Philosophy and the Sub-conscious

We live in a world today where we are constantly tempted by external forces pulling us in the wrong direction. We are beholden to short term gratification and lack the ability to make the correct choices. We are constantly being manipulated by big business marketing, sleazy politicians, and constant stream of manipulating news. In a world filled with so many predators, weak minded people, degenerates, fabricators, freeloaders and the like, how does one maintain a path of moral righteousness ensuring success? Without a moral philosophy, people can easily head down the wrong path in life, or be swept away into complete nihilism. That is why philosophy matters.

Back in 300BC, Greek Stoic philosopher, Zino, stressed the importance of finding a life’s purpose. People need a reason to get out of bed in the mornings. In a world of limitless possibilities and options, one needs to have a reason for being in existence so they can find the strength to move forward and deal with the challenges of their day.

Having a solid philosophy ensures that you are making proper short term decision to ensure your long term success. Many of the reasons why people fail to achieve their goals not because they lack motivation. Motivation will only get you so far, but because they lack a philosophy.

People, apart from animals, need a reason to exist. What separates us from the animals? Our ability to reason. So at the highest level, we have the ability to choose our purpose and make reasonable decisions each day to bring us a bit closer to achieving our goals. Having an ability to make reasonable choices will get us part way there, but we need to understand people are both reasonable and emotional beings.

Most people think that humans are ninety percent rational decision makers and ten percent irrational decision makers. In actuality, we are about ninety percent irrational and ten percent rational! We developed our intelligence and ability to make complex decisions over the last one hundred fifty thousand years ago, but we didn’t just grow a brand new entirely rational brain. Our rational brains are built on top of our animalistic brains. This leads to a kind of separation of consciousness in our heads between the conscious and the sub-conscious. Our seemingly singular thought process a kind of illusion presented to us by many processes that are going on in the brain.

The reason why people struggle so hard to change or stay true to their objectives is because not enough emphasis is put on the sub conscious mind. American social psychologist and professor, Jonathan Haidt, discusses in his many books, the concept of the elephant and the rider. This is an analogy used to describe our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. The rider of the elephant can make rational decisions, but if the elephant that he is riding on is not tame, then the rider is liable to get thrown off into a ditch or simply won’t be able to convince the elephant to go in the direction he wants. He may be successful with a lot of effort for a short time, but unless the elephant and the rider are on the same page, then the rider will become exhausted.

Philosophy can give us a physical, moral, and ethical framework that we can integrate into our sub consciousness so we can mike quicker conscious decisions and also encounter less resistance from our elephant when we are following through.

Warren Buffet is a Stoic

Warren Buffet has always amazed me. How could a person that is worth 83.9 billion dollars still live in a house that he bought for $32,500 in 1958?

The philosophy that inspires Warren Buffett to live simply dates back almost two thousand years ago to the Greeks. The concept of Stoicism was invented by the Greeks and later adopted by the Romans. The best example of stoicism is Marcus Aurelius. Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius could have had anything he wanted. He ruled over most of the known world and had absolute power. He had access to all the riches of Rome, but still, he lived a virtuous life. Marcus placed his moral virtue above all else. He pitied most men for their lack of virtue and as part of his calling committed himself to teaching them. His destiny was to rule over Rome and he new that he could not shy away from that responsibility, but he expected nothing in return.

Warren Buffett is similar to Marcus Aurelius in his display of temperance. There are many stories about Warren Buffett and his frugality. His license plate on his Lincoln Town car once read “Thrifty”. From his lack of flashy cars to his use of a flip phone instead of a smartphone in 2019, this is a man who can literally afford anything that he wants. Any pleasure, any desire, he could have in practically infinite quantity, but just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do it.

The important thing to realize is that these men, with all the riches in the world, don’t live this way out of some strange overly stringent sense of frugality. They do this as a part of their life philosophy which most likely extends for deeper than just frugality. This lack of desire for material pleasures in favor of temperance allows both men to operate at a different level of thinking than most. They both committed themselves to their calling, one to rule and the other to invest, and displayed no interest for material wealth. They both committed to living well below their means.

The biggest advantage to living extremely below your means is that it gives you a feeling of invincibility, a feeling that no one can hurt you. If the Roman Empire collapsed, Marcus Aurelius would be perfectly content living with nature in a small village with no money. If Warren Buffets finances collapsed, and he lost 83.8 Billion dollars, he would be perfectly content to live out his days in his modest home with absolutely no change in quality of his life.

It’s about clear thinking. If you don’t have anything to worry about and almost no material possessions, then you are more likely to think clearly in difficult situations. These men are both dedicated to their calling and not making irrational decisions. For instance, in many cases, Warren Buffett will hang on to a stock investment even if it’s price is dropping fast because he knows he is in it for the long game. His goal is to earn a healthy return and make good decisions, but he also knows that in the end, win or lose, his life will be completely unchanged. He has the ability to make his plays based on rational decisions and not emotional ones.

