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In the Name of God بسم الله
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Organic living: a modern false religion?

Haji 2003

Entry posted by Haji 2003 ·

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The case against artificial ingredients is well worn in terms of the possible damage to health. The health benefits of foods that are as natural as possible with limited human interference I.e. processing seems compelling.

For a couple of decades and perhaps for a couple more going forwards organic foods have given people something to believe in. Organic represents good, wholesome and natural and the opposite - foods that have chemicals added to aid their growth and which have been through a range of processes in order to give them longer-shelf lives represent what is bad. Whatever limitations organic foods may have are, for some people, more than compensated by their health and environmental benefits.

Consuming organic is virtuous and whatever sacrifices need to be made in order to do this are similar to those theists are willing to make for their beliefs. Of course the believer in organic may claim scientific evidence to back their behaviour.

The question is whether the 'organic faith' is likely to be a permanent state of affairs. I think not. Because natural food production processes are not scalable for an ever increasing global population.

In contrast, the ability of humans to interfere productively in food production has been established over millennia and we've been getting better at it. Our interventions raise all sorts of scientific, environmental, moral and economic issues and as a result I don't think God would lead us to a developmental dead-end. So I think the current preference for organic and natural food that is devoid of processing is likely to be a short-term fad, albeit a well-meaning one. 

We now have better knowledge of how not to process and the costs and risks of different processing methods, and overtime I think we will become better at processing and as the following story highlights the need to develop artificial ie. man-made processes for making foods is likely to increase and so is our ability to do so. Along the way we may well find ways of processing that do still cause health and other disbenefits, but it'll be up to us to find novel solutions. Relying on historical processes won't be an answer.

Quote

A Finnish company that makes food from electricity, water and air has said it plans to have 50m meals’ worth of its product sold in supermarkets within two years.

It is produced through a process similar to brewing beer. Living microbes are put in liquid and fed with carbon dioxide and hydrogen bubbles, which have been released from water through the application of electricity. The microbes create protein, which is then dried to make the powder.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/plan-to-sell-50m-meals-electricity-water-air-solar-foods

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The Green Knight
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When you have Roundup banned and when governments and scientific researches not in corporate funding and control. When human life becomes more valuable than profits. When they ignore profits and derive new antibiotics for the adapting pathogens. When the masses are not misled like sheep for more consumption of everything including dangerous and haraam for the sake of profits. Then a whole lot of problems will disappear and humanity will start progressing like before too.

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Guest Mars

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Those cute little microbes, would they be considered minuscule chicken or microscopic ravens? Essentially the derived protein (eggs in this case), halal or haram? 

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Haji 2003
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On 7/3/2019 at 10:23 PM, Darth Vader said:

When you have Roundup banned and when governments and scientific researches not in corporate funding and control.

I would liken Roundup to an early surgical implement. Crude and destructive, but nevertheless a necessary step in the evolutionary process for man to develop more effective solutions.

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The Green Knight
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On 7/12/2019 at 2:12 PM, Haji 2003 said:

I would liken Roundup to an early surgical implement. Crude and destructive, but nevertheless a necessary step in the evolutionary process for man to develop more effective solutions.

Respected brother, I do not believe in there being an ongoing evolutionary process for mankind. On the contrary, statistics and events cumulatively show an alarmingly stark devolutionary decline with an end of the road ahead in progress. Just my two paisas. The people are losing trust in authorities and key opinion makers and they have plenty of valid reasons for that, and this rift is only getting more solid and wider. We can call it a breakaway civilization of the common man who is fed up of mass manipulation based on routine distortion of facts.

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Haji 2003
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On 7/13/2019 at 2:31 PM, Darth Vader said:

On the contrary, statistics and events cumulatively show an alarmingly stark devolutionary decline with an end of the road ahead in progress. Just my two paisas.

Certainly in various respects of social and personal behaviour you could point to a decline e.g. the widespread adoption of haram activities. But my reference to Roundup and surgical implements pointed to the fact that there have certainly been technological advances. Moreover the imperative to adopt such advances is certainly driven by greed, but also the adoption of certain ethics and morals.

