Mission Statement:
The Paleo Garden is an experimental collective of professionals in the legal, medical, consulting and writing communities. Grounded in the paleo/primal/EF philosophy, The Paleo Garden aims to ‘unite the clans’ with a focus on health, nutrition, fitness, agricultural reform and getting right with the world. We embrace Georges Hebert’s philosophy of “Be strong to be useful.” We are prone to discussion of foundational myths and theories of social organization as well as diet and fitness.
About Paleo Gardens
The good old days held some truth that we may have forgotten, but in those days we lacked knowledge that the human race has acquired over years of evolution and cooperation. That our physical DNA has barely changed would indicate that looking back to our diet or origin could provide great benefit as a template in this modern world. We might become healthier to longer enjoy our advances in technology, art, and civilization if we rediscover our natural heritage, even as we discard primitive or destructive belief systems that no longer serve us.
Paleo Garden is dedicated to rediscovering how our ancestors lived, loved, ate, laughed, slept, grew, died. We are the offspring of our ancestors, we who stand on mighty shoulders of wisdom, art, and beauty that were passed down to us. Our inheritance includes cave drawings, painting in the Sistine Chapel, and moving images on flat screen TV. It’s a never-ending concentric interlocking web of Venn diagram circles to figure out where you may stand. With such varied points of view, each of us looks for the one that makes the most sense.
Food Production. Is what we’re growing and eating the optimal utilization of energy input (gas, fertilizers, water, transportation, production) and energy output (calories, nutrients, waste products)? There are many areas in which economies of scale simply do not make sense for your Paleo Garden.
Economy. This search for the Paleo Garden will be looked at in terms of Human Action. That is, action of the individual living in a free society, with property rights, with a voluntary division of labor, freedom of religion, who is able to protect the fruits of labor in a free market.
Fitness. The road that led to this site’s creation started with the study of wellness, health, strength and natural utilization of one’s body. There are many tribal elders out there that taught us. Education about physiology, endocrinology, cardiology and exercise will be a main facet of this site. We’ll help you build your Paleo Garden vocabulary, and point you in the right direction. After just one year or less of following our vocabulary lessons and reading the teachings of from sites in the “Paleo community”, you’ll be an expert on insulin, HDL/LDL, growth hormone, vitamin D, antioxidants and more. With this knowledge, you’ll find other paleo sites in our community more meaningful and easier to understand. It’s our vision that Paleo Garden will help strengthen this community that we so proudly belong to. If you’re new to this community, it would be an honor for this site to introduce you to the interpretations of various other paleo sites.
Nutrition. This site does not assume that government intervention will solve humanity’s current woes of pollution, poverty, overpopulation, extinction of wildlife, hunger, or the emerging epidemic in developed countries, obesity. In just about every global crisis, we see the fingerprints of bad government policy that went against older and wiser practices., In fact, wasteful, expensive, inaccurate programs perverted commerce, our food, and our happiness from a mismanaged central authority
Global Warming Hypothesis. This site is not dedicated to a conservative ideology, or a preset notion that we should return to the Stone Age and give up our technology. If you don’t believe in Global Warming, aspects of a Paleo Garden make economic sense regardless. If you believe in Global Warming, there will be adequate information on this site to guide you to a Paleo Garden in which you may reduce your carbon footprint. How may we truly act locally? The only economy we should manage is our own home economics.
Psychology. Your mind, your body, your thoughts. How well in our modern home do we understand how evolutionary theory explains how our minds adapted through long cold nights throughout the millennia staring at the stars, the fire, or the purple skies of a sunrise? While still taking responsibility for our actions, we can recognize how our modern lives are lacking in sleep but abundant in chronic stress. We can learn to determine which expectations of continuous instant gratification are false, and what harmful images abuse our complex Paleo brain and body.
Survival. Living in a Paleo Garden in a modern world can contribute to a peaceful life. When one has good health, and the knowledge of how to grow and raise at least some of your own food, there is a reduction in the noise around you, and you will be better able to avoid focusing on workplace trivialities that follow you home.
History. The story of any family is the story of a history passed down through many generations. From one side of the world to the other, from one era to the modern day, each of us has our own stories and our own perspectives. The Paleo Garden is a place to hear these stories, and to judge for yourself what version of others’ truth becomes yours. The Paleo Garden is not a place where we intend to judge others for their choices and conclusions, but to provide forum for learning from each other.
Organic Food. We believe that technology exists today that allows for the human race to stop tending to the granaries. Consolidating our sustenance in just a few crops has led to a consolidation of power over us. The Paleo Garden is not about fear-mongering, but about hope for every individual and community based on free choices by individuals and communities.
This website is an attempt to find the various points in the Venn diagram where our old Paleo Garden’s ways may overlap with the modern world. Whether you are an environmentalist, libertarian, vegan, BBQ chef who prefers grass fed beef, survivalist, or Evolutionary Fitness adherent, we are all on the same side of the barricades. And we all may very easily rejoin the same tribe again, each with our own perspectives, in our Paleo Gardens. 