Post: #26

(06-21-2014 06:56 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Something that I've observed for a while now is that certain intelligent white dudes, once past their very first blush of youth -- with that first precocious white hair, so to speak -- are irresistibly drawn to some variety of SWPL agrarian asceticism. They become enamored of the dopey idea that you have to "farm the land" to have some right to its fruits, and that this impoverished vision of life is the locus of all human integrity.

It is nothing of the sort. There is nothing great or especially inspiring about "farming the land"; it is dull and tedious work, made more tolerable over time by advances in farming technology that have allowed us to relegate most of the work to machines. One of the very best consequences of the technological progress of the past century and more has been the dramatic reduction in the percentage of the population that is obliged to work in agriculture. To pine for a general regression to the hellish tedium of "farming" is not integrity; it is just one more utterly banal form of Gaia-guilting and ingrate masochism.

Being released from general farming duties is not bad, it's good. That does not mean, however, that "building particle accelerators" is somehow the only thing "we" "do" when we no longer "farm". Why all this rhetorical extremity that does nothing more than reduce the richness and variety of life in our endlessly interesting and complex world to an ugly and thin caricature?

To say that the only things progress has brought us are "selfies and shitty human relations" is to deal in such caricatures, and it reveals a lamentable truth: that many intelligent men have become cowards in the face of complexity. Faced with a world of unprecedented richness and bewildering variety, intelligent men are quailing and indulging in laughably sentimental visions of the "noble past" to assuage their ingrate rages and SWPL guilt complexes. Because the imagined integrity of the past is just that: a thinly imagined fraud.

The problem is that men expect everything and all at once: ease, comfort, convenience, and worst of all, lasting and insistent "happiness" at all times. They demand every imaginable good, material and spiritual alike, and can hardly tolerate -- much less with the great good humor required -- the unbelievably rich and protean culture in which we exist. They don't even have the boyish ability to enjoy being tumbled in the waves for its own sake. Unwilling to dare surfing the endless complexity of the world as it is, the intelligent -- but deeply uncreative -- men of this time have become whiners, ill-humored ingrates and thinkers of thin and fake thoughts. They need to reexamine their premises if they want to enjoy the life that is there, begging to be enjoyed -- like a luscious young girl begging to be ravished by a man that dares to not be a coward.

I think you are over-complicating it slightly and conflating different ideas. Farming/ growing your own food can be satisfying and gives you a connection to the land that you don't get at the supermarket- its not simply machoism. I don't really understand how this links to men wanting everything at once: if they are happy to accept lower living standards in return for a closer connection to nature/ the natural world (and tastier food) are they being ingrates who want it all?

Call it Gaia-guilting, but I feel as though in the western world at least, instead of celebrating a further disconnection with nature and pressing on incessantly for further technological advances (this soylent is a good example, as people are removed a degree further from the actual plants and animals they eat), we should be trying to build on what we have and cultivate less tangible things.


EDIT: Punctuation and wording.

Post: #27

(06-21-2014 06:56 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Something that I've observed for a while now is that certain intelligent white dudes, once past their very first blush of youth -- with that first precocious white hair, so to speak -- are irresistibly drawn to some variety of SWPL agrarian asceticism. They become enamored of the dopey idea that you have to "farm the land" to have some right to its fruits, and that this impoverished vision of life is the locus of all human integrity.

It is nothing of the sort. There is nothing great or especially inspiring about "farming the land"; it is dull and tedious work, made more tolerable over time by advances in farming technology that have allowed us to relegate most of the work to machines. One of the very best consequences of the technological progress of the past century and more has been the dramatic reduction in the percentage of the population that is obliged to work in agriculture. To pine for a general regression to the hellish tedium of "farming" is not integrity; it is just one more utterly banal form of Gaia-guilting and ingrate masochism.

Not sure if you're passively referring to me here but that's how it seems, in which case can the crap and just directly address me.

Your post is chock full of generalizations and authoritative yet unfounded declarations.

I've volunteered on organic farms, and it is hard work, the same way that anything worthwhile is hard work. To say that the work is made more "tolerable" due to technological advancement is completely presumptuous and condescending. I see farmers on a regular basis that would laugh their asses off at that notion.

