The Purpose of Life is simply to complete a cycle of life – to stay alive, to reproduce if possible, and to die. Dying is still inevitable despite the best efforts of some contemporary longevity researchers.

Purpose of Life: Stay Alive

Most non-human animals seem to relentlessly pursue that simple Purpose of Life. A few may have fun along the way, and many become murderers without any apparent recreational reason except to eat. For the most part, our so-called lower lifeforms, which include almost everything except us, seem focused on staying alive. They seek shelter, avoid being eaten, consume their own nutrition, they sleep – all reproduce or disappear from the earth.

Meaning of Life: Endless Imagination and Striving

Human animals, on the other hand, are wired to add meaning to their lives by inventing their own story, but most people simply just adopt a story they were born into. Historically that story involves shelter, physical protection, food, sleep, reproduction, teaching the story to their children, growing old, and dying. Invariably the story involved ideas about how to act while staying alive, and what happens at death and imagine a life after death.

Now the story is getting more complicated so we prefer to call it a narrative.

In most parts of the world people are now being born into a world of technology that foists a different narrative onto them than the one their parents were born into. Part of that narrative is a constant bombardment from social media, advertising, and what a creative thinker coined enshittification. Nowhere has enshittification become more prevalent than in the healthcare industrial complex. Here we present an argument on how to free yourself from enshittification. It starts with one seemingly simple but realistically almost impossible step that has plagued philosophers from the beginning of recorded time.

Know Thyself

What did Socrates mean by the phrase “Know Thyself”?

The phrase “Know Thyself” (Greek: gnōthi seauton) was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi long before Socrates lived, but Socrates made it the foundation of his philosophical mission. For him, it meant far more than introspection; it framed the entire moral and intellectual life.

Historical records indicate that Socrates was a real person who lived in Athens around 470-399 BCE. The problem is that he either never wrote anything down, or his writing didn’t survive. Plato is the one who wrote things down and for a while he ascribed a lot of ideas to Socrates.

To know yourself is to know what you don’t know. This is not our own profound insight: In Plato’s Apology (21d), Socrates explained he’s “wiser” than others to the small extent that he doesn’t think he knows what he doesn’t know.

This sums up our current state and how we take care of our personal health. All the health and wellness advice splattered around our modern information systems is useless unless you know how it might apply to you personally at this exact time in your life and your current metabolic health. While most run to a doctor and blindly follow what may be questionable or even false information, many are increasingly taking personal responsibility for their own wellbeing. We cannot show you how except to offer a strategy embodying scientifically proven guidelines.

You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure

Peter Drucker’s statement, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” is a frequently cited business management tool but it applies to your health also. A few important aspects of managing your health include hydration, sleep, physical movement (some call it exercise), and nutrition. All can be measured and recorded to varying degrees of accuracy if you learn how to do it. Some aspects of managing your health cannot be easily managed: Your physical environment, air and water quality, and food quality and availability in an enshittified world.

We can easily record sleep, keep track of how much filtered water we drink, record blood pressure, measure blood glucose, order blood tests on-line, or with the help of a trusted doctor. Wearable devices give useful information, especially the warning to get up and move.  These become things we can manage.

Here are a few ideas to consider as you develop your own survival strategy

What We don’t Know

We could make a comprehensive list of what we don’t know but it would become uselessly long and possibly very discouraging. Instead, we will highlight a few general things we don’t know.

1. Despite our instinctual belief that we know our own bodies based on how we feel, and unless we have a laboratory at our command, we can at best only guess about our highly individualistic DNA heritage: CYP450 isoenzymes, MTHFR, COMT, VDR genes, or the infinitely complex nature of our microbiome.
   
   

2. Macro-nutrients: We don’t actually know how many grams of protein, fat, or carbohydrate we eat in a single meal, nor do we know the chemical composition of each. It’s mostly water but it fills us up and we over-eat.
   
   

3. Micro-nutrients:   We have no idea if our broccoli contains enough magnesium because crops are raised on depleted soil. The same goes for most of the other micro-nutrients, except possibly sodium.
   
   

4. Unless we or our doctor measures our vitamin D levels (or any other nutritional marker), we have no idea if we are deficient. Vitamin D is becoming routine since the Covid debacle but sadly many other nutritional tests are expensive or may not even be available outside of a research laboratory.
   
   

5. Most of us have no way to know if our fruit is contaminated with insecticides, so we don’t know what we are doing to our brain, liver, and kidneys, if anything or nothing.
   
   

6. Some people warn about Glyphosate (webmd) in grains and what it does to the beneficial bacteria in our digestive tracts. Do we give any thought about feeding our good bacteria, or do we just worry about feeding ourselves?
   
   

7. We are told to eat fish to get essential omega-3 fat but do we know how much toxic mercury is in the fish? 
   
   

8. Some of us seek nutritional insurance trough supplements, some of which are reportedly contaminated with lead, cadmium, or arsenic.
   
   

9. Do we know when to eat, or how much to eat? Three square meals per day has given us a nation of overweight diabetics.
   
   

10. We know when the air doesn’t smell right but realistically it’s impossible to quickly know the type or percentage of pollutants.
    
    

11. We drink water, coffee, soft drinks, beer, and never know how much arsenic (or any pollutant) is in the water.