High Fructose Corn Syrup for the Modern Soul

Photo credit: KH.

The state of our physical and mental health primarily flows from what we consume, whether that consumed thing is a gallon or petroleum, a potato chip, or a news headline. When we look and feel like crap, it’s probably related to consuming crappy foods and living a crappy, unhealthy lifestyle. If our minds are confused and agitated, it’s probably because we are consuming and living by toxic, false beliefs. Garbage in, garbage out.

In May, I wrote my most popular Medium piece to date, entitled, “How Modern America is Optimized for Loneliness, Misery, and Poor Health.” In the ensuing months, I’ve been pondering the relationship of that piece’s thesis and the prevalence of mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and substance addiction. I keep concluding that if our societal structures are set up to isolate, placate, and distract, how can one not suffer from some sort of mental illness? Taking this logic a step further, I wonder if many of these conditions aren’t illnesses at all, but healthy-normal responses to toxic environments, lifestyles, and belief systems. It’d be surprising if a person who spends over eight hours a day looking at their phone — flitting between different FOMO-inducing apps, web pages, newsfeeds, texts, etc. — didn’t display the symptoms of anxiety or ADHD. Drink poison, get sick. This is not to dismiss the role of genetics, but it is to question the direction of causality between environmental forces and genetic predispositions — that the former’s causes can trigger and exacerbate the latter’s effects.

Scenes like — two people ostensibly socializing, yet staring into screens — have become commonplace and normalized. And we wonder why people feel so lonely and disconnected? Photo credit: KH.

Since I covered toxic environments, and because there are many who cover toxic lifestyles and foods more expertly than me, I thought I’d write about toxic ideas and belief systems, ones that seem to be held by the majority of modern humans nowadays, making them unhappy, ignorant, and existentially impotent. Here’s a list of ten toxic ideas and beliefs that should be purged from our collective ontological diets ASAP:

1. That Big Business/Government/Media/Pharma/Tech will solve the problems they created. These entities and their beneficiaries, which increasingly work as a unified phalanx, are causing most of the world’s biggest problems — anthropogenic climate change, pollution, wealth inequality, a global “housing crisis,” homelessness, obesity/hunger/malnutrition, industrial warfare, etc. It’s a fallacy — one propped up daily by Big Media — that these institutions and their functionaries will undo or reduce these problems. There’s no logic in this reasoning, especially when these entities have so much to gain from problem perpetuation.
2. That technology will save the day. Many will bemoan the impact of Big Tech (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple), but retain their faith in Technology like cryptocurrency, blockchain, renewables, EVs, etc. What this faith misses is how technological panaceas are intrinsically connected to the continuance of the large scale and centralized power systems maintaining electrical grid and supply chain stability. This is why most techno-proponents are already part of the power-wielding hegemony. Their stated agenda to empower the little guy and equitably distribute power belies their real motivation of wresting control of the energy, monetary, and communication systems currently controlled by the Old Guard (i.e. their parents).
3. That individual action can’t affect positive [or negative] change. Big Business/Government/Media/Pharma/Tech keeps the masses powerless by convincing them that their problems need top-down support to be remedied. Yet, per point number one, these big entities are the ones screwing things up. Consider this: Big Business can’t exist without lots of individual workers doing its bidding. Big Government can’t exist without faithful constituents. Big Media can’t exist without uncritical, uninformed readers and viewers. Big Pharma can’t exist without individuals who won’t take responsibility for their mental and physical health (see point five). Big Tech can’t exist without novelty and convenience-obsessed individuals giving their time, money, and allegiance to technology. Don’t believe the hype. You, the individual, have the power.
4. That most wars are about more than energy/resource security. Why does the media generate so much moral outrage and support for wars in places with strategic value for oil and gas extraction, yet is indifferent to conflicts in regions without? It’s because oil, gas, and the economic engines these liquids fuel are the reason for wars. Morality is a convenient excuse (see my final point for more about morality).
5. That wealth is more important than health. Health is wealth is an axiom whose truth most only discover when their health disappears and it’s too late to get it back. No, on a functional level, the average modern human takes little heed of being and staying healthy, evidenced by (among other things) the fact that 74 and 42 percent of the total US population is overweight and obese, respectively, per the CDC. Despite their abysmal health, the average American spends a paltry 18 minutes a day exercising and 34 minutes socializing, both cornerstones of good physical and mental health. Nonetheless, this same American puts in his or her eight hour workday (all stats per BLS) and eight plus hours of screen time. This lopsided time allocation is a reflection of lopsided values…and, to be fair, corresponding economic conditions that promote non-stop toil for economic gain and survival.
6. That more is intrinsically a good thing. Look at a hillside covered with ticky-tacky suburban homes or at a Lagos or Delhi slum teeming with hungry people or at a landfill overflowing with the detritus of our industrial, disposable lifestyles. Take a big whiff off the tailpipe from a 5,000 pound F150, America’s best selling automobile. These are the ugly consequences of a global obsession with more, no matter what Steven Pinker says.
7. That real change happens without personal sacrifice. There’s a widespread delusion that a new, sustainable world is possible when today’s dirty, industrial systems are replaced by clean (i.e. less dirty), industrial systems. Instead of driving internal combustion engines, we drive EVs; instead of using petroleum-based single-use packaging, we use compostable packaging; and so forth. This delusion is readily adopted because it requires no sacrifice or alteration of existing lifestyles. This focus on supply completely misses the thing causing all of the problems: unsustainable demand — often for stuff and conveniences that serve no purpose towards, or directly undermine, human and planetary flourishing (big trucks, big homes, an endless supply of electronics, etc.). Until people start understanding what they actually need, not perceived or marketed needs, and consuming accordingly, until they know and experience “enoughness,” nothing will be enough.
8. That “casual sex” exists. Perhaps the only thing less casual than sex is death. Sexual intercourse, while undoubtedly pleasurable, is an evolutionary and biological act for perpetuating the species. To hold sex and sexuality principally as tools for getting attention or a recreational act or a tool for selling stuff obscures sex’s actual seriousness and sanctity. It’s messing with a lot of our heads.
9. That pleasure and happiness are the same thing. The other points on this list obliquely point to this junk idea, but it bears further clarification. A Buddhist teacher once told me that if something was a real source of happiness, the more we did that thing, the happier we would become. He then applied this filter to the things humans often turn to to feel better — things like sex, drugs, booze, junk food, fast cars, purchasing shiny, new stuff, etc. He then asked if we become happier the more we do these things? Do more drugs, sex, and ice cream lead to Nirvana? Of course not. Once the initial pleasure wears off, ice cream, drugs, sex, shopping, and other transitory pleasures are likely to make us feel worse. He contrasted this to virtues loving, kindness, generosity, and patience — all of which tend to increase our sense of happiness the more we do them. The problem is that Big Business can’t sell virtue, but it can sell drugs and other stuff.
10. That the material and ephemeral are more important than the spiritual and enduring. I was raised in a spiritual vacuum by an avowed atheist dad and a church-hating former nun mom. As such, my early aims in life, if one can call them that, were about becoming like the men I saw on TV: professionally accomplished, physically attractive, and sexually promiscuous. Like many, I was taken off this hackneyed path when my individual resources proved unsuccessful, bordering on fatal, for living a happy and healthy life (yes, drugs and alcohol were involved). In the wake of ruin, I discovered a power and order greater than myself, one I call God. I’ve met more people than most, and it’s my abundant personal and observational experience that people who live at peace with themselves and the world have and maintain a connection to a higher source, whether they call that source God, Christ, Allah, Buddha, the Tao, Truth, or Nature. To be connected to this power is to be aligned with an internal and enduring order, logic, and purpose — one that often exists in spite of external disorder, absurdity, and meaninglessness. The connection to the eternal, which was once a widespread value in preindustrial times, has been replaced by the pursuit of the sellable and ephemeral — fame, looks, wealth, acquisitiveness. Today, God and saints have been replaced by the false idols of markets and businesspeople, of politics and politicians, of celebrity, of technology, and most of all, of personal glory. This premium placed on the material and ephemeral over the spiritual and enduring is not working individually, and it certainly isn’t working on a collective level.