This has nothing to do with asceticism. If anything, there is a hedonistic and carnal enjoyment of top quality produce. Anyone who has ever eaten any perfectly ripe piece of fruit right off the tree can attest to this. A peach so ripe that you barely nudge it and it falls off the stem, still warm from the sun, and you take a bite and you can't even keep all the juices in your mouth. It's like eating 18 year old pussy man.

This isn't about everyone growing their own food. The scenario I suggest involves more farmers on a very local scale. Everyone benefits when community is established. Would you rather know your local sheriff, or would you rather he be shipped in from another state? This is something that many places are struggling with. Would you rather know the person growing your food? Or gladly accept whatever ConAgra puts in front of you?

Farming and industrial agriculture are two very different things. Machines are not required in the scenario I've been describing, with the exception of tillers and mulchers. The farms where I volunteered, most of the labor was done by hand. You work up a sweat and an appetite, and you leave at the end of the day with some beautiful produce. I've never once in my life had good produce that came from any mechanized operation, and in fact most of those operations are to produce grain that goes into processed food. So much for progress.

Post: #28

thedude, no passive aggression on my part. I was reflecting on your comments but they also seemed to me to be characteristic of a much more general attitude, which is what I really wanted to talk about.

When I speak of the ascetic impulse, I mean something fairly abstract, and not incompatible with the kind of physical pleasures you're describing. I mean rather the desire to turn away from the complexity of the world as it is, and toward a simpler life, however imagined. As I said, I see this as a kind of spiritual cowardice in the face of complexity which afflicts all too many intelligent men in our time.

In that sense, where some may see a contention between two opposing ideals -- Rhinehart's frankly ascetic and monastic (however rationalized) idea of "soylent", and what appears to be its opposite, a return to "real food" via simple manual farming and decentralized agriculture, etc -- I see merely two sides of the same coin. Both of these apparently contradictory ideas share the same urge towards simplification and reduction of a part of life, the literal and physicalist reduction of "soylent" not really different in kind from the technological and societal reduction of an imagined agrarian renaissance. The details of particular agricultural arrangements interest me a lot less than this ascetic and reductive impulse -- broadly conceived -- that I have tried to describe in my post.

Post: #29

Thought I'd revive this thread with Rhinehart's latest stunt:

Quote:The rules are simple. Do not use more than 4 liters of water per day. I also decided to track ‘virtual’ water usage. That is, be mindful of the water used to produce a good that is used, in addition to water used directly. Given that a single toilet flush takes over 6L of water, and the cotton in a pair of jeans takes about 7000L to grow, some changes to my life were clearly in order.

His solution?

1. Take a massive dose of antibiotics to kill off his gut bacteria so he wouldn't need to shit.

2. Swap all that water-intensive cotton clothing for a jumpsuit made from the polymer nomex, obviously made through an all-natural industrial chemical process. Don't wash the clothes either.

His conclusion:

Quote:Our foods, our bodies, and our planet are mostly water, and yet, we are spoiling and wasting what the cosmos has made at an unsustainable rate.

Water falls out of the sky in a drinkable state across almost all of the world. Water shortages happen because technology allows large numbers of people to live in previously inhospitable places. He seems to favour more use of technology to solve the problems it's caused.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #30

I'm just going to go and say it. His ideas are novel, but if he doesn't have enough time to sit down and eat a real meal the problem is his lifestyle. How much you want to bet Rob like most of his friends work 12 hour days and drink hard on the weekends?

This isn't a solution, just like eating off the dollar menu isn't a solution either.

He's living like a 3rd world widget maker.
I am personally up to here with knowledge heavy wisdom poor types. Engineers, scientists, and economists are brilliant people and yet so incredibly direction less it's astounding.

Post: #31

Spergs gonna sperg.

I don't get why he's writing as if water itself was a non-renewable resource. Next he'll be holding his breath to see how low he can make his oxygen footprint, forgetting about plants.

