A lot of the Greek mobilization last year against the state was spearheaded by anarchists who hold the “The Coming Insurrection” text as their Bible. For those who don’t know about this text, it’s written by a bunch of intellectual French a few years ago, but its positions have been adopted by many in Greece, Spain, the revolutions in the Arab world, and of course, the Anonymous.

The text basically goes something like this: “our capitalistic/social-norms world sucks, it will only get worse, let’s all revolt now!“. The text is reminiscent of French Continental philosopher and Marxist politician Alain Badiou in many ways.

Personally, I am not a supporter of this text (or Badiou for that matter). While I agree with many of the points that are made in the text, and I wholeheartedly agree that our situation today sucks a$$, and that there’s major need for Change, I don’t believe in a Revolution or Civil War as the bearer of such Change.

A Revolution usually entails violence and loss of life, because even if it’s a Revolution of the Mind, not everyone gets the bug at the same time — leading to confrontation and social unrest. When that happens, it entails the destruction of anything that was “good” in the previous status quo, not just what was “bad”. It’s that close relationship between Destruction and Revolution/War that I have a problem with the whole concept. It’s such an uncomfortable thought, not because I don’t embrace change (I do), but because such extreme measures are so unpredictable.

Today, as I’ve written in the past, I see myself as a middle-of-the-pack politically- and economically-speaking. Not a capitalo-Libertarian, and not a Communist, not a full-on Anarchist and not a Conservative Capitalist, but more of a progressive Socialist with Technocratic and Anarcho-Socialist leanings. I have this faith that Science and Technology can provide solutions for some things that have tormented philosophers and politicians for thousands of years striving to find a good solution for. For the rest of the elements that Science doesn’t help us with, it’s up to the society to mature through the ages and “perfect” every aspect of its being. It might take 10,000 years to do so, I don’t claim that this can happen by next year, but this Utopia that is dreamed by all of us (including the Anarchists), can only happen via universal maturity.

Every major event in our history that tried to change the status quo overnight has been cataclysmically negative, or at least traumatic. From the rise of the Nazis, to Trotsky and Stalin, all the way to the recent Egyptian revolution which a year later still has the Egyptians protesting in the streets, apparently unhappy for their new rulers! The French Revolution was the only major Revolution that bore some good fruits in the long-term, but it didn’t happen without massive blood loss, and without having the country on its knees for over 30 years after it happened.

Oh, I’m a dreamer too. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that I haven’t been dreaming of Utopia myself. And when I’m saying that I’ve been dreaming of it, I’m not saying that in a form of trying to think of all its technical details of how such a Utopia can become and sustain its stature, but how it actually feels like to live in it. For me, it’s an island in the Pacific, with the perfect climate. A beacon of civilization and art compared to the rest of the world. I close my eyes and I think of how the houses look like, how the streets look like, the parks, the trains and electric cars, the art. How relaxed the few laws are. How clean and beautiful everything looks like everywhere. How good the diet of the citizens is (pastured and wild animals, sustainable green agriculture), prompting to minimal healthcare needs, while everyone lives above 100 years old. How it’s a culture who strive for progress, and not towards owning more “stuff”. How simple and comfortable their attire is. How thousands of citizens get together in the shore during sunset to practice Zen. How there’s no crime, because the people are mature enough to know right from wrong. How special their educational tools are, driving everyone’s IQ off the roof. How citizens volunteer for public works for some of their free time. How the citizens self-censor and self-limit themselves in ways that protect the environment and wild animals. And everyone is just in bliss…

Basically, the whole thing in my mind doesn’t feel much different than the mythical island of Atlantis.

As much as this dream will remain a dream for centuries, if not thousands of years, I’m positive that one day such a Utopia will arrive (should we manage to not annihilate ourselves in the process). But such a Utopia can not arrive via a Revolution. These two concepts are diametrically antithetic. A Utopia, or should I say a “large-scale societal nirvana” (or some could even call it “Applied Marxism”), can only happen via a slow maturation in both the individual, the society, and the political landscape — and goes hand-in-hand with advancements in science, because science could potentially help us overcome some of the problems arising from human nature. As for our Capitalistic world today, it’s just a phase. It’ll come to pass, naturally. But it’s important to go through it and learn from it.

I don’t disagree that in some extreme cases measures must be taken against an abusive State, and I certainly believe that citizens must be active politically and fight for what’s fair, but unfortunately, this type of Marxism that the Leftists dream of doesn’t work today because its principles go against the human psyche. We have to either twist its principles (which is what the Eastern Block did), or we have to use science to change the human nature and remove the specific limitations that holds us back from our Utopia. Some times this might just be a way of producing more food or cheap labor via robots, and some times it might be a vaccine which changes people’s behavior towards a specific goal (as inhuman this might sound, transhumanism/posthumanism is an open possibility).

