Western culture has reached a point in technological advancement where we have gone too far. We are no longer bettering our our lives with more, more, more. Today, we still think that we need more: a bigger house, a fancier car, more relaxation time, more pay, more sex, etc. We now need to deal in quality, not quantity.
The fundamental problem we can't seem to address is that for all the modern trappings we are surrounded by, we ourselves are still the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution (or God's creation, if you like) and our bodies are designed to expect certain environmental limits. Most notably, these limits deal with our physical energy usage and our eating.
Today, we have reached physical exertion levels that are scandalously low. A person working in an office in front of a computer all day, who drives to and from work, and goes home in the evening to watch tv may get away with using less than 1000 calories in that day.
This has huge consequences in the health of that person as we've come to see. All of diabetes, high blood pressure, cancers, and a host of other ailments stem from this problem. If this weren't enough, the problem is further aggravated by the foods we eat. The first defining event that made us civilized was agriculture; most typically the growing and harvesting of grains.
Grains possess many nutrients, minerals, proteins and oils we need, however there is a great deal of carbohydrate that goes with it. All carbohydrates, whether starch or sugars, eventually all break down into simple sugars, most usually glucose. We have far too much glucose in our blood. Exercise uses it up. Conclusion: move more and eat less carbs. Nothing new here.
The problem we have is with the self discipline necessary to do this. We fail with alarming regularity. So what is the fix? Let me digress for a moment.
After the Second World War, the Allied Forces, who had won the war over Germany in Europe, wanted to see Germany rendered industrially neutered so that Germany could never contemplate any further technologically inspired conflict. Basically, they (primarily FDR) wanted to see them left somewhat primitive, and technologically backward. This was Pastoralization.
In a manner of speaking, this is what we will be needing: we need a measure of pastoralization in our lifestyles. The Amish Mennonites live this way now, and though we may not be abandoning our cars and tvs in the near future, we can choose either to accept the natural demands of our bodies (2000+ calorie physical exertion per day, and hunter/gatherer diet) and discipline ourselves (with little success), or simply don't include those items that are effectively toxic to a healthy lifestyle.
We can try a third option, and that is to use technology to simulate what we need naturally. This works to a limited degree because the nature that we look to simulate often possesses subtleties that we often miss.
An example may be a combination of an interactive treadmill that may be coupled to a shoot-em up computer game projected onto screens around the treadmill. This kind of technology attempts to get people active and do so in a fun way.
Another means to get people active would be to build environments that incorporated pleasant ways to exercise. An example may be a large office building with a huge internal atrium. This atrium could spiral around at a gentle incline from ground level to the top. To make the long spiral walk more pleasant, the sides of the spiralling atrium walkway could be heavily planted with exotic plants, perhaps even housing limited animal life like birds. Finally, if this whole jungle walkway has a sprinkler system to water plants overnight, this may even serve as a fire exit.
My suggestions here are only to indicate possibilities; the intent is to adapt our environment to simplify physical activity without requiring us to go out of our way for it.
As for the hunter/gatherer meal requirements, we may see whole new services spring up based on fresh fruit and vegetable delivery services. Presently, the produce that temperate climate communities get are fresh and tasty only when the local producers harvest. Otherwise, many types of produce may look appealing, but don't taste anything like they look (tomatoes are notorious for this). There may be local 'ripening' greenhouses and take imported produce and do a final ripening, if this is at all possible. This is very much an area of growth (lousy pun, sorry).
Our meat diets could see some significant changes as well. Wild meat has many more nutrients in it than does farm livestock. Yes, it can be 'gamey' tasting, but preparations and recipes can correct or take advantage of that. Also, there are whole ranges of other game that we may find questionable, but other cultures know to value. For example, when was the last time you were served pigeon soup? This is much more in keeping with the hunter/gatherer diet.
If the truth be known, we've only barely started to experiment with the many naturally available (not farm raised) meats. The cooking industry has yet to unleash their inventiveness and make 'weird' foods desirable.
While we can adapt our environment to better suit our primitive needs, there will probably come a point where we need to effectively 'declare war' on what can only be called 'the Blob Lifestyle.'
What is the Blob Lifestyle? Consider what we view most desirable today: Fancy cars, large tvs, boats, planes, RVs, home amenities to reduce home workload, etc. What's common to all of these? They are all done sitting. The Blob Lifestyle is a sedentary one; lots of 'ree-laxing.'
Under normal natural circumstances, this preference for relaxing is an important survival strategy - it ensures that we retain as much energy as possible, so that in times of famine, we don't squander what energy we've managed to accumulate (as fat). Clearly, this is no longer the case: we have far too much retained energy from our sedentary lifestyles and far too much relaxing.
Henceforth, this must become a big no-no in affluent societies. We need revolutionary thinking that accepts our abundant energy supplies and our minimized energy usage. Put bluntly, even after we have made as many adjustments to our environment as possible to get us active, we'll need to declare excessive relaxing as undesirable.
'You're relaxing too much.'
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