Signals From The Earth

A friend I hadn’t seen in some time recently contacted me asking for tips on changing her diet. She wanted to start eating 75% raw food (after completing a juice cleanse), and since she knew that I was vegan, she wanted to know if I had any ideas on how to fight cravings. This was my response:

Although I eat a great deal of raw food, I wouldn’t consider myself a raw foodist; I am, however, a vegan, and have been for about five years. However, as you already know, there’s a lot of overlap: most raw foodists are vegan by implication.

My experience was drawn out. I first gave up fast food in college after reading Fast Food Nation, and shortly thereafter gave up red meat. After a few months, I went vegetarian, and stayed that way for about six months. Only then did I start to make the transition to vegan, which for me took about another six months. I’m a slow but steady kind of person, so this is how I do just about anything new.

I will say that I never missed red meat or fast food. But I did experience cravings. I remember there were nights when I would have dreams about eating pork chops. My theory (and I believe I’ve seen this corroborated somewhere) is that cravings are your body’s way of telling you you’re missing out on some nutrient. When I first went vegetarian, my diet probably wasn’t terribly balanced, and I think this is an issue for many people. The good news is that if you replace unhealthy food with nutritionally superior food, your cravings will fade and be replaced for a desire for quality meals.

Going vegetarian wasn’t hard for me, but going vegan was harder than quitting smoking. It’s not that my cravings were very intense, but rather that the food environment in which we find ourselves is fairly hostile. We are barraged from all sides by foods that are packed with many things you’ll be wanting to avoid. My suggestions are:

1. Change your environment. Sometimes we have little control over the kind of food that surrounds us. But there’s a lot we can do. For the first while, try to minimize your outings to unfriendly restaurants where you’ll be tempted to compromise. Purge your pantry of unwanted junk. Eat mostly what you cook. If you feel awkward about avoiding a social situation, you can just tell people why, and mostly they’ll understand– or even accommodate.

2. Treat yourself to health. It’s easy to see a healthy diet as a form of self-deprivation. But actually, it’s the opposite: you’re working extra hard to give your body what it needs and wants. The trick is to remind yourself of this in different ways. Get yourself a plethora of healthy foods you normally wouldn’t. Surround yourself with great options. Present things in a fun way. After all, the fun presentation of most junk food or cultural comfort food is half the reason we are drawn to it. This is especially important for meals you make at home or bring to work. Celebrate your new way of life.

3. Get some perspective. I can’t say I’m a believer in the juice cleanse, and I have my reasons. First, it’s unhealthy. It’s true that fasting removes toxins from your body, but that’s because those toxins have been stored safely in your fatty tissues. Releasing them rapidly has been demonstrated to shorten your lifespan. Your body just isn’t designed to deal with that much toxin at once. It’s a major strain. I think the reason the diet is so popular is that it creates the alluring fetish of a rapid reversal of unhealthy behaviors, leading to a new self in a few days of intense concentration.

But for most people, the problem with eating right isn’t short term concentration. It’s the long run. I have a friend who has been trying to quit smoking for years. Every time he quits, he is good for about two weeks. Then he gets bored. What is he going to do when he goes out and drinks, or is sitting at his computer at night? So he starts back up again, and is frustrated by his failure. What he doesn’t get is that even two weeks of quitting is a major victory. If he were to quit once a month, he would only be smoking half the time. I know that sounds funny, but it’s true: it’s really the long run average of your behavior that determines your lifelong health profile.

The same is true for food. I like the idea that you’re changing three-quarters of your diet. If you can eat right for half your meals every day, or even one meal, and stick with it for the rest of your life, that’s much better than changing your whole routine for a week, or even a few years, before giving up on health and eating the way your peers or family do. If you make slow, sustainable changes, everything will fall into place: cravings will reverse into a desire for good food, habits will work for you instead of against you, you will learn new things about food and your own body, and instead of fighting you, others around you will begin to learn from your example and follow your lead.

I hope this helps.

Do we still like President Obama? This seems like a question many liberals have been wrestling with as the first year of the young chief’s term wraps up. He’s made gestures toward his major campaign promises, but they are showing little substance. He has managed to negotiate a turnaround in the stock market, but unemployment is still rising. He declared a plan to close Guantanamo, but detainees are still languishing in legal turmoil. And the historic ACESA bill (American Climate and Energy Security Act) has stalled out in the House. But he’s at the pulpit, pushing for its support. So why can’t a popular president, who seems to be committed to a progressive agenda, and whose party commands a once-in-a-generation majority in Congress, manage to close on any of his primary agenda items?