When we see wealthy people go off the deep end and get addicted to drugs, sex, and alcohol and ultimately blow all their wealth, we should not be asking “How did this happen?” We should be asking, “How could this not happen?” The only failsafe to keep people from completely imploding is having a philosophy to prevent it. There is no place for overconsumption of material goods in any philosophy… maybe besides hedonism.

People who have nothing and people who have everything need to be attached to a moral philosophy. A set of instructions on how to live life and bring out the most good. So next time you look at someone who is wealthy and not spending their money, and you are thinking, “Gosh, I wish that was me, because I would know the proper way to spend that money”, Just know that they have a philosophy guiding them in their life and you, most likely… do not.

Everyone should apply this type of thinking in their life. Just because you can afford that expensive car, should you get it, or would you rather be invincible? Just because you could polish off that large pizza, should you, or would you rather be healthy? Just because you can afford that expensive watch, should you, or could you invest in something more profitable? Just because you can afford to get a big fat mortgage on a house, should you, or would you rather sleep well at night not beholden to your employers every wish, because you have no choice, because you need the money, because you are paying a huge mortgage.

Next time you are in a situation where you are contemplating spending money, you should think, “What would Warren Buffet, the man who has everything, do?”

People Aren’t Vegan

Earth is a planet that was formed billions of years ago. About 3.5 billion years ago life formed. About 3 billion years ago came the first photosynthetic organisms.

Since then, organisms have been evolving in a worldwide ecosystem built on balance between evolution and resource sustainability. There have been organisms that have thrived based on photosynthesis and other organisms that have thrived based consuming photosynthetic organisms and incorporating nutrients into their own body chemistry. I would probably consider those organisms to be the first herbivores.

Then there are organisms that could eat both the photosynthetic organisms as well as the organisms described above. Those would be the first omnivores.

Over billions of years, complex
Lifeforms evolved and an almost endless spectrum of super complex organisms came into this world developing more and more complex ecosystems. These ecosystems are built on complex systems of exchanges of organic material to propagate life forward. In recent times dinosaur ruled the earth from brontosaurus to the great T-Rex. Even more recent times, like 150 thousand years ago, the first Homo sapiens came into being.

Through the millennia basic structures emerged in these populations of animals. Organs like lungs or gills, the stomach, pancreas, gallbladder, liver, small intestine, cecum, anus etc. These organs are built to facilitate the process of this exchange of organic material that occurs across organisms. They provide a place for the breakdown of food and facilitate the creation of enzymes and hormones that control this process.

Depending on the organism, this combination of organs can be configured in such a way that is better for breaking down fiber and cellulose or better at consuming materials like fats and proteins. It just depends on the animal and it’s place in the ecosystem at a particular time in evolutionary history.

No animal is purely an herbivore and no animal is purely a carnivore. For instance, a tiger primarily eats meat, but you will still see it ripping out blades of grass with its teeth or munching on the stomach of an animal that is full of grass. Even animals like deer or cattle have been known to eat small animals, like an unsuspecting mouse that wanders too close to a cow that is feeding or insects that are hanging out on the blades of grass consumed by cattle.

These examples above show that all animals fall on a spectrum. Nature does not care about life or death or consciousness or any of that. It really doesn’t care about anything. It just “is” and everything evolves in a balance.

Because there are very few to no purely carnivorous or pure herbivores, it is reasonable to say that all animals fall to on a spectrum. Now it is just a matter of determining where each animal falls on that spectrum.

Both humans and chimpanzees come from the closest genetic line about 6+ million years ago. This common relative was an herbivore that primarily survived based on fruit but most likely ate small game. Since then we have evolved in different directions. Chimpanzees went on to eat mostly fruit with a small portion of their diet coming from meat. You can tell this because of their larger rounder gut. This is because they have a shorter large intestine and a longer more voluminous colon/cecum/large intestine for digesting large quantities of fruit and fibrous material.

Humans on the other hand have a smaller more tapered gut. We have a larger small intestine, a smaller large intestine, and a cecum that has evolved away. The reason for this de evolution is because for whatever reason humans shifted more to the omnivorous side. We started to eat more meat and less fruit, roots, etc than our closest relative who still maintained its more vegetarian diet. We stood upright which gave us the ability to use tools and move quickly. We developed the ability to run marathons and sweat, which helped us to hunt in packs and run our prey to exhaustion. We developed the ability to throw a 100 mph fastball, which can be traced back to humans evolving the capability to throw the spear at mammoths and other prey. The ph in our stomach dropped as low as 1.5 so we could eat not only just meat, but rotting meat and marrow from bones, from animals killed by other predators and because we had no refrigeration.

