Misery Loves Company

Since embarking on my 811rv health journey, I've had many interesting experiences and reactions from other people. The vast majority are overwhelmingly positive, but sometimes I get exaggeratedly negative responses from people. This got me thinking about the possible reasons why. This passage from Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel on page 331 may contain a clue:

Preserved writings of the first millennium B.C. show that ethnic Chinese already tended then (as many still do today) to feel culturally superior to non-Chinese "barbarians", while North Chinese tended to regard even South Chinese as barbarians. For example, a late Zhou Dynasty writer of the first millennium B.C. described China's other peoples as follows: "The people of those five regions-the Middle states and the Rong, Yi, and other wild tribes around them-had all their several natures, which they could not be made to alter. The tribes on the east were called Yi. They had their hair unbound, and tattooed their bodies. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked by fire." China's cultural unification accelerated during that same period, as literate "civilized" Chinese states absorbed, or were copied by, the illiterate "barbarians". Some of that cultural unification was ferocious: for instance, the first Qin emperor condemned all previously written historical books as worthless and ordered them burned.

This is clear evidence that there have existed among societies peoples that were eating a raw diet, but were forced into assimilation by the dominant societies.

The Chinese example reminds me strongly of the Roman Catholic church's condemnation of Galileo and his "barbaric" notion that the earth was round.

I've been reading much about Leonardo Da Vinci also, who is fabled to be have been a fruitarian too. We will never be able to ascertain this positively. He was extremely secretive of his ways and his writings-no doubt out of reasonable fear of the powers that could easily have condemned his life.

The powers that be are always very fearful of change, it is no wonder they try to quench it.