The following is an overview and summary of recent thoughts about shared conditions. Or actually, in many cases, I’ve been contemplating this info for years and decades. I already covered some of this in recent writings. But here I bring in a few other points, such as about food systems. And I emphasize how it relates or should relate to left-wing concerns, as well as why so few leftists seem concerned or simply less open-minded, less curious. While the main focus is on health, I was considering other factors that affect us and our society. And I want to further my thoughts on the problematic relationship of the far left to science, not only health-related research and theory but also the social sciences. I gathered these thoughts while commenting at Charles Gregory’s From Marxist Hunks to Fascist Thugs. He recommended turning it into an article and so here we are.
As for the title, I purposely made it catchy and a bit antagonistic. Partly, it was just that it amused me — authoritarians of all sorts are irritating, and so I figured there is no harm in mocking them. And as a radical left-winger myself, I felt it fair game for me to throw a barb at my fellow left-wingers. Plus, it does sort of get straight to the point. Far left-wingers, specifically economic (pseudo-)leftists like Marxist-Leninists, really are obsessed with the canon of old texts in the way fundies apologetically masturbate over scripture. But these same dogmatic (pseudo-)leftists are often clueless of anything written in living memory or so it can seem sometimes. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around that. These types love to attack right-wingers as ignorant and uneducated, which is fair game. Yet the incuriosity among left-wing authoritarians no less problematic. What is this disconnect between ideology and intellect?
The main point, though, isn’t to be provocative or mean-spirited in dismissing authoritarians. Rather, my intention is to advocate psychological and sociological self-defense, in the way Noam Chomsky has spoken of intellectual defense (albeit his close association with Jeffrey Epstein indicates he didn’t learn his own lesson well enough). That requires awareness, knowledge, and dialogue (We Need To Talk About Health; A Theory of Societal Retardation; & Signaling In Our Body-Mind and Our Body Politic). There are too many people who might think of themselves as liberal-minded but have become authoritarian, who might think of themselves as independent-minded but have become dogmatic and conformist, who might think of themselves as egalitarian but have become domineering. The ideological rhetoric and labels used can obscure this reality from others but, worse still, hide it from the individual’s own recognition. That’s why it’s important to study these fields, to see the signs both in others and in oneself. Only by knowing how conditions shape us can we change those conditions to get different results.
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Rather than mere body positivity and mental illness acceptance, we should actually be helping people to improve their health, not just as individuals but as an entire society. Yet often those on the broad left who push back the most against a health focus are Marxists and other economic left-wingers. Those are the very people who are most critical of culture war, identity politics, and wokeness. They’d claim they’re for concrete bread-and-butter issues. It’s just they define everything according to economics, often crudely to my mind, what could be called economic fetishism. I wonder if many of them, without realizing it, have internalized the economic framing and priorities of neoliberal capitalism, and so they’re less able to radically imagine economics as related to collective health.
That’s in response to Gregory’s piece. I don’t have any criticism of his argument, if I might put a different emphasis on it or add some layers to it. My own take hinges more on one of his concluding statements: “The left needs to reclaim a body-politics rooted in the transformation of material conditions, not only in representation or individual optimisation.” The right-wing has typically made health about producing the superior and successful individual (i.e., the individual who is above the masses, who is capable of dominating others). But the left’s take on it should be about collective wellbeing through public health policies and programs. There are some nods in this direction with healthcare reform, if it’s extremely inadequate to the size, scope, and complexity of the problems we face.
For some reason, many hardcore left-wingers seem to perceive an interest in and concern for health as limited to reactionaries, be it right-wingers (e.g., gym bros) or liberals (e.g., vegans) — apparently, it’s bourgeois to worry about sickliness and to want health. But there is also a common leftist disinterest in scientific research, which particularly seems strange to me. Many left-wingers, specifically on the far left (e.g., Marxist-Leninists), would rather reference a 19th century political philosopher than a 21st century political scientist, as if knowledge hasn’t advanced over the generations. This kind of hermetically-sealed intellectuality reminds me of axiomatic self-certainty of right-wing libertarians and objectivists (Conservative Mistrust & Ideological Certainty (part 2)). The obsession with traditional left-wing texts, as sola scriptura, is a sign of authoritarianism and conservative-mindedness (i.e., not being open to new info and ideas, perspectives and experiences).