Post: #32

Latest insane babblings from the man himself: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331

Quote:First, I never cook. I am all for self reliance but repeating the same labor over and over for the sake of existence is the realm of robots. I utilize soylent only at home and go out to eat when craving company or flavor. This eliminates a panoply of expensive tools and rotting ingredients I would need to spend an unconscionable amount of time sourcing, preparing, and cleaning.

Who talks about food like this?

Quote:With no fridge, no dishes, no microwave, no oven, no range, no dishwasher, no utensils, no pests, no cleaning products nor dirty rags, my life is considerably simpler, lighter and cleaner than before. I think it was a bit presumptuous for the architect to assume I wanted a kitchen with my apartment and make me pay for it. My home is a place of peace. I don’t want to live with red hot heating elements and razor sharp knives. That sounds like a torture chamber.

That sounds like you're mentally ill.

Quote:I enjoy doing laundry about as much as doing dishes. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.

"Washing clothes is for those weirdos who don't regularly get a new wardrobe delivered from China"



People's opinions seem split between it being his genuine myopic obsessions or being a click-bait promo for Soylent 2.0. Possibly both.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #33

(08-04-2015 07:37 AM)Benoit Wrote:  

Quote:I enjoy doing laundry about as much as doing dishes. I get my clothing custom made in China for prices you would not believe and have new ones regularly shipped to me. Shipping is a problem. I wish container ships had nuclear engines but it’s still much more efficient and convenient than retail. Thanks to synthetic fabrics it takes less water to make my clothes than it would to wash them, and I donate my used garments.

"Washing clothes is for those weirdos who don't regularly get a new wardrobe delivered from China"

It's also for overprivileged Western women like Dolly Parton and other women with a childhood poverty complex. Synthetic fabrics don't break down any faster than a fucking plastic cup does, and, as Harry Stamper shouted at Greenpeace protesters from his oil rig: "You know how much diesel that clunker boat burns through in an hour?!"

Fuckhead.

Post: #34

I need to take a break from this forum.

Hydroelectric power generation was the last thing on my mind when I saw this picture on Rob's website.

Post: #35

(08-04-2015 08:17 AM)Blick Mang Wrote:  I need to take a break from this forum.

Hydroelectric power generation was the last thing on my mind when I saw this picture on Rob's website.

Post: #36

I'm probably going to buy a tub of it sometime, probably to eat during final exams week. I am going to cut it with whey to increase its abominable protein content.

If you haven't ever been so busy for a week or month at a time that all you do is work and sleep (all the naysayers here) and barely have time to cook or eat, then this product clearly won't interest you. One time I went three days on nothing but cigarettes, whey shakes and ramen noodles. Long hours at work sucks but putting lots of funds in the savings account is great.

A decent IIFYM fortified mass gainer designed as a meal replacement is a pretty genius idea.

If this guy wants to make even more money he just has to pitch The Soylent Diet or the Six Day Soylent Cleanse to Oprah and have a bunch of fat chicks beating down his door.

Post: #37

Why doesn't he suggest mass suicide as a means to protect the environment?

If all environmentalists, vegans, leftists, college professors, socialists, etc did this we'd have smaller cities and a significant decrease in greenhouse gases.

Maybe in the future, one can dream! /sarcasm

Post: #38

(06-21-2014 06:56 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Something that I've observed for a while now is that certain intelligent white dudes, once past their very first blush of youth -- with that first precocious white hair, so to speak -- are irresistibly drawn to some variety of SWPL agrarian asceticism. They become enamored of the dopey idea that you have to "farm the land" to have some right to its fruits, and that this impoverished vision of life is the locus of all human integrity.

It is nothing of the sort. There is nothing great or especially inspiring about "farming the land"; it is dull and tedious work, made more tolerable over time by advances in farming technology that have allowed us to relegate most of the work to machines. One of the very best consequences of the technological progress of the past century and more has been the dramatic reduction in the percentage of the population that is obliged to work in agriculture. To pine for a general regression to the hellish tedium of "farming" is not integrity; it is just one more utterly banal form of Gaia-guilting and ingrate masochism.

