is a product of our mind, so why shouldn’t a general mathematics be the same?

 

postscript: looking at computers, ‘the algorithms we have examined up to now were all deterministic. In other words, they proceeded to find solutions to instances of a problem by following a rigid recipe, the outcome of which is determined in advance. Not so with nondeterministic algorithms. Faced with the instance of a problem, a nondeterministic algorism simply guesses the yes/no answer and, if the answer is “yes,” also guesses a solution.’ (Beyond Reason, A. K. Dewdney, p 199)

 

Firstly, I dispute the word ‘guess’, when a brain/mind is involved that has taken 3,000 million years to evolve and should be able to do better than guess, but the greater the number of attractors taken into account in the Mathematics of the Mind the better the answer or ‘guess’. The Mathematics of the Mind should be able to ‘create’ a ‘solution’ to some extent involving humanity and to better the solution when it considers more alternatives (more attractors). A small point, but the ability of the mind to iterate and create lies at the ‘heart’ of the Mathematics of the Mind. This book puts forward the idea that the creative mind gets ‘better’ with time, use, nutrition etc in line with the second Law of Life.

 

The Mathematics of the Mind in its general form is necessarily vague, but precision of measurement has been built-in to us to escape predators or catch prey, because it is the most efficient way and heritable. There is little doubt that we have inherited the necessity of exactitude, and that, we call mathematics, so we end up with a gradation of three columns instead of one.

 

Secondly, nondeterministic algorism sounds very close to indeterminate in logic space and needs a mind to ‘guess’ an answer. I maintain that the universe is a probability space that contains only logic as an operator which manifests itself as the Half-truth, which is complete and allows a reality when we impose upon it, through our mind/brain, as happens when we measure something. A nondeterministic algorism is creating an extension of mathematical reality (to us) in the same way and we realize that it doesn’t exist outside of our mind/brain.

 

A brain/mind acts not only as a computer but actually creates our reality by measuring it, and as each brain has the same architecture, so our reality overlaps that of the larger animals that sense us and each other, so it could be said that we have god-like powers and created our world (or our reality)!

 

We created our reality in the same way that we created mathematics and now we have created the Mathematics of the Mind and reap the benefits when we use it. Similarly, I have outlined possible means to Survival of the Best and we need to define it in our minds and change our reality in line with it, and reap its benefits. As mathematics grades into the Mathematics of the Mind, so does Survival of the Fittest grade into Survival of the Best, and the basis of this change in reality is education, communication and a mind in tune with the Mathematics of the Mind to define a ‘common ground’ as in, as one example, Chapter 18: Finding God Through One Religion.

 

postscript: the Philosophers’ stone concept above is ‘static’ with no mention of time, also no mention has been made of logic in the left hand side and I am assuming that formal logic (true/false) is there, but I have not mentioned it. By including time and chaos into true/false, we get the Logic of the Half-truth, which is used on the right hand side, so now there is an opportunity to put it into the left hand side to make the ‘book-keeping’ correct.

 

Starting another concept (or thought, or attractor), it has been put forward in this book that there are five ‘dimensions’ (three space and one time in O world and one logic in world P and by necessity in world O also) that we can use, so, if I am correct, EVERYTHING must fit within those five dimensions, otherwise we will need more dimensions. Hints have occurred in other chapters in considering the proverbs and nouns, such as existence, reality, consciousness etc. as being part of the Half-truth. In other words, language must be part of the logic dimension, and in particular, the Half-truth.

 

Bringing these concepts together as a thought and using creativity to derive a prediction, we can conjecture (postulate, guess etc.) that ALL language fits into the Logic of the Half-truth, and further that EVERYTHING fits into the five dimensions. An example: a horse is in a paddock can be true if it is there over time, false if it is not there over time, if it is there some of the time and not there the rest of the time, and it is too dark to see if the horse is there (or raining too hard etc and equates to chaos, indeterminacy etc).

 

So, going back to the philosophers’ stone concept, the Mathematics of the Mind, the Logic of the Half-truth and time passing over-arch the three columns that I have used for clarity. It is of no use making one column, as there should be, because the three columns are the result of ‘everyday use’ by different sections of the community.

 

To accentuate the ‘oneness’ of the three components that have been used, I might call them a trinity and point to the ancients’ use of this technique in the Christian Church that caused Terry’s problem in chapter 1 with the Trinity to describe the three aspects of the one God.

 

 

 

Chapter 2: The Philosophers’ Stone

Chapter 24: The Philosophy of Food and Health

Darryl Penney, , , Leave a comment

Chapter 24: The Philosophy of Food and Health

 

I have heard that humans excrete potassium and retain salt. Animals use salt licks and I can appreciate why our bodies retain salt (sodium chloride) because it is difficult to find in the wild, However, it has been suggested that because we ate fruit, and fruit is high in potassium, we excreted the excess potassium, but we evolved from the fringe of fruit eating monkeys that were forced to eat roots and vegetation and spend more time on the ground because they could not compete with the fruit-eaters. So, our ancestors were ready for life on the ground and, presumably retained the potassium excreting ability.

 

Fire has been used for cooking for 400,000 years and our teeth have become smaller as a consequence of less chewing etc. because cooking tenderised food, Intertwining another thread into this little derivation, how did our ancestors cook? It has been mentioned that hot rocks were used to heat water in skins, and each new heated rock from the fire, introduced some wood ash into the food, which contains potash (potassium compounds).

 

‘Earlier studies have shown that the dominant elements of wood ash are calcium, potassium, magnesium, silicon, manganese, aluminium, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, sodium and zinc.’ (Www.ScienceDirect.com, Ash properties of Pinus halepensis, S. Liodakis, G Katsigiannis, T Lymperopoulou)

 

Thus, it is conceivable that we excrete potassium because of our long association with cooking, also, mushrooms may have been a major food, see below, and they are rich in potassium. If our teeth have evolved to decrease in size, it is possible that we have evolved to excrete potassium, or reinstated the ability. From these attractors set 10,000 years ago, we have to translate in time to the present and compare today’s food.

 

Modern food is high in sodium because it enhances flavour cheaply, preserves, panders to our addiction for salt, is always available on the table etc. Taking it further, vegetables are cooked in water, into which the soluble vitamins and minerals etc pass, and the water is thrown away. Sodium is increased in the diet and potassium is decreased. Compare the hunter/gatherer, where the food, and water that it was cooked in, is eaten. Extra salts from the wood ash are inadvertently added, and that addition is a wide range of elements that are left when the volatile components are burnt off. Humans are the only animals that use fire and gain their minerals that way. Fire even promotes health, apart from warmth, protection etc. Truly a gift of the Gods!

 

But, I hear on TV that nutritional experts are telling us that dietary supplements are unnecessary and that plenty of fruit and vegetables will give a balanced and sufficient diet. Clearly, if the above, where wood ash is added, is likely, the statement ‘balanced and sufficient diet’ is clearly a half-truth, without the other deficiencies of modern vegetables and fruit, see below. Wood ash is a multi-mineral supplement for our ancestors!

 

So, what is the prediction? It is no use deriving the above if we don’t use it, and making a prediction sharpens the point and allows us to incorporate and simplify the organization of the mind. So, it is apparent that a proportion of the current population is going to suffer problems, and while there is much more to be fine-tuned, the above starts us on the trail of the ‘obesity epidemic’ of the developed world. But first, the change to farming 7000 years ago, affected the Natufians to the extent that their average height dropped 4 inches from that of the hunter/gatherers in the same region.

 

So, moving modern cooking back to the Paleolithic, the answer is apparent. Eat stews and take a multi-mineral supplement. But this is only one attractor! As previously outlined, a vast variety of food was consumed and our population tended to reside in multi-niches for insurance against food scarcity. The food was gathered daily as it would not ‘keep’ and we gained from the exercise that went with collecting it.

 

Even the ‘chop and three veg’ that was considered good food in the past is poor compared to the above, and the take-away lifestyle is laughable, when considered similarly. The thought struck me that the vast majority of people won’t change, but perhaps these ideas are necessary for those interested in restarting evolution and wanting to form a Forever Club, see later.

 

(2) Fruit and vegetables

 

Half-truths abound in the media, and half-truths are the marketers’ stock-in-trade, because they want to you buy their product. Marketers are interested in profits, not your health, and even fruit is not produced to help us, but to help the plant distribute its seed. The tomato plant is toxic, but its fruit is not, because the tomato plant wants its fruit to be eaten, and to this end, when the seed is ripe, the tomato turns from green to red to bring it to animals’ attention, and at the same time, it becomes palatable.

 

We are being manipulated by plants! The red tomato is offered as food and the aim is to have it eaten to spread the seed. The bait is the sugars that are to be found in the ripe fruits of most fruits . Nectar is offered to bees within the flower to spread the pollen in the same way. As we are being manipulated by the plant, the eating of fruit may not be in our best interest!

 

In fact, monkeys are successful in living on fruit and as indicated above, our ancestors were those that couldn’t compete with the fruit-eating monkeys and we were forced into the vegetables. Vegetables are that part of the plant that the plant does not want eaten and so the plant fills those parts with phytotoxins as a defence against being eaten. We use the phytotoxins in our own defence mechanisms, and many organisms accumulate toxins to make themselves unpalatable to predators.

 

So, this derivation indicates that we should eat vegetables and forgo fruit, especially as fruits and vegetables have been bred to be bigger, which means that the phytotoxins are reduced as the skin area to volume is reduced. This effect is probably lower in berries like blueberries, raspberries and Alpine strawberries, because they are less developed for the market. Ordinary strawberries are much larger than Alpine strawberries and, I believe, are highly sprayed during production. In fact, spraying food plants to inhibit insect damage, reduces the natural phytotoxins because they aren’t needed, and so are not produced!

 

Fruits in general, in my opinion, should be avoided, but there are other factors and a list of one author’s super-fruits is given, but the point is made that some of the fruits are listed because the seeds are eaten, and it is not in the plants interest to have its seeds eaten, unless they pass through the animal undamaged. If the seeds do pass through unscathed, they are rewarded with a dollop of fertilizer!

 

So, fruits such as Alpine strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, Godji, berries, figs, pomegranate etc could be valuable because of the seeds, but other fruits are part of traditional foods and these are the foods that we evolved with and we are likely to use their phytotoxins for our own use and include dates, plums, grapes, apricots, quinces, pears, apples, pomegranates, and the berries.

 

(3) Fruit of the forest.

 

‘The fungi and, in particular, the mushroom have components that can contribute to human wellness and mitigate threats and assaults that render the human body vulnerable to several life threatening diseases including cardiovascular ailments, cancer, metabolic disorders (diabesity) and neurodegenerative disorders. Mushrooms have been used as medicines by humans for 5000 years or more (Halpern, 2007). Mushrooms – an unexploited resource of numerous bioactive components including polysaccharides, terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloid, nucleotides, lipids, vitamins, protein, amino acid and minerals can have many beneficial effects on human systems (Wasser & Weis, 1999).’ (Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms for Sub-health Intervention and Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases, Vikineswary S. and Chang S. T.)

 

Mushrooms are a good source of food and by observation I have not seen them eaten by animals, presumably because many mushrooms are poisonous. In fact, I have read the comment of a specialist in the field of fungi that he would not eat a wild mushroom, but only when it was bought from a supermarket. Mushrooms were used by early man and that leads to the idea that the mind had to be based on a large enough brain to reliably distinguish the safe varieties.

 

Those people that made a mistake would have made a large number of people sick or dead by adding poisonous varieties to the cooking-pot, and thus there would have been pressure to grow the brain to take advantage of such a useful resource. Mushrooms are found throughout the year, are not eaten by animals, dry themselves easily, can be eaten raw, can be eaten at any stage, unlike fruit that has to ripen when the seed is mature, is found in rich valley soil, easily collected etc. In fact, so valuable was the mushroom that it had to derive toxins to keep animals away, and thus probably contributed to our brain development.

 

‘They have a high content of several vitamins particularly of Bs and D, minerals (potassium, phosphorus), and also a high content of some trace elements, especially of selenium which is regarded as an excellent antioxidant.’ (Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms) Notice that mushrooms may have been a significant food and high in potassium that we are able to excrete. Also, vitamin D was required so badly that our skin lightened and (possibly) hair became blonde to decrease absorption of sunlight. The darker skinned people tend to have black hair.

 

Further, mushrooms are high in selenium, and some books state that Brazil nuts are also high in selenium, but they are not found in Europe. So, looking at our blonde Europeans that need vitamin D to such an extent that they change appearance so drastically, we may be sure that mushrooms were highly sought after, especially as they dry so easily. In modern times cod-liver oil is used to prevent rickets in the north of Europe, and presumably mushrooms were used in ancient times.

 

Selenium is a trace element that was tested in recent times as a cancer preventative, and was so successful that the trial was stopped as it was thought unconscionable to deprive the control group of the benefits of selenium supplementation.

 

When I was a child, I had very light blonde hair and I have noticed this tendency to be white blonde in members of my family and have always wondered why Anglo children have much lighter coloured hair which darkens as they grow older. I have always rationalized this as looking ‘cute’ lessens their chance of being left behind! After all, kids can be a nuisance at times! But, in the light of the above, it is sensible that mid Europeans require large amounts of vitamin D for growing bones and they make less of it because their bodies are small and the skin area is small. This current theory of mine may be true or may be false, but it brings together more patterns that mesh together and that is what my brain has evolved to do.

 

(4) Foods that fight cancer.

 

The cancer epidemic, like many other so-called diseases needs a solution that can be put into our mind and remembered because it ‘fits’ and is so logical that is will never be forgotten. I believe that the body can prevent cancer, or at least prevent it becoming a threat to us. ‘Pathological studies have found microtumours that had never been clinically detected hidden in the tissues of an overwhelming number of people who died from causes other than cancer. In one study, 98% of individuals had small tumours present in the thyroid, 40 % had prostrate tumours and 33% had breast tumours; obviously, tumours in these organs are normally detected only in a far smaller percentage of the population’. (Foods that Fight Cancer, Preventing and treating cancer through diet, R. Beliveau & D. Gringras, p 57)

 

‘Most brightly coloured fruits are important sources of a class of molecules known as polyphenols. Over four thousand polyphenols have been identified; they are especially abundant in such substances as red wine and green tea, as well as plants such as grapes, apples, onions, wild berries. They are also found in several herbs and spices, as well as in vegetables and nuts.’ (p 69)

 

‘Many of the phytochemicals showing the highest levels of cancer prevention activity are present only in a few very specific foods (figure 20). The isoflavones in soybeans, the resveratrol present in grapes, the curcumin in turmeric spice, the isothiocyanates and indoles of broccoli, or the catechins in green tea are all anti-cancer molecules occurring naturally in a very select group of foods. In other words, if it is true, generally speaking, that fruits and vegetables are part and parcel of a well balanced diet, we must also take phytochemical content into account in the context of a diet designed to reduce the risk of cancer.’ (p 71)

 

The above paragraph outlines a number of concepts (or attractors) that need a prediction and it suggest to me that ‘the highest levels of cancer prevention activity are present only in a few very specific foods’ leads to eating a very wide selection of foods, and further, these foods should be spices, herbs, camellia leaves (tea) and probably a wide range of the leaves of common plants that could be brought into the herb category. In other words, what I call an ‘antioxidant mix’, is sprinkled (ground in a blender) on my food before serving, along with turmeric and pepper.

