Sourcing Energy Sources

Occasionally, fire-altered mammalian flesh can taste great!

Have you ever witnessed a baby’s first reaction to refined sugar? It’s almost as if you can see the addiction set in.

Obesity and diabetes continue trending upward. In the United States, one in ten people [more than 100 million] suffer from diabetes or its symptomatic precursors. About a third of the global population are either overweight or obese.

Uh, what could cause this trend if not food?

Children born today have been said to represent the first generation since, like, ever predicted to not live as long as their parents.

It has been a polarizing topic, so let’s not argue about it; instead, let’s isolate the simplest of facts demanding widespread acknowledgement: the more something weighs, the more energy it requires to keep up with everything else.

This cycle is yet another which feeds itself.

Why are we mindlessly eating what we’re strategically being fed?

More specifically, why aren’t we listening to our bodies when they protest or revolt?

Predators on earth share certain physical characteristics that humans do not feature, e.g. sharp teeth, claws, and jaws that don’t move from side to side like those found in primates, which, in tandem with flat teeth, are meant to grind down tough plant material.

Just because you can eat red meat doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to. A dog will lap up a puddle of antifreeze because it enjoys the flavor.

Instant gratification comes with consequences.

I don’t care how bloody you like your ribeye, there’s no way your mouth will water while watching a bull crap. Have you ever witnessed it? To call it eventful would be a gross understatement. Upon observing one of those overfed creatures standing in a pasture expelling a powerful flood of hot shit like a busted fire hydrant, might you stop and think, “Mmmm, I wanna tear off that animal’s skin and sink my molars into its torso flesh”?

When you imagine chowing down on red meat, you probably picture a hamburger, steak, or maybe a piece of elk if you’re hip, all of which may sound and taste delightful {especially the elk since you probably shot it (with an arrow)}, but, for example, cattle are neither hamburger nor steak. Those are small cuts of flesh, altered by fire and seasoning, far removed from the creatures that once carried them around as weight.

We season our meat to make it palatable.

And with what (besides salt) do we season literally everything we eat?

Plants.

Nature has a way of letting life know what should be consumed.

How do you think lions know to eat zebras?

Was a memo issued 3-4 million years ago?

Do lions season their meat with salt and herbs then roast it over an open flame?

No, they stalk, pounce, rip, chomp, kill, and eat their protein raw and bloody.

See a man do that and you’ll assume insanity.

However, if you add the process of cooking with fire to the equation, envision the same man holding silverware inside the safety of a five-star restaurant, throw in a hundred-dollar bottle of fermented grape juice made a quarter-century ago, and he might be viewed as civilized.

Now picture someone across the table eating a peach.

Now picture that same someone eating a peach in the wild.

Now tell me the difference.

Let’s pretend you haven’t eaten in days, and you find a plump pig rolling in slop. Your first instinct most likely wouldn’t be to attack the animal and try to bite off a hefty chunk of its porky butt.

Again, I’m all too aware that bacon is delicious.

But swine, slabs of bacon are not.

There’s no way in hell humans are meant to eat pork.

Or anything with hooves.

Or anything with hair.

Next time I see a pig fly, I’ll eat my words.

I know there are people who have enjoyed a pound of bacon every morning for the last thirty years and claim to feel great. I wonder how they’d feel if they hadn’t eaten bacon religiously all those years.

Several millennia ago, killing wild animals wasn’t as easy as it is now. Our ancestors had to put their lives in jeopardy by getting up close and personal while using primitive weapons, primal ferocity, and messy aggression. The ancients had to adopt and ingrain a violent approach in order to hunt successfully—in other words, in an effort to secure calories.

In other words, early humans ensured insurance by getting down and dirty.

In other words, the oldest of the old-timers did what they had to do to stay alive.

Since there isn’t exactly much growth in an age of ice, we may have gone extinct due to starvation if not for mammalian meat. All that extra protein caused our ancestral brains to grow. In fact, I do believe that we owe our planetarily supreme levels of intelligence to figuring out how to stomach flesh.

That was then.

Where are we now?

Maybe vanilla human brain growth outpaced the natural evolutionary trajectory.

Maybe that’s why we’re so mixed up.

Maybe this is a cost of not being extinct.

Cool.

Let’s fix it.

Controlling a flame does not mean we should be doing everything that fire can do.

Our bodies have let us know via blatant repetition that adequate hydration must be prioritized above food.

Water opposes fire. Fire purifies water. Do the math.

