Neanderthal Capitalism1

While I read ultra-marathonist Dean Karnazes’ latest book, I came a cross an interesting dieting tip: eat everything the Neanderthal Man ate, and you won’t get fat. This caught my attention as just a while ago I had read Dr. Mark Hyaman’s book called Ultrametabolism, where he describes a whole food diet which will increase your metabolic rate and keep you burning fat even as you rest.

The logic behind the Neanderthal diet is simple: our digestive system hasn’t changed much in the past 130000 years. The difference is that nowadays we don’t need to hunt for our food anymore. We just drive our gasoline-powered cars to the nearest McDonald’s and easily inject 2000 calories of energy into our system in just a couple of minutes. No chasing wild animals, no climbing trees after some fruit. The result is obvious: we’re getting fat.

Our ancestors had to spend hours hunting and working hard at obtaining a total average of 2000 calories per day. Today, one milkshake has more sugar than we could hope to find on all the fruit a Neanderthal man could eat.

The human mind and body are incapable of absorbing everything the market offers us. We get more and more of everything, in ever larger extra plus sized portions. All while our body would have been satisfied with a tiny portion of it.

I was surprised to find out that the Neanderthal Man’s diet really does work. I was more alert, I lost weight while eating everything I wanted to eat, and it seems that everything seemed to work better on my body. It’s also very simple: you may eat anything the Neanderthal Man could, including grains, vegetables, all meats, fruits and so on. These tyypes of foods do not allow you to overeat, because our body is tuned to be satisfied by just the right amount of them. When a certain amount of fiber and nutrients have been ingested, the body sends you a clear signal that you’re satisfied. Before you add anything to your plate, ask yourself “did this exist 130 thousand years ago”? If the answer is yes, you may go ahead and eat all you want of it.

So, what does any of this have to do with capitalism?

If you look closely, the Neanderthal Man’s diet analogy is perfect for the world we live in.

It is impossible to absorb the surreal amount of information and new products being released every instant. We are becoming physically and mentally obese. We must cultivate the conscience that it is impossible to possess and consume everything that is shown to us at the speed that everything is thrown at us.

It seems like there is an insatiable urge for permanent showbiz. Super-athletes must break their records on every next competition and they must live under unreal behavioral restrictions. Stock markets must soar every session or heads will roll, sales have to increase every period, goals must be met under the most stringent deadlines. All these are examples of artificial expectations that are absolutely the contrary of what nature tells us to do. In the natural world, everything oscillates, natural progress is slow and constant and there is no schedule or deadline that can make a tree develop any faster than its DNA was programmed to. Attempts to artificially speed up nature almost always end up being catastrophic.

So why are we trying to speed up our own nature when that is impossible? Everything in nature happens on its own time, completely ignoring the excesses of modern capitalism. We are becoming mentally and physically obese – and we have been submitting ourselves to an artificial and very unhealthy lifestyle for a very long time. For thousands of years, in fact.

Planet Earth is screaming hints at us. Birds are dying, fish are dying, the air is polluted, all while the TV is telling us to use less water. In the meantime, British Petroleum pollutes more water than humanity could consume.

We must hit the brakes, urgently.

The idea is to practice a sort of Neanderthal Capitalism, more primitive and slower, under which we can develop with health and have time to absorb all that the market has to offer, without getting caught running in the hamster wheel. As with the Neanderthal Diet, no sacrifice is required, just act naturally.

Here are some ideas:

• You probably don’t need the latest, fastest, coolest gadget with the most buttons. Less is probably more.
• The beauty standard being shown to you on TV is incompatible with the lifestyle of someone who works, studies and does home chores.
• Use public transportation. One person per car is a recipe for chaos.
• Understand that almost everything being shown on TV is plain simply fiction.
• Less is more, slower is healthier.
• Buy things in cash. Don’t try to speed things up by getting into debt.
• Spend calories before eating. Make your body believe you had to hunt for your food.
• Buy products as if you had built them yourself. Take time before buying as if you were building the object. Control your impulse to “BUY NOW”.
• Trade your old thingy for a new one just like Neanderthal Man would change his survival tools – because they broke and needed substitution.
• Question the utility of things. You probably don’t need it.
• Walk at least 200 yards to your next meal.

That is part of the recipe to Neanderthal Capitalism

PS. Someone just wrote me an email about this article(same day it was published, yay!). The email said: “if Neanderthal was so good, why is he extinct.” Good question. I don’t know.