 

Further, ‘synergy is also often involved in indirect mechanisms. The foods that we eat on a daily basis, for example, contain a host of molecules without any anti-cancer activity per se, but which can nevertheless have a considerable impact on cancer prevention: by increasing the quantity (and thus the potential anti-cancer activity) of another anti-cancer molecule in the bloodstream, by slowing down its elimination, or by increasing its absorption (Figure 36). One of the best examples of this indirect synergy is the action of piperine, a molecule present in pepper. Piperine increases by a factor of one thousand the absorption of curcumin (Figure 38); this allows the amount of curcumin present in the body to achieve levels sufficient to modify the aggressive behaviour of cancerous cells. (p 202)

 

Cancer is a problem in our basic cellular structure and evolution has provided the solution, in my opinion, as indicated above. It is a compound problem, but there appear to be three basic ‘platforms’ holding it in check and these are firstly, the ability of the bacteria (now our cells) to repair DNA damage. that occurred in the harsh conditions of the reducing atmosphere before the ozone layer formed. Secondly, better control of apoptosis through food, where cell death is initiated by the body’s processes, and thirdly, certain foods stop the growth of tumours by denying blood vessel growth (anti-angiogenesis). Some books go as far as saying that cancer, heart ‘disease’ etc are preventable diseases.

 

 

(5) Cooking.

 

‘In 2006 nine volunteers with dangerously high blood pressure spent 12 days eating like apes in an experiment … Their diet included peppers, melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, grapes, dates, walnuts, bananas peaches, and so on – more than fifty kinds of fruits, vegetables and nuts. In the second week they ate some cooked oily fish, and one man sneaked some chocolate. The regime was called the Evo diet because it was supposed to represent the types of foods our bodies have evolved to eat. Chimpanzees or gorillas would have loved it and would have grown fat on a menu that was certainly of higher quality than they could find in the wild….. The aim of the volunteers was to improve their health and they succeeded. By the end of the experiment their cholesterol had fallen by almost a quarter and average blood pressure was down to normal. But while medical hopes were met, an extra result had not been anticipated. The volunteers lost a lot of weight – an average of 4.4 kg (9.7 pounds) each’ (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, p 16)

 

This quotation warrants a few remarks, firstly, it is in line with my ideas of a wide ranging diet that is principally fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and a small amount of cheese and fish. Secondly, it cured the problem of high blood pressure, and blood pressure measures the elasticity of the arteries and that is a measure of the health of the body. The more elastic the arteries, the lower the blood pressure. Thirdly, the diet is ‘natural’ in that it was eaten by our ancestors, but is ‘artificial’ in that it comes from a wide variety of habitats that would not be accessible without modern commerce and transportation. Fourthly, it shows that excess weight is possibly a symptom of the way that we eat.

 

This book supports the idea that cooking was one of the principal reasons for the evolution of Homo Habilis to Modern Man by decreasing our digestive system, increasing our brain size, decreasing jaw and tooth size by softening our food through the process of cooking our food.

 

There is much more on this interesting subject that will have to wait till a later date, and this small amount was added to ‘flesh out’ the inter-connectedness of life.

 

(6) Added benefits from fibre.

 

The purpose of the digestive system is to break down the food into its chemical components and absorb them into the body. The lower parts of the gut contains bacteria that work on the fibre that we can’t digest.‘In the large intestine, the passage of the digesting food in the colon is a lot slower, taking from 12 to 50 hours until it is removed by defecation. The colon mainly serves as a site for the fermentation of digestible matter by the gut flora. The time taken varies considerably between individuals.’ (Wikipedia, Human digestive system, large intestine)

 

‘The essential function of fermentation is the regeneration of NAD+ for gylcolysis so ADP molecules can be phosphorylated to ATP. The benefit of fermentation is that it allows ATP production to continue in the absence of O2. Microorganisms that ferment can grow and colonize in an anaerobic environment. Microorganisms produce a variety of fermentation products. The products of fermentation of cells are waste products of the cells, but many are useful to humans.’ (Microbiology demystified, Tom Betsy and Jim Keogh, p 97)

 

The modern diet, with an emphasis on carbohydrates and meat and a down-playing of fibre causes the colon to forgo its purpose in evolution, which is to convert un-digestible products into absorbable and useful ones through the use of the gut flora. If the lower digestive system were not useful, or even necessary, we would not have evolved it because of the extra weight etc.

 

The colon evolved to process the by-products of food that we evolved to eat and is part of a chain of digestion. If we eat a ‘modern’ diet with low levels of fibre, the colon is not producing the energy or chemical products that we evolved to use and, presumably need to stay healthy. Another reason to use the diet found in the Palaeolithic diet described above.

 

 

(7) Arsenic and rice

 

“It is the diets that comprise of numerous sources of rice or rice based products, such as in macrobiotic, vegan, gluten and dairy intolerance regimens that the cumulative inorganic As exposure is likely to be highest and thereby of greatest concern.”

Dr. Andrew Meharg from the Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK and investigator in all 3 above mentioned studies graciously agreed to answer some questions about arsenic and rice.

Why does rice contain higher levels of inorganic arsenic than other cereal grains?

Rice is grown under flooded conditions that lead to high mobilization of soil arsenic into the plant.

What other foods are likely to contain inorganic arsenic?

Seafood has high arsenic, but the species present are organic, which have low toxicity, unlike inorganic arsenic found in rice.

Is there any data available on the threshold level of tolerance for inorganic arsenic? In other words, what amount of inorganic arsenic must be consumed on a daily basis long term in order to cause health problems?

At the low levels found in foodstuffs it is a chronic carcinogen – at higher doses it is an acute toxin.

Are there more arsenic poisonings reported in countries like China and Japan that presumably would have a higher per person rice intake than the general population in the U.S.?

This type of epidemiology takes decades to research, and the problem has just been identified – only detailed study will link food intake from arsenic to observed cancers. Based on US risk assessments, elevated cancers due to rice consumption should be observed.

Are there any steps that can be taken to reduce the inorganic arsenic levels in rice?

Yes. 1. Growing aerobic rice – cultivated under none-flooded conditions. 2. Source rice from low arsenic regions. 3. Breed rice for low arsenic. 4. High water to rice volumes and discarding the water during cooking moves a large portion of the inorganic arsenic.

What recommendations do you have for individuals with celiac disease who may consume a lot of rice and rice-based products?

Switch to using other grains if possible, or at least to not have such a strong dependence on rice products, and source rice from low arsenic regions

(www.glutenfreedietician.com)

 

The quotation above, suggests that modern convenience foods such as grains are marketed for usefulness and not necessarily for health, and this is in line with the comments about ‘improved’ varieties of fruit and vegetables, above. I believe that the Palaeolithic diet, with sensible modifications for our time is the best bet for the future.

Chapter 24: The Philosophy of Food and Health

Chapter 23: Anti Ageing and Mind Health

Darryl Penney, Leave a comment

Chapter 23: Anti Ageing and Mind Health

 

The following are some thoughts and observations that occurred to me as I sought to effect an anti ageing program. This subject is a crucial and intrinsic part of this book, but, there is not the space at this time for more than a cursory glance.

 

(1) Total happiness: Anti-ageing consists of three interrelated factors, nutrition, exercise and mental state. Mental state seems to be an unusual factor, but it turns out to be a most important factor because both nutrition and exercise depend on the mind and the mind depends on nutrition and exercise. The relationship is determined by the first Law of Life, which is composed of iteration, componentization and the passage of time.

 

Componentization links exercise and mental state, and nutrition is linked also to mental state. These will be considered over two chapters because they are so important, but anti-ageing itself is important because we all want to get the most out of life.

 

Anti aging is a half-truth because you can’t stop aging because time continually passes, just as you can’t stop time passing. Anti ageing is true to a certain extent otherwise I wouldn’t be going to all this trouble, but aging is Real Age and is measured against the average health of the population at that age. It is often said that Real Age is some combination of Chronological Age, Functional Age and Metabolic Age

 

Where chronological age is your age in years, and continues to increase, functional age is the age that you function at. I am suggesting that you are younger if you Rock’n’Roll for a few hours, a couple of times a week than if you watch TV during that time. Similarly, metabolic age is some estimate of the age of your functioning processes and someone who smokes cigarettes would have an ‘older’ body than someone who doesn’t smoke cigarettes. It is interesting that a smoker’s risk profile for cancer, after they give up smoking, returns to the non-smoker’s profile after about 5 years.

 

It is apparent that all of these inter-related concepts need the Mathematics of the Mind, but, each person is different with different choices so that it might be best to present my ideas and let the reader gradually get use to them and choose their own path. I think that everyone will agree that ANY extra healthy time is worthwhile, but it is the individual’s choice.

 

. So, what am I trying to maximize? Probably lifetime happiness, but:

 

Lifetime happiness = daily happiness per day summed over the total number of days lived

 

daily happiness = some sum of (no pain, not being poor, having companionship, being healthy, having a home, having work to do etc)

 

But using the Mathematics of the Mind, the happiness in the past is less than our happiness in the present and in the future because happiness in the past is a memory and is obviously less than that being experienced in the present and the expectation of the future.

 

Effectively, discounting the past as it has passed:.

 

Future Happiness = future daily happiness times length of future life

 

Then Total lifetime happiness = (approx) future daily happiness times length of future life.

 

That doesn’t sound promising! Apart from pleasant memories, we have to stay as healthy as possible and live as long as possible. In other words, the traditional decline into old age has to be turned into a flat line with a sharp decline into the final moments. This would maximize the happiness because the summation is maximized.

 

postscript: Surprisingly, this equation is important because this book tries to maximize the number of days left to us by nutrition, exercise and state of mind, and maximizing our enjoyment of those days through the Forever Club.

 

Both the future daily happiness and the length of future life depend principally on the attractors:

 

 

Nutrition ……………..state of mind ……………………. exercise

 

(2) Speed of movement: Looking at state of mind, consider a group or herd, that comprises a dominant male and a group of females. Young males and old males take their chances outside the herd with predators, and old females act as grandmothers within the herd. The herd guards the young and the old become food for predators. This is the altruistic aim of the old, to provide food for the predators that are harassing the herd. I believe that the old, when they no longer feel useful, slow down, so they are taken by predators in preference to the rest of the herd.

 

The above paragraph shows that it would be advantageous if older animals, in general, slowed down, so that they were preferentially more at risk than younger animals and experiments have been done showing that the slower that humans walk, the shorter is their life span from the time of measurement. How many times has it been said that someone will slow down when they retire. There is a general slowing down with age because people think that they should slow down, or ought to slow down or deserve to slow down. Perhaps the slowing down is aging! Perhaps ageing is mentally induced!

 

Many years ago, I read a Science Fiction story about someone that didn’t age because they did not take note of time passing, but, the essence of this story was that they did not slow their lifestyle. It is difficult to expect someone to continue working 40 hours a week in a job, but it could be expected, as I do, to work several hours gardening a day. Also, fast dancing is very important to me. It is the amount of fast movement that is important. Remember, children run, adults walk and the old hobble! These are generalizations, but it doesn’t make them false.

 

But, it is not just the exercise. A gardening business requires speed of working to charge money, and it is a means of causing the mind to increase speed of movement. A business is very important because, if you need to slow, you work longer at a lower rate of pay. There is a well known saying that if you do something every day, you can do it forever and if you exercise every day, you will always be able to do that exercise! And, if you can do that exercise, you don’t become old, or, importantly feel pain doing that exercise.

 

(3) Healthy mind: The mind has to be healthy if we want to increase happiness and ‘diseases of the mind’ must be overcome. No one in a healthy state of mind wants to end up poor, dead or debilitated because of diseases of the mind, such as gambling, lying, dishonesty, cruelty and all the other failings that religion has warned us about. In fact, the ideas in this book resulted from the interplay of the virtues of dancing versus the problems of poker machines.

 

However, let’s leave this subject to the religions because, I surmise that these people are unlikely to have genes that humanity would want carried into the future. That is a common idea, but, not correct because intelligence is upbringing and stimulation, mental problems come about through up-bringing, as can be seen in the chapter on prisons and this brings us back to Survival of the Best and the Forever Club.

 

(4) Creativity and nutrition: ‘You are what you eat’ is literally true because the food supply determines your thinking! What I have called, the seventh sense, and it is very important because the state of the food supply, temperature, competition for food etc changes the animal’s thinking and re-aligns the thinking to suit the changed conditions. This is a result of plant chemicals returning the thinking of the animal to the way that the animal successfully weathered the same conditions in the past.

 

High levels of phytotoxins means that the food supply is under stress and the animal thinks defensibly, whilst low levels mean good growing weather and the animal should act creatively by increasing offspring to move into niches. Niches are important for evolution because that is where the animal can evolve from when change in environment etc. occurs, because the ability is there, if needed. Humans evolved from the unsuccessful monkeys that couldn’t compete with the fruit-eating monkeys in the trees, and they developed stronger teeth for eating rougher fare, because they couldn’t compete for the soft fruits. This ability to survive on a non-fruit diet allowed them to move away from the trees.

 

(5) The mind and exercise: I have mentioned the importance of speed of movement, but what is the effect of exercise on the mind? The mind is ‘linked’ into the body to create a ‘reality’ along with other nerve groups throughout the body. The mind has the job of keeping the animal alive to the best of its ability, and that is survival of the fittest, but the body is required to operate in the lowest ‘energy’ state, so with very good food, the body is encouraged to luxuriate in a higher state and by using exercise sufficiently, not to exhaustion, but ‘sufficiently’, the body is raised to a higher level than is required to co-exist with the rest of the herd. This componetization is the basis of survival of the fittest because the fittest, given the local conditions, can breed more successfully than the weaker members.

 

So there are four major ways that we are able to move the body/mind ‘up a notch’, through creativity, speed of movement, exercise and nutrition. Exercising to exhaustion is not nice and I have found that I have set a limit on exercise because even ‘old (in years)’ bodies can put on muscle to such an extent that I feel extra exercise to be unnecessary.