The point of this thread was to highlight how early attempts at man-made foods might well have been poor, but the principle of people creating nutritious and safe food stuffs should not be discarded - since in technical terms we are advancing.

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  • Latest Blog Entries

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      Doing your own 'research'
      By Haji 2003 in Contemporania
         8
      Note: I'll be updating the initial entry with additional points over time, as discussions elsewhere on Shiachat help me to flesh out the original arguments.
       
      Summary
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      What I will also do is to examine how the whole notion of informed decision making fits within a broader ideological framework and why some groups of people favour it.
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      The popularity of 'do your own research' (DYOR)
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      On the one hand you have public health officials, ostensibly driven by the need to protect the health of the public, who recommend government diktat. On the other hand we have politicians from a political party that favours business challenging these recommendations. In addition the lawmakers recommend alternatives to lockdowns that require consumers to make their own 'informed' choices.
      This leads to the ideological context of DYOR.
       
      Do your own research and the wider ideology
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      John Stuart Mill. On Liberty (Kindle Locations 7017-7020). Kindle Edition. 
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      In summary the DYOR promoters seek to diminish the health impact of Covid, because if they were to admit it, the role of the State to interfere with personal liberty would have to be accepted. Instead of the latter the DYOR promoters want people to make their own risk assessments and then act on them as a result of personal choice. However as we'll see later this is not a long term solution.
       
      Why is DYOR promoted?
      The reason why some groups in society promote DYOR is because it sounds good in principle, but it does not work in practice. If it did work in practice, the people who promote it would no longer do so! This sounds counter-intuitive, (why should someone promote something that does not work) but there is a logic behind it. 
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      Some politicians and businesses encourage people to 'do their own research' because they know that most of the time people will get it wrong. The same groups support models of behaviour change that say to people you are ultimately free to make informed choices from an array of products and services that vary in terms of how good or bad they are for you. 
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      The above context is wholly different to dealing with a pandemic, but what is common to both is people offering us a false illusion of having control over our destiny.
      Having processed YouTube videos people feel that they have done their 'research' and that they can now make an informed choice. The choice making seems more 'rational' and in a cultural and educational environment where we have been brought up to celebrate rationality this seems like a good thing, in and of itself.  
      So in comparison to following government edicts to wear face masks, the 'own research' crowd watch some videos and consciously choose not to do so on the basis of information that they have gathered. They are therefore exercising behavioural control over their lives in a manner that they could not previously. And when challenged they can cite 'evidence' that supports their position - further enhancing their behavioural control.
      The reality is of course, that wearing a mask costs very little in terms of money and behaviour change. There are many benefits to others in addition to any to the wearer. But the anti-maskers are told that wearing a mask is some kind of subjugation to government control. Choosing not to wear a mask because someone tells you that you'll breathe more CO2 as a result, sounds like an informed decision that gives you control over your own life.
       
