Part 13: Naturalist Lifestyle, Natural Health
The fourth belief is pro-biotic, pro-science, and pro-ethics
Read also earlier posts »Intro: About »1: Born Of Lockdown »2: Need For Naturalism »3: Equivalence Of God & Nature »4: Special Role Of Science »5: Right & Wrong Tech »6: Smartphones & Covid Vaccines »7: Irredeemable Tech »8: Tower Of Babel »9: Eden & The Fall »10: Mary Shelley: Prophet? »11: Naturalist Congregation »12: Lifestyle, First Three Beliefs
In Part 12, I listed seven basic beliefs of Naturalism and described the lifestyle of a Naturalist with respect to the first three of those. Today I’ll address the fourth belief, regarding natural health. Of course, my description is somewhat hypothetical, since this religion currently has no congregation. But any good thing has to start somewhere!
First I’ll digress a bit and mention that I was excited upon reading a great op-ed recently published by the Epoch Times. It’s coincidentally very similar to my take on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein in Part 10 of this substack. However, the co-authors—which include the famous Dr. Peter McCollough—attribute Dr. Frankenstein’s failings to a lack of understanding of his human limitations. My interpretation is a bit different. The central problem of the book Frankenstein—and of the development of tech in general—is that human potential for technological advances is not naturally limited and is therefore self-endangering. That’s why it is necessary to develop an ethics of humility toward nature with regard to our tech. That’s why we must learn consciously to avoid tinkering with nature’s essentials. It’s simply a healthy form of self-control.
Those necessary ethics relate well to the topic at hand, the fourth belief of Naturalism: “Natural health is superior to pharma health.”
I’m devoting this entire post to the fourth belief because it inspires a lot of detail in me. That’s indicative of the extremely sad, wrong state of modern pharma-based medicine. Certainly one of the main reasons for the existence of Naturalism is to encourage a new way of living with respect to health.
As you read about the Naturalist perspective on health, please see if any of the descriptions here fit what you think might be a good lifestyle for yourself.
To begin, the Naturalist realizes that the technology that has developed around healthcare is parallel to technology that has developed in all the other facets of our lives, and that a lot of it is problematic. When dealing with matters of health, Naturalists would—as a matter of ethics—generally value the simplest solutions possible, and would judge more technologically complex solutions through the lens of “rightness” (see Parts 5, 6, and 7).
The very simplest of health solutions are prevention of illness through diet and lifestyle.
It follows that Naturalists would strive to eat healthy food. For example, organic food might become a new form of dietary tradition for Naturalists, similar to what kosher and halal became for Jews and Muslims. Organic food is certified as not being genetically engineered, which fits well with the Naturalist faith, because genetic engineering will likely be a “wrong” technology (see Part 7) in the eyes of most Naturalists. A Naturalist shopper in the supermarket might also frequently shop for basic whole foods, or else prepared foods that have fewer and simpler items in their lists of ingredients. Naturalists would be more likely to cook at home, compared to most people.
And in case the Naturalist has a cold or flu, the adage of Hippocrates would likely apply: “Let food be your medicine, and medicine be your food.” Modern science also gives valued advice: fasting—an age-old spiritual practice—has been shown to be beneficial to health if done properly. This could be another item in the “dietary health toolkit” of the Naturalist.
Other means of preventive health would involve lifestyle. Naturalists might lead active lives but also strive to avoid excessive stress. They would see the importance of having time for socializing as well as relaxing alone or with family. It’s not accidental that the Biblical origin of the non-working sabbath has the same intent, to ensure that people (as well as God) have a shared time to relax. A restful sabbath day would fit well in Naturalism, perhaps in conjunction with a weekly tech-avoiding “device fast” on the same day (see Part 12). Avoiding the use of devices or internet on a sabbath reminds me of how orthodox Jews don’t drive or ride bikes on their sabbath. They become socially present to their immediate neighborhood that way. Device-fasting could provide a very similar social benefit, encouraging people to be socially present to their families and acquaintances.
As another part of their lifestyle, Naturalists would be interested in scientific research on wellness, diet, and other health issues, and would share such knowledge with each other, such as at Naturalist church services (outlined in Part 11). Naturalists would value moderation and resistance to addiction as part of their lifestyle.
When serious illness or injury does strike, a Naturalist might first consider the very lowest tech approach toward treating illness: using the body’s own natural immunity and natural ability to heal, as well as one’s own “gut feelings” about how to respond to the difficulty.
