Rachel said:

>Kirt said,
>
>>>The paleolithic diet is sound for reasons of evolutionary biology and it is
>>>certainly interesting and enlightening to immerse onself in some of the
>>>habits and trappings of paleo life. That is however as far as it goes, at
>>>least for me. I think anyone who would actually prefer a real paleolithic
>>>lifestyle over this one needs to have his head examined.  :)

FTR, that wasn't me. ;)

I never tell someone to have their head examined--I try to examine it! ;)

But the rest was,

>>Gordon brings up a point which will not be appreciated here but is
>>important nonetheless: the overwhelming tendency to romanticize
>>hunter-gatherer life (and by extension, esp for instinctos, wild animal
>>life). Whether this tendancy is simply a fad romance for relatively
>>unfulfilled people (no doubt because they are stuck in modern times instead
>>of Neanderthal, eat-them-CroMagnonbrains-get osteoperosous, times ;)) or
>>because there is some sort of spinal-cord-new-age calling to
>>get-back-to-basics, I can't say, but perhaps it is as simple as some folks
>>needing to feel _special_. Who knows?

Rachel:
>I don't romanticize cave man times,
>but I certainly have learned a lot from the works of those who studied more
>primitive people over the past 100 or so years and can see the undeniable
>consequences of falling out of harmony with nature, over populating,
>weakening the soil, and the people who depend on it for life.

I see those things too. Yet I still see the romanticizing. Some to an
almost religious exteme, where all evil is explained, all good defined. It
may be that such a belief system helps a person feel important, even better
than da rest of da shmucks out der, cause they are so privy to the whole
Truth and nothing but the Truth.

>I, for one, am not trying to feel special, and doubt most folks on this list
>are..... I am endeavoring to feed myself, my husband, my friends the most
>nourishing food possible and to teach as many people as I can to do the
>same.

Whether you are consciously trying to feel special doesn't really matter.
Indeed, if you were conscious of trying to belong to some special group
with a special belief system in order to bolster your sense of satisfaction
and worth, it probably would not be as interested in devoting the brunt of
your time and energy to spreading the word, or evangelizing.

I am as interested in the subjects you mention as you are, I suspect. In
that sense you are preaching to the choir. ;) The issue of romanticizing
h-g's remains though. Let's face it. You very deeply believe (come on now,
admit it ;)) that if everyone on the planet ate paleo, had untechnical
births (and deaths), breastfed, co-slept, etc etc (whatever your A-1 list
of the behaviors you have selected from h-g's is), that most of the world's
problem would not exist, that most people's problems wouldn't exist if they
only were raised and fed in a paleo way. If you didn't think along these
lines, why would you want to "teach as many people as [you] can to do the
same"?

As a practical matter, the books are easily obtained and available if a
person is attracted to the paleo matters. It's not like there is some
conspiracy or book burning going on. So it's not the media standard. So
what? Most cool stuff isn't, it seems to me. But that's simply because my
interests are often not the same as the media standard, except for
Seinfeld, of course. Of course, I feel special because of that. ;) But
liking Seinfeld helps me belong. ;)

Why would you want to change someone else to be interested in what you're
interested in? I am saying that, perhaps, part of the reason is that you
will feel less alienated, more important, even more loved--in a word,
special. My point is that this is, perhaps, part of the reason people
evangelize all sorts of things, not just lunch. (So the question is: is
evengelizing paleo? ;))

It also may be that if it is admitted that paleo folks have a tendency to
romanticise h-g's, that that feeling of, "Ah, finally, I have discovered a
belief system that gives me direction, that makes sense of information
overload, that simplifies the complex, that marks what is right and what is
wrong, etc."--that feeling (along with the feeling of being superior) gets
burst a bit. It sounds like many people around here have gone through that
with vegetarianism, and they probably can relate to what I'm talking
about--but they would have had a harder time with it when they were in
their vegetarian stage.

None of this is the end of the world--not at all--but I am always curious
how people view these things. Looks like there is a wide variety of
different folks attracted to the paleo ideas, judging by the diverse posts
on the topic...

Cheers,
Kirt