 

‘Exercise turns out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that self-control scientists have discovered. For starters, the will power benefits of exercise are immediate. Fifteen minutes on a treadmill reduces cravings, as seen when researchers try to tempt dieters with chocolate and smokers with cigarettes. The long-term, effects of exercise are even more impressive. It not only relieves ordinary, everyday stress, but it’s as powerful an antidepressant as Prozac. Working out also enhances the biology of self-control by increasing baseline heart rate variability and training the brain. When neuroscientists have peered inside the brains of new exercisers, they have seen increases in both gray matter – brain cells – and white matter, the insulation on brain cells that helps them communicate quickly and efficiently with each other. Physical exercise – like meditation – makes your brain bigger and faster, and the prefrontal cortex shows the largest training effect.’ (The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal, p 42)

 

(6) Personal exercise: I hate exercising in a gym because it is hard work, costs money, costs time etc, so I use a different approach. I exercise, garden, work around the farm and dance. I do 100 pushups (2 x 50) to keep strength in my upper body, and about 4 minutes of ‘balance’ exercise.

 

Balance is the sixth sense and people tend to neglect it, especially as they get older. In fact, it could be considered that slowing down is ageing, and if you don’t slow down, you don’t age. So, balance should be part of an exercise regime, and it may save your life because: ‘A survey was made of 1592 patients, over the age of 50 years, who had sustained a fracture of the hip……..The mortality rate after 3 months was 17 per cent and that after 6 months 21.5 per cent……. The mortality after 1 year was 27 per cent, after 3 years 43 per cent and after 5 years 56 per cent’. (Mortality after hip fractures, J. Steen Jensen & E. Tondevold, Gentofte Hospital, Denmark)

 

The figures above show that life expectancy after a hip fracture can be low, and we should do all that we can to avoid fractures. This can be done by increasing bone density through food and exercise, such as dancing, and also by the following exercise. It should be noted that it can take a couple of years to be able to do this exercise properly. I stand on one leg with my eyes closed till I count to 130 quickly and repeat for each leg. That is four exercises, two on each leg. Note, with eyes closed!

 

What am I trying to accomplish? I have mentioned before that the nervous system is a component and will perform better if required, and it does that by laying down myelin on the nerves and this insulation speeds up the signals. The faster the signals travel, the faster the reaction time, also, new ganglion are set up through the body as part of the autonomous nervous system to counter-balance movement. The aim is to decrease reaction time if I trip and further the longest nerves are those from head to toes and are important in balance (as are the compensating muscle movement).

 

Finally, having to work fast because I am being paid, getting exercise from pruning etc, having to work because of commitments and dancing, complete the picture.

 

(7) The mind and pain: When we get a pain in a muscle or joint etc, the first thing that many people do is to reach for a ‘pain-killer’ tablet. Pain is a communication device between the body and the mind and it is the instigator of repairing the problem, so we have to work with the mind and the body’s natural pain-killers. I believe that the way to control the body is through the mind, as mentioned, previously, that a thought is held in the mind and that is enough to direct the body. Thoughts such as ‘if the muscle doesn’t fix itself, I can’t go hunting and will starve’. It could be a way of influencing the basis of the body/mind. It is an unproven theory, but it seems logical and seems to work.

 

The body is very attentive because if a muscle hurts, the body is saying don’t use the muscle, I’m fixing it. If you need to use the muscle (or joint, tendon etc), the body helps by reducing the pain. In fact, exercise augments the healing process by stressing that it needs to be used. A useful adjunct is to go to sleep for a short time and the body appears to work on the problem.

 

(8) Chronic pain: I have no experience with chronic pain and can only suggest that a three way approach might be successful using mental state, nutrition and exercise. I did develop a ‘ganglion’ on my wrist through over-exuberant use and that took 15 years to repair itself, and that occurred as my anti aging regime improved. I believe that our bones and joints are replaced every 2 to 7 years and this overhaul improved the condition when my diet and exercise improved.

 

(9) Educating the mind nutritionally: At birth the mind is unknown to us but I assume it to be the proverbial ‘blank slate’ and the traditional food is mother’s milk. As the baby grows it eats the same foods that its parents ate and just as they ate a wide variety of foods, so the baby eats a wide variety of foods and in the process its brain grew ‘nutrition-wise’ or wise in nutrition.

 

The above is obvious, but is it? We know that pregnant women crave certain odd foods and that can only be because the body requires certain nutritional elements and informs the brain which tells the mind to eat certain foods that it associates with certain nutritional needs (the eighth sense). This ability is to be expected and built into our brain from the earliest times and is passed on through survival of the fittest. This is a consequence of the Laws of Life that when competition is extreme, only those animals that could get the minimum (required) nutrition from the minimum amount of food would survive. But, that minimum nutrition had to be sufficient for every part of the animal, and the animals that could best select the required nutrients would survive best, and that sense is heritable.

 

That is a nice derivation of the Mathematics of the Mind, but what of the prediction? So it is a survival instinct that I have called the seventh sense that changes the thinking of the animal as the neurotoxins (in the brain, which are phytotoxins in the plant) of the brain change as the phytotoxins in the food change, and the variety of the food changes with weather, temperature, animal competition etc.

 

So, phytotoxins are necessary, and that means that we, in modern times, should eat none or a minimum of processed food, maximizing natural fresh food otherwise our mind is not being informed by its food. Even worse, the modern diet lacks variety and the mind cannot function well because it is ‘naive’. What of the habit of adding herbs and spices, which were suppose to add taste? Taking the above further to answer this question, I would suggest that they are a remnant of the variety of foods that went into the pot when food was scarce. Were the herbs and spices, extra food, or to improve taste, a medicine or tonic, or to promote the seventh and eighth senses etc.

 

This is a very important point, just as each new fact goes into making the mind more creative, so the food elements educate the mind in a nutritional sense (the seventh and eighth senses).

 

(10) A companion: I have heard that an optimist lives, on average, seven years longer than a pessimist and I can imagine that the mental state can influence length of life. Similarly, I have heard that married men are happier than singles, and whether these statements are true or not, living a long time on your own is not going to be as pleasant as a shared life.

 

The solutions, and the resulting predictions, are more likely to be more useful if they pop up from different starting points. One such is super-eusociality and the Forever Club that provide an entrance to restarting evolution. People that act on the contents of this book are likely to be superior and, being superior might attract a companion, and that companion would make a long life more interesting. Truly, a ‘web’ of life that, if understood, should make our time on this earth longer, more comfortable, useful, enjoyable etc.

 

(11) The brain, body and exercise.

 

The body is designed to be autonomous and to do as much as possible on its own leaving the mind in overall charge of integrating its position in the ‘scheme of things’, and to do this, it has a complex set of ganglions and brains throughout the body.

 

It is said that you never forget how to ride a bicycle and it takes some time to become proficient because new ganglions have to be set up, especially the ‘countervailing’ or counter-balancing connections. The same occurs with learning a new dance step because young people pick it up quickly, whereas old people, more slowly. I wonder if older people really take longer if they use the anti aging procedures?

 

Other examples are driving a car or a repetitive chore like gardening. I now, have changed my mind about the fact that ‘multi-tasking’ by the human mind is possible. In fact, I often do my best creative thinking when driving or pruning in gardens. The autonomous nervous system takes over, and I hold a thought in my mind and suddenly the mind ‘flits’ around the subject and ‘digests’ the content and often something unexpected ‘falls’ out.

 

It sits comfortably in my ming that this effect is the ultimate aim of the mind/body. A grazing animal will be eating, chewing, watching for predators, looking for the preferred food, watching rivals etc. We have evolved to never stop evolving! The more that you learn, the more creative you become, the more successful you become and the more likely to survive and the more progeny you will leave behind.

 

So, what is the result? The more that you exercise, the ‘better’ the food that you consume and the more stimulated the brain, the higher your level of componentization and the more progeny that you are likely to leave behind and this is (one of ) the links between the first and second Laws of Life.

 

postscript: Earlier a quotation was given that the mind affects the brain and the brain affects the mind. Once we understand how the mind is formed and functions, the brain learns, more dendrites are created and the mind uses these circuits to boost the creativeness of the mind. Thus creativity is enhanced, but the longer that the brain lives, the higher the creativity, and that is the purpose (that I am suggesting) of length of life, combined with exercise and nutrition. Possibly many very good minds are wasted because they didn’t have the necessary nutrition and exercise as they grew older. This is the point of the above, and suggests that it is a waste to retire and allow all that knowledge (from a lifetime) to wither.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 23: Anti Ageing and Mind Health

Chapter 22: Magic, Proverbs, Politics and the Voting System

Darryl PenneyLeave a comment

Chapter 21             Magic, Proverbs, Politics and the Voting System

 

postscript: The Mathematics of the Mind is a measurement system that includes, by necessity (see Chapter 27) the mind, or consciousness to be part of the measurement process, and consciousness has been part of organisms for a very long time. A logical ‘perspective’ is also necessary and I have called this the Half-truth, and I think of the result as time dependent ‘pillars’ (attractors) that we can move around, or navigate around. This is the familiar mathematical ‘model’, and I will use it in this form to look at the voting system.

 

It is common knowledge that the more fundamental a change, the more wide reaching its effects (usually) are. Re-reading that sentence shows that the concept of ‘the more fundamental, the more wide reaching the effects (usually) are’ is one of the solutions in the style of the Mathematics of the Mind. The give-away is the word ‘usually’ because the Mathematics of the Mind is imprecise. Another example is Occam’s razor, and that lead to Chapter 27, ‘Existence, Reality and the Effects on Fundamental Physics’ and is a prime example of a simple concept opening up new concepts over a broad front.

 

Another simple statement that everyone knows, but does not have a name, that I am aware of, is that ‘if you have an interest in a project, you are excluded from any vote about that project’. Obviously it is imprecise because you could vote against your own interests, but then should you not get a vote? Perhaps half a vote, or a quarter of a vote might be in order? These questions are part of a group that is amenable to the Mathematics of the Mind through the Half-truth because of their inherent imprecision.

 

The Half-truth is a simple expansion of the normal true/false to: true, false, true some of the time and false the rest of the time, both true and false at the same time. This fits well with these imprecise statements that are so powerful as to be called proverbs. After all, a proverb is very powerful in our thinking and contains the ‘nugget’ of decision-making in a ‘nutshell’ to speed up our decision-making or confabulation. We could say that proverbs are decision-making at the ‘coalface’ and the Mathematics of the Mind ‘juggles’ them to reach a decision.

 

So, applying the Logic of the Half-truth to the voting on a project: if someone has a pecuniary interest in a vote, they may vote as their conscious dictates (true), may vote their pecuniary interest (false), change their mind during the vote or not able to make up their mind about which way to vote (which also includes falling asleep, dying, losing consciousness etc.) so there is completeness in the analysis because all cases can be considered.

 

At this point a digression might be in order. In Chapter 27, I said that we use five dimensions in world O and world P. The Logic of the Half-truth is the dimension of the universe that promoted the Big Bang and operates the logic behind the universe. The other four dimensions are space and time that are world O because they need consciousness to exist. The Half-truth is a logic operator (world O and P) and we use it in daily life without acknowledging it, and that is why I can use it to analyze proverbs that are not amenable to the logic that we commonly use, and I might add, recognize. We recognize the common logic operators true/false, but these are half-truths because they are not all-encompassing, whereas, the Logic of the Half-truth encompasses all possibilities because of the extra two terms and allows imprecision. This is counter-intuitive because we are seeking precision through mathematics, but we are sacrificing precision to handle concepts that are not precise.

 

A further digression concerning the usefulness of fundamental changes, and nothing could be more fundamental than identifying the fifth dimension, which is the Logic of the Half-truth and as we have seen, its use changes our (or at least my) perception of fundamental physics and now it describes proverbs. I am bringing this up to show the connectedness of these concepts, which is the test of a good theory.

 

Carrying on this idea that a dimension is fundamental and wide reaching, space and time do not have a reality unless a mind or consciousness is involved and the logical fifth dimension is not exact. We see this in the uncertainty of a particle coming into existence in Chapter 27, and we see it in having to use Occams’ razor to say that we probably do not exist. True and false only exist in formal logic because we define formal logic to be a Truth, likewise, the operator that defines our reality is a Truth (God or mathematics), otherwise we would not have a continuous reality, and our body attempts to achieve this continuity.

 

This takes us back to the beginning of the book when a Truth (mathematics) was used to ‘pull-down’ or ‘crystallize’ our reality through the Half-truth to derive the three Laws of Life that define out reality. So, there seems to be consistency that the space-time (note time interval) dimensions are life created and the Half-truth and time passing are the logic operators in the probability space (of existence) that I have proposed. The question of the number of dimensions requires investigation and it is apparent that world O and P are not compatible, but we knew that already, so the use of the concept of dimension is a half-truth and one should be careful in its use.

 

However, a reality needs to be continuous, or perhaps a better word is ‘complete’. A good reality should be seamless, as our eyes endeavor to make our vision by over-lapping and filling in for the nose, otherwise magic is introduced into the reality when something strange happens at certain times or points. Magic has been with us for thousands of years and has gradually dropped out of the lives of people as technology expanded and answered questions, but then it is re-surfacing with the gadgets that we use. Thus, if we can prove that our reality is ‘seamless’, we will have proved that magic (or strange effects) does not exist!

 

World O’s exquisitely precise space-time (interval) along with an exact mathematics has given us a wonderful world of technology that outshines the wishy-washy world of the Mathematics of the Mind, the Logic of the Half-truth and probability of existence. It almost makes me want to give up this project! A magnificent creation crafted over thousands of years of human history. It a pity that it is not correct! Chapter 27 points out the problems that misconceptions have allowed to seep into fundamental physics (at least to my mind). Mathematics ignores concepts!

 

Is the reality of space-time (World O) complete, and the answer is ‘no’. To expand, the reality that we have evolved is very good, almost perfect, but it is frayed at the edges because of our measuring sticks, which by necessity, limit completeness. Atomic clocks are getting better, but not perfect, quantum mechanics presents difficulties measuring small lengths, the speed of light presents speed measurement limitations, mathematics is (effectively) a Truth because we made it that way, and so forth. Modern technology has not left many places for magic, but one example is the experimenter’s involvement with experiments and that has been explained in Chapter 27 (that the mind is part of the measurement process).

 

Is the reality of the ‘wishy-washy world of the Mathematics of the Mind, the Logic of the Half-truth and probability of existence’ complete, and the answer is ‘yes’! Probability is complete from 0 to 1 because we define it that way, as it is mathematical, and so is the Mathematics of the Mind. The Logic of the Half-truth is complete as discussed above because of the extra two terms that account for the unexpected. The second dimension, ‘that time passes’ is vague, but complete because time can pass at a rate greater than zero, but less than infinity, and the Multiverse contains all universes in probability space, but which, of course, probably don’t exist!

 

We have proved that there is no magic and no surprises in the universe, but have we? Uncertainty is confined to world O, to the measurement of quantum mechanics and our mind/consciousness, but in Chapter 27 we showed that quantum mechanics and the universe are linked through the uncertainty of the measuring stick, but only if measurement occurs, so if quantum mechanics contains magic (or something unexpected) the universe does too. In other words, our minds separate out (and recognize) that part of the universe that our minds interact with through measurement.

