Monday, July 18th 2022
Betrayal.
Yeah, I mean what are you going to do? In a land where people ask you what you want to hear them say, you cannot count on someone’s word as being worth something. In a land where anything can be bought, you can’t trust the value of things. In the land where anything can be stolen, where there are no legitimate property rights, intellectual or otherwise, you can’t trust anyone for honesty.
It’s a little after 7:00 on Monday morning and I have no intention of doing anything relevant today. It’s cloudy and overcast. The weather report is crawling for two more days of rain. I am a bit bonked in the head and my leg is ripped to shit from yesterday. I’m taking the day off today basically no matter what happens. I have no specific bureaucracy to take care of. I am lacking in nothing food-wise. I’m not required to go anywhere and I’m not expecting anyone to come here. Today, nothing is going to happen.
If for some reason it doesn’t rain at all, perhaps I will go give the plants a sprinkle in the evening. Other than this, I’m going to spend an absolute minimum amount of time on my feet. I’m going to declare this a healing day. I’m going to call this a hospital day. I’m going to call this even a mental health day. Today is rest and recuperation. Tomorrow is likely to be the same.
I parted with my ex partner badly at the end of the day. Frustrations peaked. I think frustrations between us have peaked generally. Truly, I can’t blame her for what she feels or what she thinks and I don’t think she should blame me for what I feel I think either.
I ride a track bike because frankly, it’s minimalist. You also feel a connection to the bike a bit more. Perhaps it’s a harder bike to ride and control and more limited but it is a particular type of bike that once you get into, it’s hard to go back to gears and brakes.
Another two aspects of it are that it is a continuous bike. Brake-less does not just mean that you have no mechanical system of slowing down other than yourself, it also kind of means that there’s no break in the writing. You just have to keep going. You pedal uphill and you pedal downhill and you pedal your stops and you pedal your starts. There is no coasting ever and you are the motor and as long as you are in the saddle, your body is moving.
This is one thing that I don’t think people understand. It does something to you when you live on a track bike. It’s not just the connectedness to the machine, it’s a connectedness to your task. You learn not to take breaks. Your cardiovascular system adjusts to the fact that you’re not going to stop and start or relax. Perhaps you lose some sense of pleasure and as a road bike, I probably wouldn’t recommend it for distance tours although a couple of years ago, I would regularly do 35 to 65k rides. It’s just you become someone who just doesn’t take breaks. It might be too intense for some people.
The second thing is that if built correctly, the bike is bomb proof. You could also say that it is cheap. You are not constantly fixing your bike because you’re not breaking mechanisms nor do you need constant adjustments to make sure the gears are always being clicked into correctly. You don’t have brake pads wearing out. Yeah, you wear out chains, gears and rubber. But it is a much more minimalistic approach. Literally, if you take reasonable care of your drivetrain, you won’t be doing any basic maintenance except a little lubrication and keeping your tires pumped.
Why am I talking about this? Because sometimes when two different people get together there is a tie that binds them that goes beyond their differences. They have something in common and no matter how diverse the rest of their lives, that little island of togetherness still exists.
But sometimes you end up losing that tie for one reason or another. Either from neglect or from proactive abuse of that thing. Sometimes people start knowing like an animal trapped in a trap at that time that binds you. Some people will chew their own leg off rather than stay trapped. You get to the point where the animosity grows so great, you can’t even breathe around each other. And this feeling becomes infectious.
Again, I don’t really feel like sharing intimate anecdotes here. I’m just saying that I’ve got a problem in this relationship. This problem has been around for a long time. I could blame the season of course because this is the time of year when tensions grow high. You can look up the stats for road rage and understand that it is highest in the fall. I’m sure violent crime increases in the fall. Why wouldn’t divorce stats increase in the fall?
I don’t know what’s going to happen about this and frankly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it. I am a problem solver by Nature. I am a planner. I’m also a minimalist track bike rider so a lot of people don’t really like the economy and efficiency of my plans. Some people like those fuzzy edges where mistakes are never found and where betrayals can go unnoticed for a long time. Some people don’t really like rock hard foundational decisions and prefer a nice soft landing place where no eyes ever land on them, questioning about their decisions.
For the moment, I guess I’m just going to have to be self-sufficient for a while. I don’t know if I’m up for the job or not. I don’t even know if there’s anything that’s going to help. I would rather not end up in the hospital again and I’m going to do everything possible to prevent that from happening. A little economy of movement. A little harsh planning to minimize doing what I need to do. I’m going to keep unnecessary nonsense to an absolute minimum. I’m just going to lock things down tight for a while and hope for some healing.
I also don’t expect any sympathy from anywhere. I don’t expect any void that gets created to get filled anytime soon. I don’t see anything coming in to make things better in any real way. I’m not expecting any phone calls or any offers of help. I’m not expecting anything to make this situation any better. I am pretty much 100% sure that I’m going to have to ride this one out alone. No matter how ridiculous it is, I have absolutely no one that I can think of who would want to throw in and help out.