American power is exercised by industry and professional groups. And the most powerful ones in the country are all arrayed against Mr. Obama. He has cut the Department of Defense budget for the first time in a decade, intentionally picking a fight with the military-industrial heavy hitters; his energy policies take aim at the bread and butter of America’s oil giants and auto barons; and now, the Democrats’ health care bill threatens to squeeze the profit margins of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance conglomerates. This makes the bill an uphill battle, and one on which Obama has been hesitant to commit. Obama is notoriously averse to being on the losing side. On multiple occasions, he has declined to stump for party allies in local races where the odds seemed grim. So while Pelosi and the left wing of the party have stated in no uncertain terms that the public option is a non-negotiable part of any healthcare bill, center-right Blue Dog Dems from Southern districts have practically jumped ship, saying that government healthcare will never pass– all the while with the President remaining rhetorically aloof. So the question becomes this: is Obama using wise tactics to allow for the development of a politically feasible compromise bill that will finally make America into a mature democracy, or is he hedging his bets, fearing that this bill, like every comprehensive healthcare reform since LBJ, will soon go belly-up, and take his political capital with it?

If the president is riding the fence to spare his boots, we all have reason to fear. Without the popular leader’s visible support, it’s difficult to imagine a successful showdown in the House, where Democratic cohesion is loose and uncertain. But the case appears to be otherwise. Obama may not want to lose face, but he is committed to victory in some form on healthcare. Which means that whatever bill seems most likely to pass in the House should have his backing. At this point, it’s neither the worst or the best of all worlds. The amount of federal involvement in proposed measures has run the gamut. The now-recessed committee in charge of drafting a bill for the House produced a bill with no public option whatsoever (the committee chairman thought any government initiative would never pass); while some versions floated in the last few months have included a full-blown federal insurance competitor, with minimal buy-in costs and the power to negotiate with Big Pharma on the cost of drugs. What we have now is somewhere in the middle. Instead of a fully government-administered agency, the House bill posits a system wherein non-profit healthcare cooperatives would receive federal subsidies to provide low-cost healthcare to millions of Americans, while simultaneously expanding Medicare to insure millions more who perhaps can’t afford private insurance. It also provides Medicare the aforementioned ability to bargain with pharmaceutical manufacturers. In limbo is the much-talked-about “trigger mechanism,” whereby if insurance rates did not decrease by sufficient margins within a certain number of years, a full-fledged public option would automatically be put in place.

And that ain’t bad. In the comparative history of government healthcare in the West, great institutions are the inheritors of small beginnings. In the UK, as you may know, the NHS developed out of wartime provision of medicine to displaced city dwellers fleeing Nazi bombs. But after the war, the service proved so popular that it eventually became one of the most central elements in British governance. It is also the most expensive.

Our most expensive budget item is warfare. One reason why military budgets have ballooned since World War II is what economist call the endowment effect: people who would not be willing to spend an extra amount of money (viz., the cost for another fighter jet) are simultaneously unwilling to give up what they believe they already have (viz., the fighter jet) in exchange for the cost. This is irrational in the abstract, but points to a fundamental condition of human behavior: risk-aversion leads us to fear change, especially in fundamental provisions for our way of life. Even if we don’t feel we could afford to buy an extra amenity, we avoid selling a current amenity (even at a fair price) for fear of unintended consequences. What load was that amenity bearing, and how will my life change once it’s gone? I can never get rid of the clothes in my closet for the same reason. And I’m betting that ten years down the line (2012 apocalypse predictions notwithstanding), conservatives who wouldn’t spend a dime on socialized medicine today wouldn’t give it up for a million bucks. So what happens to a budget that can’t shrink? The only way to go is up.

It will ail what cures you. www.selfloathinguniverse.com.

You can view my second comic here. Also, my friend Jay Hathaway has some delicious comics news at his blog.

I made a philosophy comic.

I never linked to my last week’s arts column in the Austin Enchilada. Another goes up tomorrow. I have been wondering what kind of writing I enjoy doing the most, and what kind of writing I admire. Then I happened upon this article by Peter Schjeldahl. Although Schjeldahl was previously unrecognizable to me, he is a well-known American art critic. But while most art criticism tends to focus on theory, Schjeldahl’s writing is immediately engaging in a literary sense. It is not just that he succeeds in transmitting to me his immediate and contemplative mental state regarding art; he succeeds in placing that information in the context of shared cultural experience. Recommended.

Read it here.

I have been writing articles on a handful of websites recently. Check out my vegetarian recipes here and my nutrition news updates here. I haven’t updated either in a few days, but will soon. Also, I have an arts article in the first edition of the new Austin lifestyle site Austin Enchilada, which launches Thursday August 6th.

