So much suffering occurs because we romanticize a past that never actually existed in the belief that it's destined to become the future. In the middle we sit, here, now, with time marching forward. Derek explores how wellness influencers weaponize this psychological phenomenon and describes his personal remedy for such thinking.
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We'd be so much better off if we just admitted that we're making it up as we go along.
There's long been this sense that the right is in love with the past.
Specifically a 1950s Leave it to Beaver style post-war America, when industry was booming, the economy was soaring, and the middle class could just middle class without interference.
Constant growth seemed imminent.
Of course, this is a pre-civil rights, pre-feminist, heavily Christian America, which opens the sentiment up to all sorts of criticism.
At times, it feels like the right's fascination with a nostalgia that never actually existed, this myth of a perfect America, is indicative of their racism and misogyny.
And for some it likely is, though I feel that this phenomenon speaks as much to biology as sociology.
Plus, my focus here really isn't on the right, or at least not in terms of traditional conservatism.
Yes, they'd likely be better off admitting we're just making it up as we go along, but that also applies to the left and the center and everyone else.
This trend seems particularly suited for the conspiritualist left, as there's currently a lot of romanticism occurring there, especially when it comes to church attendance and homeschooling, the latter serving as a socially safer way to say religious instruction.
But throughout wellness spaces, a different type of romanticism is in plain view.
Some of this perfect time myth points to the 19th century, a period that we cover throughout the first section of our upcoming book.
Many current conspiritualist ideologies point back to this specific era, Likely due to the incredible depth of scientific advancements that occurred during this time.
And the wellness space's seeming insistence that much of this progress is unnatural and therefore bad, even though the people claiming it to be nefarious benefit from its application today.
But there's an era that points back even further, to ancient times.
Don't feel bad if you can't define ancient, as the term is being used in a meaningless way.
There's no actual date it needs to point back to because it's entirely made up.
This is something I've thought about often, but I started thinking about it specifically for this bonus episode after receiving a marketing email last week about a new Ayurveda skincare product that uses the magic of white snow mushroom, which the publicist is positioning as a hot new ingredient that's actually ancient.
This dichotomy is common, something brand new that's really just been rediscovered, and here's our influencer that found it for you.
This mindset was common when I worked in the natural foods industry back in the mid-aughts.
New products were always rolling in.
Goji berries, acai, yerba mate, raw cacao, yacon syrup.
Each company was dedicated, in marketing if not in reality, to working with regional farmers harvesting their yield organically.
And each superfood was unlocking an ancient secret to healthy longevity that's been lost in the processed food haven that is the modern American refrigerator.
Ironically, a byproduct of the post-war Republican Golden Era.
Modernity, then, is something to be rejected, a sentiment you can use your smartphone to blast out into the world, apparently without irony.
We've seen an uptick in the fervor of this messaging since the pandemic began.
COVID somehow thrust us back to a time when germ theory and vaccination weren't medical breakthroughs but questionable interventions competing with equally valid centuries-old methods.
And so you have a resurgence of terrain theory, which mingles with hints of miasma theory, yet at its most extreme is this romanticizing of the power of thought.
If you're sick, it's really something you did wrong.
It's really just a form of moral escapism that's existed in various forms of religion for centuries.
The notion that all health and wealth are mindsets and not attributable in any way to genetics, social constructs, or just plain bad luck.
Take Melissa Sell, a chiropractor we've covered in the past, whose certainty that Germanic New Medicine, a healing modality created by an anti-Semite who claims that all disease is actually a special, meaningful program of nature, results in tweets like this.
Modern society is a smoldering trash heap and ancient natural living is the phoenix rising from the ashes.
I'm so glad you're alive at this time with me so we can explore this knowledge and witness this beautiful transformation together.
While Cell has rebranded Germanic New Medicine as Germanic Healing Knowledge, the foundational ideal remains.
You, and more directly the way that you think about life, is the direct cause of every disease you'll ever experience and oh wait, disease isn't even real.
It's a teachable lesson meant to show you the true path.
And if you die in the process, that too was destined.