I’m Kind of ashamed of that maybe. In a more perfect world, perhaps I would have a few more cards to play than I do. But I think that’s life and that’s what you get and I’ve already played the cards I’ve been given for a long time. The truth is that sometimes there’s just no cards left to be dealt and all you can do is play your hand and hope for the best.
I think that last thing I said might be a bit of a Freudian slip or at least just a little Freudian. I didn’t mean it in a sexual way although logically, I guess that’s where it goes.
Don’t worry about that. I’m not worried about that and you shouldn’t be worried about that. That’s nothing to worry about.
Does this fit right in with normal Monday morning depression? Maybe it does.
On a positive note, I have more food to eat that I need. I have access to all the calories I need to sustain myself. I have as much activity during the day to do as my heart desires to participate in. I have plenty of comfortable places to relax in. I don’t even have any particular reason to worry about heating or staying warm. I have some general house maintenance that needs to get taken care of, I have a window that needs to be replaced, maybe two, but I don’t even need to worry about those for a couple of weeks.
If there was ever a good place to Bunker, I’m in a perfect place to do it. 6 weeks left of Summer. Not a lot to do and have an imperfect situation not to do it.
***
What is the true meaning of selfishness?
1 : concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others. 2 : arising from concern with one’s own welfare or advantage in disregard of others a selfish act.
I believe that when considering egocentrism, simply believing that you yourself are the center of the planet, even for your own life and way of thinking, misses the basic premise of how interconnected we are not only to other people but to eventually the planet itself. You require food. Sure, you can grow some of your own food but that gives you a reliance on the planet to feed you. If you include money anywhere in your thinking, you are now tied to people and these days, unfortunately, to corporations and governments. There’s no real way to go completely off grid and only take care of yourself without having at least some influence both incoming and outgoing on your environment.
This is not to say that selfishness is an absolute wrong. We are not talking about 100% on the spectrum either way. 100% selflessness is as much of a lie as 100% selfishness. I did not mean to say that I’m going to bring this down to a mathematical argument but it is possible to get close mathematically.
We can take for example the concept of taxes. Theoretically in a world with an uncorrupt social center, public funds are there to be redistributed for the public good. In effect, this would be everything that we do as a group to improve the lives of all people within a society. This is almost universally never the case these days and the percentage of our taxes that gets used for things that we ourselves would probably never vote for makes this example, well, corrupt. But if we just leave it as a pure example, what percentage of our earnings would we share with the public good, knowing that it comes back to us in terms of public services? We probably would not argue too much especially under the situation that we were not particularly hungry or in too much pain. If we felt we could afford it, nobody would have any problem sharing.
But let’s say we leave money here and we start talking about our physical actions. Under the same set of guidelines, if we understood that a certain percentage of our day and our energy should go to general public welfare, if we didn’t feel like we were particularly sick or being made slaves of, I don’t think anybody would mind kicking in a few hours of effort if they knew it was coming back in social security. it’s not really a matter of calling it pro bono work, working for free, it’s not working for free, it’s simply contributing to the public good and not only to our own selfish gains.
So I’m not speaking here of any ultimate 100% for me or 100% for them. We are not talking about absolute royalty and we are not talking about absolute slavery. We’re just looking for a sweet spot that keeps everybody happy.
I’m talking about this because I have a couple of videos to share today. The general theme is going to be veganism. This is the green food blog and I am here to talk about food, health, nutrition, our impact on our environment as well as some reasonable ways to improve the world and perhaps work to calm down global warming and other environmental problems. Eventually, it’s going to be our sense of selfishness that is going to need to be tweaked. No matter how we digest new information about health, public health, our sense of well-being and the well-being of our planet as a whole, there is going to have to be a diminishment of selfishness for anything to take place for the good.
Or in other words, it is absolutely selfishness that is taking us to the brink of disaster if not already having us over the edge and beginning a free fall.
So the first video is from a YouTuber called Yes Theory. In this video, Matt Dajer takes the month of January to go vegan and because of his seven-point something million subscribers, has access to some of the top people in the world of vegan and plant-based information.
At the end of the video, he has his blood work done and finds out he is much healthier than he was before. He also seems to have run into some rather amazingly positive people, finds himself noticing that he in fact feels excellent, learns that the optimum diet for himself would be plant-based and yet, he can’t pull the plug at the end and makes the statement that he is free to eat what he wants.
How does he come up with this conclusion? Well, I can think of a few reasons. Number one, this is a for money channel. He is here to make personal profits and therefore what he does or says is just a matter of content. We are not looking at someone making lifestyle choices, we are looking at someone making financial choices.
Secondly, when he comes to make his decision about his eventual diet or how people should consider things, he refuses to allow the theory of selfishness to leave him. There are many ways I could explicate this particular thought but in this video, the only focus of a plant-based diet was on athletic performance. In this case, we don’t have a professional athlete, we have a professional money maker who is interested in knowing how he can turbo charge his personal health so as to maximize his personal gains. Is this positive? Sure, why not? But it does leave out having any pity for animals or even bothering to recognize the hypocrisy of eating flesh in general.
