Welcome

 ____________________________________________

Hello, all good people...

    ___________________________________________

Salutations, I am Craig Willms creator of the Protohuman blog. The blog itself, as a weblog is now defunct. I have not posted since 2014, and I don't intend to resurrect it now. 

However, I own this space so to speak, and I have things I'd like to post in the form of essays, articles and personal notes simply as a record that I had these thoughts and sought to write them down before I lose myself. I'm under no illusion that anyone will read them - or care one wit. 

Still, there is a chance that someone will look me up after my death and find my online life. We live in the first era where we can preserve our thoughts indefinitely due to the way back machine, aka the Internet. Prior to the Internet you'd have to be published to have your writings preserved outside of your personal notebooks. Therefore, the essays and personal anecdotes that follow are something I want associated with me. 

The articles/essays are in no particular order, relevant perhaps, but may have been superseded by events that followed. I maintain the right to be wrong about any of it...

que sera sera!

Hold on!! Wait!

     Take a minute to look at my art and listen to my music. 

    - please see the links in the Recommended Sites section on the right ==============>  

                     

Death by Civilization

 

by Craig Willms

Ever increasing human longevity has stopped. We are in the post peak period. People are dying sooner and young men are dying at an alarming rate. There are any number of reasons, but it seems clear modern civilization is catching up with us.

The average lifespan of humans increased rapidly as water and sewer systems were developed. Modern agriculture, ranching and fishing enhanced life when transportation and refrigeration made it possible to move and store perishables across the land. Hunger and starvation has almost become a thing of the past in modern countries. Health care, vaccines and medicine also contributed to rising lifespans. These advances of modernity were a Godsend. Until recently lifespans seemed poised to keep going up. Now however it's trending in the opposite direction. Why? Diseases of our vascular and metabolic systems are at crisis levels, and we can very probably pin it on the industrialization and over processing of our food.

Those of us born in 50's and 60's are reaping the rewards of modern industry's commodification of foodstuffs and the grocery store. I have recently joined the team that refers to the middle aisles in the supermarket as the poison aisles, where ultra processed carbohydrates with added sugar live. I'll sneak into those sections to buy my pasta on occasion but will otherwise avoid them.

We were all raised on the food in those aisles. Over in the meat and dairy section they removed most of the nourishing fats and called it heathy, while they put a target on red meat for maximum vilification. Running under the radar were the oils designed to replace butter, lard, tallow and other traditional animal fats in our diets. The seed oil revolution was well underway by the time we were born. These highly processed, ultra processed cooking oils we ingest were initially conjured to replace whale oil for industrial applications early in the 20th century. Soon thereafter they were developed into human grade products to be incorporated into our food system. Many of them are poisonous in their natural form, the ultra processing refers to the monumental steps manufacturers take to remove the poison. That should've been a neon glowing warning sign. The FDA and other government agencies looked the other way or have outright promoted these poisons. 

Nearly every restaurant uses these seed oils in their recipes and their deep fat fryers. Much of the packaged food on grocery store shelves use these vegetable oils, to the point where it is almost impossible to completely remove seed oils from your diet. Even purportedly healthy food like nuts, granola, yogurt and other dairy are often processed with these oils. 

These seed oils contain a lot of omega-6 fats and little to no omega-3. Both fats can be good for you, but omega-6 is detrimental to a healthy human being when it's out of balance with omega-3. Since seed oils are everywhere and in everything we constantly over indulge on omega-6 compared to omega-3. This is likely the cause of the metabolic disease and heart disease spikes in developed countries, studies bare this out. Since we don't ingest omega-3 fats anywhere near the amount of omega-6 we have become completely out of balance. 

Starting in the 80's Americans have been teased and vilified all around the world for being fat. Obviously, heart disease and diabetes run rampant here in America. Low and behold as these seed oils have been incorporated into Asian and European diets more and more the disease and excess weight gain has followed. Just in the last few years is this being brought to our attention.

Various studies have been done, including those funded by the conglomerates that make these oils. The studies taken up by non-industry researchers show that the data is clear that there is a correlation between the rise in seed oil use and rampant disease in the United States. In this video by Dr. Chris Knobbe - 'Are Vegetable Oils the primary driver of Obesity, Diabetes and Chronic Disease?' lays out his case very well. Also cited are studies of indigenous and isolated populations that still rely on animal fats exclusively and none of the disease or obesity seem to be present. I thought - ok, but there are a lot of things that have increased in developed countries that could potentially account for excess disease, like say, lack of exercise, personal electronics use or air and water pollution, and even agri-chemicals used on our food. These might be valid concerns however the studies done in China show a clear correlation between seed oil use and obesity and cancer (and we know diabetes is way up in China). It's important to note that the use of sugar, the other food villain, is very low in China. China is also quite polluted, while pollution is going down in the U.S. 

The video has several revealing graphs that bolster the point being made. The good Dr Knobbe makes a completely compelling case, and I advise everyone to watch his lecture. 

I am hoping that this topic gets the attention it deserves. I'm already seeing publications from major newspapers and Ivy League schools citing studies to refute the growing chorus of seed oil naysayers. I've no doubt who is funding these studies. It's big tobacco all over again. Oddly, it's been pointed out that the scientists and the titans of tobacco had moved into the food industry. Is it a coincidence that death and disease followed them?