For example, in the main leftist subreddits, I rarely see a discussion of something like the scientific research on high inequality. It corresponds with an increase of illness, physical and mental, along with more mistrust, paranoia, conflict, aggression, impulsivity, etc. So, obviously, disparities aren’t only about economics in an overt sense. Even for those who aren’t poor, high inequality appears to cause people to feel and act poor (Keith Payne, The Broken Ladder). The wealthy are worse off too, if no where near as badly. More than anything, it distorts, deranges, and destabilizes everything (Kate Pickett, Richard Wilkinson, Thomas Piketty, Peter Turchin, & Walter Scheidel). The result is a stressed-out and sickly society. This should be a leftist issue, but I see little left-wing talk about it beyond a standard economic analysis of rich people being bad.
There are other areas of health-related research that get almost no attention from leftists at all. There are studies that show how diet and nutrition not only impact mental health but also what could be called social and moral health. The only book I know of to cover this scientific material in detail is Mark Hyman’s Food Fix, and he does mention how it relates to issues of poverty, racism, etc. But some health experts have long been aware of the relationship between nutritional content of diet and prosocial behavior. Of what I know, the earliest book to explore it is Weston A. Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939). It’s mostly remained a niche topic of alternative health, in spite of how central it is to human functioning and flourishing.
Still other areas of research and theory are even more straightforward. Consider the behavioral immune system and parasite-stress theory. Exposure to nonzoonotic infectious-parasitical diseases decreases ‘openness to experience’ (liberal-mindedness, social liberalism) and increases conservatism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism, xenophobia, etc. I’ve argued that a major cause of liberalization of society had to do with improved hygiene, vaccinations, sewage systems, and water treatment plants. That is what the municipal socialists got right, but it’s also where Scandinavian social democrats seem to have a better grasp than the average American left-winger. The present right-wing turn no doubt is partly a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic, according to the behavioral immune system and parasite-stress theory (Sick Individuals = Authoritarian Societies; & Filth of Rome, Health of Alexandria).
It’s a pretty damn important topic. Some have noted that the only countries that went totalitarian earlier last century were those with some of the highest rates of infectious disease: tuberculosis, polio, Spanish flu, etc. That includes Russia. A large reason that the USSR failed as communism (i.e., direct worker control of the means of production) is likely because initially it was dealing with such a sickly population that induced mass authoritarian social control. And then likely why that authoritarian state capitalism lost its power wasn’t mere economic problems but the improvement of public health that had liberalized large parts of the population who, then, no longer wanted to be under authoritarian rule. These are things that are harder to understand without a health lens.
I suspect that Nazi Germany would’ve followed a similar path. They too were funding health research and implementing major public health improvements. Even if the Nazis had won WWII, the next generations of Germans would likely have liberalized. Authoritarianism is an evolved threat response. But once the threat is resolved, authoritarianism loses its attraction in the public mind. That is when authoritarian governments either reform or collapse. That is one of the interesting things about authoritarianism, it’s obsession with health. That probably explains why it’s the US right-wing at the moment that has prioritized health in a way that the left-wing has not.
After this period of disarray and dysfunction, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get another right-wing leader like Theodore Roosevelt or else someone like his nephew, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Both used authoritarianism to solve problems. Then society would swing back the other way again. TR explicitly stated that left-wingers were right about the problems they complained about (Capitalists Learning From Socialists). And to steal their thunder, he advocated that elites should take care of those problems. Otherwise, left-wingers would do so in a way that the elites wouldn’t like. We’re in the opposite scenario. Leftists now won’t even acknowledge these problems, at least not sufficiently. But if we leftists, specifically non-authoritarians, don’t deal with it, it will continue to be dominated by right-wing authoritarians who use health concerns as a ploy for power.
