Forgiveness, Plant-Based Scams, and Bitcoin

The Cultured Warrior Newsletter #009

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Thoughts to Ponder:

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself.  It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.~ Sylvia Plath

In these times of of doing what you’re told; and simultaneously told that “you can be / do anything” we’ve never been more mislead. The irony of progressive, new-age, woke, whatever you want to call it -ism is that the underlying message is that “you can (should?) be non-conforming and inclusive just like me” and parenthetically “screw you if you’re not!” Being yourself means you can’t blame culture, the media, your parents, or anyone but yourself for what you do. Electing, let alone repeating, any other narrative is succumbing and assimilating to someone else’s story and your life is no longer your own.

Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.~ C.S. Lewis

This is another painful irony right in line with gratitude, motivation, etc. What is often overlooked, in my opinion, about forgiveness is that it has little to do with the forgiven and much more to do with the forgiver. As Lewis is getting at here, a state of grace is required, not acceptance or dismissal of what’s been done, but compassion for one’s own woundedness. That is, the goal is to free one’s self from being controlled by the wounds that remain — to re-person the person. Often touted is the distinction between a victim / survivor mindset. I do think semantics — and the stories they comprise — matter greatly. I also think we can over-identify with any story whether it’s the one we want to believe or one thrust upon us by the grievous acts of someone else and the state of mind thereby induced.

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Things I’m Reading:

Plant-Based Food Companies Face Critics: Environmental Advocates

Diana Rogers, in her newsletter, said that “No food system is without a carbon footprint”, eluding to the article’s statement that “Everybody has a supply chain, and there is a carbon footprint behind that chain.”

Robb Wolf said, of the same article, on Twitter; “Wait for the WHOLE lifecycle analysis, supply chains etc to be accounted for, then show me how “sustainable” this stuff is.”

The article states that “One investor tracking firm gives Beyond Meat a zero when it comes to sustainability measures. Another rates it a “severe risk,” putting it on a par with the beef and chicken processing giants JBS and Tyson.”

“The problem, critics say, is that neither Beyond Meat nor Impossible Foods discloses the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions across all of its operations, supply chains or consumer waste. They also do not disclose the effects across all of their operations on forests or how much water they use.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is greenwashing at it’s finest.

Patrick Brown, founder and chief executive of Impossible Foods, said; “trying to account for every sustainability measure ‘is a ridiculous use of our resources,’ he said. “It will make us less impactful because we’re wasting resources to satisfy an Excel jockey rather than to try to save the planet.” Well, Mr. Brown; I suggest you put your money where your mouth is as White Oak Pastures, TruBeef, Joyce Farms, and many others have.

You’re wanting your virtue signaling to pad your bank account, but people are seeing through hour bull-s… soy-crap.

The Relationship Between Suicidal Ideation and Parental Attachment Among Adolescents

“Studies have concluded that individuals with the absence of secure parental attachment fail to learn self-regulatory strategies, which lead to negative and destructive behavior toward their peer partners.”

“Anhedonia is characterized as the loss of pleasure or lack of reactivity to pleasurable stimuli and includes anticipatory anhedonia and consummatory anhedonia, both of which show stable individual differences.”

The analysis of this study revealed an inverse total effect of parental attachment on suicidal ideation (p < 0.001) and a direct inverse effect of parental attachment on suicidal ideation (p < 0.001); and the strength of the inverse relationship by way of parental-attachment-anhedonia was more than twice as strong as peer attachment. This is particularly interesting because the study was done with a Chinese population where there is an extremely strong cultural influence and “grooming” process. If anything, this shows how deeply parent-infant attachment imprint our interactions not only with others and the world; but with ourselves. It should be noted too, that peer-attachment did have a statistically significant effect on suicidal ideation, though not as strong as the parental attachment.

Association Between Eating Speed and Metabolic Syndrome

“The meta-analysis revealed that eating faster was significantly associated with higher risks of MetS (metabolic syndrome, OR = 1.54), central obesity (OR = 1.54), elevated BP (blood pressure, OR = 1.26), low HDL (OR = 1.23), elevated TG (triglyceride, OR = 1.29), and elevated FPG (fasting blood plasma, OR = 1.16) compared to eating slowly.” This is fascinating and there are so many directions one could take this discussion. Perhaps the loudest thing speaking to me is that this triples down on the evils of “convenience food.” Not only are these foods intentionally made hyperpalatable and devoid of nutrients, extremely cheap due to government subsidies on their ingredients (double down), their packaged and convenient nature makes it easy to eat on the run or get things “to-go.” The ritual of eating with a group of people is seemingly relegated to a few holidays per year; let alone the amplified disconnection from what is required to procure a nutritious meal — and that goes for vegans, carnivores, or anyone in between.

Older Adults Who Experience Their lives to Be Completed and No Longer Worth Living

This is a pretty interesting review regarding the terminology used in literature studying euthanasia or assisted suicide. Interestingly, I recently republished a paper I had written on the subject in 2014. I’m glad to see some discussion and distinction here between non/pathological suicide. One might be tempted to say that wanting to kill one’s self is always pathological. However, I don’t know if I even have the paper anymore, before I knew I wanted to be a therapist, my last undergraduate (philosophy) paper was on “The Philosophy of Suicide.” Culture and context matter greatly here. One peacefully and cogently deciding “to meet their maker” or that their life is complete is fundamentally different process than “it’s not worth living anymore.” Even at that, are we talking about a 9 year old or a 90 year old? Who am I to tell someone that’s lived through a depression, two world wars, multiple terrorist attacks and natural disasters, and witnessed their friends and family pass away; that they continue to live in misery as long as their corporeal being persists — and by medical force if necessary (respirator, feeding tube, coma, obese, demented, diabetic, etc.)?

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Resources to Thrive:

• How Fiat Money Made Beef More Expensive: As Shawn Baker says; “Eat steak and HODL!” Even if you’re not in to tech or the crypto(currency) scene this is worth a glancing read. Why? Most of us need a financial loan at some point (education, mortgage, car loan, etc.). Most of us also still use fiat (or national) currency in our daily lives. This article illustrates how a system that essentially just prints more play money is like a game of Monopoly; except it’s not a game when food systems are being disrupted and you can’t buy a house. In short, the (banking) system that benefits from inflation is the same one that holds your loans and controls your food system because they’re the ones with the funds to distribute and invest as they please. They’re going to, obviously, invest in what’s easiest to produce — corn, soy, and if they must (corn fed and confined) pork and chicken. This doesn’t just come down to the price of the product though, chicken and pork, particularly in feed-lot examples, have a much different supply chain expense than chicken and swine (see the article above).
• Speaking of Bitcoin, here’s a nice little run down of “How Does Bitcoin Work (in 5 minutes).”

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Trainer’s Corner:

• Hydration Is More Important Than Carbohydrate During Cycle Exercise: At first I was excited about this paper, hoping that it’d point towards electrolytes and, specifically, sodium. Negative. The report concludes that hydration with water, or two other electrolyte beverages resulted in equivocal performance. They woefully conclude that it’s the carbohydrates that resulted in improved performance at lower temperatures and longer durations (relative to the electrolyte beverages) rather than indicating the relevance of electrolytes. In the year 2021 there is still the propagated myth in sports-nutrition that athletes must consume carbohydrates to perform at a high level and that simply isn’t true.