by Brian Shilhavy
Being in my mid-60s now, I am entering into a phase of life that Western culture generally refers to as my “senior years.”
Outside of Western culture, especially in many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, this is the phase of life that is equated with “wisdom,” recognizing that people who have lived on this earth the longest, have generally accumulated the most wisdom, and such people are to be respected for having reached this age.
This is also seen in the ancient writings collected together and published in the Bible, which was mainly written in Middle Eastern culture.
Consider this verse from the Law of Moses as recorded in Leviticus:
You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:32)
In Western culture, however, older people are looked upon as feeble and senile. They are considered mostly by the group they belong to in Western culture, the “seniors”, which is a group that is a goldmine for the medical scientists and their drugs.
In what is pure insanity for most other cultures around the world, American seniors are taught to “retire” around the age of 65, and take life easy, when in fact they are usually smarter and wiser in their senior years than the younger people running the world, and should just do anything BUT retire.
There is one caveat to this principle, however, and that caveat is that you have to reach your senior years without being dependent upon the pharmaceutical industry, which will do everything they can to render your life mostly meaningless as they attempt to make you a life-long consumer of their toxic products.
Seniors are seen as a burden to society, and especially to the medical system, as the drugs and surgeries that are marketed to them generally prevent them from participating in the workforce, dependent upon Government subsidies such as Medicare and social security.
Understanding this western mindset, it is easy to understand the insanity of an article that was published yesterday in The Guardian that attacked the wisdom and sound advice that came from the oldest recorded person in the world who just died at the age of 117, and commanded people to listen to scientists instead.
Never take health tips from world’s oldest people, say scientists
Scientists still trying to work out why some people live beyond 100, but agree it is best to avoid taking advice from centenarians themselves
Think about this headline and sub-headline statement for a minute.
Scientists admit that they don’t know why some people live so long, but they are very certain that they know you should not trust the advice from people who do live so long!
Here are some more excerpts from this article that better belongs on satire websites such as Babylon Bee, but is actually published as “news”.
The death of the world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, at the age of 117 might cause many to ponder the secrets of an exceptionally long life, but scientists say it could be best to avoid taking advice on longevity from centenarians themselves.
According to the Guinness World Records website, Branyas believed her longevity stemmed from “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people”.
Does this advice to have “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” sound like advice you should “avoid”?
I wonder if Maria’s “toxic people” she avoided included scientists and medical doctors? My guess is that she most definitely stayed away from these toxic “scientists” including medical doctors, which was a primary reason why she lived so long.
So who is this “scientific” expert who is claiming that Maria’s advice is not “scientific”?
However, Richard Faragher, a professor of biogerontology at the University of Brighton, said that in reality scientists were still trying to work out why some people lived beyond the age of 100.
Faragher said there were two main theories and they were not mutually exclusive.
The first, he said, was that some individuals were essentially just lucky. In other words, just because centenarians had certain habits, it did not mean those habits were driving their longevity – an error in logic known as “survivorship bias”.
“Merely because you have survived smoking 60 a day doesn’t mean that smoking 60 a day is good for you,” Faragher said.
The second theory, he said, was that centenarians had specific genetic features that equipped them to live a longer life – in other words they were rendered more robust as a result of their genetics.
Faragher said both theories, however, resulted in the same warning: “Never, ever take health and lifestyle tips from a centenarian.”
He added: “What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalisations – is that they don’t take much exercise. Quite often, their diets are rather unhealthy,” noting that some centenarians were also smokers. (Full article.)
I literally busted out laughing when I read this, because this “scientist” who has an impressive title, “professor of biogerontology at the University of Brighton“, claims that people older than 100 giving health advice make an error in logic known as “survivorship bias”, completely ignoring the fact that he is making one of the oldest and most common errors in logic called “appeal to authority“, which means he has no factual evidence whatsoever to the claims that he is making, and even admits it “scientists were still trying to work out why“, but wants people to believe what he says anyway, because he is a “scientist.”
By this false logic, he could also say something like: “grass is really red in color, and if you drive through a red light nothing will happen to you, because red is a natural color.”
Yep, sounds logical to me and must be true, because he is a “scientist”.
But if you believe these scientists, and act upon your belief in them, you could get yourself killed, and then you will never live long enough to be a centenarian.
These “scientists” invent their own “truths” that are based upon nothing other than their own appeal to authority, and then build opinions based on these false truths presenting them as if they are “facts.”
They believe that due to their authority and perceived “expertise” they can then dictate to others what is true, such as their definition of a “healthy diet”, which Maria probably did not follow, because modern scientists think modern processed foods are healthy, and traditional foods that have nourished populations for thousands of years are unhealthy, such as “saturated fats”.
And these scientists believe that if you eat too much of these traditional foods, such as foods high in saturated fats, like bacon, juicy hamburgers, REAL butter, etc. that in modern times are now declared “unhealthy” by the “scientists”, then you need to take a pill, a statin drug to artificially lower your cholesterol, to counterbalance the negative effects of all these ancient, natural foods, in spite of the fact that the REAL scientific literature shows that those with high cholesterol live the longest.
These scientists also declare that “smoking is bad for your health and leads to lung cancer and a short life,” and so when they find these people over 100 who have smoked most of their life, they know these centenarians must be wrong.
The fact that it might just be “cigarettes” that are linked to bad health, and not the tobacco itself, is a thought that they will not even entertain.
And yet during the years I lived in the Philippines in a very remote, rural area on a mountain, I knew many older people in their 70s and 80s who grew their own tobacco and smoked it instead of the commercially-made cigarettes, and showed no signs of lung cancer at all.
It totally changed my opinion about tobacco, the actual plant created by God, by what I was observing directly in that culture, rather than listening to “scientists”.
Sadly, Western culture has become so dumbed down, that probably 99% of the people who read this garbage that tries to pass as “journalism” on The Guardian will trust the “scientist”, and not Maria who lived to be the oldest woman in the world from her generation.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-31)
Related:
How Long did YOUR Ancestors Live While Eating BACON, LARD, & WHOLE MILK?
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