As I am dealing with rather a lot of change at the moment, physically and mentally, I decided to take a quick look around the raw foodies on youtube today.

The last time I bothered to look was some years ago, around the time that Patenaude and Gianni were telling everyone that none of the ‘leaders’ were actually raw.  This was when FullyRawChristina (apologies if the name is wrong) seemed to be becoming immensely popular.

I stopped looking at any raw food material around 2012 or so, due to my failure to communicate with Wolfe about the original book.  It was just too depressing.  Now I am looking at videos that are even more depressing, for a different reason. Fresh faced young things complaining that they were ‘sold’ an impossible lifestyle, that they expected all their problems to be solved with positive thinking, that they felt guilty about having feelings at all, that their periods stopped etc etc.

Even Freelea is punting a non-raw diet.  Who decided that it all had to be so defined?

Liferegenerator seems to have moved from his stance on 801010 to more of a Monarch-style rawness.  He also seems to be making some rather Wolfe like videos on keeping his hair, whilst losing it.

If I was a nastier person, I would laugh at this, but really I have never seen so many people cut off their noses at once.

From the standpoint of somebody who had always had problems with food and positivity generally (see previous post on positive thinking)  a few things were obvious the minute I even considered being raw.

• an attitude of gratitude and feeling positive every day ain’t gonna happen.  This is a sales pitch mentality, originally created before any of us were born by a vitamin salesman who trained Jim Rohn.  Being healthy does not solve all or even any of your other problems.  It did not help that Mr Charisma, David Wolfe, did not like emotional confrontation, and a lot of people got suckered into that, including me very briefly.  After that moment, I confronted until I was blue in the face, to no avail.
• 100% raw, whilst I gave it a damn good try, was not sustainable long term because you spend most of your day thinking about, preparing or finding the correct food.  It was also quite expensive in some cases.
• Ignoring your B12 requirement is insanity. (801010)
• Inserting the word vegan into anything makes it a niche product, and cuts your audience by about 80%.

The strengths of the raw ‘culture’ on the other hand were as follows:

• adopting a fairly anti-social lifestyle in terms of food altered adoptee’s personal relationships, in terms of prioritising themselves over whatever their former friends were doing.
• feeling better meant making slightly better decisions short term.
• looking good is always nice.
• learning to take partial advice is supposed to make you more capable of leadership and less inclined to follow ‘leaders’ in the first place.  It is not supposed to turn you into a Patenaude-like whiner.

As I said many years ago about the 801010 Wolfe-haters back then (who were far less embittered than the more recent ones that contacted me) You take up the information that you need and you explore further.  You do not cling to every mistake and bit of bad behaviour in order to discredit both them and yourself for listening in the first place.  It is a bit like considering suicide.  Utterly pointless and self-defeating.

As the scene seems to have kind of imploded, perhaps now is the time for some sense to enter the world of raw food.  The fact is that 100% was never going to work for everyone.  On a macrobiotic basis alone, expecting people from all over the world to eat the same thing made no sense at all.  Cold countries tend to have been meat eating, and tropical countries less so for a start.  There are ways around this if you are really determined, but the learning curve was too high for most people.  Arguing over which diet was best did not help.  I believe I mentioned this several years ago.

From a personal perspective, my hop, skip and jump into raw food has not only saved my life, but also my 90 year old mother’s, simply because it is a very clean way of setting a base for natural medicine.  My learning curve was not as unassailable as most people’s, because of my father and my intense scrutiny of anything I do, but even I double check everything.  I certainly don’t fall hook, line and sinker behind any so called leader, no matter what my personal feelings may or may not be.  We are not vegan or even vegetarian, but the fact is that raw foodism comprises 90% of our diet for very good health reasons.

If anyone in the raw food line of work had any sense, they would restart their thinking process along the lines of actual nutrition.  The WHO say that 9-15 portions of fruit and vegetables should be the basis for anyone’s diet, not five as people are told.  If you start from there, you can create a much more stable basis for your raw foodism argument.  Why arsing about is necessary instead of actually helping people I do not know.  Nobody cares if Freelee hates Durianriders.  Nobody. Get your acts together.

https://youtu.be/fQWkitvfncc

As I walk off some weight in order to progress Ina – I am more aware than ever that a face is required to move projects on in this day and age – I am considering the lessons from a lifetime of being too considerate of other people. I cannot tell you how much your connectedness to others holds you back.