No matter what, see you again in 100 years or so.

The general consensus among Paleo dieters is that dairy is a Neolithic food, and so milk, yoghurt and cheese are not allowed (although butter, ghee and sour cream are still consumed by most Paleo dieters). Even the Primal faction of Paleo, which is more relaxed, suggests caution when it comes to dairy. The main disapproval for dairy on Paleo is its lactose and casein, both known allergens and inflammation agents.

The idea is that when you go Paleo, you’re supposed to eat brassica vegetables & spinach daily, eat the heads & bones of sardines, and that your gut will take care of absorbing calcium better now that you got Paleo. Even with all that, a Paleo dieter gets about 60% of the RDA for Calcium daily, but then they come and tell you that the US RDA number is unnaturally high and was measured against modern dieters, not Paleo ones. Funny how the die-hards don’t use the same argument for all the other vitamins!

Honestly, these suggestions are kind of laughable. Who eats broccoli daily, and who eats sardine heads daily? And what about all of us who came from the Standard American Diet (SAD) and have leaky and damaged guts after years of eating grains, and we can’t absorb nutrients as well yet? My teeth were transparent like glass when I first found Paleo!

My home-made lactose-free goat yoghurt rocks with raw honey, berries, nuts!

To get adequate calcium and phosphorus on the Paleo diet one must drink slow-cooked bone marrow broths from grass-fed cows or wild game. It’s the main way to get any serious amounts of minerals and vitamins, and I suspect that this was the main way our dairy-free Paleolithic ancestors were getting by too (and by eating eggshells too).

But the problem is that the vast majority of Paleo dieters don’t take the time to cook bone broths (or eat offal). A lot of people come to Paleo for weight loss and not for its amazing health benefits, and so they omit such basic requirements. They simply remove foods from their diet (e.g. grains, beans, sugar etc), but they don’t add other foods that are needed (e.g. fermented foods, offal, broths etc). That’s not Paleo that they’re doing! It’s SAD-lite!

Now, in all fairness, the Paleo arguments about lactose and casein are valid. Lactose is a complex poly-saccharides sugar (gut bacteria love these, as lots of it goes undigested in our bowels), and bovine casein is even more difficult to break apart, since the right enzymes are usually not present in our stomach (because the milk was pasteurized, and its enzymes were nuked).

But there’s a workaround, and it’s what I’ve been using myself with great success (for my gut, bones, and teeth). Remember, Paleo is a template, not a hard-line religious dogma. This has been more evident lately, as more and more Paleo dieters have been adding more kinds of foods in their diet, as long as their bodies seem to tolerate them. Dairy seems to be popular in the Paleo world as of late too, but this is my regimen on how to get the most out of dairy, without accumulating any of its negative effects too.

Step 1: Don’t eat bovine dairy, but go for goat/sheep dairy. Goat/sheep’s casein chemical structure is closer to that of humans’, so we are able to digest it way easier than cow casein. Some people who are allergic to cow casein are able to have goat/sheep dairy without a problem! There are some cows that produce the “right” casein, but these cows are not bred much anymore. We are the victims of 10,000 years of cow un-natural selection! Buffalo have the right casein, but who can milk a buffalo?

Step 2: Limit lactose. Go only for harder goat/sheep cheeses (which contain only traces of lactose), and make your own, home-made, lactose-free, multi-probiotic goat/sheep yoghurt (fermented for 20-24 hours so the bacteria have time to consume most of the lactose & galactose sugars). Or even better, kefir, which is more potent than yogurt!

Step 3: From cows, only have grass-fed butter or ghee, and sour cream (if you can tolerate cow casein). Sour cream usually has very little lactose left in it (this is the lactose-free one I personally buy). If I could find butter/sour-cream from goats or sheep (or buffalo/bison), I’d switch in a second!

Step 4: Never drink pasteurized animal milk, unless it’s raw goat/sheep milk, *and* you can trust the farm you bought that milk from! Raw milk can indeed be dangerous, so you must be sure that what you’re drinking is safe. Preferably, go for coconut milk instead, and use it mostly for cooking.

Step 5: Don’t forget the bone broths! A lot of other bone-related minerals are found in bones/marrow that can’t be found in dairy! You can also get almond & coconut drinks that are enriched with calcium.

Alternatively, you can buy a vitamin that includes Ca+D3+Mk4+Mg (all elements are needed to absorb calcium), but such a pill is not ideal either. For example, phosphorus is as important as calcium for bone health, but it’s very rare to find it in most vitamin pills. Eating real food is still the preferred way to get mineralized.