Mr. Natural

We at the Idiom have friends who constantly advocate for all things natural. Natural childbirth, natural health supplements, organic food, etc. They worry about pollution in the air and contaminants in the food supply. This preference for all things natural goes hand in hand with a general credulousness regarding every new all natural healthy, environmentally friendly fad.

Let's set the record straight. Things that are touted as "all natural" generally suck. St. John's wart won't cure bad depression. Fish oil will not cure all your health ills. Natural childbirth hurts, not to mention you can die if you decide to deliver in hot tub with no doctor because it's more natural. You can't improve your vision through eye exercises. The list goes on. Fuck natural. I'll take nuclear power, antibiotics, carbon spewing cars and pain killers any day over an all natural lifestyle. in the state of nature, life is brutal, harsh and short.

So I have never been able to understand why people, educated people, continue to embrace all natural, primitive lifestyle choices as if they were inherently good. Here's an interesting theory I hadn't thought about:

Since socialism had not been able to raise the people of what was then called the "Third World" out of a primitive lifestyle, the New Left declared instead that a primitive lifestyle is the ideal, and that we should try to emulate it here. The centerpiece of that campaign has been environmentalism.

The argument is that then Communism collapsed, instead of accepting ideological defeat, the left redefined its goals as promoting a primitive, anti-capitalist lifestyle. Because above all, the left believes it knows what's good for you and how you should live. It's a very appealing argument. It's fair to say the loudest advocates of the "all natural" and "environmentally friendly" lifestyle are left of center. Hippies, socialists, marxists, democrats and other people I have no use for have embraced all things natural and eco-friendly (and unfortunately it seems to be catching on with millions of other poor critical thinkers in the country unlike Communism). Marxists have been demonstrably wrong about almost everything. Stalin did not unite the workers of the world, he just exterminated a few millions of them. The Rosenbergs weren't innocent, they did pass nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Communism doesn't work, it destroyed the Soviet Union and China has a capitalist economy. The American left was credulous in the past and its credulous now. Only now instead of blindly accepting the tenets of Marxism, the left accepts "all things natural" as a matter of faith.

Now if I could just understand why so many people thought Marxism worked.