      God, nihilism and the human condition
      This new section was inspired by the following post:
      At one extreme then, the individual can feel that there is so much in the way of different perspectives, error on all sides etc. that we simply cannot identify what is the right course of healthy behaviour and what is not. In my opinion that reflects a worldview which questions God's benevolence.
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      And just as the above increasingly become more challenging in a more technologically advanced world, so the tools that we have available to help us increase in their sophistication and effectiveness.
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      That information can be used to follow individuals on social media, who have the medical expertise and benevolence to support your interests. Once you follow a reliable expert you can:
      See who else they follow And you can then also follow the health experts they follow  
      Conclusion
      Few if any people are capable of 'doing their own research'. Ultimately it becomes a matter of choosing who you decide to believe. And in that regard it becomes a matter of assessing someone's character, their education, and their track record. People who believe in the concept of taqlid know exactly what the issues are here.
      postcript
      1. See the following blog entry I had made for a further explanation about why people can make poor choices:
      https://www.shiachat.com/forum/blogs/entry/579-how-unscrupulous-people-take-advantage/
      2. I am attaching a copy of a paper titled, 'Why is changing health behaviour so difficult', published in the academic journal Public Health. The paper identifies some common mistakes public policy officials make when designing behaviour modification programmes. 
      Why is changing health behaviour so difficult.pdf
    • Haji 2003
      Whichever option you choose - you lose
      By Haji 2003 in Contemporania
         0
      Summary
      When you are in a weak position, all the choices you have are bad ones.
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      In short whatever the Pals decided did not matter, the Israelis' dominant position ensured that they could respond in a manner that was advantageous to them. The same applies to Native American Indians in the 18th and 19th centuries, whether their response to European settlers was to fight make treaties the outcome would always be the same, their lands would be taken. In both cases there was such an asymmetry between the two parties that there was nothing the colonised could do that would change the outcome.
      In the examples that follow I look at some contemporary examples that illustrate a different dynamic. In these instances non-Western powers have presented the West with situations where however the West responds will lead to an outcome for the West that it does not want.
      Huawei - China
      Turning now to a totally different situation, the following piece in the FT neatly summarises how I feel about the situation between the U.S. government and Huawei. In the 21st century, it is beginning to look as if the Chinese have the best cards. for example Huawei makes good and cost-effective telecoms infrastructure.
      Western countries may have security concerns, but if they ban Huawei, they could end up with a poorer solution. Other countries that have no such qualms could benefit from the cost advantages that Huawei equipment offers. But if Western countries accept Huawei they risk entrenching the advantages that the Chinese have, as well as the claimed security risks.
      Sanctions have been a preferred Western method of taking action against countries that have fallen out of favour. But this tool only works where you have something the other person wants, when the situation is reversed - you can end up damaging yourself.
      https://www.ft.com/content/8fc63610-88fe-11e9-b861-54ee436f9768
      SWIFT - Russia
      This example arose during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022. The West wanted to sanction Russia by imposing economic sanctions including barring Russian entities from access to western financial systems. But this was not straightforward:
      https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/24/what-is-swift-international-payments-network-russia-sanction
      Sic transit gloria mundi (so passes worldly glory)
      In a previous FT story about the same subject I posted a comment that this situation is similar to the British attempts to stop Indian technological development by banning the Indians from making their own steam engines, at the start of the 20th century. The British may have delayed Indian development by some decades, but that's all they were able to do. Whether the British took no action to stop Indian technological development or whether they proactively tried to hinder it, ultimately they would lose. 
      There are now far too many Indians with every increasing levels of capability to stop the juggernaut.
      Conclusion
      In the context of China, I think the U.S. government feels a threat to its economic/technological dominance. And the sanctions are its attempt to fight back. But whether the U.S. decides to fight or not, I think in the longer term that dominance will have to be compromised. Huawei and the Chinese are now too far along the technological path of development and they are far further ahead than the India of the early 20th century. 
      The U.S. is now in a similar technological position that the Palestinians have been in terms of geography. Whatever option the US chooses, it will ultimately 'lose'. Loss in this context is not necessarily ceding technological leadership to the Chinese, but it may well involve acknowledging their superiority in certain areas. Other countries like Russia also may be able to work their way around sanctions for example, so western attempts to control their behaviour will have limited success.
      In the context of Russia it seems that there is too much at stake economically for sanctions to be effective, the sanctioners stand to lose as much as the sanctioned.
       