 

Isn’t that concept describing the possibilities inherent in consciousness? After all, consciousness or the mind evolved the concept of ‘measurement’ and produced a ‘conscious reality’ for itself! It appears that magic may exist and there is the chance of finding something unexpected, but through our mind/consciousness! We found one reality, maybe there are more possible realities or perhaps we can improve our existing reality! Perhaps the next goal is Survival of the Best, turning our world into a paradise through the Mathematics of the Mind! That could be classed as ‘magic’ or perhaps, ‘The Second Coming’!

 

The Green movement has taken over aspects of the neglected Holy Spirit and made the environment a ‘religion’ for themselves, and so the Greens can be described as (a small part of) the second Law. The established religions are not expected to do more than they are at the moment, and the status quo looks like it is here to stay.

 

The separation of the second and third Laws, or the herd versus the predators is deep-seated, and has been left to a strange character called the politician. The politician has to look after the herd and the wide world, as well as looking after their own interests, and this can lead to problems that we can look at, but, bearing in mind that I know little of the subject, it will be affected by the setting of the book. In fact, it is only because of the crucial nature of the politician to Survival of the Best, that I attempt it at all.

 

I have mentioned before that a herd of animals, fish, birds etc. benefit by being in a herd, and the mind must view the world and divide into two zones. Firstly, the far zone where predators, mate stealers, competitors etc lurk, and the inner zone, which is the safe zone where everyone is a friend. Looking at the psychological point of view, the ‘Poker Machine Addiction’ is where some people (literally) destroy their lives by playing poker machines for long periods. The vast majority of people find it bizarre, unbelievable, insane etc that some people put huge amounts of money into a machine that pays back only 90% of what is put in (in the long run). A machine does what it is designed to do, so why do some people ruin their lives playing such a machine? Several ‘tricks’ are used, that reflect on the political environment.

 

Firstly, as described in Chapter 6, Dancing, Nutrition, Poker Machines, Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics, the Mathematics of the Mind shows that people have to be given credible options to keep them away from the machines, as well as down-playing the glitz that attract them. Some clubs provide little option to members, as there is little entertainment or things to do except eat or play the machines. Legislation could be used wisely to safeguard peoples’ money, exercise, nutrition etc throughout the community.

 

Secondly, a different pathway is responsible (in my opinion) for forming addicts of poker machines. This is taking advantage of a ‘naive’ seventh sense. The seventh sense is the changing of thought processes depending on the surrounding environment (Chapter 11). Consider, ‘All of these accounts report a remarkably uniform set of changes in the body – relaxation, warmth, numbness, anesthesia, analgesia, orgasmic release, energy. Again it makes no difference whether these changes actually occur in the body and are conveyed to somatosensing maps, or are directly concocted in these maps, or both.’ (Looking for Spinoza, Antonio Demasio p 123)

 

This last paragraph suggests that long-term poker machine players might change their view of the world from engaging with the varying sunlight, the night-time, the movement of herd members etc to no clocks, constant light and sound, continuous play etc in the gambling areas. It is common knowledge that many clubs and casinos try to isolate patrons from the passage of time. Why? Surely it is more than to keep them playing to lose small amounts of money. I believe that they are changing some of the more susceptible players’ minds, and ‘changing’ our minds is a survival characteristic and heritable.

 

Instead of sun, rain, wind, food and the other factors of life, the constant temperature, constant light, constant sound etc changes the focus of the mind. In other words, the ‘normal’ state of the mind is re-set. The player, who has lost money is in a similar position to an animal under stress when food is running low. The animal is looking for an ‘over-looked’ food source, whilst the player is looking for a large payoff, that sometimes occurs. Both are thinking similarly, if I do not find enough food, I am (literally) dead, or if I do not get a large payout to cover my losses, I am (financially) dead.

 

The less the food supply, the more desperate the animal becomes, and the deeper the debt of the player, the more desperate that the player becomes to try the next play to turn up ‘the big one’. The seventh sense of the animal is the progressive change in the thinking and remembering of similar circumstances in the past. The ‘new’ brain remembers the hidden valley, or the river, or tree branches fit for emergency browsing from the past when it accompanied its mother, stumbled upon, remembered, used creative thinking etc.

 

The player is in a ‘unique’ situation without knowledge of a solution. The only tactic within the knowledge of the brain is to keep going in the same way and try for a large enough ‘win’. So, they keep playing until they run out of resources (effectively death). This is the result of a seventh sense that is ‘in tune’ with its environment and ‘naive’ as it may have experienced a ‘salvation’ or solution earlier in life that maintained it through a similar situation. But survival of the fittest can only go so far, and that is death, and we do not want to see this happen, so, the government should step in to prevent us from being exploited by using education in the schools where the seventh sense can be replaced by learning, or by legislation if we remain ignorant of the dangers.

 

So, the solution to this problem is not difficult. Firstly, the knowledge that poker machines are machines that pay back only 90% of what you put in, in the long-run, should be known to all people through education. However, if you are lucky, you can walk away with a big profit quickly, but mathematically, ‘forget it’, because the odds are against you. This is where the first point comes in and the machines should be ‘de-glitzed’ to some agreed upon formula.

 

This presents the question of what to do to protect the ‘problem gambler’ or the possible ‘problem gambler’. From the above, the answer is simple, restrict the size of the pay-offs. If the players realize that they cannot pay off their losses from possible winnings, they will stop putting money in. If ‘problem gamblers’ are restricted to machines that pay a maximum of $10, why should they play?

 

‘Problem gamblers’ would have to use certain machines. So what are the problems? Probably it would be whether politicians could stand-up to the clubs! But, then again, the clubs could have extra $10 payout machines, but how many would they buy? Not many, I guess!

 

This example shows how important psychology is, how important the clubs are, how insidious the machines are, how impotent the politicians and so on. From my point of view, the politicians, when given the answer, did not use it because of other factors that were more important to them. What they were, I don’t know, but politicians have many people to appease and keep happy if the are to keep their job. The aim of this book is to give a logical mathematical base that everyone can agree on, and remove ‘wriggle room’. To this end, I am going to use the Survival of the Best as a base and see if we can’t make political life ‘easier’ for everyone to handle, and perhaps create a ‘statesman’ in the process.

 

As an example, I would like to give a biased view of the last election when Tony Abbot was swept to power to ‘stop the boats’ and get the budget into surplus. The previous government ‘spent’ huge sums on social schemes. When the austerity measures were announced every group that had their ‘entitlements’ cut was outraged, and the left-leaning media, especially the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) that was having its funding cut had a ‘field day’. I have never seen such an exhibition of ‘greed’ versus the ‘good of the country’, also, considering the on-going problems with the Senate, it is looking to be increasingly difficult for a government to inflict necessary financial ‘pain’. Something must be done to redress this trend.

 

The examples of Survival of the Best that I have given previously, took the lessons of nature and transposed them onto modern society, but none too successfully, so let’s look at the Survival of the Fittest and see if that is not a better interim choice to restart evolution. Survival of the Fittest is simply that the oldest and weakest animals are removed from the scene by becoming food for something else. As I have said before, this idea is frowned upon in the modern world, as the Nazi regime found, however, with a little thought the same result can be attained without as many problems.

 

To put the problem of social security into perspective, it is estimated that three to four working tax-paying people are required to keep each person on welfare, which means, if we look at the problem a little differently, that every fourth person that we meet in any crowd will be a beggar! This shows the scale of the problem, and even worse, these people that can’t, or do not work, have just as much say as you do in how much you give them! I am not going to say if this is fair, as to the amount that these people get, I am asking, should the beggar tell me how much I should give? In other words, I am not trying to change the system, nor decide how much these people should get, I am objecting to the fact that they should tell me how much I should give them, which is what is happening through their vote.

 

‘The Classical Golden Age, approximately 500 – 400 BC ….. The development of democratic government in Athens, Athenian democracy excluded women and slaves, but it was the first in history to establish the principle of government by citizens of a state.’ (http://www.history.org.uk, The Historical Association)

 

As I have said, I know little about this subject, but I do know that the fact that every adult being able to vote is a very recent occourance and over the same period the social security payout has risen hugely, effectively from zero to huge numbers of dollars. The situation has changed dramatically over the last 100 years and is in danger of upsetting our political system (as above), so what can we do to bring the situation back to stability?

 

The purpose of Survival of the Best was to breed the best, but the Survival of the Fittest at least removes the less desirable animals and achieves a somewhat similar result. We are approaching the situation of two variants in Homo Sapiens, the healthy intelligent person of the developed world and the less healthy and less intelligent person from the un-developed countries through the fact of over-crowding, poor nutrition and lack of stimulation affecting intelligence. This situation is dangerous, and reducing population and increasing the lot in life of poorer people is crucial throughout the world.

 

We need a ‘strong’ political system that can deal with ‘turning back the boats’ and new threats, but we won’t do it with a ‘sick’ political system. So, I am not advocating taking away anyone’s right to vote, but I am questioning that person’s worth, to vote. Is a person’s worth, to the country, the same as their right to have a say in how the country is run? Surely this questioning is better than the present situation where everyone gets the vote EVEN when they are voting to pay themselves out of the public purse. The most fundamental position is that if a person has a ‘vested interest’ in a vote, they abstain from that vote, yet, as shown above, this is not happening. It is crucial that the time dependency of these concepts is aligned with a time dependent mathematical system as I am advocating here.

 

In terms of worth, a person is a mathematical model of the sum of that person’s giving and taking from the country. I have suggested that Survival of the Best enables better quality citizens to be recognized, but perhaps a first step is to measure that quality. I suggest that if your net taxes paid, less social security payments be zero if positive, and 0 to –10 depending on the amount received from the government. Further, the older a person is, the more valuable that they are because of the worth to breed and having paid more in taxes. I am assuming that women could freeze their eggs early in life. This is harking back to Survival of the Best, so, the age divided by 10 might be appropriate.

 

Much has been said in the last election about a co-payment of $7 each time that a visit is made to the doctor’s surgery and I suggest a minus number of visits divided by 5 to the doctor’s or hospital. Similarly, the amount subsidized on medicines divided by –200 and say minus one for each year in jail. The summation of these numbers, all of which are available to the government, form a number that is attached to your name at election time and tells the proportion by which your vote is downgraded. Simple! Well, we have ignored the gender bias!

 

I won’t waste time with it, because if it happens, and it must, there will be much debate. This seems to be the easiest way to ‘grade’ the worth of a person to the country and it is easy to implement as the government has all the numbers and is automating the system to make them available. As I have said before, this ‘solution’ sits well in my mind and I doubt that any rational person would disagree. Nothing changes, but lessens the ‘pressure’ on the government to get its legislation through the Houses, and is, in my opinion, fairer. Considering that these disadvantaged people tend to vote against the Abbot government, it would appear that this scheme is in the Abbot government’s best interests, and probably the country’s best interest.

 

Apart from the worth of this idea in politics, it forms a basis to Survival of the Best, in that a sick pensioner would have a low number, whilst a healthy self-funded retiree would have a high score. This is as it should be if it is to represent ‘success’ in this life. The number could be worn as a badge or as part of a name as degrees and decorations are, and be an ongoing source of pride that you know what you are doing, in looking after yourself in this world.

 

This idea of a number allows for many things, and forms the basis of Survival of the Best. I shall have to list the attributes, simply because the number is so powerful. It shows that you are healthy, that you are a prime specimen because you are old, that you are successful in the economic world, that you have husbanded your resources, that you have weathered the temptations of life and kept your money and assets. This number is what women should be looking for, because it gives them assets, a stable household and well functioning children! Yes, this number is what we have been looking for, and this will be expanded into the Forever Club, because the government will probably not support it as they should.

 

A conclusion might be appropriate because we have jumped around looking at so many concepts (attractors) that it is difficult to narrow our gaze. I would say that we have defined a model of a person’s worth that enables them to ‘stand up and be counted’ and provides a goal in life and a means to perpetuate good genes and extend a worthy life. A reward for a life well lived and a lesson to all to emulate! As well as a step towards the Second Coming!

 

Chapter 22: Magic, Proverbs, Politics and the Voting System

Chapter 20: Eating ‘Properly’

Darryl PenneyLeave a comment

Chapter 20: Eating ‘Properly’

 

The last chapter intimated that the solution to the problem of the overweight and obese members of the population was ‘waiting in the wings’ biding its time, from a population perspective. But if an individual wanted the information on the triumvirate of food, exercise and mental ‘strength’, how or where would they get it? As mentioned before, we need to look to the Paleolithic era because that is where our genes have evolved to be! So, I would like to put forward a theory, and that is all it is, on what to eat and how to cook it. Needless to say it is not a coincidence that it is (very) similar to what I use!

 

 

More than 70% of the total daily energy consumed by all people in the United States comes from foods such as dairy products, cereals, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils and alcohol, that advocates of the Paleolithic diet assert contributed little or none of the energy in the typical preagricultural hominin diet. Proponents of this diet argue that excessive consumption of these novel Neolithic and Industrial era foods is responsible for the current epidemic levels of obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and cancer in the US and other contemporary Western populations. (Wikipedia, Paleolithic diet, Rationale and evolutionary assumptions)

 

In the last chapter, an attempt was made to indicate the enormous variety of foods that gatherers ate, coupled with the basic rationale to broaden the range of foods from as many niche environments as possible as a means of ensuring a food supply at all times. In a modern society, living in towns with limited time to hunt and gather, what, when and how do we eat?

 

The simplest question to examine is the question of ‘when’ to eat. It is generally accepted that we should have three meals a day, with or without snacks. However, one of the major aims of modern living is to reduce the time devoted to hunting and gathering. Taking this trend even further, we should reduce the time for eating and this is happening through the increased consumption of take-aways. Often workers especially, leave home without breakfast, catch some snacks during the day and don’t have the energy to cook properly when they arrive home. This trend is exacerbated when both parents work, and take-aways are often eaten.

 

Add to this the tendency for processors to process our food, which for wheat based foods is to remove the wheat germ and grind the resulting starch as finely as possible so that the bread etc is as ‘light’ as possible, which makes the starch able to be absorbed (as sugars) quickly which leads to insulin problems as the sugars in the bloodstream quickly peak and then subside. I could go on and on about modern processing, but a ‘sea-change’ in thinking is necessary, and simply, that is to use the natural processors of our food that we have been using for millions of years and have evolved to use. The answer is seeds and nuts, but the difference is that the modern processor is trying to use the cheapest ingredients, whilst the plant is ‘packing’ the seed with the best that it can produce to give its offspring the best chance of success. This simple idea should be held in mind when thinking of ordering take-aways!