The other day in Rittenhouse Square, I saw a young, stylishly dressed couple playing with a deck of cards that looked familiar. On closer inspection, they were from the “Necronomicon” collectible card game. I’ve never played it, but it reminded me of my time playing “Magic: The Gathering” and its relatives as an adolescent. I shouldn’t have been surprised, either. It’s become socially acceptable to talk about your CCG proclivities on Twitter (a nerdy medium at its core). And now I’m told that numerous bespectacled celebrities, including Moby, have confessed their love of Dungeons and Dragons. My reaction, when my brain began to collate this trend, was an enthusiastic “fuck this.”

I love geeky games. I was among the most painstaking roleplaying dweebs. I spent years of my life lost in the constructed realms of various fantasy games, and would never trade those years in. I made some of my best friends in the process. It was also cheaper than driving around stoned.

But gamers were also quietly ostracized. Most of my peers saw the activity as  déclassé, despite it making most teenage hobbies (like pretending to be old enough to drink Coors Light) look stultifying by comparison. Gaming was also symptomatic of my preexisting social isolation. It’s probably no coincidence that in high school, I excelled at the two activities, roleplaying and policy debate, whose rules dictated that the other participants listen to what I had to say.

Most gamers were outcasts. The notion of the dorky basement dweller and his level 4 magic user is not a myth from the ’70s. I have met him, even if he sometimes is from the ’70s. So why the resurgence? On first glance, one might as well ask why big-framed glasses are now trendy. Irony is a massive engine, and burns through our collective predilections at a rapid pace. As soon as D&D and its ilk were famous enough in their nerdiness to become symbolic, their adoption by the cultural avante-garde was inevitable.

But it’s not ugly ducklings bringing back gaming.The people behind the now-nascent cooling of RPGs and other basement addictions are the same people who are unironically adopting the identity of the nerd as a social positive. Presumably, they have come out of the basement, they have jobs and disposable income, and even kids of their own, and want their value to be recognized. That sounds great. But I hate it.

I consider myself an ex-geek. However, I rejected geekdom because it was unprincipled, not because it was unpopular. At first, it was the massive outlays of time that hurt my schoolwork. Then, it was the realization that immersion in my remaining fantasies of computer games and my own mental mythology were short-circuiting my desires from becoming expressions, actions. Outgrowing the geek persona was not an act of self-denial; it was a process of self-actualization.

So who is heralding the new “chic of geek”? First, most of the people calling themselves geeks would never last an afternoon around the card table. I’ve heard graphic designers, beer snobs, administrative law experts, and painters describe themselves as geeks. I’ve even heard hipsters presuming to “geek out” about the latest Pitchfork pick. These people are missing the point: being a geek wasn’t just the complex state of obsession that led brainy kids and social rejects to worship their mythic alter egos; it required a second element, the element of repression and marginalization that prevented their energy from finding external purchase.

What about the kids who never truly outgrew their geekiness? I know more than my fair share. Some find a productive niche as software engineers, or librarians, somewhere they won’t have to face the social realities of their organization. Not great artists, but often great people. But you’d be surprised how many dyed-in-the-wool geeks drop out of school, and never make it out of their home towns. These kids’ inability to engage reality prevented whatever act of creativity it might have taken to be who they wanted. Many geeks never make it out of the basement.

But it’s not that the cool kids are mocking our kitchy collective subculture. It’s the opposite: fairly mainstream or at least well-adjusted adults are recognizing the unironic allure of our beloved pasttimes. It’s fun, it’s social, and in the aftermath of Harry Potter, doesn’t seem that weird. In light of this, I’ve come to terms. The up-and-coming renaissance of D&D is less like our love of Reefer Madness and more like our love of croquet: in the absence of the social distinction that made the activity alternately clubby or pretentious, we are left with a basically fun game we can play with our friends.

And this is the larger story as well: it’s not that the society has entered the enclosure, but rather that the enclosed objects have permeated into society. We now live in an information age with information lifestyles. Everybody spends time on their computer, everybody is a specialist, everyone is obsessed with media, everybody has to think. But this does not make everyone a geek, any more than playing croquet on your college quad makes you upper class. The rules of the game have changed, and now the once-off-limits is acceptable.

Take anime. Sure, you’re all wearing glasses and riding bicycles, but you won’t admit to watching stylized cartoons from Japan. That’s because you don’t. The people that do are varied, but many of them are socially inept. Actually inept, not just pretending. And anime has a lot in common with D&D: although some works are quite sophisticated, the majority play on amped-up symbolism and simplified archetypes to evoke a hero drama that’s powerfully seductive to children– and anyone else who hasn’t matured psychologically. Eventually, the finer works of the genre will become acceptable fanfare for everyone. Until then, ask yourself: would I fit in at a screening of Evangeleon? Or am I just saying I’m a geek? You don’t have to tell anyone the answer. I wouldn’t want you to lose your cred.