Maintaining health without the use of medicine is not only a fine spiritual goal, but also in many cases a practical one, given that there is a huge amount of iatrogenic death and injury in modern times (i.e. death or injury caused by professional healthcare itself). In many cases, people would be better off by not using or seeking standard healthcare. Some simple examples are routine diagnostic procedures such as mammograms, prostate tests, and colonoscopies. Although at first it seems counter-intuitive, more than a handful of studies have shown these procedures to result in risks without clear benefits.
Other techniques of non-medicinal treatment might involve mind-over-illness and faith-over-illness. The placebo effect has been experimentally shown to be very powerful. Other techniques—such as meditation with positive thinking and visualization—perhaps also have great potential. Faith healing might be something a Naturalist would personally explore. There is a rich history of belief and practice in religious healing, such as in the Christian Science church in the United States. Naturalists could certainly source from that tradition, just as they source from others.
Another reason to minimize interactions with doctors is simply rational skepticism about profit-driven medical standards, which increasingly label people as needing medical intervention. For example, both blood cholesterol and blood pressure standards have become steadily stricter over the years, causing more and more people to take ongoing prescriptions to “control” conditions that would have previously been regarded normal. Naturalists would recognize that there is a great degree of collusion between public health policymakers and the pharmaceutical corporations that are pushing prescriptions for reasons of profit. Of course, this collusion has become completely brazen during the corona years.
When diet, natural immunity, and non-medical techniques are not enough to resolve an illness, the next step in the Naturalist’s medically conservative approach would be natural remedies, such as those in herbal traditions from around the world. If pharmaceutical medicines are warranted, then the simpler ones, the non-patented ones, and the time-tested ones would be prioritized. A Naturalist understands that there is a reckless bias in modern medicine toward expensive and recently patented medicines.
One form of pharmaceutical that would be very questionable for Naturalists would be vaccines. Vaccines change and manipulate a body’s responses to the environment on a permanent or very long-term basis. The immune system, a core function of our bodies, is altered by vaccines. That alone would raise ethical concerns for Naturalists because changing the essential nature of organisms—including ourselves—is unethical (see Part 7). As a Naturalist myself, I regard vaccines generally as “wrong” technology.
Receiving treatments like vaccines and gene-therapy is a sort of de-sacralizing of one’s body because it is a de-naturing of the body. Of course, the Christian principle of treating the body as a temple is a great source for this ethic. A similar directive from the Bible is that you should “honor God with your body.” In Naturalism, this directive takes on a more specific meaning because God and nature are equivalent. In this light, the directive means that we should strive to live within the realm of our own nature, not game or trick our nature via clever technological manipulations. These manipulations would be a dishonoring of the body, as well as of our natural, God-given uniqueness and healing abilities.
In addition to purely ethical concerns regarding vaccines, practical ethical concerns exist too, with respect to harms that the vaccines cause. Vaccines come with side effects that include serious illness and death. Our public health establishment currently tries to sweep these under the public rug, but more and more people are aware of the problems, especially now that the egregiously dangerous covid injections have been put into mass misuse.
Is there even any benefit to all the jabbing of the past 50 years? The death rate from most vaccinable illnesses plummeted in the 20th century prior to the introduction of mass vaccination. Clearly, the lion’s share of health advances last century were due to trends such as less crowded living conditions as well as practices such as public water purification, refrigeration, and transportation of fresh food to urban areas, all of which involve tech that is less questionable. However, official dogma credits vaccines for advances in longevity, despite the evidence.
Piling injury upon injury, vaccines are being used more and more frequently. The CDC-recommended childhood schedule has been greatly expanded since the 1980s. In recent decades, there has been the promotion of greater numbers of adult vaccines, too, not to mention the outright coercion recently associated with the covid jabs. All this is done without the slightest regard to the cumulative effects of layering all these injections atop each other. The official assumption is that a vaccine, once approved, can only do more good than harm, and that having more vaccines is always better. That assumption is nonsense, but the support for vaccines is anything but logical now. It has become simply a faith. Naturalists recognize that vaccines have become a modern false god in an anti-nature, anti-biotic religion. Here, I use “anti-biotic” in a broad sense. This false religion has a fundamentalist hostility to micro-organisms, the micro-biome, and therefore the very air we breathe and water we drink.
In contrast, Naturalists are pro-biotic in a broad sense. They know that ambient respiratory viruses are simply a part of nature, part of the biome we all share. Just like a rabbit or a fox in the woods, viruses, bacteria, and fungal spores live—and try to make a living—in our homes or workplaces. Micro-organisms are an inevitable and essential part of our surroundings. I would not be surprised in the slightest if research shows that micro-organisms have group intelligence. Certainly they are highly adaptable.
Trying to eradicate flu-like illnesses is not only futile but also likely harmful to ourselves. When we are challenged by such viruses—when we catch a cold or a flu—we are generally better off for it afterward, because our natural immune system has been enriched by the experience. Later, when we are older and weaker, our immune memory will be able to ward off similar viruses better because of our earlier bouts with them. You can, in fact, even welcome occasional illness as good exercise for the body, something that makes you stronger in the long run.
In cases of truly serious disease outbreaks, different low-tech approaches may be employed rather than vaccination. For example, simple quarantine was extremely effective against smallpox, and at least one health historian that I’ve read has credited quarantine as the major tool in the eradication of that disease some decades ago. (Of course, I am speaking of the true meaning of quarantine, the sequestering of the sick and exposed, not of the healthy population.)
The fact that modern viruses may have genetically modified origins themselves—as is apparently the case with the Sars-CoV-2 virus—adds some momentary complication. Do engineered viruses make our biome unnatural? And if our biome is now unnatural anyway, does that mean we should shield ourselves from the biome itself, and fight the wrong tech of engineered viruses with yet more wrong tech in the form of engineered jabs? This argument is similar in ethics to Bill Gates’ idea of fighting climate change by inundating the atmosphere with a shield of aerosolized nanoparticle aluminum. Gates thinks naively that we can solve one of our disturbances of nature by creating a counter-disturbance, and that all will turn out well. The fact is that we simply make our own little planetary nest dirtier each time we attempt this. We must instead stick to a sensible, conservative ethics with regard to tech, in order to keep our nest a good place to live.
In short, the Naturalist would be likely—after becoming informed on the topic of vaccines—to skip them, especially the recent mRNA covid gene-therapy injections. Their alteration of genetic material within the body is an even more profound manipulation of the core nature of the human organism.
Since we’ve all recently been through the trauma of covid policies, as an example let me now summarize how a Naturalist might deal with covid. Of course, this is not health advice. I’m just speculating how Naturalists would respond.
During a corona scare, Naturalists would be likely to:
1. Stay abreast of health research on coronavirus and treatments for covid.
2. Recognize that public health recommendations are often not accurate or good, and that some bad science is “tailored to fit” such policies.
3. Practice calming techniques such as meditation, if fear sets in.
4. Seek out unafraid acquaintances who like to socialize normally.
5. Resist unhealthy orders for lockdown and masking. Know the science and recognize that these policies are not based in good science. Spend time outdoors, get fresh air, and stay active.
6. Learn how to do nasal rinses with saline or iodine solutions, which have shown to be very effective against severe covid illness.
7. Improve diet in terms of preventives like Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and zinc: fish and fruit might be a good start on this.
8. Build up a personal store of supplements and medicines that are known to be good, time-tested, and safe treatments: things like quercetin, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, NAC, as well as the vitamins I’ve mentioned. Know how to use these effectively.
9. Try not to avoid the virus. Recognize that everyone will get it eventually, and that the more naturally people get it, the stronger their natural immunity will be afterward. Minimize or avoid medicines if the symptoms seem naturally manageable.
10. Avoid the hospital if at all possible, especially if inhumane hospital policies are in effect, like forced intubation, no visitation, etc.
11. Avoid the covid jab, primarily because it’s immoral, but also because it’s destructive to the body.
12. Take comfort that the above steps are an ethical way to respond. Realize that, despite all our efforts, we may still become ill or even die (that’s true of any treatment for any illness). Accept in a broad, spiritual sense that nature will follow its course despite whatever we may desire. In Naturalism, this can also be understood as being open to “God’s plan”.
It’s interesting to me that whenever we humans seek to control nature by gaming the essentials of it, we do so out of fervor for the beneficial promise of new technology, a promise that seems to always end up backfiring. In medical tech, his has been gradually happening with antibiotics and MRSA in the past couple decades. The latest delusion of the modern anti-biotic religion is, of course, that lockdowns, masking, and gee-whiz mRNA injections save millions of lives. In fact, the exact opposite is happening even as I write.
Though Naturalism is an ethical system, it results in practical benefits that naturally grow from these ethics. Avoiding the covid injections, for example, has proved to be a very good move with respect to both personal and public health. In fact, an honest utilitarian ethicist—judging actions only on the basis of their results—should eventually come to a conclusion similar to that of Naturalism regarding the immorality of the covid mRNA therapies. However, a utilitarian could never have the same foresight as a Naturalist. A Naturalist knows that these vaccines are bad news even while they are still in the planning stage!
I’ll continue exploring the beliefs and lifestyle of a Naturalist in the next part.