Summary
In the real world we all have to eat – and getting enough of the right sort of food that will keep us healthy is an issue.
We know how to grow food that will keep us healthy, we have the technology, it is simply a question of spreading the information.
The internet has become our prime source of information. But the virtual world of the internet is dominated by someone trying to sell you something, for profit or manipulate the way you think to increase their power.
But humans are the most successful creature on the planet because of a combination of intelligence and cooperating together. We naturally form groups to overcome difficulties, like the predicted food crisis.
No single person can solve the forthcoming food crisis but using the power of cooperation we can solve the food crisis, and it mother the climate crisis.
The Gbiota club is such a group, but to be effective we need to show the world that we exist, are a genuine group concerned about our grand kids future.
The first step is showing the world we exist by every one of us creating our own icon. Read more at www.gbiota.com/gbiotanews look for Mary’s mini for details
Is there really a food crisis?
Is there really a food crisis – the shops are full of food so obviously this is just a scare campaign by a bunch of woke trendies – right?
Well let’s look at the story of that related crisis – the climate crisis. Now there is a real story with goodies, badies, greed, lying and devious plots.
The basic science behind climate change is well over a hundred years old and in all that time has not changed one little bit. Now here is not the place for that story, you can read all about that in the many books, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes or This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein.
But if it is true, then what do we do about it? Before the dreaded epidemic, which I can’t say or this article will be black listed, I went to China and was lent a little electric car. Now this was truly terrible – little more that a 4 wheel electric scooter with 2 reasonable seats up front and 2 kids seats in the back.
In China, where road laws are optional, this did not stop three people cramming into the front seats and four adults in the back – and I could still drive it.
It had a range of barely 100K, I have no idea what the maximum speed was as I never had a chance to drive it on the open road but it would be pretty miserable I am sure. So who in the right mind would buy such a terrible contraption and why?
Well for a start a $10,000 purchase price and it could be fitted with solar panels, which while no where near powerful enough to drive it, if you left it out in the sun it would charge the batteries up enough to take the kids to school, do the shopping or get to work – and all for free and with no carbon emissions.
Lets face it – this is no where near as comfortable as driving the kids to school in a V8 SUV so what determines whether people would choose a SUV or a rattly little electric car.
It is nothing to do with technology, they both do the job perfectly well – it is a question of the public image which is acceptable.
If the public image is that driving your kids to school in a SUV shows that you are a highly successful career person to be well respected then you will be under subtle pressure to use an SUV
but
if the public image is that driving your kids to school in what look like a circus dodgem car with a solar panel on the roof shows you are a community conscious individual rather than an unthinking swanky prick then you may well go for the electric car.
So what has this got to do with a food crisis and if there really is one what we do about it?
If you ever get around to reading the Naomi books you will realise this is nothing to do with the available technology. We actually know how to feed the world, all eight billion of us, with nutritious food that will keep most of us fit and healthy (I am not getting into genetic here and moving the bell shaped curve towards a healthier population here – this article is about the power of managing information).
Sorry it is not really new
In my technical articles you will see I talk about partial flood and drain as some sort of new technology – but that is not strictly true.
Let me take you back to WW2 when I was a toddler. I watched as ladies (there were hardly any men about when I was a toddler, my Dad was in North Africa fixing Beaufighters – one of the few planes which could take of with a full load in the High Atlas mountains).
In those days child exploitation was not just acceptable it was socially desirable – you could get away with anything with the magic phrase ‘don’t you know there is a war on’?
So my job, as a toddler, was to lower plant pots into a foul smelling brew (literally chicken shit tea) until the bubbles had stopped then pull them out and let them drain. I may know a lot more now about the science of how water moves (see Water) but flood and drain is not some new invention.
The only instruction was not to fall in as it would spoil my clothes and ‘don’t you know there is a war on?’
The power of information
I want to talk about the power of information but please – telling a toddler not to fall into a foul smelling vat of chicken shit tea would be classified as redundant information.
WW2 has been analysed and over analysed, with typically a focus on the mechanics but one under rated factor is the power of Hitler’s propaganda machine – really the first time that modern technology (OK the radio and the microphone) was used with such devastating effect.