Being released from general farming duties is not bad, it's good. That does not mean, however, that "building particle accelerators" is somehow the only thing "we" "do" when we no longer "farm". Why all this rhetorical extremity that does nothing more than reduce the richness and variety of life in our endlessly interesting and complex world to an ugly and thin caricature?

To say that the only things progress has brought us are "selfies and shitty human relations" is to deal in such caricatures, and it reveals a lamentable truth: that many intelligent men have become cowards in the face of complexity. Faced with a world of unprecedented richness and bewildering variety, intelligent men are quailing and indulging in laughably sentimental visions of the "noble past" to assuage their ingrate rages and SWPL guilt complexes. Because the imagined integrity of the past is just that: a thinly imagined fraud.

The problem is that men expect everything and all at once: ease, comfort, convenience, and worst of all, lasting and insistent "happiness" at all times. They demand every imaginable good, material and spiritual alike, and can hardly tolerate -- much less with the great good humor required -- the unbelievably rich and protean culture in which we exist. They don't even have the boyish ability to enjoy being tumbled in the waves for its own sake. Unwilling to dare surfing the endless complexity of the world as it is, the intelligent -- but deeply uncreative -- men of this time have become whiners, ill-humored ingrates and thinkers of thin and fake thoughts. They need to reexamine their premises if they want to enjoy the life that is there, begging to be enjoyed -- like a luscious young girl begging to be ravished by a man that dares to not be a coward.

Got Damn! What a post! So much depth! That last paragraph was intense!

This post was basically an F-22 going way over most people's ability to comprehend. I had to re-read that at least 4 times to make sure I understood that clearly.

Veloce he is not so much dissing farm work, but the rationale behind why middle aged men like the Soylent guy would get involved in something like that. He is attacking that mindset/mental state as a whole, not the value of organically grown food itself.

Post: #39

Man, this old thread...

In re-reading Lizard's post I have a couple other arguments I could make.

Lizard tends to go on about how those that lament for the past are somehow cowardly or fools or both.

There's no need for such presumptuous judgements. Some people just prefer a simpler life and it's no more complex than that. I'm currently without phone or car and goddammit, for the time being I'm really enjoying it. Complexity and the wonders of the modern age don't confuse me or scare me. I've ridden the wave pretty high, and I've decided that simpler pleasures are simply what I prefer. I've seen more of the world, done more drugs, partied harder, fucked more women, than any of my friends or peers that I grew up with.

As far as Soylent goes, it's not so black and white. I see pros and cons.

Every culture has staple crops, be it corn, rice, legumes, etc. The foods that make up the foundation of their culture and everything revolves around that. In Asia it's rice, in Mexico it's corn, in parts of Africa it's yams, etc. I don't see anything wrong with someone trying to invent and refine their own staple food, although I disagree with how he went about doing it. The key missing element is pleasure. Without pleasure, I'm not sure you can call it food anymore. Some of the greatest pleasure I got from food was eating a broken rice dish for about $1.25 at some dirt-poor roadside stand in Vietnam.

Post: #40

(08-04-2015 07:37 AM)Benoit Wrote:  Latest insane babblings from the man himself: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=1331

The problem with this guy, is that he considers only the energy he consumes himself, but not the energy needed to ship his clothes from fucking China. Or the energy and carbon footprint needed to produce and send out to him, his beloved NUC and AOC 17in USB DisplayLink monitors. As well as everything else he needs to keep up his current lifestyle.

Post: #41

(08-07-2015 02:10 AM)Veloce Wrote:  There's no need for such presumptuous judgements. Some people just prefer a simpler life and it's no more complex than that. I'm currently without phone or car and goddammit, for the time being I'm really enjoying it.

You're right, but what those like Rhinehart fail to acknowledge or understand is that it's hundreds of years of progress that makes "the simple life" and "going back to the land" possible. Crops nowadays produce consistency and yields that would seem like magic to a medieval peasant farmer.

Quote:Every culture has staple crops, be it corn, rice, legumes, etc. The foods that make up the foundation of their culture and everything revolves around that. In Asia it's rice, in Mexico it's corn, in parts of Africa it's yams, etc. I don't see anything wrong with someone trying to invent and refine their own staple food, although I disagree with how he went about doing it. The key missing element is pleasure. Without pleasure, I'm not sure you can call it food anymore. Some of the greatest pleasure I got from food was eating a broken rice dish for about $1.25 at some dirt-poor roadside stand in Vietnam.

