Was reminded by the "Gloom, Despair..." post that I'd written this some years ago, felt it would make a good side discussion, so dug it up:

Despite that the governments of the western world have never been more tyrannical, the young people are more libertarian than ever, and even those who used to identify with leftist ideals are becoming disillusioned by government corruption and ineptitude. I think that with the incredible communication power the internet has provided at our fingertips, government will find it increasingly more difficult to hide their perpetual and inevitable malfeasance. Even if you believe that all-powerful socialism would be wonderful, there comes a point where you realize that every single politician that attempts it is a corrupt liar, only interested in personal glory and power, and you just can't trust any more politicians who promise socialism.

As an aside, I have another source of hope that I personally find extremely interesting: nutrition and diet science. 40 years ago, the wheat and corn industries bribed and propagandized Congressmen and Senators to institute the food pyramid. Despite expert scientific testimony debunking it, and a fierce fight by a minority of the minority Republicans at the time to prevent it, the government made the high-carb-low-fat diet The Law. 40 years later, the average weight of Americans has ballooned, and their personalities and intellects have changed as well. Now that the science has really started to catch up and thoroughly study the effects of high carb diets, it's been amazing to me how much the politics of the nation have been affected by the effects of sugar on the brain and body. For instance, every 2 pounds of excess bad fat stored by a mother in her pregnancy results in a 1 point IQ drop in the child, rising quickly to about 20 IQ lost and leveling out at about 30 lost. If average American women of birthing age are 30 pounds overweight (and, oh, they ARE), the whole nation loses 15 IQ points on average. Furthermore, sugar's effect on brain development actually has deeper behavioral effects. It has been observed that conservatives tend to have much larger amygdalas, a portion of the brain that controls the fear response, but more broadly could be said to control paranoia. Conservatives and libertarians are certainly much more paranoid than progressives and liberals, so that is not a very surprising brain difference. What is surprising, though, is that the sugar diet (high carb diet) stunts fetal amygdala development.

One clue to the difference, and the evolutionary advantages and disadvantages, between a sugar-plentiful diet and a sugar-scarce diet is the difference between chimpanzees and bonobos. Bonobos are pretty much exactly as similar to us as chimps, both at 98.7% genetic similarity, and 99.6% similar to chimps. Bonobos and chimps are nearly identical physically, but have very different behavioral tendencies. Bonobos are sometimes referred to as "hippie chimps" because they are simply far less violent, and much more social than chimps are. The bonobos exhibit the same brain difference in the amygdala compared to chimps as liberals do to conservatives. Bonobos are also less intelligent than chimps, displaying very little tool use or complex thinking. But, they don't need to. Bonobos live in a place where they have no significant predators, and infinite fruit to eat all year round. Chimps must hunt and forage for limited resources, and be smart and aware enough to escape a handful of predators that can easily make a meal of them at any time. The bonobos live in a land of plenty, and spend their days eating and fucking as much as they want. The chimps live in lands of scarcity and danger, and must constantly work to stay alive and keep their loved ones alive. Which do you think is the more successful species? Chimps, of course. Bonobos are endangered at a population of about 20,000, and chimps are 10 times more successful at about 200,000.

Bonobos: sluts, gluttons, carefree, egalitarian, spoiled on free stuff, no work ethic, solve their problems with sexual favors.

Chimps: violent, intelligent, hierarchy, paranoid, work nonstop, solve their problems with cleverness and cruelty.

In human beings, these two psyches, the paranoid and the carefree, are in a fight to control the government, to control the entire society. But, since the sugar diet is being scientifically proven to cause the obesity epidemic, the increases in diabetes, cancer, early brain degeneration like alzheimers, heart disease, kidney failure, liver failure- the list goes on seemingly forever -it is going out of style. The gluten free diet, the keto diet, paleo diet, atkins diet, and other low-carb-high-fat diets are gaining popularity quickly in both the medical community and (more importantly) in the health community as it is proving to cure so many ailments, and to make people thin and healthy like they've never been before. And the icing on the cake, to me, is that the sugar diet causes shrunken "paranoia lobe" amygdalas, and as women transition to fat centric diets, their babies will have larger paranoia lobes, and will more likely grow up able to correctly process and predict the inherent danger to themselves that government poses.

To me, this dichotomy of plentiful sugar and scarce sugar causing a brain differentiation completely explains why civilizations tend to crash when they get too dominant. Their leaders could never have guessed that, as their population grew wealthier, the increased availability of sugars and the inevitable overindulgence in it would lead to general stupidity and a behavioral change literally hardwired into the brain. But, as a side effect of people wanting to be as beautiful as they can be, and science finally figuring out and widely disseminating the knowledge of how to be so, our society might just escape that trap right before it topples us this time.

So I hope, at least.

Now, some 8 years later, re-reading this, I think I've been proven right. Certainly, there are a lot more things going on to affect the cultural shifts happening than just the effects of diet, but I bet it's a bigger effector than hardly anyone realizes. We all know here, as well, the dangers of fluoride, glyphosate, etc, which have also been foisted upon our society by the usual suspects. But, science has run end-around on them, and the truth of how to be healthy is percolating through our society. Even leftist suburban moms, in their mania to follow the latest health trends, are accidentally raising children with amygdala active enough to question the holocaust.