On audiobook, I was listening to Christine Kenneally’s The Invisible History of the Human Race. I’ve read some of it before, but I wanted to refresh my memory. She is one of those rare writers — like Derrick Jensen, Luke Kemp, Agner Fog, Robert Sapolsky, etc — who can synthesize vast amounts of diverse info. I’m fairly sure it was from her that I first learned of an interesting area of research on food systems. The focus is on how they form perception, cognition, behavior, cultures, social order, and politics. But one has to wonder if dietary nutrition itself might be altering development. To know for sure, one would have to look at the overall food system and the total diet.
[As a side note, there is evidence that something is unique about wheat. The populations that eat the most wheat have the highest rates of certain psychiatric disorders and neurocognitive conditions: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, schizophrenia, etc. A while back, I started what was to be a long-form essay on the history of wheat, as interpreted according to food systems, dietary ideology, nutrition studies, and the social sciences. It was to be a piece paired with my prior writing on beef (Ancient Dietary Ideology Persists).
In that other piece, I briefly spoke of grains: “While many like Charles Darwin, in his letters, saw agriculture as necessary and beneficial as part of Western evangelism, so as to destroy primitive culture and independence*, others instead perceived the opposite danger of Westerners becoming too civilized; too weak, emasculated, and impotent.” And because of Christian symbolism, the civilizing of heathens often involved having them grow wheat. It could be observed that, as described by Weston A. Price in the 1930s, the healthiest and most prosocial peasant-like rural farmers left remaining in Europe and the British Isles were eating such mainstays as barley and oats, not wheat. That would be a carryover of the old feudal diet of peasants, as wheat had previously been limited to the wealthy.]
As discussed in Kenneally’s work, Nathan Nunn found that plough-based agriculture, historically used for wheat, required the greater strength of men and so increased patriarchy as compared to hoe-based agriculture, such as barley. And Thomas Talhelm showed that wheat-growing populations are more individualistic and analytical, while rice-growers are collective and holistic thinking. (Talhelm explained it socioculturally. But a likely contributing factor is that environments, wet and warm, conducive to rice farming are also conducive to infectious disease.) That pretty much sums up wheat-based Western culture, at least in its modern form: patriarchal, individualistic, and analytical. But interestingly, before the Little Ice Age ended and agriculture improved, wheat was a rare crop in Europe.
The first dependable surplus yields of wheat didn’t happen in the West until the early 1800s. White flour suddenly became cheap and common. So, our notion of wheat bread as part of a wholesome American diet is only a couple of centuries old. It’s likely no coincidence that it’s when individualism took off. Some of that wasn’t an accidental side effect, though. The emerging capitalist elite saw the old communal self of lingering feudalism as a threat to the new economic and political system. As part of land reform, there was moral reform that sought to restructure human psyche and identity by restructuring the land itself: flattening hilly roads, dredging and straightening waterways, walling in land, systematizing of agriculture, etc (Enclosure of the Mind). This process, though, had begun much earlier (Containment of Freedom).
That could partly explain why the Enlightenment and early modern revolutionary period happened precisely as the food system was changing. That includes the colonial trade introducing sugar, tea, and tobacco; all mind-altering substances. There is a fascinating historical account I came across (“Yes, tea banished the fairies.”). It was first printed in a newspaper around the 1840s. An itinerant preacher in northern England asked an old man why the fairies disappeared. He said it was because tea (i.e., caffeine) replaced nappy groot ales (alcohol, mild psychedelics). We do have scientific studies on the effect of such substances. Psychedelics, for example, increase ‘openness to experience’. Groot ales, by the way, were systematically eliminated by law. They were replaced with hops that was able to preserve beer for transportation in colonial trade.