 

postscript: This is a good place to point out that we are actually ‘sorting’ attractors to get the best outcome that we can, and the simplicity of the above paragraph in pushing us toward or away from take-aways (or not take-aways) can then be compared with a further step, quoted below, on the importance of anti-oxidants. We are using the Mathematics of the Mind to set up attractors, compare them, realize that there is not a unique solution and use the mind to determine the answer to the question ‘What’s for lunch?’. The ‘default’ solution is the one supplied by evolution, and that is to ‘eat naturally’ as we would in the Paleolithic era. Unfortunately, the mind then has to ask another question, ‘How to catch it?’, and so on, and so on.

 

‘There are more than 200 studies showing that those who eat the most fruit and vegetables have the lowest levels of cancer at almost every site in the body. This protection does not come from the vitamins in these foods, or from the fibre. Researchers now believe the carotenoids (other than beta carotine) and other substances in plant foods may be responsible for the protection. (Vitamins: what they do and what they don’t do, Rosemary Stanton, p 202)

 

Only two meals a day are necessary. One before we go out hunting, gathering, working etc and one when we arrive back with the ‘goodies’. One is breakfast, the other is dinner at night. In our modern world, breakfast before leaving for work and dinner when arriving home. If absolutely necessary, pack a lunch. The secret is to ‘do it like we were designed to do it’. The food should be ground by our teeth or in a blender, not ground super-finely in modern mills. Dinner is the fresh food that was hunted and gathered during the day, breakfast is composed of stored and dried foods. In other words, breakfast is all the nuts, seeds and dried and fresh fruits around the cave or kitchen and they can be used to last throughout the day using the methods above.

 

This breakfast is commonly called muesli, and has the positive side that it is mainly eaten raw. It is a little daunting to be faced with whole nuts, fine seed and in between. The answer is to use a blender that reduces everything to a finely ground, but not too finely ground palatable ‘flour’. Because this ‘flour’ is both finely and coarsely ground, it takes a long time to digest fully. So, the problem of only having two meals and that those meals be sufficiently long-lasting is solved!

 

How to eat has been indicated for one meal, as above, and it has been outlined in the two ‘rat’ experiments in a previous chapter, there is the second, evening meal that has a different ‘base’. Fire has been used regularly for (at least) 400,000 years, and that period is long enough that it has influenced our genes to reduce our teeth size. Consider the following.

 

‘Early humans cooked up their first hot meals more than 1.9m years ago, long before our ancient ancestors left Africa to colonise the world, scientists claim.

 

Researchers at Harvard University traced the origins of cooking back through the human family tree after studying tooth sizes and the feeding behaviour of monkeys, apes and modern humans.

 

They concluded that cooking was commonplace among Homo erectus, our flat‑faced, thick‑browed forebears, and probably originated early in that species’ reign, if not before in more primitive humans. “This is part of an emerging body of science that shows cooking itself is important for our biology; that is, we are biologically adapted for cooking food,” said Chris Organ, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard.

 

The advent of cooking was one of the most crucial episodes in the human story, allowing our ancestors to broaden their diet and extract more calories from their food. Because it softened food, it also spelled an end to the days of endless chewing. There has been disagreement among experts on the issue. Some of the most convincing evidence for human use of fire is more recent, dating to around 400,000 years ago, though older claims exist, including the remnants of a campfire in Israel that dates back to 790,000 years ago.

 

The researchers began by creating an evolutionary tree of monkeys, apes and modern humans. On to this they added information on how long various species spent feeding. Compared with chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, humans spent remarkably little time eating. Chimps typically spent more than one third of their day feeding, while for humans it was about 5% of their waking hours.

 

The scientists then added information on tooth sizes to the family tree, and this time they included details of extinct human ancestors and closely related species.

 

The study showed that three species of humans, Homo erectus, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), and modern humans (Homo sapiens), evolved small molars relatively quickly, which could not be explained by general changes in head and jaw sizes.

 

Instead, the scientists believe the invention of cooking could explain the changes in both tooth size and feeding times. As early humans learned how to cook, they no longer needed large back teeth to chew tough food, or had to spend hours chewing to gain enough calories. Over time, large teeth disappeared from our ancestors, to be replaced with far smaller ones.

 

According to their report in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Homo erectus, which emerged in Africa around 1.9m years ago, spent 6.1% of its time eating. Neanderthals, the authors claim, spent 7% of their time feeding. “We think that Homo erectus and Neanderthals were spending about as much of their day feeding as we do, which implies that they were both cooking,” Organ said.’ (The Guardian, Tuesday 23 August 2011)

 

So, from the above, it appears that one key to our success is to reduce our feeding time, and that is the direction that I am advocating with fewer meals and snacks. Also, as one who has teeth that are inclined to decay readily, the regime of two meals and no snacks allows me to brush my teeth after eating and be comfortable in the knowledge that I cannot do better for my teeth. It is hard to believe that when I was young I was told that by the time that people were 30 years of age, the current situation was for them to probably have dentures! Thankfully, I have avoided that by changing my diet away from sugars and starches.

 

The use of fire to cook food has reduced tooth and jaw size in humans and has also resulted in making nutrients more available. Whilst we have become genetically dependant on fire to release nutrients from food, fire has had a great impact on our social lives in protection from wild animals and as a gathering point for social interaction. In fact, the usefulness of fire is (probably) part of our psyche as mentioned before, and is probably being used to manipulate patrons of clubs towards gambling areas.

 

One example, of many, in this regard is the question of calcium intake that has formed a large part of the dairy industry’s advertising. They intimate that dairy products are necessary for healthy bones. As a vegetarian, I have always wondered why we should eat dairy products when cows get and retain so much calcium from a diet of grass. Also, I have always been a bit dubious about the acid/alkaline effect of meat versus vegetables, so I would like to present the following quotation that categorizes meat, fish, cheese and grains as acid producing whilst fruits and vegetables are alkaline. Note particularly that grains, which one would have thought to be included in fruits and vegetables are classed with meat etc. Osteoporosis is widespread in modern life, and yet the following quotation indicates that a little meat and fish and low levels of grains, with no dairy aligns well with the Paleolithic diet

 

‘Foods which cause a net acid excretion include meat, fish, cheeses and grains (Remer T, et al. Potential renal acid loads of foods and its influence on urine pH. J Am Diet Assoc. 1995 Jul; 95: 791‑97). Fruits and vegetables have a net alkaline value and consequently reduce acid excretion and hence reduce calciuria thereby halting bone resorption and actually allowing bone accretion to occur.

 

Although the dietary calcium to protein ration in stone age diets would have been quite low, the large amount of fruits and vegetables (35% of total energy) included in the diet would have produced a net dietary acid‑base status which would have favored bone accretion even in the face of enormous protein intakes.’ (An Interview with Loren Cordain, PhD, by Robert Crayhon, MS

Reprinted by permission from Life Services)

 

A little more information might be worthwhile because of the importance of deciding whether to eat a modern diet versus a Paleolithic diet. ‘A disturbance of the acid‑base balance occurs when acid‑base changes surpass the body’s ability to regulate it, or when normal regulatory mechanisms become ineffective. This can happen with chronic consumption of an acidic diet.

 

Health problems

If pH levels aren’t balanced, this can mean negative health outcomes that include:

 

  • Decreased growth factors
  • Growth hormone resistance
  • Mild hypothyroidism
  • Higher levels of blood cortisol
  • Loss of muscle mass
  • Enzymatic changes in cells
  • Altered regulation of metabolites and minerals
  • Decreased uptake and release of oxygen

“Borrowing” buffers

Why do these health problems occur?

 

One reason is that in order to counteract high acid loads in the diet, the body looks for buffering substances, such as minerals and proteins. It often has to “borrow” these from elsewhere.

 

For example, the body can use calcium and phosphorus to buffer acid loads. Where’s the biggest stockpile of these minerals in the body? Your bones.

 

One of the primary causes of osteoporosis is the loss of calcium from bones to buffer acid loads in the body, not lack of dietary calcium. The United States, Finland, England, Israel and Sweden have the highest intake of calcium from dairy, yet they also have the highest rates of osteoporosis.’ (Precision Nutrition: All About Dietary Acids and Bases, Ryan Andrews, 11/5/2009)

 

The quotations above, indicate what is wrong with take-away ‘fast’ food. The original ‘fast’ food, in modern life, was ‘hot potato chips’, which combined the original (addictive in nature) fat, starch and salt. This fast food is easy to understand because it combines the three ‘foods’ that are hard to get in nature. Firstly, salt: ‘many animals regularly visit mineral licks to consume clay, supplementing their diet with nutrients and minerals. Some animals require the minerals at these sites not for nutrition, but to ward off the effects of secondary compounds that are included in the arsenal of plant defences against herbivory. The mineral contents of these sites usually contain calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sulfur (S) phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and sodium (Na). Mineral lick sites play a critical role in the ecology and diversity of organisms that visit these sites, however, little is still understood about the dietary benefits.’ (Wikipedia, Mineral lick, Overview)

Secondly, as mentioned above, vegetables were (effectively) herbs because they had not been ‘developed ‘ to produce large quantities of starch etc. Thirdly, animals were lean, without excess fat because of competition.

 

But, another popular take-away includes sandwiches, rolls, wraps, pies etc which all come packaged in a grain covering. The grain covering keeps everything together and provides a dry surface to hold. A great idea! But, meat, cheese and the grains are all acid, which brings on the problems listed above. Also, another class of take-away (at least in the developed world) is Chinese food with the inevitable white rice, high meat and low vegetable content.

 

‘Our mouths, teeth, jaws and stomachs all indicate that humans are not adapted to eating lump of raw meat … The problem is that tropical hunter-gatherers have to eat at least half of their diet in the form of plants, and the kinds of plant foods our hunter-gatherer would have relied on are not easily digested raw. Plants are a vital food because humans need large amounts of either carbohydrates (from plant foods) or fat (found in a few animal foods). Without carbohydrates or fat, people depend on protein for their energy, and excessive protein induces a form of poisoning.’ (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, p 47)

 

‘Because the maximum safe level of protein intake for humans is around 50 percent of total calories, the rest must come from fat, such as blubber, or carbohydrates, such as in fruits and roots. Fat is an excellent source of calories in high latitude sites like the arctic or Tierra del Fuego, where sea mammals have evolved thick layers of blubber to protect themselves from the cold. However, fat levels are much lower in the meat of tropical mammals, averaging around 4 percent, and high-fat tissues like marrow and brain are always in limited supply. The critical extra calories for our equatorial ancestors therefore must have come from plants, which are vital for all tropical hunter-gatherers.’ (p 48)

 

One point of interest is that ‘people with an anatomy like ours could not have flourished on raw food in the Pleistocene epoch’ (p 49) and secondly, given the above, many people eat large quantities of meat without protein poisoning, and that is because modern farming methods are designed to make meat ‘fatty’ to tenderize it. In fact, laws are in place restricting the amount of fat in ‘minced’ meat. ‘”Minced”, used in relation to meat of any permitted species and containing pig meat <=30% fat content.’ (Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee) Bovine <= 20% and sheepmeat or goat meat <=25%.

 

In the above, we have looked at when to eat, and how to eat, in perhaps a negative sense, and it is now time to look at what to eat. This is not easy because we do not have the time to pick it fresh, nor do we have access to the variety mentioned in the previous chapter. Several patterns have been proposed, and now the time has come to draw them together. Firstly, the theory, and it is only a theory, suggests that we should intake a wide variety of foods because we have used multi-niches as a means of safeguarding our existence.

 

Secondly, as noted in Mineral licks, animals, including ourselves, ‘know’ what their bodies’ need. This is the eighth sense. This sense is very old and has been in place since bacteria needed to find the food that they needed efficiently, after all, if the required nutrients are not ‘balanced’ for the body’s requirements, the organism is not efficient and will die out. Our mind will tell us what to eat if given the chance and we will eat those foods in preference. Thus, given a wide range of available foods, our brain should select those that we need. But, our brain must be given the chance to select the ratio, and it can only do this if it has experience with the range of foods! Modern eating uses a restricted number of foods and this restricts the eighth sense of modern people and they eat to excess whilst chasing nutrients. As an example, it is well known that pregnant women often get a ‘craving’ for some unusual food and this is probably because her body is requiring certain nutrients at certain times and the mind is forcing her to eat them. But, a ‘naive’ mind might demand a less suitable source of food be eaten which might lead to too much sugar etc being consumed.

 

Thirdly, the ‘rat experiments’ described earlier suggest two types of meals, a breakfast and an evening meal with the proviso of 30 nuts, seeds and fruits in the morning and 30 vegetable, herbs and spices in the evening. The ratio of amounts of each variety depends on personal selection, and depends on a ‘feeling’ of their ‘worth’ to the body for the existing conditions by the conditions changing the thinking of the animal or person. So, what can we do to reclaim our knowledge of the foods that are available to us when our diet has traditionally been restricted by modern life.

 

The first step in determining the foods that could be within our multi-niches is to determine from what part of the world we evolved. Several waves of proto-humans migrated out of Africa and subsequently died out, however, ‘it has been known for some time that the Ancestor population went through a genetic bottleneck, in which populations must have dwindled, with later population growth after 50 thousand years ago… For the people who made it through the bottleneck, whether volcanically induced or not, life on the Indian savannahs would have allowed rapid demographic growth which would, in turn, have triggered geographical expansion.’ (The Humans Who Went Extinct, Clive Finlayson, pp 99-100)

 

Clearly, the present-day European people spent time in India with progressive migration into Europe and Great Britain, and this is the area (India to Ireland) that interests me and the foods that can be found in that area. It is not difficult to list 30 nuts, seeds and fruits from that area, and it is not difficult to list 30 vegetables, herbs and spices also from that area. The list is not exclusive, by any means, but it is better than the number of foods currently consumed in society. Remember that high starch cereals such as wheat and rice are not included, nor potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, milk and other ‘developed’ foods.

 

If the hunted and gathered food, which suited our genes, was so superior, why did the Neolithic farmers win-out? ‘We may have an example of Ancestors swamping or out-competing others of their own kind, not because they were better or more intelligent but because circumstances had given them a way of life that generated more numbers. Later in history, farmers would swamp-out hunter-gatherers from many parts of the world in a similar fashion.’ (p 182)

 

 

Chapter 20: Eating ‘Properly’

Chapter 17: Finding God through One Religion

Darryl Penney, , , Leave a comment

Chapter17: Finding God through One Religion

 

Abstract: The Mathematics of the Concepts has been used very successfully in other areas and I want to use it to provide new insights into a simple means of bringing the existing religions into one core belief with each religion retaining its ‘flavour’, with a long-term aim of amalgamating them into one religion.

 

It was quoted that people prefer to deal with people in their own group as much as possible, and that it is desirable to have, in time and through the generations, the racial characteristics that your family line has worked towards. It was assumed that women would move to other religions in their pursuit of lifestyle, but it is a big step to leave one’s family and religion, as they have done for untold generations, without the dreadful fear of inbreeding hanging over their heads.