Of the elemental quartet identified by the Greek philosopher Empedocles in the fifth century prior to the time of Jesus Christ—earth, air, water, fire—which can be destroyed by the other three?

A fire can die by drowning.
A fire gets blown away by overly stiff winds.
A fire will suffocate by cutting off the oxygen supply.

Can you make any sense out of the previous three statements after inserting the words “A human” in place of “A fire”?

I guess we should slap a mental asterisk beside the other three pillars in the fearlessly fearsome foursome since fire would have a hard time living without each.

Here’s an example covering a fourth less than the whole: when presented with a little breeze [air], and contingent upon exposure to a lot of fuel [earth], flames [fire] may spread.

In eight other words that can be easily interpreted in an all-inclusive manner, water breathes the fire of life into earth.

I’m sure this must mean something.

Technically, we don’t need fire to survive right now, but when used responsibly, it will have an undeniably positive impact on our life expectancy as a species.

Adding heat to some of our natural food sources alters it in beneficial ways. For instance, cooking kale breaks down an iodine-blocking compound. Your body needs iodine to make thyroid hormones. Handy!

Food	Increases When Cooked
Mushrooms	Potassium
Tomatoes	Lycopene [major antioxidant]
Carrots	Beta-carotene

Examples aplenty. I can’t list everything, okay?

Also, for vegetables with thick cell walls such as asparagus, we couldn’t absorb nearly as much of the essential vitamins if we didn’t first apply heat, a.k.a. cook.

But these types of foods already tick all the boxes on nature’s checklist.

Can you think of any likely outcomes from eating livestock raw?

I’ll bet you can.

I’ll double-down and bet that those possible outcomes don’t sound pleasant.

Eating for the sake of enjoyment exemplifies misprioritization. You don’t need calories that are fun to consume. You need calories that maximize your potential in terms of energy. When I realized this, I started spending the extra cash on organic options made by smaller companies and saved money by omitting beef, dairy, and pork. The results have been a decrease in food budget, and a huge gain in overall energy levels. Next on the chopping block: gluten, sugar, and caffeine.

Consider any potential source of calories.
If it looks bad, smells bad, and tastes bad in its natural state, then it’s probably not good.
If it tastes good now and feels bad later, then it’s probably not good.
If you’re unhappy with your overall health, then you’re probably not fueling your body as well as you could.

Food fuels and charges your body similar to how electricity juices up and enables a vehicle or a cellphone.

How good at functioning is a car without gas or a phone without power?

In simple terms, your body is a machine that processes the energy you need in order to move.

There are many sources of energy available for consumption in our universe, but all bodies can’t be good at processing every bit of it. That would make no sense. Duh.

If we want, we can connect our phone cords to outlets that pump out too much wattage, just as we are free to funnel granulated sugar into our fuel tanks, but those choices bind us to inescapable consequences in the future.

Freedom of choice does not imply exemption from adversity.

Are you skeptical that an icy hundred-thousand-year age of punishing food scarcity could embed into DNA and manifest as greed in the human brain?

Look at how dogs act around food. When did wolves start eating from the hand of man? Could it have been when we started eating flesh? It must have been.

When we started eating flesh, we got addicted, greedy and smart; meanwhile, wolves grew reliant, smaller and dumber—in another word, domesticated.

In other words, wolves became dogs, our favorite creature to pet.

We may not all like to admit stuff, but we know these things.

How many people don’t know how it feels to pig out on entire meaty pizza while washing it down with a liter of cola? Not the act itself—obviously that part’s fun or people wouldn’t do it. What about half an hour later? How does that aspect feel?

Time is funny like that.

It’s hard to think ahead.

Your brain can’t quite fully process data that doesn’t yet exist.

It can only be truly concerned with the stimuli it processes at any given moment.

The future, even one second from right now, cannot be guaranteed.

We never know when time might expire.

No wonder we’re increasingly keen on instant gratification.
No wonder the average attention span dwindles on the daily.
No wonder we want what we want and we want it now, damn it!

How often do you get to escape from all the noise of daily life and simply be with your mindful body of workable thoughts?

Meditation may sound like hippie mumbo-jumbo to a lot of people—admittedly, it used to sound like that to me—but I’m starting to suspect that it’s a lost art the world would do well to rediscover as a whole.

We need more time.

Time to ourselves.

Time to take detailed inventory, to make honest self-assessments, to know where we came from, to understand why we’re here, to feel the essence of who we really are.

This is the kind of information you don’t have to share with anyone.

Why do you do what you do?

Why must you believe what you believe?

