I Am Paleo Man

Published by E A St Amant at Smashwords.com

Smashwords Edition 2014, 2015

Copyrighted by E A St Amant September 2014

Web and Cover design by: Edward Oliver Zucca

Web Developed by: Adam D’Alessandro

Author Contact: ted@eastamant.com

E A St Amant.com Publishers

www.eastamant.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, emailing, ebooking, by voice recordings, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or his agent.

By E A St Amant

How to Increase the Volume of the Sea Without Water

Dancing in the Costa Rican Rain

Spiritual Apathy

Restrictions

Black Sand

Book of Mirrors

Five Days of Eternity

Five Years After

Fog Walker

Murder at Summerset

This Is Not a Reflection of You

The Theory of Black Holes (Collected Poems)

The Circle Cluster, Book I, The Great Betrayer,

The Circle Cluster, Book II, The Soul Slayer,

The Circle Cluster, Book III, The Heart Harrower,

The Circle Cluster, Book IV, The Aristes,

The Circle Cluster, Book V, CentreRule,

The Circle Cluster, Book VI, The Beginning One

Non-Fiction

Atheism, Scepticism and Philosophy

Articles in Dissident Philosophy

The New Ancien Régime

ToC

Chapter One

Why Almost Everything Is a Controversy

(We Climbed Down Out of the Trees and Acquired Uncertain Knowledge!)

Chapter Two

Some Unanswered Questions Are Not Your Responsibility

(Ours Is Not to Ask Why, But to Live and Die!)

Chapter Three

Why Freedom of Choice Is Not an Illusion

(Liberty to Choose Is Our Only True Freedom!)

Chapter Four

Hunter-Gatherers, and Why We Got it Wrong About Them

(The History of Primitive Humans Is Reflected in the Mind of a Child!)

Chapter Five

The Golden Rule: Why Reciprocity Is an Excellent Moral System

(Do Justice and Let the Skies Fall!)

Chapter Six

The Complexities of the Human Diet

(Don’t Live to Eat. Eat to Live!)

Chapter Seven

Why Paleo? Why Libertarianism? Why the Hard Life?

(In Hard Times, the Will to Surmount Will Inspire You!)

Chapter Eight

What About Exercise? Food? Stress Relievers? Sleep? And Poop?

(Eat Fast, Die Young! Discover Flow, Live Long!)

Chapter Nine

A Review of Books Touching On the Ideas Discussed Above

(You Must Know Everything!)

Chapter One

Why Almost Everything Is a Controversy

(We Climbed Down Out of the Trees and Acquired Uncertain Knowledge!)

I run everyday to shake the cobwebs out. Running is bad for you at a certain age like mine. I’m in my sixties. It’s hard on the joints. Running is apparently good for you. Counter-intuitively, it strengthens the joints over time. This little parting right here at the start is demonstrative of the whole human dilemma, and sort of what this book deals with: knowledge you need every day. How do we get it, what good is it, and do we have enough of it to suggest a proper way to live a life in a total sort of way, including diet, physical fitness, overall wellness, moral truth and social-political suitability for a creature with a precarious human nature? What has come to us in the last centuries from science, philosophy and modern common sense is that likely no active supernatural order exists to easily manifest itself and assure us which path for Homo sapiens is the right one with absolute assurance. If God knows, He’s keeping it close to His chest. It certainly seems so to me, and I’ve been keeping my ears pricked for evidence of it since childhood. Left on our own, we have to duke it out on the front lines of every issue. Sometimes, perhaps even often, it appears that there is no progress in modern knowledge in the sense of what path is right for human beings in their everyday lives. I mean, obviously I realize that there is advancement of the scientific sort, but I mean improvement in the area of what we should do given our uncertain situation on what’s right and wrong for us on a daily basis; hell, out there in ethereal wonderland, there are a thousand answers for every question. It’s complicated, every damn last issue. For instance, there are a thousand diets, and all of them at odds. I’m thirty reads into nutrition, diet, and food books, many which I review in the general bibliography. A hundred moral codes, and all of them appearing all against all. I spent my life immersed in these ethical alternatives. Dozens of versions of what the heck humans are, and no way to get a definitive answer on any front.

Here in the beginning of a contentious debate, many roads intersect. If you believe you have real choice and control over yourself, but you are overweight without an understanding of why– that is, against all your strenuous efforts, you are losing the squabble in the effort to stay slim– here is not only the intersection of free will and determinism, but also of modern cooking and primitive diets. If you think eating meat is wrong and that animal rights are viable, here then meets the fundamental concern of a self-aware omnivore. If you think the government and their licensed practitioners have got it wrong about our food consumption, and that more state action should be taken, you’re crisscrossing with the libertarian sentiment that suggests that if no action had been taken in the first place, than the event of our recent ineptitude around the contemporary diet wouldn’t have occurred. If you’ve listened to conflicting nutritional advice in the media and come away bewildered, you are facing the epistemological quandary of the 21st century: how much knowledge can reason and science produce, and what lengths are required of the individual to attain it? Still, this does not settle the most ancient of philosophic disputes: how can we know things, what can we know exactly and with how much conviction? And thus it takes us, I believe, to what may be the oldest, wiliest conspiracy ever produced in the Western World: why did all of the countless works of the great atomists, Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, and Lecretius, disappear, and almost the entirety of the decadent-mystic platonic library survive through the medieval times (including Plato, Plotinus, and Augustine)?