 

I am reminded of ‘lumpers and splitters’, those that amalgamate and those that are divisive and what I am suggesting here, is a bringing together of the religions, whereas it is the natural way of people to be divisive and split off groups or cliques, presumably for some form of control of followers etc. The first step in bringing people’s together is to overcome the ‘splitter’ or ‘divide and conquer’ mentality, the second step is to bring the religions together and that is not as difficult as it sounds because the prophets were of like mind, and it has been those who came after, that turned religion to their own ends.

 

As mentioned before, it doesn’t matter where we start, so ‘by their very nature, myths inhere both legitimacy and credibility. Whatever truths they convey have little to do with historical fact. To ask whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea, or whether Jesus truly raised Lazarus from the dead, or whether the word of God indeed poured through the lips of Muhammad, is to ask totally irrelevant questions. The only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is “What do these stories mean?”’ (No god but God, Reza Aslan, xiii)

 

As mentioned before, the first problem is to simplify, and the paragraph above indicates that we should look to the original people involved, and bearing in mind that it was their followers that wrote the Bible and Quran, many years after Jesus and Muhammad’s deaths, that is the best that we can do. I have selected Christianity, the Old Testament for the Jews and Islam because of the inter-linking and the fact that three quarters of the world’s population follow those religions.

 

Origin of Religion – Important Dates in History:

  1. 2000 BC: Time of Abraham, the patriarch of Israel.
  2. 1200 BC: Time of Moses, the Hebrew leader of the Exodus.
  3. 1100 – 500 BC: Hindus compile their holy texts, the Vedas.
  4. 563 – 483 BC: Time of Buddha, founder of Buddhism.
  5. 551 – 479 BC: Time of Confucius, founder of Confucianism.
  6. 200 BC: The Hindu book, Bhagavad Gita, is written.
  7. 2 to 4 BC – 32 AD: Time of Jesus Christ, the Messiah and founder of Christianity.
  8. 32 AD: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
  9. 40 – 90 AD: The New Testament is written by the followers of Jesus Christ.
  10. 570 – 632 AD: Time of Muhammad, who records the Qur’an as the basis of Islam.

(AllAboutReligion.org)

 

 

As can be seen from the table, the major religions are old and belong to discrete areas, and this has come about, to a large extent by warfare, in spite of the messages of peace from the Prophets. ‘Your religion was your ethnicity, your culture, and your social identity; it defined your politics, your economics, and your ethics. More than anything else, your religion was your citizenship. Thus, the Holy Roman Empire had its officially sanctioned and legally enforced version of Christianity, just as the Sasanian Empire had its officially sanctioned and legally enforced version of Zoroastrianism. In the Indian subcontinent, Vaisnava kingdoms (devotees of Vishnu and his incarnations) vied with Saiva kingdoms (devotees of Shiva) for territorial control, while in China, Buddhist rulers fought Taoist rulers for political ascendancy. Throughout everyone of these regions, but especially in the Near East, where religion explicitly sanctioned the state, territorial expansion was identical to religious proselytization. Thus, every religion was a “religion of the sword.”’ (p 80)

 

That last sentence is very revealing, and it bears repeating that religions that were based on peace and harmony were ‘religions of the sword’ at some time. Another example of how religions can become skewed, ‘perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. “Fight in the way of God those who fight you,” the Quran says, “but do not begin hostilities; God does not like the aggressor” (2:190). Elsewhere the Quran is more explicit: permission to fight is given only to those who have been oppressed … who have been driven from their homes for saying, ‘God is our Lord’ ” (22:39; emphasis added).’ (p 84)

 

If we compare the last paragraph to the following modern interpretation the disparity is apparent. ‘Today, the traditional image of the Muslim horde has been more or less replaced by a new image: the Islamic terrorist, strapped with explosives, ready to be martyred for Allah, eager to take as many innocent people as possible with him…. Yet the doctrine of jihad, like so many doctrines in Islam, was not fully developed as an ideological expression until long after Muhammad’s death. (p 79)

 

The above makes it clear that people and forces, after the time of the prophets, have created a momentum and a religion that has little to do with the original words. There is the point that religion has grown with time and circumstance over the millennia, but the original meaning has been lost or changed. ‘Like so many prophets before him, Muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion. By his own admission, Muhammad’s message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples. “[God] has established for you [the Arabs] the same religion enjoined on Noah, on Abraham, on Moses, and on Jesus,” the Quran says (42:13). (p 17)

 

It is apparent that something has gone monumentally wrong with the religious world, in which the vast majority of the word’s population is engaged to some degree. I would liken the problem to the need to invent writing and the recording of numbers, in order to keep accurate records for business, and in the same way the Mathematics of the Mind is the means of recording concepts and their contexts and keeping track of them over time. The Mathematics of the Mind forces uniqueness through the Logic of the Half-truth and keeps the attractors distinct, over time, but available for use, in the same way that the brain uses the strength of neurotransmitters to form a sub-conscious which is both there and not there in the half-truth sense. To continue this ‘chain of thought’, the half-truth created the universe, rules the universe and is the operator that is the fifth dimension that we use together with space-time in our daily lives. Truly, God is the God of Truth, and we are made in God’s image as our mind is based on (mathematical) Truth! Also, the judiciary set laws in time and a sentence is made on the laws in force at the time of the offence, and similarly, journal articles provide a reference in time for concepts and context that can be quoted by authors.

 

To repeat the above, ‘the only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is “What do these stories mean?” ’ (p xiii) There have been many ‘prophets’ and the religions have selected those that they want and discarded the rest. In the main, these prophets were poor, railing against the economic structure of the day, and possibly delusional to some degree, on the other hand, Muhammad was a successful businessman and did not meet an untimely end. Their sayings, such as have been recorded, provide the ‘nuggets’ to be gleaned over, and to simplify, we can forget the building of the religions over the millennia, as people, circumstances and times changed. The present time is our time, and we need to interpret the original stories in terms of ‘our time’ and the means is through the Mathematics of the Mind.

 

To repeat, ‘by his own admission, Muhammad’s message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples.’ If so many people believe his words, who are we to disbelieve the above? Clearly, it is the organized religions that have ‘mired’ themselves in orthodoxy and have refused to accommodate change. From Chapter 1, the idea was put forward that the Christian Church has ‘lost’ or has not kept up with the one third of the teachings about the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E. ‘over-stepped the mark’ in entrenching the doctrine of the Trinity into the teachings, because the Church functions quite well in its traditional role with leaving the second Law of Life in ‘limbo’. Unfortunately, not so for the world which is suffering a multitude of problems exacerbated by the churches’ position, but it does indicate that the Churches are fallible.

 

Elsewhere it was derived that people should work towards a family of the colour and stature that they are content with so there is no concept of racial discrimination, one religion to prevent inevitable sectarian violence, dressing similarly and so forth. Animals have always tried to blend in with the surroundings to remain invisible to predators and religious sects that dress ‘differently’ are risking sectarian violence. Flaunting difference in dress is isolating themselves from the rest of the population and creating tension and resistance to members moving out of the group into the wider community, which is the motive of the ‘splitters’.

 

The major problem at hand is to make one religion by overcoming the ‘splitters’, and the answer is, to combine what we can of the religions into one. However, religions have been around for thousands of years and this could take time, but given the immediate threat of global warming etc, a start should be made.

 

Sometimes there are very easy ways to control complex situations, and I am reminded of the problem of the poker machines, where, the solution is simple, but the politics was not and lead to this concept of the Mathematic of the Mind. The Mathematics of the Mind is overarching, and the Old Testament is overarching, but the New Testament and Muhammad are about close relationships and I am ignoring the concepts, so there is no appearance of the Mathematics of the Mind, but the rest of the book provides the context to this climactic problem. I will be content to provide a possible solution and leave the discussion to those better qualified.

 

I know very little about the complexities of the various religions, but, as I have said before, the first job is to simplify, and as I know so little, I am possibly, a good candidate for the job! From above, we have to ‘lump’ and to do that, which is against the desires of multiculturalism and the religions that we know today, we have to legislate and use the power of the state. Politicians have problems because they are discriminating against a segment of voters, but are there alternatives? (Actually there are, but see later)

 

Religion is part of the third Law of Life, and the State is mainly the second Law and is far stronger because the Holy Spirit has been neglected and the Church has kept the niche that it has had for centuries. The State controls the Churches through taxation and they could start the process of bringing the Churches together by their congregations sharing the different Church buildings for services on a rotation of times. The basic idea is for the various congregations to, if not mix socially for a start, at least see each other and tax the laggard religions. If we are serious about the world’s problems, governments have to act seriously.

 

At the same time, the Religions have to ‘absorb’ the later prophets into their religion, after all, can the ‘spirit’ of the prophets be ‘bad’ when so many people support them. Eventually, the religions must become one! Muhammad considered, above, that he was a prophet in the vein of those that came before. Could the other religions accept him now that the world has changed so much and faces Armageddon? As an example, I am thinking of the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of Gaza putting aside their differences, but it is probably a land problem as much as religious differences, but would the presence of the others matter if they had similar religions! Is it such a big step when Muhammad, himself, thought that he was carrying on the tradition?

 

This time of change is also a good opportunity to bring the sects together, such as the Catholic Church, the Church of England and others. Also, ‘legal institutions empowered with the binding authority of God’s Law. The modern Sunni world has four such schools. The Shafti School, which now dominates Southeast Asia … the Maliki School, which is primarily observed in West Africa … the Hanafi School … which prevails across most of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, is by far the largest … the Hanbali School … dominates ultraconservative countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan … Shi’ite school of law (p 165)

 

It is interesting to consider the ‘splitter’ case and it aligns with what I have said previously and there appears to be the same case of overcrowding, sectarian violence etc and ultimately as living standards decline, a ‘superior race’ will emerge, and it can be seen gathering momentum now. In fact, that is the purpose of this book, to restart evolution without leaving the disadvantaged to become another race or species.

 

The Mathematics of the Mind demands a prediction and I would like to quote the following: ‘one spring morning in tenth-century Baghdad, the frenetic but scrupulously controlled markets of the capital city were thrown into a state of agitation when a raggedly dressed man named Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj – one of the earliest and most renowned Sufi masters – burst onto the crowded square and exclaimed at the top of his voice, Ana al-Haqq! “I am the Truth!” by which he meant, “I am God!” The market authorities were scandalized. They immediately arrested al-Hallaj and handed him over to the Ulama for judgement….. He further alienated the Ulama by focusing the bulk of his teachings on Jesus, whom he considered to be a Hidden Sufi. For these declarations, he was condemned as a fanatic and a “secret Christian”…. The Caliph had al-Hallaj tortured, flogged, mutilated, and crucified; his corpse was decapitated, his body dismembered, his remains burned, and the ashes scattered in the Tigris River.’ (p 204)

 

One cannot help but be struck by the similarities of the above and the different outcome in Christianity. This question will be taken up later.

 

‘Al-Hallij’s offence was not the sacrilege of his startling declaration, but its imprudent disclosure to those who could not possibly understand what he meant. Sufi teaching can never be revealed to the unprepared or the spiritually immature. As al-Hujwiri (d. 1075) argued, it is all too easy for the uninitiated to “mistake the [Sufi’s] intention, and repudiate not his real meaning, but a notion which they formed for themselves.” (p 206)

 

The book, of which this chapter is an extract, has been written in such a way as to increase the readers creativity and knowledge to an extent that they can take notice of the above paragraph and link it to this article and the rest of the book. Enough references have been made to show the context of the problem and if all else fails, the Forever Club is moving forward and, if necessary, leave those that can’t change to be superseded as has been happening for the last 3,000 million years through evolution.

 

The next step is to analyse religions using the Logic of the Half-truth:

 

A religion is:     true (which contains God and the ‘true’ prophets because God

is Truth in all religions. Notice above that “I am the Truth!” by which he meant, “I am God!” and previously that I determined that God must be the God of Truth because truth is the only determinant in our universe),

 

false (which contains Satan and the ‘false’ prophets),

 

indeterminate (which contains those situations, like the case of Jesus and Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj where the outcome could go either way, also this indeterminacy determines the existence of the universe in probability space. It should be noted that this existence of the universe [world P] is a natural phenomenon and is separate to the existence [world O and P] of God),

 

chaos (which is the case when something is both true and false at the same time, and too difficult to deal with at the moment, also, it would include all of the trappings of the religions that have built up over thousands of years and seem a bit pointless).

 

So, the result is that religions contain God, and it is a question of classifying the prophets as ‘true’ and ‘false’, but what of the Old Testament? It is interesting that ‘the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.’ (The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, p 31)

 

The Old Testament was written 3000 to 4000 years ago and probably is a historical record of a tribe as well as a religion or creation myth to hold the people together. Perhaps, in the light of the paragraph above, it should be rewritten, especially de-humanized in line with the thoughts presented here and in the rest of the chapter. The Old Testament evolved on the basis of the three Laws of Life and thousands of years later these Laws were overlain with the Trinity, which is invoked, but neglected today. I have pointed to certain areas that the Mathematics of the Mind and the Half-truth have outlined, and it is up to someone to redefine religion within this logic and carry it forward.

 

The way to do this is now clear, that each religion can agree on what is in the ‘true’ section of the Half-truth and that is the religion for all, but the remainder, which is a ‘history’ is separate to each religion and is an ‘adjunct’ or the ‘feeling’ of that religion and is kept separate and known for what it is, and that is the possibility of an ‘indeterminate’ part for disputed events and the final part for the ‘trappings’ of the religions along the lines of the Half-truth. This is a necessary step to a ‘Second Coming’ and there would be one religion world-wide with different ‘feeling’, but not meaning. As people become similar in mind and ways of life through the electronic media, so will the religions be forced into one through cooperation or contest.

 

postscript: As mentioned above, I have been wondering why the Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions have steadfastly refused to get together as seems sensible and I ascribed it to the ‘splitter’ effect, but perhaps there is a more generous reason, and I will outline it as ‘cultural’.

 

The Jews have an ancient religion and, as mentioned above, their (one) God is not very pleasant. The Christians have one god, divided into three parts, God, the Father, God, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Islam says there is only one God. Can these three views be reconciled? Let’s see. Measurement needs a mind and a ‘perception’ to view the problem through, just as the experimenter must be part of the experiment and has to design the experiment for the measurement to exist. Put another way, measurement needs both concept and context, which leads to the Mathematics of the Mind.

 

We evolved a consciousness along with survival of the fittest (Chapter 28), but religion, as a ‘creation myth’ didn’t need to be ‘rooted’ in a reality because (presumably) it was heritable that we believe the new tribe’s creation myth and fit into a new tribe to minimize the risk of inbreeding.