An example of this efficiency of killing can be shown in examples where tribes of humans have run whole herds of wild horses off cliffs or how all the mammoths are now extinct. Or how in Australia there are no large megafauna after 40000 years ago, exactly when people got there.

There isn’t a place on the earth that you can go where animals don’t fear humans. That is because we have killed all animals who don’t know to fear us. My argument is that people are the most effective predator to ever roam the planet. We make velociraptors from Jurassic park look like telatubbies compared to us.

People are not that smart. Everything you hear about the negative affects of meat steams from epidemiological studies that combine people who eat meat with other processed foods such as sugar, bread, starch. They don’t account for people who smoke and use alcohol. The bottom line is that if a person were to eat only meat and organs, they would be absolutely fine. All nutrients that we need to survive can be found in animals. The negative effects only happen when you combine meat with bad food like tons of sugar. Or when you process it. Or when you create it in factories with a lot of antibiotics. Etc.

If a person at only ate grass fed organic meat and organs, it would be very difficult to find anyone with negative health challenges. If someone wants to eat fruits and veggies, I would suspect a diet like the paleo would be best, because in a world of abundance like we have now, people could get themselves into trouble if they eat too much of the wrong plants.

My biggest point is most animals are omnivorous. It just depends on the type of animal. It is definitely possible to live on only plants and also possible to live on only meat. That is the beauty of being human. We evolved to do both.

If we want to try to get into morality, environment, etc. that would be an entirely different discussion with great points on both sides, but I think everyone should be able to agree that humans are not strictly vegan. It’s just not true.

If we wanted to make an argument that it would be good to start shifting over to a plant based diet as a species and give us the time necessary to evolve to it, then that would make more sense to me, but we aren’t there now. that is a discussion that makes sense, but it will be many thousands of years before we would evolve to run optimally on a plant based diet.

Willpower and Diet

Over the last year, I have lost about 44 lbs. This was accomplished through dieting (keto) and incremental fasting (mainly sticking to carnivore/keto and not eating breakfast). Today, I just completed a 5 day fast consisting of eating nothing and drinking only bone broth and water. For a lot of reasons, which I will explain later, this is the best way to lose weight. I had actually planned on fasting indefinitely until I hit my goal weight but a bout if dizziness, constant irritability, and an overall lack of productivity left me feeling like I couldn’t continue anymore unless I got a small meal. I ended up eating a meal which consisted of three eggs and four pieces of bacon. Even though I was failing my fast, I have never enjoyed eggs and bacon more in my live.

In the several weeks before starting the fast, I was not diligent in sticking to my keto diet and incremental fasting. Work trips and food binges were consistently getting the better of me. I was starting to see all the weight loss progress I have made over the last 10 months slip away. Feeling bad about the lost progress, I made a quick resolve to fast until I had achieved my goal weight of 175 lbs down from 230 lbs.

Despite the backward slide, I have been learning a lot about myself. One of the things that I am learning is that I do have willpower.

Fasting can really teach us a lot about willpower. One of the things that people don’t understand is how much willpower it takes to complete a fast whether it is for sixteen hours, eight days, or more….

One of the strategies that I have been using to be able to deal with hunger pains is to tell myself, “It’s a good thing that I have a lot of willpower, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do this”. This gives myself a kind of reassurance that I can push through any discomfort that I am feeling. The only times when I will quit is if I feel like I am not able to think clearly, too crabby to those around me, or unable complete my day to day work and personal responsibilities.

There are a lot of people out there that have literally no willpower. They look at discomfort as a bad thing. If they go without food, they think they are going to die. If someone says something that upsets them, they get swept away by negative emotion. They don’t realize that physical discomfort is not a bad thing. Its a good thing. Many of them use food or drugs as a crutch. They are looking for an escape from past trauma or are unhappy in their life.

I actually feel very bad for people who are dealing with addictions and trauma. I feel bad for people who are constantly giving in to their cravings or taking drugs to numb their physical or psychological discomfort. What they don’t understand is that every time they eat a cookie or a piece of cheesecake, they are making their willpower weaker. Every time they take a painkiller or anti anxiety pill, they are making themselves weaker.

Too many diets focus on “what to eat” and “what not to eat” without first focusing on peoples ability to harness their own willpower. In the word we live in today, we are constantly being marketed to with processed foods containing sugar, and prescription drugs. Hungy? Eat a Snickers. Feeling down? Take a Xanax.

The first conversation that needs to be had with people who have overeating disorders or drug addictions is a conversation about willpower. They need to understand that comfort is not the way to improve themselves. Only pain and discomfort will cause the spirit to grow stronger.

People need to be taught first strategies and methods to increase their willpower and once they learn that they do have willpower and how good it feels to be in control. Then they can make progress to cure their food and drug addictions.