brown rice

So yesterday, I knocked myself unconscious with brown rice. I am trying to make some adjustments to my diet to even out the roller coaster my blood sugar rides every day and I thought, "Hmmm, brown rice good, it's on the list of items that are supposed to be good." And I had it for lunch.

15 minutes later, I had a massive sugar high and then crash and barely made it to the bed where I passed out for an hour. It was a little freaky. Then I remembered something I had read in the forums on RH where people warned that different people process things differently. That is why they say it takes about a month or two to figure out the hows and whys of what and when you should eat.

The only thing, oddly enough, that everyone seems to agree on is Stevia. The goal in all this is to reduce the amount of "short sugars" that I ingest, carbs or sugars that are processed too fast and to replace them with more complex sugar sources that linger a bit. This, naturally, leads to sugar substitutes. Unfortunately, I have a long standing intolerance to any type of sugar substitute - which I never understood before, its like my almost allergy to olives - now I know it is because olives, like the sugar substitutes contain an organic neurotoxin that is created when they are processed. The same organic chemical they add in industrial printing applications.

But Stevia, I was shocked to read how many people have an adverse reaction to it. I tried it once and thought it was disgusting. I think, in the end, it is going to boil down to just eating less and more often; avoiding certain foods but not necessarily excluding them and of course, the back up glucose.

Ack...enough of that.

I am circling the City again. I have a few things to clear out before I can really sit and start to work. It has been hot and muggy here. I hooked up the AC and the mad kitten came and just sat in front of it for 20 minutes before going and curling up on the bed (in the direct air stream) and napping for several hours.

And more on violence and cruelty, the deeper I get into the book it both confirms things I have long believed and reveals more. One of the things he points out is that most acts of cruelty and violence come not from people with poor or low self-esteem but from people with high self-esteem that is erratic. In other words, they think highly of themselves most of the time, but have moments of doubt. When their self-image (the good one) is challenged, they lash out. Once they have a taste of the power (not pleasure, even Ted Bundy reported that he was always disappointed that he didn't get more pleasure or emotional satisfaction from killing) acts of cruelty and violence can become a habit.

People with high but erratic self-esteem who perceive themselves as victims are far more likely to be violent and cruel. Their victim status becomes the justification for "getting back," or "teaching someone a lesson."

In the examination of hate crimes Baumeister points out that if you look at it racially, taking into account the social self esteem of a group, the group in the highest esteem position is the one most likely to commit hate crimes.

And also, and this is important, the more a person identifies with a group (makes the group identity more important than their individual identity) the more apt they are to be cruel and to accept performing violence for the group. Violence and cruelty being defined as physical, mental and emotional abuse.

As one of his examples, he brings up Betty Friedan (who wrote the Feminine Mystique) and her impassioned (and ignored) plea before the first international woman's conference in China that the feminist movement was not meant to be about learning to hate.

I harp on this all the time, the more we divide out identities into groups that are exclusionary the more we are able to dehumanize non-members and the more cruel we become in general. As Baumeister points out, a trend of self-hate, cruelty and oppression occur more within the group between members then is acted out toward non-members  - someone is always "not enough" of whatever their group identity is. Baumeister traces this through religion, minority empowerment groups and political movements.

"The greatest hate and acts of cruelty," he points out, "are reserved for the people who are on your side."


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