That's what rubs me the wrong way about proponents of Soylent as a magical solution. It may be 'convenient' if you only view meals as a way to add calories for fuel, but that's not a very normal viewpoint for anyone except bodybuilders during contest prep, and weirdos like Rhinehart, who seems to be extremely detached from the world around him.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #42

(08-07-2015 09:20 AM)Benoit Wrote:  

Quote:Every culture has staple crops, be it corn, rice, legumes, etc. The foods that make up the foundation of their culture and everything revolves around that. In Asia it's rice, in Mexico it's corn, in parts of Africa it's yams, etc. I don't see anything wrong with someone trying to invent and refine their own staple food, although I disagree with how he went about doing it. The key missing element is pleasure. Without pleasure, I'm not sure you can call it food anymore. Some of the greatest pleasure I got from food was eating a broken rice dish for about $1.25 at some dirt-poor roadside stand in Vietnam.

That's what rubs me the wrong way about proponents of Soylent as a magical solution. It may be 'convenient' if you only view meals as a way to add calories for fuel, but that's not a very normal viewpoint for anyone except bodybuilders during contest prep, and weirdos like Rhinehart, who seems to be extremely detached from the world around him.

Here's the thing though: Is any of those staple crops can be downright disastrous for humans in a sedentary lifestyle. Rice, beans, corn, starchy vegetables...this is carb loading intended to fuel a human that exerts a lot of effort on a daily basis. Unless you're doing backbreaking labor every day, there's no reason to be eating these foods with every meal like they would in their respective countries. So there's room for new staples. I think this is a foreign concept to Americans, who have untold abundance and variety at their disposal.

I've worked 80+ hour workweeks, and even in the kitchen there were times when I didn't have time to eat, and there was food everywhere around me. At one Italian restaurant, I used to pop cubes of butter in my mouth to keep me going. Pretty sure a meal replacement shake would have been healthier.

Post: #43

I remember there being food alternative shakes on commercials before. There is nothing impressive about this except for the fact that he is a good chemist, because it has been done before.

What is the innovation? What is the accomplishment? Even the price tag of $65/week is nowhere low enough to make this viable for the third-world and is barely a step up from whole foods. $10/week and it'd be notable.

Let me know when someone tackles easily renewable water. Or makes meat a vegetable so that we can grow chicken or beef or pork on trees and come harvest time pluck them right off the branches.

Post: #44

IMHO the idea is wonderful. It's not like you have to only eat (drink) Soylent. I'm a great cook but sometimes I just want to eat so I can put some nutrients in my body.

Some points taking into account:

- Soylent is not cheap at 15 $/day. In some countries you'll end up spending less with a healthy diet. I thought Soylent would be even cheaper due to economies of scale. Few years ago I bought a bag with 20kg of whey protein (80% concentration, lab-tested) for 200 $.

- Soylent have low amounts of protein IMO. Can an active person who exercises everyday maintain his muscles?

- How do we know Rob Rhinehart is not cheating the formula and putting some cutter in the product or not putting the right amounts? Don't know how his company is now but I saw the VICE episode and it looked lame. He look like an idiot.

Post: #45

The problem I have with the philosophy of Soylent is that it promotes optimising your life into a series of mechanical processes.

Everyone knows the stories of successful men who have wardrobes full of the same outfit so they don't have to waste time choosing, but we're not women and playing dress-up isn't that enjoyable for most men.

Food is something that's inherently pleasurable, a literal feast for the senses. A lot of people enjoy the cooking process and the eating process, but even for those who hate to cook are capable of putting a ready meal into the microwave.

I refuse to believe that someone capable of spending $15 a day on Soylent won't have access to quality pre-packaged products - they aren't limited to eating bargain-basement crap.

If Soylent was aimed at people who are working too intensely to take the time out for a meal break, I'd accept it. But it's aimed at people who think that having to eat is an inconvenience.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold