Lack of critical thinking about food has long been one of my biggest peeves. I rant to my students every semester about why they shouldn’t worry about gluten unless they have celiac disease; that the paleo diet is based on pseudoscientific reasoning about human evolution; and why their blood type has nothing to do with what kind of food they should eat. So I truly appreciate today’s Daily Read from Alan Levinovitz. Writing for Slate, Levinovitz compares diet fads to religions and laments the fact that no amount of facts and logic will dissuade people from their uncritical faith in charlatans like Dr. Oz and the Food Babe. He deconstructs how these folks make abundant use of sophisticated nonsense to manipulate people and scare them into compliance with their absurd dictates about “unnatural” foods and insidious “chemicals” and “toxins.” Levinovitz sounds pretty discouraged about the possibility of changing people’s minds; yet he ends by making a compelling argument for improving people’s critical thinking skills by educating them about such persuasive techniques and logical fallacies. Perhaps there is hope yet.
Author: Ranthropologist
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Shifting Perspective: House and Home
Several weeks ago I impulsively started looking online at local houses for sale and began fantasizing about owning property again. In 2011, I walked away from the condo I’d purchased in 2005 for $196,000 because it had dropped in value to somewhere around $40,000. So with a foreclosure on my record, and a deliberate one at that, my options are limited until the foreclosure drops off my credit report in 2018. Still, there are options for me, and that was enough to get me browsing websites and scrolling through pictures of remodeled kitchens and laminate floors.
Looking at all those pictures and thinking about what I’d want in my ideal house made me start ruminating on what I want vs. what I need. Depending on how you define need, none of us needs very much in terms of housing. Four solid walls and a roof enclosing space for sleeping, cooking, eating, and bathing are all anyone really needs. Just look at the mini boom (pun intended!) in micro housing – a trend in which people are making themselves comfortable in tiny living spaces, often made out of unusual materials like old shipping containers. I am pleased with the micro house idea, but at the same time, I have a lot of stuff – enough that it fills my current 2-bedroom, 1200 square foot rental pretty snugly. This troubled me as I put in an offer to buy a smaller house – 3 bedrooms, but only 975 square feet. I wondered what I’d have to give up to fit my stuff into this smaller space. My offer was not accepted (which I decided was for the best), but I continued to be troubled as I thought about all the space I take up in my house. I have described living here alone with my two cats as being like the last cookie in the bag – I rattle around in all this space that is designed to hold more than one person – and yet my stuff fills in all the corners.
My uneasiness with the house hunt crystallized recently while I was at the gym. I don’t have television at home, so when I go to the gym I enjoy watching mindless drivel. On this particular day it was a show with some silly name like “Love It or List It.” The show involved a couple who had to decide to either buy a new house or keep the one that the show’s designer had remodeled to fit their needs. The show seemed inoffensive until the couple started looking at possible houses to buy. Every house the realtor showed them was deemed too small. They had nothing but disparaging words for the bedrooms that their kids might occupy, calling them “half-bedrooms” or “closets.” These rooms were big enough for a bed and dresser – typically kid-room furniture – but apparently that wasn’t enough for this couple. They weren’t smug or arrogant about it; in fact, they seemed to genuinely want the best for their kids. Yet, I still found their attitude distressing, and began questioning my own desire for a big enough house just for me and all my stuff. This, of course, is where the shift in perspective comes in.
Why do we want so much space? I could offer long and complicated explanations that dig into culture and capitalism and the structural nature of inequality, but at the most basic level I believe that human beings naturally want more. We have to keep this in perspective, though, by remembering how much more many of us already have compared to people in so much of the rest of the world – and also right here in the United States. Remember the micro houses? They are now being offered as a solution to homelessness in some cities. These homeless people are happy to get the tiny house. People in many parts of the world live in structures that most people in the US wouldn’t dream of calling home. From war-torn neighborhoods where people try to make do in the bombed-out shells of their apartments and houses to rural villagers in traditional huts to people building shacks in landfills, people all over the world struggle to keep the walls and roof they need to say they have a home.
This does not mean I think everybody should have to live in a tiny house. It does not mean that because some people suffer, we all should suffer. But maybe we should redefine how much space we actually need to call our house a home. I think we should remind ourselves that what makes a house a home is not its size but its meaning. That’s why realtors say they’ll help you find your “dream home” – they’re selling the physical house as the embodiment of the idea of home. But while a house is tangible, a home is not. Any place can be made home, regardless of its size or how much stuff it can hold.
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Daily Reads: Almond Joy
California is experiencing a severe drought, so severe that Governor Jerry Brown recently mandated 25% cuts in water use for individuals and businesses throughout the state. Those cuts did not include agricultural users. Many people are upset that farmers are escaping the restrictions, and they have turned their ire on a specific crop: almonds. It turns out that almonds are a very thirsty crop, with a single nut requiring a gallon of water to produce.Mother Jonesled the charge against almonds in July 2014 when they published an article snarkily titled “Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters.” This article was my first introduction to the economics of almonds, and I immediately agreed that almonds are a wasteful crop to produce during times of such drastic drought – though I have to admit I didn’t stop eating them (I have never had almond milk and I’m not eager to try it regardless of the drought). Now, with the new water restrictions, almonds are the target of people who believe that a crop that uses up to 10% of California’s agricultural water should give way to more drought-tolerant, sustainable crops. Yet, it turns out that there is more nuance to the business of almonds than just their thirstiness and value to the state economy. Today’s two Daily Reads address both sides of the almond debate. One article, from CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), highlights the value of almonds and points out that they can be sustainably managed by small farmers. The second is an article from Mother Jones responding to several arguments that almonds really aren’t that bad. I invite you to read both, as well as the other articles I linked to, and draw your own conclusions; but as for me, I still think there are better ways to use our agricultural water than to grow a water-intensive crop that is mostly destined for overseas markets.
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Daily Read: Fundamentalist Atheism
Today’s Daily Read is a perfect follow-up to my post from yesterday on religion. Mary Elizabeth Williams says what a lot of atheists like me are thinking when she takes Bill Maher to task for his particular brand of fundamentalist, militant atheism. Writing in Salon, Williams points out that Maher does a grave disservice to his cause when he applies blanket generalizations to religious practices and characterizes them all as worthy of contempt. She is right to call Maher an intolerant bigot. Williams is a Christian, and she makes clear that her Christianity does not make her an extremist or an idiot – and the same is true of the followers of many religions. Maher errs by lumping all believers into the same category. I completely agree with Williams. As I said in yesterday’s post, I think it’s ideology, not religion, that is truly the root of so much sociopolitical and cultural conflict in the world; religion is just the frame that justifies the ideology. You don’t have to believe in the supernatural to believe that your way of life is the correct way. My atheism has not caused me to turn my back on the values of my culture. Most atheists are good people with strong moral codes – just like most Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Atheists like Maher only serve to make us look just as bad as the fundamentalists of any religion, and I wish he would shut up and go away.
Bill Maher’s bigoted atheism: His arrogant shtick is just as ugly as religious intolerance
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(R)anthropology Class: The Culture of Religion
It is no secret to my students that I am an atheist. It usually comes up early in my classes when I have to talk about cultural universals like religion, or when I have to explain why I don’t teach intelligent design (the secret code name for Christian creationism). I am also quick to reassure them that I have no interest in turning them into atheists; however, I do nurture a secret hope that by helping them become better critical thinkers, they may come to embrace agnosticism, if not outright atheism, on their own. But, I do not want to browbeat them – dare I say convert them? – into atheism. When I give my lecture on religion, I’m trying to explain it to them from an anthropological perspective. Religion is a cultural universal – every culture has one – so my students need to know the basic outlines of what constitutes religion.
I teach the concepts mostly from a functionalist perspective. Anthropologically, religion can be simply defined as beliefs or rituals that revolve around or involve supernatural beings or forces. What is the function of religion in society? First and foremost, it serves to answer unanswerable questions: WHY are we here? WHAT happens after we die? WHERE do we go? WHY do bad things happen to good people? WHY isn’t God a Charger fan? And so on. These questions cannot be answered by science. God/the supernatural, as encompassed in the myriad religious practices of the world, serve to help people answer the unanswerable, and explain the unexplainable. Of course, in the earliest religions, many of the unanswerable questions were things that science has now explained: why does the sun rise and set? What are stars? What makes a volcano erupt? Yet, as long as we have existential questions such as why are we here, then we will still have religion.
Religion also provides comfort during anxious times. When a person has suffered a devastating loss, they can turn to their religious beliefs for solace. I think for many people, it is much easier to believe that God has a plan for them than it is to believe that bad things happen for no reason at all. It is terrible to imagine that, say, losing your child to cancer has no greater meaning. So, people pray, or talk about God’s plan, or say that little Junior is with the angels in Heaven. Of course, suffering great pain or loss can also make people question their faith, but that anxiety-reducing function of religion keeps people returning to their supernatural or spiritual beliefs. As an atheist, I am comfortable with the knowledge that there is no greater purpose to life; it doesn’t make my life any less meaningful, and in fact in some ways makes it more meaningful, because I’m convinced that this is the only chance I’ll get and I’m going to make the most of it (the multiple fallacies that people hold about atheists, such as the idea that people who don’t believe in God eat babies because without God you can’t be moral, is a subject for another post).
Along with the comfort and anxiety reduction functions, religion has an important role to play in educating people about correct behavior and what the consequences will be if they step out of line. Having a religion that offers rewards or threatens punishment is a very useful tool for regulating individual and group behavior. It’s even better if people believe that God is always watching them; even if you are alone, God sees you masturbating! So you’ll follow the rules even when no one else is around. Religion also provides the rules themselves. For the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – yes, I tell my often surprised students, Yahweh, God, and Allah are all the same guy), those rules are codified in holy texts such as the Talmud, Torah, Bible, and Koran. All three of these religions share the Old Testament, but their theologies are differentiated in their independent holy books. The Bible is filled with rules of conduct and stories with examples of the consequences if you don’t comply – just look at Lot’s poor wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt because she disobeyed God by looking back as she and Lot fled Sodom and Gomorrah (aside – if I was Lot, I’d be thrilled that my wife got turned into a woman-sized salt block. Salt was extremely valuable in those days!).
One of the things I find to be the most interesting about religion is that religions always reflect the cultures from which they are derived. This is an obvious statement, but it’s not one that is often scrutinized. Religion provides an orderly model of the universe in that it gives a supernatural origin story for why the world is the way it is. Where did we come from? God made us from clay and breathed life into us. Why do we suffer? Because first Eve, then Adam, disobeyed God by eating the apple. Why do we follow the rules we follow? Because God told Moses the rules and bade him share those teachings with his followers. Think about what this does for the people following the rules of their culture, as codified in their religion: it provides a supernatural mandate for doing things a certain way. It removes from groups and individuals the burden of being responsible and puts the burden on God. It allows people to say, “Hey, I didn’t make the rules. God did.”
I have been using mostly Christian examples here for convenience, because it is the religion with which my readers will be the most familiar, but these ideas apply to all religions, from the simplest animatism to New Age spiritualism to the most complex polytheism to the mainstream, widespread Abrahamic religions and all their different denominations and sects. And every one of these religions is a proxy for the culture they come from.
I have heard some people argue that religion is the root of all evil. I don’t entirely disagree, but I don’t think that’s really the problem. It makes sense to say that religion is the root cause of many of the world’s conflicts, both past and present; many people have gone to war in the name of their religion. Obviously a deeply fundamentalist interpretation of Islam drives groups like the Islamic State today, just as a particular interpretation of Christianity drove the Crusades. People fight and kill and destroy and die for their beliefs, so you could argue that if there were no religions there would be no war. But I think that is completely wrong. The fact that religion is a proxy for culture is the reason why I believe we will never be free of conflicts that people are willing to die for. Religion is just the supernatural explanation for culture. That’s why I can say I’m an atheist, yet I live by the largely Judeo-Christian morals of my culture. I don’t have to believe in God to be a good person; I’m a good person because my parents, my family, and my culture have taught me to be. If my way of life was threatened to the degree that I felt the need to take up arms to defend it, I would, but God would have nothing to do with it.
The conflicts we are experiencing around the world may seem to be based on religion, but really, they’re based on ideology. Many people in the United States believe our way of life is the best way and the right way, and many US Christians will say it’s because we are a country based on the Bible (the fact that this is not historically accurate does not change the fact that our overall ethics and morality generally derive from Judeo-Christian principles). The terrorists of ISIS explicitly attribute their motivations to Islam, but they are also fighting for a way of life. The Sunni and Shiite conflicts that rage throughout the Middle East, or the Israel-Palestine division that seems impossible to bridge, or the Hindus in India fighting with Muslims in Pakistan; these are all fights for culture and ideology. Even if you took religion completely out of it and made all these people atheists, they would still believe that their way of life was the right way, and they would fight. Religion isn’t the root of all evil. People are.
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Daily Read: Pill Poppers
Dietary supplements have been in the news a lot lately. Ever since an investigation in New York found that many supplements don’t even contain the active ingredient listed on the label (in other words, there might be NO St. John’s Wort in your bottle of St. John’s Wort), supplements have been getting attention. And now yet another study shows that many popular supplements contain amphetamines which, of course, were not listed on the label (and which the FDA apparently has known about for two years) . Julia Belluz writes about these stories and the overall lack of regulation of the supplement industry in today’s Daily Read. Amazingly, supplement makers are allowed to make unsubstantiated claims about their products on the product label. You know that little box on the supplement bottle that says “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease”? That’s the supplement industry’s get out of jail free card. Unlike regulated drugs, which have to be rigorously tested for safety and efficacy before they are approved, the burden of proof for supplements works in reverse: the FDA must prove that supplements are harmful before they can be taken off the market! Basically, supplement makers can make any claim they want and they don’t have to prove it. Now, I realize that not all supplements are harmful, but the regulatory loopholes are still far too vast (see many supplements don’t even contain the active ingredient listed on the label above). As far as I’m concerned, I won’t trust any supplement claims unless I’ve done the research myself; and I’ll change my mind if presented with convincing new evidence (for example, I reevaluated my daily multivitamin after new studies showed that they are not only not helpful, they may be harmful. I no longer take a multi.). So be careful, and don’t take the supplement makers’ word for it. There are more damning details in the article, so don’t take my word for it either – read it yourself.
How dietary supplements evade regulation — with dangerous results