Without Hitlers propaganda machine there would have been no WW2 and I would not be writing about war time child exploitation.
But in this modern age the tools for propaganda, (OK lets be trendy and wrap it up in fancy words and call it information manipulation) have increased in power and effectiveness beyond recognition.
Despite every night the news being dominated by stories of floods, droughts and fires from around the world there are still people saying that climate change is a natural phenomena and nothing to do with mans activities.
This gains traction, not because of the measurable facts, but because of the power of the manipulation of information which makes driving the kids to school in a V8 SUV rather than a solar charges electric vehicle, socially acceptable.
Don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress.
One of the arguments put forwards by the vested industries in the fossil fuel industries is that currently electric cars do not have the range for long distance travel – and there may be some truth in that. (I still drive a SUV for long journeys but have a rattly little town car. I will change as soon as long range batteries are developed, as they will be. Do what you can now!)
That does not alter the fact that most car journeys are short and with current technology can be provided by a solar charged electric vehicle and would make a substantial reduction in green house gases – right now with existing technology.
The reason why that is not happening right now is because of the power of information manipulation.
It is the same with food, I spend my time trying to improve the technology of growing plants to improve our health. This is not a perfect technology and is continuously being improved but to wait until we have the perfect technology, understanding the Eco system of microbes in the soil and our guts is putting perfection in the way of progress.
Every eight seconds some one has a limb amputated from a side affect of diabetes. It is just a fact that we do not have the technology of completely resolving diabetes but there is no issues that the current epidemic of these non infectious diseases, like diabetes could be substantially reduced by changes to our food system.
Just because we can’t prevent everyone from having their legs chopped off does not mean that we should not save the legs that we can save now. Do what you can now.
To do that we have to discuss the manipulation of information and to do that we have to discuss what Darwin actually said about evolution, (which was not simply the survival of the fittest but more like survival of the randiest) and how that has formed human nature.
What Darwin actually said
and why we are the most successful creature on the planet
Even back in Darwin’s day there was that lust to condense a carefully worded scientific document into a three word catch phrase – survival of the fittest.
Now that is not what Darwin said and is not true. What determines whether a species survives is – can it successfully breed.
There are many different strategies, frogs have millions of off spring in the form of frogspawn, the pigeons who have adopted my car as the perfect place to shit are a singularly stupid bird with no sense of danger, but they lay a vast number of eggs so are successful breeders (and on-car shitters).
Humans have a totally different strategy which has created human nature so if we are to avoid the looming disasters of climate change and its offspring food shortage we need to understand what Darwin actually told us.
How humans breed (successfully)
No this is not a guide for teenagers on how to have a bit of a randy up at a party, they can do that quite well by themselves. No it is about how humans have become the most successful creature on the planet and how we are going to survive climate change and food scarcity.
Look I get a bit fed up with all the doom and gloom and how much better things were in the olden days. That is all BS, ask anyone of my age who was a toddler in the war. Things were terrible, houses and people were obliterated overnight – but us humans pulled together and not just survived but made a much better world.
We just need to understand how we did it.
Human babies are borne totally helpless and take the longest of any animal to mature. The nearest rival for that is the elephant who take almost as long to mature but a baby elephant (and antelopes and all the other animals) have young that can survive shortly after birth.
Not so human babies and that has made humans the way we are.
There is an old African saying that it takes a village to raise a child – and that is just so true.
But there is more – a village has adults with a wide variety of skills and knowledge, there are the hunters, the spear and bow and arrow makers, the old folk with an intense knowledge of the local plants and where they grow, farmers and medicine men and a leader.
And they all work together cooperatively and relatively peacefully because they are all mutually dependant.
People may say that we are the dominant creature on earth because of our intelligence, but that is only a half truth the real reason is that combination of intelligence and cooperation which won us the gold medal.
The black side
This would make a wonderful fairy story but there is a black side which could ruin everything.
We are at war, I don’t mean a physical war between the right and the left but a war within every society. A war between those people who understand that we won our gold medal because we are cooperative and those selfish pricks who put their lust for profit and power ahead of the community – a war between cooperation and self interest.
