Date: 24 Nov 2017
Subject: The patholgizing of the natural
Thoughts after reading Huysmans: the evolution of what's considered
unnatural and natural.
How modernity has surpassed the most grotesquely unnatural scenarios
imagined in the past, while pretending to be the exact opposite:
living a life about as natural as a Versailles faux shepherdess.
The modern fetishes for the "real" and the "unspoiled", &c.
Yeah. About as modern as Rousseau (that stupid f*cker again).
The apex exemplars of this kind of thinking: faith-less and
culture-sundered people in any suicidally decadent urban area of
the US and Western Europe.
For people so obsessed with their physical health, these folks look
awfully damned sickly.
All the neuroses underlying much of "alternative medicine" (sic),
its recycling of absurd 19th century ideas: "vitalism" (in back of
the trendy diagnosis of 'adrenal fatigue') and alt med's Manichean
notion of the body as something inherently dirty and self-polluting
(naturopaths attributing all maladies to unscientific and unverifiable
things like so-called 'leaky gut', 'parasites' and 'chemical toxins'
that need to be purged. How very Protestant: sin, cleansing and
redemption.
