[ExI] road to wellville, was: RE: morality

[efc at swisscows.email]

On Sat, 20 May 2023, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:

> Daniel I found that era of history most entertaining for it provides such a
> great insight into unfettered capitalism and what happens under those
> circumstances.  There were no government controls of any consequence on what
> people could sell as food.

That era has a romantic shimmer over it. I prefer unfettered capitalism
over unfettered statism. You sold me the book! ;) THe only problem now
is where to slot it into my reading list. =)

> Malted corn made into flakes are nearly inedible without quite a bit of
> sugar.  There are lower-sugar corn flakes, such as Special K, but even that
> has a lot of sweetener.  What corn flakes did (although it was not the
> intention of John Kellogg) is to seduce the world into eating sugar in huge
> quantities.

Food is a very interesting subject. Especially how it affects
individuals differently and lately in sweden (well, last couple of
years) its also become very political. In some places in society, meat
eaters are seen as evil, capitalist killers and of lower moral fibre
than vegans or vegetarians.

Sadly what happened in some vegan communities was that they tried to
make their babies vegan and the local doctor started to find malnurished
children and it made the headlines and at least religious veganism got
quite a blow.

Another blow of a different kind happened last summer when a vegetarian
at the medical university in Stockholm found out through her research
that if you add a bit of meat to every vegetarian meal you eat, your
body will absorb much more nutrients from the greens than if you only
eat greens without meat. So following her research she added back meat
to her diet, and this also caused a lot of hand wringing, some arguments
of bad science, more control studies etc.

And then of course there's the subjective dimension. Some people argue
they feel bad if they eat meat. Other people like me, always feel hungry
and tired unless I do eat meat. ;) But body chemistry I assume is highly
individual to a certain extent.

>> ...But the story does remind me of sugar filled Tony Tiger moments of my
> childhood. ;)
>
> Didn't we all.  Kellogg's and Post taught Americans to start their day with
> a little corn and a lot of sugar.

But as you said in an earlier message, young human beings can tolerate a
lot of garbage without any damage.

> >...Some companies have such a strong connection with Christianity. I read
> up on chik-fil-a and apparently the CEO was very strongly against gay
> marriage and spoke up, and cause a lot of controversy (according to
> wikipedia)...
>
> Tis true.  Our local ChickFila offered to do a PTA fundraiser, but several
> of our local teachers tried (and are still trying) to block them on the
> grounds that they are anti-gay.  But then what about those companies which
> have connections to Judaism and Islam?  Both of those groups' religious

I think regarding judaism and islam anti-gay collides with persecuted
religious minorty so they cancel out I assume. I imagine someone smart
could probably design an equation for it or a meme scale that show how
much you need to balance various controversial points of view to make
them cancel out in the media. ;)

> I remind the anti-Chicks that the founder Truett Cathy died several years
> ago.  There is nothing wrong with the food.

This reminds me of people who want to purge the libraries of classical
books and classical music because the author/composer was nazi or an
antisemite.

Currently, in some countries they want to burn Dostoyevski and not play
classical russian plays due to Ukraine and I think that is extremely
childish.

>> ...I received a Buck knife as a gift some years ago, and on a note in the
> box it said that Jesus was their most important board member who they turn
> to in difficult moments. Best regards,
>
> Ja, but it didn't hurt that knife one bit.  I don't begrudge anyone having
> an imaginary friend they turn to in their difficult moments.  I consider

No, I thought it was highly charming at some level. I like people who
stand up for their principles and adding this note, at the risk of
alienating customers who are not christian or conservative, I find that
admirable.

On the other hand, I like politically neutral companies who provide
their service and don't enter public debate about every single issue,
and that is the stance I've opted for in my own company.

Best regards, 
Daniel