Paleo, Pete Evans, and Why We Are All Massive Hypocrites

Politics, religion and sex — those are the 3 taboo topics that you never bring up in polite company. It seems we can add another to that list, and that’s diet. If there is one thing that people seem to get frothing at the mouth crazy over, it’s the food both they and other people put in their mouths. If nothing else, Pete Evans’ appearance on Sunday Night where he talked about the benefits of the Paleo diet showed that people tend to be massively defensive and incapable of logical thinking when it comes to certain topics. The reactions the following day on social media showed that most of society, despite us living in an age where we have more access to information than ever, cannot emotionally detach themselves enough to consider the evidence of either side of an argument.

Once upon a time, debate was about challenging perspectives, learning, and everyone involved gaining new insights. This is no longer the case. People now identify with a certain tribe and give themselves over to it completely. Any kind of debate or discussion is no longer about learning, it’s about winning, and what that means is cherry picking the facts that you like and ignoring those you don’t. It means you attack the person rather than their argument, and hold the people in your tribe up to be brilliant and beyond reproach. My favourite comments after the show were the ones attacking Pete Evans himself — saying he was making heaps of money, that he was crazy and all sorts of other absurd things.

This was despite the fact that a dietitian interviewed on the show said they agree on roughly 70% of the things Pete Evans was advocating. Seventy percent. That’s overwhelmingly agreeing with him, and yet because people had chosen their side they decided that it was better to throw the baby out with the bathwater, call him crazy and say people that follow the Paleo diet are nuts. While some of his claims are incredibly overzealous, the basics of the diet are pretty damn reasonable. Eating fresh, unprocessed food? Shopping at farmer’s markets? Trying to live a more natural, less stressed lifestyle? Holy freaking shit, this guy is some kind of crazy revolutionary! How could anyone want to follow this terrible way of living?

This is the crux of the issue. While there are outlandish claims, the vast majority of what he is spruiking is incredibly sensible, yet most people refuse to see that, only focusing on a few things that have been said in order to bring his entire argument down. So why are people so defensive about all of this? First of all, because people like to literally have their cake and eat it too. People hate the thought of others being better than them at anything, and when you enjoy bowls of pasta, pizza and you’ve got a few extra kilos on you, it’s little surprise that you’ll jump on any expert’s findings against the person that looks better than you, eats better than you and lives a healthier lifestyle than you. Now you don’t just have the satisfaction of eating that cake you just can’t help but eat, you have the smug satisfaction that the experts are on your side while you do it. Hey, you’re eating a “balanced diet” after all.

We could just skim the surface here and look at the diet issue in isolation, but it is in fact no different than a lot of other issues where people are part of a tribe and they stick with that tribe. Here are a few others:

Right wing vs left wing politics

Vegans vs meat eaters

Crossfit vs other weight lifting sports

Gay marriage advocates vs religious conservatives

I can almost guarantee that on any of the above issues, you’ll find the following breakdown:

30% on either side will be true believers, either because they strongly identify with the cause or they have been brought up to believe it;

10% on either side will identify with that side because it’s generally how they think, but they can step back from the debate and see the merits of what the other side is saying;

20% will be in the middle and not take either side.

That last number? Those are the ones that can and are willing to weigh up all the arguments and come to the logical conclusion of what has the most merit. You don’t need to be a genius to realise that that number is far too small, and that far too many people are wedded to their tribe and its opinions. The problem is that most of society is so emotionally invested in their viewpoint that they can’t budge even when they are confronted with information that shows their viewpoint may be partially or massively incorrect — the psychological condition known as cognitive dissonance. They will become defensive and attack with everything they have, lest their belief structure turn out to be a sham but more importantly, because they will feel embarrassed to be proven wrong.

The other issue we have is this notion that everyone is entitled to an opinion. The way people practice this would lead one to assume the phrase actually means “everyone is entitled to an opinion, as long as it doesn’t differ too greatly from mine”. If it does, then your opinion is stupid, or you’re stupid, or you just don’t understand, you’re a bigot, or my favourite “you need to educate yourself more on the subject” (always from someone that gets their facts from only their tribe). There is rarely a willingness to consider another person’s ideas or perspective on their merits, because your tribe is completely in the right, which means that the other tribe is completely in the wrong. This is damaging, because it stifles debate completely. There is no broadening of knowledge because no one wants to learn anything, they just want to win and validate themselves. A great example of this was one of those stupid panels they have on the morning show that I saw last weekend. The topic was gay marriage and one of the writers from mamamia.com.au was stressing that people against it were bigoted or homophobic, that their viewpoint was irrelevant and she would happily shout down anyone that opposed it because she was very passionate about the subject.

When you act in this manner on any subject you aren’t the enlightened, intelligent being you believe you are, educating the poor sheeple. You’re actually nothing more than a belligerent asshole who is shutting down debate by turning it into a self indulgent monologue. Imagine the arrogance of believing, despite the fact that the human race has existed for around 200,000 years in a myriad of cultures with a myriad of beliefs, that you are absolutely right and a whole lot of other people are absolutely wrong, just because it’s what you believe. This doesn’t matter if we’re talking about same sex marriage, the ethics of eating meat or anything else. The second you start labeling other people as bigots or telling them their opinion is flat out wrong, you’ve revealed yourself as no better or more intelligent than they are. Keep in mind that this planet that we live on has been around for 4 billion years, and the universe has been around 3 times that long. In the distant future not only will our species die out, our planet will die out and the universe will become cold and lifeless. In the face of such enormity, what makes you think that your tribe and your beliefs are so important that you can’t open your mind and actually hear the perspective of someone else?

What most people fail to take into account is that strongly held beliefs are often the result of a profound experience. A person may turn vegan after seeing the horror of a slaughterhouse and will hold that with them their entire life. They will castigate anyone that does eat meat, equating it with murder and cruelty. On the other end of the spectrum you may find someone like a teacher I once had who grew up poor in Indonesia. On the few occasions her family had access to meat it was a small cube (literally not much bigger than a sugar cube) and it had to be shared around the family. Try to tell her she’s cruel for eating a steak now that she can afford it and most likely you’d be strongly rebuked. Neither of these perspectives are right or wrong, true or false, they are just the experiences of two different people. You may have come to your position through a strongly emotional experience, but your experience is just one out of six billion. No matter how righteous you may feel, you don’t have a monopoly on the truth and neither does anyone else.

It’s really time we addressed the massive issue we have right now of the fact that people won’t see the perspectives and beliefs of other people as valid or even worthy of consideration. It’s the reason the political landscape is a pile of dogshit, it’s the reason we have terrorists killing innocent people, it’s the reason guns aren’t controlled in the US even after elementary school kids were shot in the face with them.

So the next time someone says something you disagree with, avoid the temptation to shout them down, to tell them that they don’t know what they are talking about and do something that so many would appear incapable of: shut your big gob and listen to what they have to say. And when I say listen, I don’t mean wait for your turn to talk, I mean actually listen and consider the merits of their argument and where they are coming from. Maybe if we start doing this, we can find some constructive solutions for the problems in the world right now.