One might also note that there are no indigenous stimulants in Europe. A number of thinkers, including Michael Pollan, have argued that the introduction of stimulants made possible modern industrialization, allowing long hours of intense focus, from sedentary office work to night shifts involving dangerous equipment (The Drugged Up Birth of Modernity). Joseph Henrich, in The WEIRDest People in the World, does discuss sugar and caffeine as well. But he also brings up other factors that shaped individuality, such as Vatican marriage laws that broke up kinship networks and the Protestant promotion of mass literacy. Such things unintentionally individualized and liberalized Western culture.
Besides stimulants, modernity also brought with it increased availability of suppressants, such as opium. That’s even true with alcohol. In the Middle Ages, alcohol was watered down. Once again, it was about the lack of surplus grain yields. There weren’t extra grains to make large amounts of alcohol. Gregory touches on this topic in terms of leftist concerns: “early Marxists were very critical when it came to drinking. Alcohol clouds one’s judgement, so drinking beer after a day’s work acts as an opioid, stopping the working classes to realise their situation, and thus, reach class consciousness.” It’s odd that Marxists and other economic left-wingers have entirely forgotten this old strain of left-wing thought. The understanding of material conditions has been overly simplified, as if many leftists are now less capable of complex thought. Maybe it’s a sign of declining literary culture.
[This is practical info. Although as leftists we should focus on the large-scale collective most of all, this knowledge is equally applicable at the level of individuals, as well as to families, neighborhoods, and communities. But it’s not only that left-wingers usually lack the requisite info. Oftentimes, left-wingers are among the most sickly people I meet. It’s understandable, as many people become radicalized leftists because of chronic stress, economic struggle, prejudice, oppression, trauma, and on and on. As it’s personal, these people can sometimes be the most driven activists.
But in putting all their energy into the cause, they often sacrifice their own health in the process. I know hardcore left-wingers who self-medicate through alcohol, junk food addiction, and media overconsumption. Many don’t appreciate the necessity of stress management, nature exposure, animal-based nutrition, physical activity, etc (What does stress do to the mind? And why?; & Signaling In Our Body-Mind and Our Body Politic). No matter their good intentions, this will leave them compromised and so not operating at their best, which is problematic if sickliness causes them to be drawn into authoritarianism (The Threat of the Fake Left).]
If you really want to do a deep dive into what makes cultures liberal or authoritarian, egalitarian or hierarchical, matrifocal or patriarchal, there are several books that offer immense detail: Agner Fog’s Warlike and Peaceful Societies, Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse, David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything, etc. I believe it’s in Sapolsky’s Determined (or maybe Behave) that he discusses still other kinds of factors. Populations in deserts and arid grasslands have patriarchal and warrior cultures (Mongols, Plains Indians, early Semitic tribes, etc). Populations tend to be monogamous or polygamous in copying the sexual behavior of animals in their environment, maybe to do with shared ecological pressures. And much else. It’s fascinating stuff.
While we’re at it, we could also throw in media influences: cultivation theory (George Gerbner), global village (Marshall McLuhan), secondary orality (Walter J. Ong), etc. And we shouldn’t forget how judges, when hungry or sitting in an uncomfortable chair, are more punitive and less likely to give out pardons. Even liberals become more supportive of right-wing authoritarianism when exposed to violent footage like the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Or on a milder level, getting liberals slightly intoxicated induces conservative-minded stereotyping language (i.e., simplifying heuristics in response to reduced cognitive functioning). Nature deficit disorder also shuts down ‘openness to experience’, decreases awe, downregulates the default mode network, lessens focus, and reduces healing.
There are endless examples like this. These are the kinds of material conditions that are entirely off the radar of the typical left-winger. Yet such conditions determine every aspect of our experience and psychology, thus influencing collective action and shaping an entire society. Without this knowledge, we’re blind in not understanding our own human nature — then again, some left-wingers deny there is a human nature, in falsely believing in a blank slate. The implications of the evidence are immense. We tend to take all such factors for granted. Or we don’t think of them as being significant at all. Since most of us have never known any other conditions, we don’t realize how different we’d be if our present conditions were changed. But imagine if we ever did take this knowledge seriously and applied it. Imagine how the world could be transformed.
Marmalade 
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