In the past, I have considered my family, I have considered my friends, I have considered everybody else before myself. I used to think that this was a virtue, that vanity was selfishness and that my health was incidental and not to be considered above anything else that came along.

This led, in 2009, to my painting a 14 room house in 10 minute increments, lying down for 20 minutes in between times to recover. I was extremely ill by the time I started researching natural approaches since my GP was not at all interested in helping someone who worked four jobs and looked after everyone but themselves when they said they were tired!

Ironically, had I indulged my fascination with selfish people at a much earlier age, I would have been ready to discard others far more easily. I have always been fascinated by the ability to simply ignore everyone and carry on regardless as I am incapable of doing it.

In the most recent case, I tried many times to let go of the idea that I had done something terrible to deserve the last few years. I had not done anything apart from being born, being a perfectly normal adult, and trying to make the best of a bad situation. I am continuing to punish myself for it, even by persisting with this project. What I should do is ignore any new information and continue to push for what I want, regardless of anyone else.

This, however, would be psychotic behaviour, and I am, despite my many other failings, a thoughtful person. What I now have to do is repair my ailing health, pick up the torch I was trying to give to Wolfe, and do something with it. Whether it turns out to be useful or not is not really relevant. What is relevant is whether I believe in it, and I think the most loving response is to decide that I do, regardless of the consequences to my privacy.

So. in the spirit of disassociating, my first job is to replace the icon on the homepage, which will take about a year, since it is a work of self-sculpture. In the course of doing that, I have to turn myself into a public speaker and I have to write at least two major non-fiction books. The first one being Lucifer Ogilvie, which is my alternative history of Boris Johnson, and the second being the original book.

Do I feel stupid for trying to invest in Wolfe, when I knew it was a bad bet in the first place? No, it was an act of stupid selflessness, but it was in keeping with my less bitter and twisted character and it was a kind of play against someone I knew to be extremely selfish from his history. I admire that, rather than condemn it, but any time I have tried to give a gift to such a person, they immediately assume that the gift is somehow loaded. From this, I consider that time spent listening is as important as time spent talking, and this should stand me in good stead for the future.

That is not to say you should take everything everyone says on board. Quite the reverse, you should discard anything you aren’t interested in, otherwise you end up being a follower rather than a learner.

There have been many times over the years that I have tried to take it in other directions in the time I have available. All of these have turned out to be bad ideas. Best Adventure Ever, the game I am working on, for example, will fail to absorb Wolfe’s marriage, but it is still worth making from the perspective of what it has to say about people and their approach to life. Therefore I am going to persist with it anyway. As a creative exercise it is still a worthwhile project, despite its failings in terms of reality. If Wolfe has a problem with a couple of million extra followers, I daresay he can let me know.

I have actually come quite a long way since the pre-Ina days. I used to worry about doing anything because my name was on it. Ina solved that problem. I used to worry in case things weren’t of sufficient quality. Wolfe cured me of that. What is most important is that you do something, regardless of anybody else or the consequences, because the more ripples you create, the more inspiration you dispense.

So, I must again thank Wolfe for my new cold, more efficient approach to rocking the boat. There are far more ways to skin a cat than you could ever imagine. There is always a way out of the most convoluted mess, as long as you are willing to leave it behind. Shame and feeling sorry for others is a waste of time you could better spent making your dent in the world, whether the dent is useful or simply self-serving.

Being bullied is quite serious in the course of your life, both in terms of your assumption of lack of importance and the voice that tells you that you just aren’t good enough. If you are in a similar position, please remember that the love of your life will not understand your baggage and it is therefore important to discard it and not expect any understanding or consideration. Fight for what you need to grow beyond what you are told you are capable of, regardless of the consequences or the length of time it takes you to stop beating yourself up. I know better than most how difficult that can be, especially after this harrowing and lengthy episode of self doubt. I can do better, and so can you.

For the benefit of regular readers, I obviously have no intention of attending the event in October. I am sure I could manage to have a civilised conversation, since that was all I wanted in the first place, but I am not at all confident that Wolfe could manage it, whatever his dick-led reasoning.