Ellie (I think) :
I keep finding more support for IE, Bob, in my phsyiology books. They knew
about the taste being selective for needed nutrients long before
GCB.
Denis :
And many more things, they also knew .... Remember that at the beginning of
knowledge was instinct...Taken literally, it also means that any
subsequent discovery , whether of a scientific or profane nature, is
likely to have estranged man from the knowledge of his own
instinct.....This drift away from easily accessible wisdom to recondite
theories which has been the alpha and omega of scientific pursuits, is of
course not palpable in times of slow scientific advance. But it can become
more tangible for the historian of science in periods of great scientific
progress such as during the XIXth c. Rereading the recent history of
science with instinctive acumen , one might realize that each time the
progress of knowledge seems to have urged for a separation, a breaking
apart of formerly inter-dependant disciplines, this split proved fatal
for the comprehension of man's instincts amongst the scholars affiliated to
any of the resulting orphaned disciplines ( this was most evident when
psychology divorced from philosophy; when neurophysiology became a
distinct discipline from physiology; when genetics got rid of its moral
predecessor called eugenics ...).There is thus a certain amount of
epistemological truth behind the widely shared impression that our
material progress goes hand in hand with a regression of true knowledge and
of wisdom ... This is especially valid when one considers the path followed
by medical science in the course of the XXth c. Escaping the weight of
eternal truths behind deceptive rationalistic arguments, has always been
a specialty of cartesian medicine ...
This I admit would be a worrisome feeling, if it weren't for the existence
of scientific traditions
and "initiated circles", which, either exoterically or esoterically, tend
to perpetuate the thought
of the great spirits of the time . The very purpose of these traditions and
circles is to avoid that
great ideas might fall into oblivion, and to preserve a most useful
knowledge in its pristine integrity.
The following exemple might be of help to understand the importance of the
above : I guess there are many people amongst you who know quite a deal
about who has done what in California in the last ten years in the field of
alternative dieting . And if somebody had ever vindicated an instinctive
point of view, writing books on the subject, you would most certainly know
about him.
But what about fourty of fifty years ago ? Not even an average life
duration. Do you consider it normal that the name of a person who has
lived half a century ago in Los Angeles, who has written on raw food and
health with definite insights into the instinctive viewpoint, be
completely obliterated within fifty small years ? Sure enough he was not a
great master, just a faithful disciple. But reading the disciple can be an
incentive for others to dig further along the lines of the master behind
the disciple , and that of the great master behind the small master....and
so on and so forth until one's philological appetite is satiated.
Tell me, those of you who think instinctive nutrition does not need zealots
: how much idealistic zealotry was really necessary for somebody like GCB
to initially decide to live instinctively on raw food alone ? And how, in
the face of his heroic stubborness to revive those ideas from a not so
distant past , do you account for the capacity of our societies to
obliterate anything which can make sense in terms of our own subjective ,
empirical self, even if it is just 50 years old ? And how do you account
for your own ignorance of what has been going on in your own country in
respect of food instinct, 50 years ago ? You think there is no need of a
sanctuary of "instinctive thought", where the original idealismn could be
preserved from further corruption of times. But what have you contributed
exactly which enables you to make such a statement ? And what is wrong
with instincto zealots, provided one's cult is not directed toward a man,
but toward an idea of Man, not toward a God, but toward an idea of God ?
Denis
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