We suspect that it was all there in Democritus: the heliocentric universe, the atomic theory, the rational code of morality, and the beginnings of the theory of evolution. It wasn’t afforded back then what scientific rigor these days demands, but it was a 2500-year head start over Plato’s ugly view of Homo sapiens. If you wonder what the world has become, with runaway state-capitalism and vastly expanding and aggressive current governments, people exploding into obese caricature of themselves, the absolute loss of morals in economic transactions, the gross democide figures of the last 75 years, the current resurgence of irrationalism and belligerent religions, and the outright quarrelsomeness of the Left and autarchy throughout the world, you are here at the meeting point of many perplexities. We have more Platonists growling at our reason than you can make magic potions for, many whom can sweet-talk their way out of any intellectual chasm they’ve ever created. They can spray paint all the Coke signs and smash all the MacDonald’s windows that they want– they wouldn’t recognize the root cause of a problem if someone flew a jumbo-jet into it, or if someone built a gulag labor system with 14% of its population in it, or if there was a 1000 year devolution which they call the Middle Ages, or if they created unions to protect lazy unproductive workers and called it brotherly love. We will strip naked the above issues and let you decide whether you should start running with me, or rest those old (or young) weary joints of yours and go with the current as perhaps it was always destined to be. It is possible humankind was meant to trip and fall over the cliff, and that after the Big Bang, nothing could have altered that unavoidable outcome.

I don’t have to apologize for my ordinary life. I’ve damn near never suffered a day worth mentioning, just a divorce followed by a year of laying drunk in the sun and eating salads. I thought I should mention that; suffering brings out the Platonist in all of us, and I don’t have much of it in me left as any of my confidants will attest. I’m all about counsel, but on my watch you’re not going to hear, Go back scurrying to the cave in defeat! or Get on your knees and pray! I want you to understand that I don’t mean to prejudice the end results of this book, but I have to be honest upfront. I have children and they’re no trouble at all; indeed they’re splendid, as is my spouse; undeniably, it’s the old man– me– that’s often a headache. We’re gainfully employed, as are my friends; we have a good life, but not too good; I follow a whole whack of narrow but helpful rules on debt, eating, exercising, drinking, working, and other things which I will mention in passing as we move along (for instance, we use credit but allow ourselves no debt). I have a philosophy and it’s pretty comprehensive; however, it is important to understand that when I say I have lived an normal existence, I mean that I did not venture forward and come back from the abyss. I wasn’t in rehab; I didn’t get cancer, heart disease, or any other chronic illness. Sometime ago, I smoked and quit. I stopped exercising and started again. I reached a weigh of 180 pounds in my fifties and have recently returned to my teenage weight of 145 pounds, which I have maintained since. I drink, but less and less. I am no longer paunchy or skinny fat. I have muscle tone and a great deal of energy. If any of this appeals to you, keep reading.

As you will soon learn, I searched through a great array of diets and landed on the Paleo one. There’s no compelling evidence that I am a Paleo man; that’s almost a misnomer. I certainly don’t deserve any title, and I am worthy of the respect you might give to any man who has had the wonderful family, friends and opportunities that I have come across. Slap my face if I complain. Nonetheless, I am Paleo man and how I earned it was by choice and discipline. I will explain later why the old Greek bromide, Meden Agan [Nothing in excess] or ‘Everything in Moderation’ doesn’t really work anymore, and in fact is killing many of us. For instance, if you drink, you should be Greek, but if you smoke, you should be horsewhipped (figuratively speaking). Likewise, moderation in eating is not a formula for health but indeed is a slow silent assassin. For now, I also want to say that my life doesn’t have the stressors that most modern folks’ have. I haven’t worked full time since I was 28 years old, yet I was skilled and hard-working enough at what I did to find a part-time niche in retail management to get me out of house and into the real world (a very important thing if you’ve found success). I have a knack of coat-tailing managers who are real leaders and can inspire people (a definite finite minority in retail, as indeed in life overall). I have been writing all these enduring years in between, and collecting interesting people to hang with – loving every moment to the best of my abilities. It has gotten easier with experience, as do all things in life. I am a purist in many ways, but can laugh with the most vulgar of comics. Laughter is one of the most important anti–stressors in life, as is dancing– as long as you don’t have to earn money being funny or dancing. Then they’re exceedingly stressful. But anon.

The first issues we want to ponder are, what is a Homo sapiens and so what? I want to impress upon you that at every step there are