Raw water. It’s the latest health craze, and no, I’m not making it up.
According to the Washington Post:
Hold your canteen under a natural spring and you’ll come away with crystal clear water, potentially brimming with beneficial bacteria as well as minerals from the earth.
That’s what proponents of the “raw water” movement are banking on: selling people on the idea of drinking water that contains the things they say nature intended without the chemicals, such as chlorine, often used in urban water treatment processes.
In some areas of the country, including the West Coast, it has become a high-dollar commodity — water captured in glass bottles and sold straight to you.
“Naturally probiotic. Perfected by nature,” boasts Live Water, which sells raw water sourced from Oregon’s Opal Spring.
It signals a rise of what I call “raw stupidity,” to distinguish it from highly processed stupidity.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Raw stupidity arises spontaneously from deeply held, nonsensical beliefs.[/pullquote]
What’s the difference?
Highly processed stupidity does not arise spontaneously but requires technology for propagation. Anti-vax is the classic example; indeed it’s the stupidity equivalent of Cheetos. The anti-vax movement has existed for more than 200 years, but it didn’t really take off until the advent of computers, Wi-Fi and Facebook.
No one wakes up one morning and says, “I think vaccines, which I know absolutely nothing about, lead to unusual diseases, which I also know absolutely nothing about.” Most anti-vaxxers adopt views they have acquired from proselytizing of other, equally ignorant anti-vaxxers. The primary mode of transmission is through websites and Facebook groups.
Moreover, highly processed stupidity seeks to claim the mantle of science and technology by invoking the copy-paste skills of its advocates who faithfully reproduce long lists of scientific citations that they have never read and wouldn’t understand if they did read. Andrew Wakefield is its avatar, a “scientist” who faked his science for profit and lost his medical license as a result.
The raw water craze, in contrast, is raw stupidity. Like most raw stupidity, it arises spontaneously from two deeply held nonsensical beliefs:
1. If it’s natural, it must be good.
2. It’s true if I can see it with my unaided eyes.
Everyone knows that nature is benevolent, that lions lie down with lambs, that the population of the earth used to be much larger and decreased steadily with the advent of technology, and that health is all about eating as nature intended.
The paradigmatic example of raw stupidity is flat eartherism. Obviously the earth is flat because it looks flat. Obviously the earth can’t be round because the people in Australia would fall off.
The belief in the beneficial properties of raw water is similar. It couldn’t possibly be more natural than bubbling up direct from the ground, right? It’s clear; you can’t see any bacteria or parasites so there aren’t any bacteria or parasites. So what if large animals or even people defecate nearby? Everyone knows that feces contains only beneficial bacteria because it comes directly from inside all natural fauna.
In addition to raw stupidity and highly processed stupidity, there’s an amalgamation involving both.
Consider the wisdom of Kelly Brogan, MD holistic psychiatrist. What’s a holistic psychiatrist? It’s a pro-wrestler of healthcare, a fraud who profits from the gullible.
Goodbye to germ theory! Can we really maintain the childish illusion that there are a handful of identified “bad germs” out there trying to kill us?
Brogan is obviously invoking raw stupidity: we can’t see bacteria and even if we could they would be beneficial because they are natural. On the other hand, Brogan transmits her stupidity almost exclusively through technology and invokes the imprimatur of science by constantly alluding to her medical degree. It’s the clever combination of both raw stupidity and the highly processed stupidity of someone like Andrew Wakefield that makes her particularly dangerous.
It’s hard to know what to do about either raw stupidity or highly processed stupidity. As Einstein supposedly said:
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Perhaps we should just take the natural approach and let only the fittest survive. Those who are stupid enough to buy raw water or believe a quack like Kelly Brogan are swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool as it is. Unfortunately, there’s no drug to treat stupidity; sadly, we’re limited to hoping it will burn itself out.
