http://www.sirc.org/publik/bad_habits.shtml

In Praise of Bad Habits

ICR Lecture – November 17th 2001

In this lecture I will try to do 3 things. First, I want to present a perspective on the level of concern (some might say 'obsession') with dietary, health and lifestyle correctness that characterises contemporary Western societies, and the UK and the United States in particular. This pursuit of novel, narrow concepts of so-called 'health' and 'fitness' has led us to create new outcasts – those who fail to conform to the increasing catalogue of prescriptions for what is 'best for us' – those who, contrary to the advice of self-appointed arbiters of modern rectitude, persist with 'bad habits'.

Secondly, I want to argue that this zeitgeist of 'health' has some unfortunate and unsavoury historical predecessors, which might serve as warnings to us. The forces which lie at the root of what I will refer to as 'healthism' might be rather less benign than we have been led to believe.

Thirdly, I want to argue that a number of trends evident in our cultures run counter to what we might take to be our evolutionary heritage. The idea that we should seek to remove all risks to our lives and to our bodies, avoiding what previously might have been seen as pleasurable or 'fun', might prove to be 'unsustainable' – leading to patterns of living for which our stone age brains are simply not yet designed.

~Snip~ read the rest of the article on the link

This is a re-post - it was posted here back in 2001.
I bumped into it today over at FreeRepublic

This is an excellent essay. It's a bit long, but you might find this one worth printing out for your before-bed reading.

I'm not sure, but this may be the Peter Marsh who wrote the essay.

http://mcmresearch.co.uk/peter.html

There are several good points in the article, but this is one that caught my eye in particular.

"I am aware of the limitations of evolutionary perspectives, and I reject the notion that by identifying what has existed in our past we can determine what ought to be pursued in the present and in the future."

I discussed this idea a bit with Nightlight at one point. I always think of it as "the myth of natural". The thing that's really ironic is that many of the same people who pound their chests when it comes to the subject of evolution then turn around and pursue their lifestyle as if evolution was laid out according to some pre-determined timeline.

The best analogy I can make is this: they seem to view evolution as if it is similar to a modern video game where one gets an invulnerability shield or multi-firing weapon if they turn over some rock pre-designated by the creator of the video game. (That's a really good analogy if you're familiar at all with modern video games. It's piss poor one if you're not.)

Evolution doesn't work that way. Iron and stone tools weren't set out there "hidden" in our environment so some arbitrary God or overseer could sit around watching us, amusing himself as we tried to find them. Rather, the "survival of the fittest" is the genetic survival of the creature that best exploits its environment to take advantage of whatever is available in it.

I could riff on this idea for awhile, especially regarding one of the latest trends, which is to blame global warming on cattle breeding and herding, but I'll cut myself short. I'll just say that the notion that the human species was wandering the plains of this world in search of "survival trophies" and that we should apply arbitrary good and bad labels to these "survival trophies" is bogus. If this argument were persuasive, the very same people would vehemently defend the right to use tobacco because, (at least if they are American) by definition they wouldn't be here if humans hadn't ever discovered that they enjoyed consuming tobacco.