 

However, it has come about that we need to focus our mind on the state of the world and as religions play such an important part, we need to focus the mind through a perception that brings the religions into a ‘controllable’ unit that will enable them to help restore order in the world.

 

A previous derivation found that there are three Laws of Life that describe ourselves and our relationship to the universe. These laws are approximate and ‘weaker’ contributors are neglected, but they should be ‘robust’ enough for our purposes. There is room for a God of Truth and it was shown that we are made in his image. Using these as attractors, we can move the religions around to see how other attractors influence (or influenced) them. Note that the Mathematics of the Mind and the Logic of the Half-truth are time dependent, where mathematics and logic are not.

 

The God of the Old Testament was close to His People for thousands of years and it would be strange if He did not gain some aspects of humanity in the stories of the Bible. The writers/recorders used the Mathematics of the Mind (concepts) to envision God and they did it through the Tribe because there was nothing else. The same as the experimenter defines the experiment and MUST be part of the experiment, so, of course the God of the Old Testament had human failings.

 

The Christians were much later in time, and, I imagine, recognizing the three Laws of Life, which are not particularly difficult to discern and being immersed in the Mathematics of the Mind, ascribed the Workings of God into three categories for ease of understanding by their followers. Concepts were the ‘mathematics’ of the time and they used them to simplify and show how God was everywhere. God the Father was the Creator, God the Son was the family and between peoples and the Holy Spirit was the environment (state of mind, nutrition and exercise which are crucially important because they form componentization, which is the ‘key’ to life).

 

Islam grew in the environment that created mathematics, which is a special case of the Mathematics of the Mind and its uniqueness would have appealed to traders, I imagine, because traders don’t need concepts, they need the certainty that one is one, not three! This change of thinking suited the simple concept of one God.

 

In conclusion, firstly, the mind influences the reporting of religious events, secondly, the ‘state’ or sophistication of the mind interprets the religious event, thirdly, time effects must be taken into account to changes in sophistication, and fourthly, rationality must be applied to foil deviants or extremists, because religion is too important to society be left to evolve haphazardly.

 

What I have done is to propose a trinity, much as the Christians did, again to try to simplify concepts, that shows three different ‘faces’ of God as seen through the minds of peoples separated in time and space, and yet, these are the same God. This aligns with the above idea of taking the ‘essence’ of all the religions into a hierarchy to start the process of combination into one religion, and it also shows how easy it is to ‘split’ rather than build or ‘lump’, and that should help define our choice of cleric.

 

Chapter 17: Finding God through One Religion

Chapter 20: The Overweight and Obese

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Chapter 20                                 The Overweight and Obese

 

 

 

There is an ‘obesity epidemic’ in the developed world, where 60% of adults are obese or overweight, so why don’t we look at that problem a little closer. For the individual we will need to consider more attractors, and the main ones, it will be found, are exercise, food and state of mind. This statement is ‘giving the game away’ because I want to approach the problem from the direction of helping the overweight and obese solve their problem. This is the ‘obvious’ way to proceed and it does explore some of the factors. More elegant solutions to the problem will be indicated later in the chapter.

 

From the previous chapter, there is a simple answer, and that is, we need to live the way that we were designed to live, the way our genes expect us to live. But the Paleolithic provided the three crucial inputs, above, where the food was natural, fresh or dried, we had to walk long distances every day to get it and the mind was concentrated on finding enough food and avoiding predators etc. The modern world has changed, so let us look at how we could possibly ‘fix’ the obesity epidemic.

 

Letter to the Editor:

 

I would like to mention a (possible and simple) logical ‘cause’ for the obesity epidemic of the developed world. Modern ‘foods’ and snacks are designed to sell and are packed with the ‘addictive’ elements of salt, sugar/carbohydrates and fat instead of the nutrients that our body demands and as found in the hunter/gatherer lifestyle that our genes are designed for. Sixty per cent of the adult population is overweight or obese. We all suspect that if these people ate ‘properly’ and exercised ‘sufficiently’ they would not have a problem. But, what part of the body causes (indeed forces) us to eat these snacks that are not good for us?

 

The ‘seventh sense’ of the mind says ‘eat more’ to get that nutrient that is in shortest supply to keep the body working. ‘Processed’ food does not contain the ratios of nutrients found in a Paleolithic diet, so the brain functions in a ‘drought’ scenario and tells the body to eats as much as possible to try to get the missing nutrients. Literally, the body is faced with a life and death situation, which is why it is so hard to lose fat! The causal fact is that the mind is concerned, even screaming that the body is dying from lack of nutrients and it does not know what to do but eat more!

 

Removing or reducing body fat requires eating less and the brain’s thinking goes deeper into ‘survival mode’! Dieters, effectively (and literally), ‘lose’ their will‑power. In doing so, the body, of course, ingests excesses of the nutrients that the body was not designed to handle. Paleolithic animals, fruits and vegetables had not been bred (or fed) to contain large amounts of certain nutrients, such as salt, sugar/carbohydrates and fat. Consequently the body stores the resulting overabundance of nutrients that it has, to the mind, ‘lucked’ upon in a drought!

On a personal note, I consume 30 different seeds, nuts and fruit in the morning and 30 different vegetables, herbs and spices in the evening. I suggested a change to my dancing partner’s breakfast and her (long‑term) repetitive strain injury to her elbow cleared up, her hair is growing longer and her skin has improved. Also, her speech problem has improved to the extent that I do not need to ask her to repeat things. Is this improvement in speech a case of the ‘seventh’ sense, bringing her mind back to the ‘normal’ childhood nutrition levels (of 40 years ago) or due to the fact that she is now, literally, ‘in the spotlight’ on the dance floor!

 

This proposed ‘solution’ to the ‘obesity epidemic’ is simple, but indicates that hospital food, as a ‘cure’, may not be of sufficient ‘quality’ to be an answer for the majority of the obese. The obese, in particular, are costing the economy, the welfare system and the health system enormous amounts of money, so why not try this simple method?

 

Regards from a reader.

 

Taking this letter as a starting point, for simplicity, the seventh sense is the changing of our thinking as our food supply changes, and has been discussed previously. Its reference here is that with an improvement in diet, our thinking changes to the period when we last enjoyed that diet. There can be little argument that processing food destroys or removes nutrients. This mismatch of nutrients to fats and carbohydrates means, as stated above, the body is forced to consume extra nutrients. Unfortunately, people want to do what they want to do, but often do not realize the chain of events that their actions entail. The approach above is a rational solution using previous information, but is it the best solution?

 

So, what was life like in the Paleolithic? No refrigeration meant that food had to be harvested daily with much walking to get it, areas near the cave or camp would have been picked over and carefully ‘farmed’. Food species in the wild are sparse on the ground and only a proportion can be harvested if the supply is to renew itself. As groups moved around, different herbs and vegetables would be collected. Notice that vegetables, familiar to us were ‘undeveloped’, small and sparsely growing. Vegetables were herbs and herbs were vegetables with no excess storage of nutrients above what was necessary for the plant to survive. Outside skins were thick and full of phytotoxins to stop insects from chewing through. A larger proportion of the vegetable was fibre, and so, much fibre would be ingested in order for the body to access the nutrients. Today’s vegetables have been bred to have thin skins and large stores of nutrients. Pesticides protects the plants, so skins have thinned through lack of attack by insects etc. Less fibre means less food for microbes and less variety of chemicals available for us to absorb.

 

Further, fruits were smaller and performed the function for which they evolved, to have the minimum of flesh to entice the animal to eat it to spread the seeds. In particular, the pomegranate contains masses of seeds with each seed surrounded by a sac of juice and the nutrition (for humans) comes mainly from eating the seed, which is not the aim of the tree! Another fruit that has been cultivated for a long time with nutritious seeds is the fig. An attempt has been made to rank fruits in terms of nutrition and other factors (Superfruits, Paul Gross) and (in decreasing order): Mango, Fig, Orange, Strawberry, Godji, Red grape, Cranberry, Kiwifruit, Papaya, Blueberry, Cherries, Raspberry, Seaberry, Guava, Blackberry, Black Current, Date, Pomegranate, Acai and Prunes.

Looking at pollutant impacts in modern times, ‘transport of chlorinated hydrocarbons, mercury, and many radionuclides is predominately through the atmosphere – so they rapidly achieve a global distribution and rain down all over the planet. These substances are generally relatively insoluable in water but are absorbed onto particles and dissolve in lipid, such that they are readily taken up by the phytoplankton at the base of the food chain, grazed, and rapidly transported into deep water via the grazers’ fecal pellets or their vertical migrations…. However, mercury pollution appears less tractable, since it is released largely as a by-product of coal burning, waste incineration and smelting ores. Although mercury use has decreased, the anthropogenic contribution to the global environment is still about twice its natural inputs.’ (The Silent Deep, Tony Koslow, pp 155-156)

 

What was the diet likely to be in the Paleolithic? ‘Terns … eggs … mussels … limpets, and tide pools of anemones … clams (The Valley of Horses, Jean M. Auel, p 10) … pluck leaves, flowers, buds, and berries while travelling … digging stick to turn up roots and bulbs (p 13) … dried apples, some hazelnuts … grain plucked from the grasses (p 18) alfalfa and clover … sweet groundnuts … milk-vetch pods … edible roots … buds of day lilies … currents have begun to turn colour … new leaves of pig-weed, mustard, or nettles for greens. Her sling did not lack for targets. Steppe pikas, souslick marmots, great jerboas, varying hares … giant hamster … low flying willow grouse and ptarmigan (pp 21-22) hare … wild carrots (p 53) trout … blueberries … apple tree … cherry tree is full … sunflower seeds …hazelnut bushes … pine trees are the kind with the big nuts … start drying greens. And lichen. And mushrooms. And roots… Coltsfoot tastes salty, and other herbs can add flavour. (pp 91-92) picking grain from the tall einkorn wheat. Emmer wheat grew in the valley, too, and rye grass …(p 125) willowbark tea … fresh peeled thistle stalks and cow parsley, and the first wild strawberries. (p 387) collecting grains of broomcorn millet and wild rye … two row barley, and both einkorn and emmer wheat.’ (p 433)

 

 

There is the question of ‘correct’ thinking, because, as we all know, except for a few people with disabilities, the majority of people that do not over-eat and exercises adequately will not become over-weight. This, of course will only happen if people know that they are eating ‘proper’ food, and the paragraph above indicates that a (very) wide selection of foods were eaten So, people have to know what is ‘appropriate’ food and that requires education. However, the government allows processed food to be sold and does not educate users in schools. Unless this is done the obesity epidemic will always be with us.

 

 

Similarly, most people hate to exercise, and yet exercise is necessary. The basic logic of life is simply ‘use it or lose it’ or conversely, ‘need it then grow it’ because no animal (or plant) can afford to carry around excess baggage, simply because it makes them less efficient and more vulnerable to predation. However, humans are not subject to predation and the obese and over-weight are with us. This brings us to the core reason for the epidemic, which is a lack of survival of the fittest.

 

The norm of the population is changing and the only way that the trend can be reversed is education to put everyone on a level playing field. The TV game shows such as ‘Biggest Loser’ provide a monetary goal to lose weight, but what happens after the game is over, do they revert? Where do people learn how to succeed? There has to be training that takes into account food knowledge, a way of life that provides exercise and the determination to stay thin.

 

At the moment, fat people are attracted to fat people because of an attraction to a group of people that eat the same way, do not exercise enough and think the same way. How can good information be passed down through families when parents are unable to balance their lives. One can only wonder where we, as a race are going, so let’s look at other derivations.

 

To this point, as mentioned above, we are trying to ‘improve’ the overweight and obese and have found ourselves in a messy situation. If we apply a logic to the derivation, the situation rapidly clarifies into a solution as stark as survival of the fittest, for example, under a Superman games or super-eusociety, women choose to have children using the IVF system from men who are clearly superior and most probably slim. Women that are too overweight or obese to be able to, or do not wish to rear children are automatically excluded, and the fitness, mental staunchness etc. of the population increases over time. The payoff to a person that is ‘successful’ in eating ‘properly’, exercising ‘properly’ and having a ‘proper’ state of mind is, as shown in the previous chapters has the chance of a (possibly much) longer, happier life with genes that pass into the (far?) future under these systems!

 

However, this is not a perfect world and so let’s look at a worst case scenario. The majority of adults (currently 60%) are overweight or obese, so what will happen to them? In terms of survival of the fittest, they will die out and their genes will be lost. Sounds obvious, but it doesn’t tell us who will be the winners, and how it will probably come about. The Law of Life indicates that we use the logic which underpins our society which started not in the Neolithic (10,000 years ago) but 30,000 years ago, well before farming started. This is where survival of the fittest broke down and population climbed because of a fortuitous run of good climatic conditions.

 

But first the concept of Survival of the Weakest, or perhaps better, the Survival of the Waiters! ‘Gibraltar was not a very nice place in which to live during the Victorian era…. period between 1873 and 1884… The detailed records allowed Larry to work out where children under the age of one year, many of whom died from weaning diarrhoea, had lived. From a detailed house-by-house survey carried out in 1879 he could determine whether the child had come from a house with a cistern, well, both, or neither. His results were stunning. As we would expect, childhood mortality during normal conditions was highest among the poorer people who only had access to the worst water and it was lowest among the better-off ones who could get water from wells and cisterns… severe drought limited access to good drinking water … he found that it was the poorest people who survived best under these conditions! These people were used to coping with the strain of having to survive drinking bad water all the time so when drought hit, they felt the effects least of all. As long as years were wet, wealthier people were fine, but as soon as things got bad they simply could not cope.’ (The Humans Who Went Extinct, Clive Finlayson, pp 19-20)

 

‘Those on the edge had to constantly adapt to variable conditions; they were jacks of all trades and could even stay put when conditions worsened. In fact if such conditions persisted it was these jacks (or innovators) that fared best, their numbers augmented and their geographical range expanded.’ (p 20) ‘These super-survivors could deal with the risk of an unpredictable supply of food or water better than any others of their kind so that when climate changed and made matters worse all round, it was they and their offspring who fared best. The earliest form of risk management seems to have involved living on the edge of two or more habitats or in a patchwork of habitats… this allowed them to exploit a wider variety of foods than if they lived in a single habitat.’ (p 215) ‘Further, the starting point was not the Fertile Crescent of 10 thousand years ago but the Russian Plain and its 30-thousand-year-old Gravettian culture.’ (p 216)

 

Well, the ‘successful’ people who were our ancestors and survived the multiple climate changes in Europe, survived because they ate a wide range of food, as mentioned above, when I listed a few of the wide range of foods available in the Paleolithic. A wide variety of food is the basis of our success and that ties in nicely with the above. When an upheaval, of some description, occurs, the survivors will be those who eat a wide range of foods, because there will be more food available in those niches that improve with the climate change!