I'm trying as best I can to avoid these oils in the food I cook and the items I'll order when out at a restaurant. It's an uphill task. Start at home by using coconut oil and olive oil (or good old butter, lard or tallow) in cooking and avoiding anything deep fried out in the wild. Fast food is suspect for a lot of reason's not the least of which is seed oils in everything. I usually order beef when at a sit-down restaurant, and grin and bear the bun which is undoubtedly made with vegetable oil. My health is better, and I've lost close to 30 lbs. from my peak weight since attempting to limit seed oils. 

It's easy enough to try to avoid these seed oils, give it a try. Your health and longevity may depend on it.

Presence, Reality, Consciousness and... and... Fractals?

 

by Craig Willms

What's it all about?

As I see it all existence is fractal in nature and we, and by we I mean humanity, the earth, the universe, are somewhere along the continuum. If you've ever seen the Mandelbrot Set and explored the visual extrapolations into every nook and cranny you'll know what I mean. The endlessly revealing patterns can blow your mind. They are quite beautiful. If you take a minute and lookup the Mandelbrot Set here https://mandelbrot.site/ -  you'll see it's a remarkable site. Center the screen on any part of the fractal and zoom in... Endlessly.

Fractals, simply put are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across all scales. The thing is, fractals are just graphical and mathematical representations, but are they? It's hard to make the connection between these awesomely beautiful fractals and real life, yet the connection is there; fractals are all over the place. As seen in nature fractals manifest in leaf and branch patterns, rivers and their tributaries, lightning and other electrical arcs, even the human circulatory system. Still, it is stretch to equate infinite fractal expressions to our individual place in the reality of existence. 

It's a simple matter of perspective. Whether we step back or lean in we find evidence that fractal existence is not only likely, it's plain to see. 

Since the James Web Space Telescope went into service it immediately changed long held assumptions and revealed that the universe is much bigger than we imagined. When they pointed the JWST at a patch of space the Hubble telescope had seen as completely empty, they saw 10,000 or more galaxies. The JWST may just ruin the Standard Model and force the rewriting of basic tenets of astrophysics. What it reveals is the further we see into the cosmos we find even more stars and galaxies. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions more galaxies in all directions. When we launch even more capable telescopes in the future it's highly likely we will see millions more galaxies beyond what we can see today. In other words - it's endless, just like a fractal.  

On the other end, the atom was the smallest possible "particle" there could be. Or so they thought. The word atom originates from the ancient Greek word atomos, meaning “indivisible” or “uncuttable”. Well, it was neither indivisible nor uncuttable. Scientists, mathematicians and technicians have uncovered far, far smaller divisions of matter. It's safe to assume that as technological progress continues scientists will discover even smaller and smaller particles of matter - endlessly.

So, in either direction the small gets smaller and the large gets larger. So where are we in all of this space? It's impossible to know, and more to the point does it even matter? No one knows. Even the ancients posited the notion that our world may be a tick on the ass end of the universal dog. Is it possible that all the tiny moving particles that make up a human being exist in a rich universe that is our bodies? Do these particles understand their cosmos any better than we understand ours - if they care at all. Alas, we may be the only ones doing all this navel gazing.

If existence is fractal, so what? What does it mean in the grand scheme? If there is no beginning and no ending in either direction what does it matter if we are closer to the big end or the small end. It doesn't. The galactic dog could do a butt rub on the galactic carpet and we will cease to exist. How would we know? We wouldn't. But... But, there must be something more to this than a speculative exercise... Maybe there is.

When you consider the endlessness of fractal geometry you could easily equate it with what we know of the nature of time. Time itself being as big of a mystery we can imagine. Is time the connector between the endless fractal and the present moment? Time is undoubtedly in motion. If we set a fractal in motion, it reminds me of a descending spiral or a whirlpool, which are never the same but are clearly self-similar as they progress. Therefore, I can imagine time being the ultimate fractal expression. It's a reasonable speculation, but we don't know. We may never know; we may not be capable of knowing. 

It seems to be an essential feature that ultimate truths are hidden from us behind the veil. It's long been believed that we will only know what's beyond the veil when we die. Others believe when the light goes out that's it, that's all she wrote. The individual might not be able to cope with the knowledge of ultimate truth. That's what religions were created for - it's all too much for a single differentiated mind.

Yes, it's all so esoteric, so confusing, so mysterious. The mystery begins every day when we wake in the morning and re-enter reality to become present again. Where we were all night while our physical self is in a state of semi-stasis is a mystery, and where we go when our bodies die the ultimate mystery. However, we can only participate in the one shared reality when we are conscious, aware, and interacting with the world before us. That makes the conscious state more relevant than anything else since we share it with all of existence in this moment called the present. When we are dreaming, we dream alone, and when we die, we die alone, in either case we are not present. When we are not present, not aware, we are unable to make a connection with another. But here in the presence of the shared reality of consciousness we are not completely alone, we have a chance to the benefit from the beauty of connection.  

Could it be? That's what it's all about...