    • Haji 2003
      Delaying gratification
      By Haji 2003 in Contemporania
         2
      Summary
      Delayed gratification is associated with better long-term outcomes for individuals. Time spent in prayer and other religious rituals are means by which individuals delay the gratification of enjoying worldly experiences and they are an investment in the gratification of rewards to be gained in the afterlife. Moreover time spent in these activities changes what counts as gratification for participants.
      How delayed gratification works 
      One of the ideas that helps explain the economic outperformance of some social and ethnic groups is their ability to practice ‘delayed gratification’. The term accurately sums up the idea of ‘delaying the experience of happiness’.
      This seems counterintuitive, why delay what you could have right now? Surely there is some loss involved in putting off gratification, you may not be around to enjoy it and there could be other uncertainties as well.
      The notion of delayed gratification assumes that if we put off the experience of happiness when we do receive it, the experience will be greater and longer lasting than if we had sought to experience the happiness earlier on.
      Why is this the case? The most obvious example is the delayed gratification occasioned by spending time as a school pupil studying in order to get better grades while that time could have been spent playing or watching television. Later on it’s the same studious group who are at university living in relative penury, while their peers are earning and spending money.
      However, most studies show that although graduates start earning later than non-graduates, once they do so their lifetime earnings are much higher than non-graduates. And it’s not just income, there are a number of other measures such as health going in the same direction.
      The cookie experiment
      All this goes back to the experiments conducted by Walter Mischel in 1970, who offered kids a cookie which they could eat immediately or they could have two if they waited till he came back from an errand. The high delay kids, who waited for the second cookie, did better at school and achieved various other positive life outcomes that the low delay kids did not.
      I’d go on to argue that the process of delaying can change an individual. The kids who are willing to wait for the second cookie will likely prefer the low fat, low sugar offering compared to the tasty version.
      I think this is because when the high delay kids are provided with information about harms and benefits they're better able to make the right choices. As they come across more information these people change what they consider constitutes happiness. This second order effect is important, because it has a qualitative impact not only on lifestyles and employment opportunities of these individuals but also the thought processes of the children of the high delay kids. High delay can be taught and learned.
      So delaying gratification enables the acquisition of quantitatively more happiness, and qualitatively more sustainable happiness.
      Up to this point our discussion has been in terms of purely material gains or losses. You do not have to be a believer in any religion to understand the foregoing argument, there are ample studies involving experiments (often with marshmallows) to back up the idea.
      Religious applications
      The question then, is whether the same principles can be applied in a religious context?
      The theist argument would likely be that religious practice such as prayer, the acquisition of religious knowledge and spiritual experience are all activities that take place at the expense of acquiring immediate material happiness, will likely have a higher pay-off in any after-life.
      However, anyone can understand the cause and effect relationship between, for example, the higher pay-offs associated with education and delayed gratification, because there is ample proof for this. But no one has come back from any after life, so is it the case that all we have to go on is faith?
      I don’t think so.
      One of the ways by which people can improve their self-discipline to improve their ability to delay gratification is to undertake some other task that takes their mind away from whatever gratification they are seeking to delay.
      That’s what the religious activities do. They train us to exercise restraint. They are the wait for the second cookie. If we see prayer and duas etc. as taking time away from the joys of worldly activities, that’s because they are supposed to.
      I also think the second order effects that I talked about regarding the impact of education on gratification also have a parallel with religion.
      Time spent on worship and spiritual activities, I think changes what people consider appropriate sources of gratification. They actually change what we do in this life, we consider whether the ingredients of the cookie are halal or haram.
      The Muslims who avoid weed cookies don’t need to rely on faith to understand the benefits of delayed gratification, they can see it for themselves.
      Notes:
      https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happiness-in-world/201207/the-power-delaying-gratification
      http://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification
      http://ww2.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Labour_market_information/Graduate_Market_Trends/Beyond_the_financial_benefits_of_a_degree__Autumn_05_/p!eXeLcmm
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/10246785/Graduate-premium-no-matter-what-you-study.html
       
       
       
    • Haji 2003
      Churches and synagogues in the middle east
      By Haji 2003 in Contemporania
         3
      A common Islamophobic complaint is that while Muslims may lobby for rights in Western countries, this is hardly reciprocated in the Middle East. Specifically, attention is drawn to Saudi Arabia where the rights of Christians and Jews appear to be the most restricted. 
      It's worth, therefore, to consider what the situation was like before the arrival of the house of Saud on the scene and the impact of its installation (helped by Wstern powers) on non-Muslims in the Arabian peninsula. The following extracts are taken from the notes of a European traveller. 
      Travels through Arabia and other countries in the East, M. Niebuhr (captain of engineers in the service of the King of Denmark). English translation 1792.
      So, there were Jews in Medina in 1792 and they clearly enjoyed autonomy.
      So Jews also had positions of influence.
       