 

‘In 2006 nine volunteers with dangerously high blood pressure spent 12 days eating like apes in an experiment …. And ate almost everything raw. Their diet included peppers, melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, grapes, dates, walnuts, bananas, peaches and so on – more than 50 kinds of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. In the second week they ate some cooked oily fish, and one man sneaked some chocolate. The regime was called the Evo Diet because it was supposed to represent the types of food our bodies have evolved to eat. Chimpanzees or gorillas would have loved it and would have grown fat on a menu that was certainly of higher quality than they could find in the wild…. The aim of the volunteers was to improve their health, and they succeeded. By the end of the experiment their cholesterol levels had fallen by almost a quarter and average blood pressure was down to normal.’ (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, p 16)

 

It seems strange, but our ‘strength’ in surviving infections is enhanced by the food that we ingest because we use the phytotoxins in the food, that the plants use to defend themselves against attack, we use to protect ourselves. For example, ‘resveratrol, a polyphenol compound found in red wine activates sir2 in yeast, mimics the effects of caloric restriction.’ (The Genetics of Human Longevity, Warren S. Browner, Arnold Kahn, Elad Ziv, Alex Reiner, Junko Oshima, Richard Cawthon, Wen-chi Hsueh, Steven R. Cummings) This paragraph is alluding to the comments earlier that ‘I consume 30 different seeds, nuts and fruit in the morning and 30 different vegetables, herbs and spices in the evening’.

 

The patterns for survival are coming together. Living a long time when the going gets tough and when food is scarce, eating a (very) wide-ranging diet as a safeguard against the tough times and keeping the body supplied with the necessary phytotoxins etc, the seventh sense that moves our thinking into the ‘correct’ pattern for the local conditions and Survival of the Waiters points to the survivors of the regular bouts of climate change.

 

So, what have we derived? Again the simplicity of the logic points to the fact that the over-weight and obese peoples’ genes do not have a place in the future, and ‘the answer lies in the way in which we got to the present, not as evolutionary superstars but as pests that invaded every nook and cranny that became available.’ (The Humans Who Went Extinct, Clive Finlayson, p 214)

 

The derivation above of the Survival of the Waiters is simply recognition of the existence of the gene pool that is set up by having two sexes. A result of this is that those without the genes struggle on the edges of society, until eventually a change occurs such as climate, change in predator, innovation that brings these genes that were not suitable into their own and a change occurs within the population. Modern living and modern diets are (literally) killing off those that do not have the willpower to succeed in that environment and is leaving the field to those that do. Again it is a tragedy for the individual, but the group or population is automatically maintained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 20: The Overweight and Obese

Chapter 19: How to Live Longer

Darryl PenneyLeave a comment

Chapter 19: How to Live Longer

 

Let me start by re-stating that the subjects of these chapters are interrelated, which make it difficult to construct a logical story. This is to be expected because the Mathematic of the Mind is all about moving between logic points or attractors. So, consider the last paragraph of the previous chapter.

 

But during life, there is a change in intelligence, as indicated above, and a multitude of papers have been written which compare the intelligence of races. Of course there are different levels of IQ in the different races, but they have occurred because of upbringing, poor food, lack of stimulation, infections, poor parenting, arguments in the household etc. Not only is intelligence reduced, but mental health in the child may be impaired under these conditions.

 

Firstly, ‘during life, there is a change in intelligence’. As stated before, we come into life in the simplest state so that we can start learning using all of our faculties and senses. I believe that child prodigies are ‘taking over’ the frantic learning ability that is designed to ‘fast track’ us into the new (out of womb) world where the slow to learn end up as something’s lunch. There can be psychological or personality problems, later in life if the child is ‘pushed’ too hard to perform.

 

Most of the hard work is done within the career path, which lasts for decades. Consider the quotation from Mozart, previously, where the child prodigy tells how it took him decades of hard work to become a composer of worth. Successful hardworking people need years of work to build a life for their family. From an aging point of view, the members of the race will eventually have a longer length of life if the male, that is used, is very old, yet hale and healthy. This is at odds with nature’s way, which uses males in the prime of life. Also, it has been shown elsewhere that sperm from older males is perfectly good to use, and in the chapter on super-eusociety, there is an efficient means to increase people’s length of life in this way.

 

The maximum present life span for humans is currently about 120 years. We all know that fewer people reach the more advanced age of 100 plus and occasionally we hear that the oldest person has died, near the 120 year level. Thus, the best that we can hope for, and aim for, is to remain active and healthy to 120 years of age, and then die. But, is this really true? It has been argued previously that many of our major organs can be classed as components. Why can’t we view the human body as a component of a group? After all, it appears that exercising the brain increases IQ and increasing exercise increases strength and power in our muscles, so, can we increase our current life span? So, if the body is a component and will accommodate any reasonable need, what can we derive about length of life? Looking at this question in the simplest form, we can say, that treated ‘well’ or even ‘very well’, that the body may last to a maximum of 120 years. But, what if we change our lifestyle significantly, has the body got the capacity to live longer in certain circumstances?

 

‘Among mammals, there is a good general relationship between size, metabolic rate, and longevity. Across the size range from mice to elephants, the smaller creatures generally live faster – having a higher metabolism but a shorter life span, leading to the popular perception that a species is allotted only so many heartbeats. With deepwater fishes, however, this is not the case. The meso- and bathypelagic fishes, despite their greatly reduced metabolism, generally live less than 10 years, much the same as an active pelagic species of similar size; for example an anchovy or pilchard. Benthopelagic fishes living over the continental slope, such as the macrourids (Coryphaenoides spp.) or sablefish, have a greatly reduced metabolism but also generally live for around 50-75 years – which is much longer than comparable species on the continental shelf, such as the Atlantic cod, which lives to about 25 years. At the far end of this continuum , several of the key species living on seamounts, such as the orange roughy and oreos, though growing to only about 50 centimertre, can live for an extraordinary 100-150 years.’ (The Silent Deep, Tony Koslow, p 130)

 

It does not matter to us, at the moment, why these fish live for so long, especially considering their size, it is the fact that they can! Fish are not that different to us in basic form, as was shown, previously, they have the same basic brain structure (for a start). Continuing, ‘Opportunities for young fishes to successfully recruit into this environment may be as limited as chances for young trees to grow up beneath a mature forest canopy. Little wonder, then, that orange roughy do not recruit to the seamount until they are adults, about 30 centimetres in length and 25-30 years of age, and that their reproductive life then extends for the next 100 years or so. As noted earlier, competition is so severe among the adults that they may build up the requisite energy reserves to spawn only every other year.’ (p 132)

 

Interesting, but what does it mean? I have previously mentioned that the usual interpretation of ‘survival of the fittest’ require a niche or closed environment. The seamounts are just such an environment, which is isolated and supports only a few predators. ‘There is strong circumstantial evidence that orange roughy have co-evolved with large predators and have developed striking, albeit still poorly understood sensory systems and behavioral adaptions to avoid them.’ (p 131) What this is saying is that fish (at least) have the capacity to live a long lifetime when necessary and the trigger appears to be that the competition among themselves reduces the food supply which reduces the breeding. This does appear to be in line with the body being a component as there is negative feedback (less breeding) in times of over-population.

 

The important point of the above is that it suggests that a long lifetime is available, under certain circumstances. Is this effect general across the species? It would appear so, but from our point of view, experiments on rats would be more compelling. So, ‘A life‑span study was carried out on longevity, pathologic lesions, growth, lean body mass and selected aspects of muscle of barrier‑maintained SPF Fischer 344 rats fed either ad libitum (Group A) or 60% of the ad libitum intake (Group R). Food restriction was as effective in prolonging the life of already long‑lived SPF rats as previously shown for rats maintained in conventional facilities. Food restriction not only increased the mean length of life but also acted to extend life span since more than 60% of the Group R rats lived longer than the longest lived Group A rat. Renal lesions occurred at an earlier age in Group A rats than in Group R rats and progressed more rapidly. Death of most Group A rats was associated with severe renal lesions while few Group R rats showed such lesions at death. Food restriction was also found to delay or prevent interstitial cell tumors of the testes, bile duct hyperplasia, myocardial fibrosis and myocardial degeneration. Gastrocnemius muscle mass declined in advanced age and food restriction delayed this decline. Interestingly, however, lean body mass did not progressively decline with increasing age but rather decline occurred only after the onset of the terminal disease process.’ (Life span study of SPF Fischer 344 male rats fed ad libitum or restricted diets: longevity, growth, lean body mass and disease, J Gerontol. 1982 Mar;37(2):130‑41., Yu BP, Masoro EJ, Murata I, Bertrand HA, Lynd FT., Abstract)

 

So, to simplify, food restriction not only increased the mean length of life but also acted to extend life span, Renal lesions occurred at an earlier age in Group A rats than in Group R rats and progressed more rapidly, Food restriction was also found to delay or prevent interstitial cell tumors, and interestingly, however, lean body mass did not progressively decline with increasing age but rather decline occurred only after the onset of the terminal disease process. So, it appears that rats that eat less live longer, they are healthier with less tumors etc. and interestingly (their word) body mass did not decline with age.

 

However, it should be noted that the effect for the rats is different to that of the orange roughy. The orange roughy are eating a diet that they have evolved with, albeit in short supply, but the rats are being fed a ‘man-made’ restricted diet. The longer lives of the restricted rats could have occurred because the food is not what they should be eating, but was all that they had to eat.

 

It is possible that rats have this same mechanism for increasing their life span and healthiness as the orange roughy etc. But, people do not like to restrict their food intake to the point of hunger, so we have to find a way around this problem. Another study, ‘previous investigations suggest that increased life span of calorie‑restricted rodents is a function of caloric intake rather than the macro‑ or micronutrient composition of the diet. However, the dietary source of carbohydrate has not been widely investigated. We hypothesized that the dietary carbohydrate source may affect the life span of rats independent of caloric restriction. This hypothesis was tested in male Fischer 344 rats fed ad libitum or restricted to 60% of ad libitum, an isocaloric diet containing 14% protein, 10% fat, and 66% sucrose or cornstarch. Body weights of the ad libitum‑ and restricted‑fed sucrose rats were consistently greater throughout the experimental period compared to diet‑matched animals. Food intake did not differ significantly. The survival curves of ad libitum starch‑ vs sucrose‑fed rats were significantly different. That is, the mean, median and upper 10th percentile survival were significantly greater in the ad libitum starch‑ vs sucrose‑fed rats (mean life span: cornstarch‑fed, 720 +/‑ 23 days; sucrose‑fed, 659 +/‑ 19 days). Calorie‑restricted starch‑fed rats had poorer early life survival, and no significant increase in mean life span compared to ad libitum cornstarch‑fed animals (726 vs 720 days). These animals did, however, have the greatest upper 10th percentile survival of all four experimental groups. Mean life span of calorie‑restricted sucrose‑fed rats was significantly greater than that of all other groups (890 +/‑ 18 days). The differences in survival rates between sucrose‑ and cornstarch‑fed animals could not be attributed to the effects of carbohydrate source on body weight, energy absorption, or on the timing and severity of the pathological lesions normally associated with aging and/or caloric restriction in this species. These data support the hypothesis that the dietary source of carbohydrate, i.e., sucrose vs cornstarch, can significantly affect life span independently of caloric intake.’ (Source of dietary carbohydrate affects life span of Fischer 344 rats independent of caloric restriction., J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 1995 May;50(3):B148‑54., Murtagh‑Mark CM, Reiser KM, Harris R Jr, McDonald RB., Abstract)

 

To simplify, the survival curves of ad libitum starch‑ vs sucrose‑fed rats were significantly different. That is, the mean, median and upper 10th percentile survival were significantly greater in the ad libitum starch‑ vs sucrose‑fed rats (mean life span: cornstarch‑fed, 720 +/‑ 23 days; sucrose‑fed, 659 +/‑ 19 days). Also, calorie‑restricted starch‑fed rats had poorer early life survival, and no significant increase in mean life span compared to ad libitum cornstarch‑fed animals (726 vs 720 days). Finally, mean life span of calorie‑restricted sucrose‑fed rats was significantly greater than that of all other groups (890 +/‑ 18 days).

 

Interesting! To simplify further, ad libitum starch is better than ad libitum sugar, it makes no difference with ad libitum starch or restricted starch, and a limited amount of sugar is necessary for a long life. However, the same objection must be raised here as was raised above that a rat is a sophisticated animal that is not properly fed on sugar and corn starch, so there may be other factors that should be taken into account.

 

And simplifying yet again, from the first experiment, we can restrict the nutrients, that is, we restrict the protein, fats and carbohydrates but not the antioxidants, vitamins and phytochemicals by increasing the fibre in the food by increasing use of low-starch vegetables and that added bulk of the low carbohydrate vegetables keeps the body from being perpetually hungry. A recipe that fits this suggestion for an evening meal is a vegetable bolonaise (with cheese, olive oil and tomato on top) with vegetables replacing the pasta.

 

From the second experiment, use a little sugar, but mainly fruit sugar because it is more complex, and use a maximum of low starch food, as well as a certain amount of protein and fat. The answer to this problem is nuts and seeds because they contain protein, oil and starch prepackaged into a convenient storable form that is already dried. So, a recipe for the morning might be a mueslie made from a range of seeds, dried fruits and nuts with (skim) milk to moisten and topped with extra fruit such as blueberries, raspberries and prunes (dried plums). It is important to note that only two meals a day are needed, with no snacks! Also, again, ‘interestingly, however, lean body mass did not progressively decline with increasing age’ and this I can confirm! My weight has decreased (and stabilized) until I was within the recommended Body Mass Index, with no restraint on eating or energy!

 

Of course I have cheated in suggesting these recipes because things are not as simple as outlined here, and because I am using knowledge that will be discussed in later chapters. But it is surprising that it is so easy to ‘trick’ the body into moving into certain ‘survival’ modes by replacing lack of food by fibrous foods, which begs the question, what should we be eating? Perhaps we should turn the logic around and say that if we eat less of the ‘prepared’ or manufactured food we will extend our lives, which could be what the experiment is saying!. If we add fibre to the rations so that we don’t go hungry, we live longer, and with a leap of faith, if we eat natural fresh food with plenty of fibre we should live even longer! It is hardly surprising to surmise that if we ate as they did in the Paleolithic, which matches our genes, we could (help) maximize our life span. It is interesting that it is generally acknowledged that the height of people in the Neolithic (farming) communities was about 4 inches lower than the hunter/gatherers of the Paleolithic due presumably to diet.

 

So, from the above, the human body can be considered to be a component of a group, and can change strength, IQ, longevity and much more, such as personality, obesity, cancer, heart problems, stroke etc if the body is handled correctly. Note that some of these medical problems are mentioned in one of the experiments, above. Whilst super-eusociality works for the race, nations, groups and families, the individual must strive to remain ‘at the top of the heap’, otherwise his genes will be lost to later generations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 19: How to Live Longer