Personally, I don’t think beliefs should be selected, particularly from an incomplete catalog.

Any system of belief should be the product of curious beings acting curiously, of wanting to know more, of seeking, collecting, vetting, and storing data, and furthermore of advancing knowledge achieved organically, arrived at unexpectedly, realized out of the blue like an afternoon summer thunderstorm.

Far too often, more and more, we feel the need to choose a side.

It’s splitting us down the middle.

The U.S. in particular finds itself tearing into two very different camps with diverging ideologies.

In other words, the country is dividing not unlike a nucleus during mitosis.

Why can’t debates be cordial?

Why must arguments inspire violence?

Why is everyone so insanely hostile about the most petty of topics?

I’ve seen hatred develop because someone dislikes the technological epidemic of pedestrian food pics and/or resents the bold parade of selfies featuring the same facial expression that others post online for public consumption.

We choose to look at things that irritate us.

Then we tell someone else in our tribe.

Then we feed off negative energy.

When we go looking for trouble, guess what we find.

On that note, I’m aware of the distinct possibility that no one will read this sentence, or the last, or the previous, or all the ones written prior, or the next sentence in this chapter blog, which doesn’t exist.

(Or does it?)

💨

I won’t lie.
I almost panicked earlier when I thought we could teach somebody how to listen to the past.
I’ve been told I’m related to Chuck Yeager and General Lee.
To refer to this historical knowledge as mind-bending means to undersell its genealogical significance.
With a sound that can only ring true, the speed of freedom would be wise to heed.
It may not happen this time, but happen, it will in deeds.
Will it.
Ever.
Do you know which question you’ve been asked more than any other in your entire life?
I don’t.
But maybe you do.
I might know what mine is.
“You’re never wrong, are you?”
In other words, “you’re an asshole.”
In other words, we’re “always” right!
If there’s one thing I am, it ain’t right.
I might have my favorite Pandora station to thank, I think.
This is hard to explain.
It keeps me on track.
It (em)powers me.
The music it delivers has served as fuel during major writing outbursts, particularly the 3 that had me convinced the world was about to change.
Alone in my shelter, I would dance like a fool.
Goddamn.
That felt good.
If it’s called “Energized Wavelengths” when you’re interested, then it shouldn’t be too hard to locate.
I have overseen its development just as it has overseen mine.
Think of it as the pulsating rhythm of our time.
Try to remain calm when the artists speak to you directly.
Did I plant seeds that would later wash my own brain?
How the hell would you know anyway?
Don’t get me wrong.
I’m happy we’ve teamed.
You must teem with curiosity.
Are we searching for something?
Dunno what anyone expects to find here except for answers to every
fucking question. (Hi.)
In other words, it’s a trap!
This is no more a basic handbook than it is your average mystery novel.
Honestly, I thought I was finished.
Dead in the water.
Completely kaput.
Twice.
Writing isn’t enough.
People have to figure it out on their own.
Sometimes it’s hard to find the line between what’s not real and what is
imaginary.
This style represents an evolution in character, the arc of a hero who never materialized, the ghost of a narrator itching to guide a story, the would-be star of a no-budget mockumentary that stalled out in pre-production.
More importantly (I think), it allows a glimpse back in time to a pivotal period when I felt lost, excited, abused, confused, amused, hopeful, and vulnerable.
Perhaps I should’ve mentioned this already.
How the hell should I know?
These days, I’m an absolute mess.
These days, public appearances carry a compounding mental tax.
These days, every time I listen to a recording of Where Does My Heart Beat Now, I become more convinced that our favorite French-Canadian diva is really a physics-immune psychic-angel desperately trying to educate us today from 1990.
In other words, I get all emotional.
View this as a thought experiment.
I will admit something.
Been tough sledding for me recently.
Feels like I’m coasting physically, but mentally it feels like I’m being jerked from side to side and launched up and down.
In other words, I’m changing.
I’ve become aware of my very human heart, and thus, of my body’s mortality.
I feel old.
Your body’s the same way, you know.
Can’t use it forever.
We’re alike.
We’ve only ever seen one thing that doesn’t come with an expiration date.
There’s nothing faster.
In other words, we are the fastest thing ever.
We get to choose what will become our legacy.
You don’t have to take my word for it.
Sooner or later, we all have to find a new home.
With any luck, we may find our real home.
What’s happening to you?
Am I finally growing up?
Is this a midlife dilemma or an existential crisis?
Are you losing our mind?
Yeah, I’m afraid my marbles are lost.

Good thing we’ve been found.

Greetings!