Or in other words, he cannot stop seeing himself as a carnivore. Carnivores are aggressive. Carnivores exist at the top of the food chain. He is not going to give up his sense of security or place in the hierarchy of the world despite any medical or scientific proof telling him it was to his benefit.
So, this particular video does not touch on any non-selfish reasons for going vegan. Such as allowing for reforestation by stopping the tremendous amount of land necessary for meat animals to be raised. He doesn’t talk about the actual damage to topsoil from factory mono cropping. He certainly doesn’t think in any way with pity towards the animals who go towards this “I will eat them if I like” philosophy. He is not going to get out of his car or stop flying in airplanes anytime soon. The dude’s a jetsetter and jet setters simply will not give up their seat on the plane.
Also in this video which ends in a paid promotion, there is absolutely no mention of any of the people that he consults with along the way. So, just for clarity (and because I am resting my legs today), here is a list of the guest stars.
Dr. Matthew Lederman is a board-certified Internal Medicine physician with an avid interest in the field of nutrition and lifestyle medicine. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology at The University of Michigan where he graduated with distinction. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree at Temple University School of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at The University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. After initially practicing as a hospital-based Internist, Dr. Lederman quickly switched his direction toward the field of nutrition and lifestyle medicine, having had the honor of learning from some of the greats in this field.
Nimai Delgado is an American professional Men’s Physique bodybuilder and vegan athlete. Nimai has been vegetarian his entire life, but in 2015, he switched to a 100% vegan diet. What started as Nimai’s personal mission to stay fit and healthy. Eventually, it turned into a ‘full-blown’ movement which educates people how it’s possible to gain muscle and stay ripped on a plant-based diet. “I am taking a stand against the violence, suffering, and death of innocent living beings. I am helping people understand, realize, and learn that it is possible to push your body to its physical peak and compete against elite athletes while living a vegan lifestyle!”
Robby Barbaro is the creator and founder of Mindful Diabetic and has been living with type 1 diabetes for fifteen years. For ten years, Robby has shown excellent control and overall health on a low-fat, fruit-based diet. He now offers private and online group coaching for diabetics. For more information, visit MindfulDiabetic.com.
And last but certainly not least, James Wilks
James Brett Wilks (born 5 April 1978) is an English film producer, vegan activist, a combatives expert and instructor, and former professional mixed martial artist. A professional from 2003 until 2012, he competed for the UFC, King of the Cage, and was the winner of Spike TV‘s The Ultimate Fighter: United States vs. United Kingdom
Wilks, by the way, is the driving force behind one of the most profound and influential films about the positives of a plant based diet for athletics and competition, The Game Changers.
And speaking of altruism, The Game Changers is available online for free.
Cheers
***
It’s about 6:00 p.m. and this has definitely been a non day. I took it easy with very little interaction with anything. I did take a casual walk out to pick up some greens in the morning. I made a very spicy smoothie sauce and used it to make a potato and Bean breakfast a bit more exciting. A little while later, I finished off the sauce with some pasta and a few veggies and that was pretty much it. I took some time to give myself a little medical attention. I tried to give myself a little bit of care and attention in the leg department. But other than doing some very, very light weight lifting, I’ve just been hanging around. No exceptional work done. Sorry if this offends on a Monday.
We didn’t really get any rain today unfortunately. It wasn’t very hot so I don’t think anything really dried out ridiculously. It’s still overcast right now. Tomorrow if we have the same luck and it again goes against the forecast and fails to rain, I will spend a bit more time in the garden. Everything will get watered if God doesn’t want to take care of it.
I also didn’t get a call from Minsk so it doesn’t look like there is any professional health on the way. Maybe tomorrow they will do something. I don’t really know what kind of excuses they are coming up with these days because they just don’t tell me. Brest said that they were going to take care of my deal quickly but that was 3 weeks ago so I don’t know what the word quickly means in Brest. Again, I could go off and talk about conspiracy theories or jealous people or anti-American sentiments in the country but at the end of the day, the only one really taking care of me is me. There is no doctor Who would recommend anything different from what I already do for myself. Literally, going into the hospital is just agreeing to accumulate more covid and be forced into a food situation I don’t want to be in. I feed myself much better than they can or would.
Perhaps I will get a bit more ambitious as this week goes along. I’m not talking about flights of philosophy, I’m talking about practical work towards a specific end. You never can tell when inspiration is going to come. And who knows, I might even get a call to go to Minsk. But it is also possible that this entire week it is going to be a lot like today. It’s very possible that I’m just going to give myself over to minimal movement and allow myself the maximum chance to heal as much as I can. If this turns out to be the case, good for me. I mean, nobody’s arguing with me so why fight?
Leave a Reply