      The differences in tax rates may offend contemporary sensitivities, but they were clearly no different to the way minorities were treated in many other countries of the time.
      What may merit further investigation is whether the Jews (and Christians) in Arabia suffered the pogroms that were periodically inflicted on the Jews of Europe in that period.
    • Haji 2003
      How unscrupulous people take advantage
      By Haji 2003 in Contemporania
         0
      Summary
      This post is about the reasons why there is so much imperative in the Qur'an on sellers not taking advantage of their customers. The point being elaborated here is that it can be easy for sellers to take advantage of their buyers. The Qur'an uses a specific context (weights and measures) but this notion can be extended to other areas of the transaction.
      We can lump together all sorts of decisions that we make everyday. These can be decisions about what products and services to buy and they can be decisions about whether or not to wear masks or get vaccinated. They can also be decisions about haram and halal behaviours. Many (but not all) decisions are underpinned by the information that we have to go on.
      But not all information is the same. I distinguish between different types of information that buyers can use why they may have preference for some types of information which is why it becomes easier for sellers to take advantage of them. I draw out implications for different groups of people.
       
      The background
      The starting point is the Qur'anic injunction (in various places) about the requirements of transactions and commerce.

       
       
       

       
       

       
       

       
       
      Here is some commentary from 'The Study Qur'an', I have previously noted the need to use this resource with discernment, but on this topic it seems to be ok. 
       
      Nasr, Seyyed Hossein; Dagli, Caner K.; Dakake, Maria Massi; Lumbard, Joseph E.B.; Rustom, Mohammed. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (p. 438). HarperOne. Kindle Edition. 
      Predictive value
      The information that we receive about products and services (and indeed about any life decisions) can be divided into two types, that which has high predictive value or low predictive value. The former helps better predict how a product will perform, how a virus works or what the world will be like and information of low predictive value does not do so. It's better for us clearly to rely on information that has high predictive value.
      But there is a problem, not all information is equally easy to understand and use. We all know this to be the case from personal experience. Some information is easy to understand and remember, other information we may find impossible to understand, perhaps because it is too technically complex and we do not have sufficient education. This is why we split information into that with which we have high confidence and that with which we have low confidence.
      If you want a more graphic illustration of what I am talking about watch this 1.5 minute video:
       
      Morgan Spurlock provides a humorous insight into how the fast food industry 'deceives' its customers. This screengrab from the trailer gives some indication as to how it does this. Each of the labels below carries a 'meaning' for us as consumers, in each instance I think we can agree that these are positive meanings. What Spurlock does in his engaging film is to show how in reality the meanings can be far different to what we think they mean (free range) or in the case of 100% natural the word has no meaning at all, but it still feels good.. 

       
      Confidence value
      The problem we have in making sense of the world around us is that information which can better predict how products or even events and pandemics will pan out (it has high confidence value) may actually be hard to understand and evaluate (it has low confidence value). This is shown in the top right hand box below.
       
      The human condition
      An aspect of the human condition is that sometimes we can be a little lazy in our efforts to engage with information that helps us to see how things will be because it is intellectually more challenging.
       
      The challenge
      This leads us down the dangerous path of following information that is easy to understand (has high confidence value), but which has low predictive value (won't really tell us what the future will be like). This is shown in the bottom left hand box in the diagram below.
      Unscrupulous people will give us the latter in abundance and we will enjoy a false sense of security, but will ultimately arrive at a destination that is considerably different to what we expected. This applies both to the products and services that we buy and the ethical and moral decisions that we make and indeed the health and lifestyle choices that we follow.
       
      The diagram
      The diagram below illustrates that thought leaders within society are needed to show us those things which are easy to use and can accurately tell us about reality and they're needed to explain to us those things which inform us about reality and which are hard to use. Certainly one thing which we need from societies leaders is the ability to protect us from those things which we think will help guide us and/or inform us about the way the world really is, but which in reality will not do so.
       

       
      Illustrative examples
      This example shows how the above can work in practice:
      https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/11/know-what-you-eat-health-halo
      Here's another example, from the same article above:
      Both of these examples show how consumers can make decisions off very limited amounts of information that do not fully reflect what it is that they are buying and the more important issue here is that marketers can take full advantage of this in terms of how they label products and how they photograph and present them. 

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