There has always been this war, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar were not the nicest of people but they did not have the internet to influence the mass of the people.
Hitlers propaganda machine was a warning but who could have anticipated the sophistication of the modern propaganda machine to mislead and misinform otherwise intelligent and thinking people.
It is just a reality that climate change is here and the biggest effect of climate change will be the disruption of our food supply.
So we need to counter attack by getting the facts out.
The key facts
We are a thermodynamic machine, we turn chemical energy in our food into mechanical energy by the very simple process of turning carbon into carbon dioxide and hydrogen into water.
The bulk of the food we eat, around 80%, is just used as fuel. At this moment we are making enough energy food to feed the entire world population – if it were distributed equitably. We do not know what will happen in the future but growing more energy food is not our immediate top priority.
We have evolved with a very clever system which is continuously monitoring the state of our body and uses the complex chemicals in some of our food to replace our body parts as they wear and age. Modern food is generally lower in these critical nutrients than previously so people eating a diet with much highly processed food may be low in these critical nutrients.
Feeding our brains
But that is not the real crunch line – that is feeding our brains (both of them).
At one time we thought of our gut as simply digesting our food. We now understand that our gut has intelligence from the trillions of cells communicating with each other which act like some super computer but we have no idea how the coding that controls the logic actually works.
But we do know that out gut is incredibly important, it controls our appetite so we don’t get fat and sick, it manufactures many of complex chemical needed to replace body parts as they age and wear and it hosts and trains much of our immune system.
While the amount of food required to feed and replenish our gut may be only 5% of our total food intake it is critical for health and that is what is seriously missing in our modern diet.
Our gut really matters
I have to get a bit pedantic and say our neglect of our gut biome may not be the direct cause of the modern epidemic of non infectious diseases but it is an enabling factor – but more directly if people were eating food that feeds their guts there would be a lot less people having their limbs chopped of from diabetes and dying from that disease I cannot mention.
And we have the technology that will enable people to eat a gut friendly diet, grow fresh vegetables at home in Wicking boxes full of Wickimix and it actually costs less than the current food system.
Winning the information war
So why it not everyone doing it? Information.
The food industry is massive, it is actually the worlds biggest industry and the large players spend billions of dollars on promotion trying to convince us that their food is healthy – and lets face reality – their propaganda (sorry I meant to say advertising) really works.
The facts are very simple, modern food is lacking the microbes and their food which keeps us healthy and also the critical nutrients that will enable our bodies to replace our parts as they age and wear. No one disputes this.
The solution is not difficult and is spelt out in my stories of the fictional characters George and Mary (well sort of fictional, like the films say based on real characters).
This allows people like Mary living in an apartment to have fresh vegetables grown in soil full of beneficial microbes and nutrients, this is the best way of enhancing gut health and is actually cheaper.
Technically there is no argument, the issue is that we have this massive industry with billions to spend on propaganda (sorry advertising) while the people who actually want to eat healthy food are isolated and without the power (meaning money) of mass promotion.
Profits v the people
It is simply a battle between profits and the people. How can the people possibly win against such odds?
Simply go back to what Darwin taught us, we are naturally a cooperative creature.
No single person can win this war, but once a cooperative group has formed people will naturally want to join and be part of the movement.
As the group grows the range of skills will increase. No one want to be a conceited prick but the reality is I do have some skills which enable me to work on the technology. But I am totally useless at social media, and I must admit it when my granddaughters are not around to help me, pretty useless at mobile phones.
But the bigger the group the more diverse the skill set will become and the more effective we will be.
The question is how to we get started. The answer to that is simple, everyone who believes in the cause, (food for the people over profits for the mega corporation) can make the first move.
And that is registering on the www.gbiota.club web and creating their own icon as shown in Mary’s mini and inviting their friends, real and virtual to join.
That is a statement to the world that you exist, believe that all people should have ready access to healthy food and are prepared to commit to being an active member of the group.
To finish I just say thanks for your efforts and showing the power of the people.
