Get well soon! You’re a treasure to all of us… hope you’re treating yourself with care, finding opportunities for rest when needed- which is, under the circumstances, understandably rare but so needed. My heart goes out to you.
This is such a great article Kyla, thank you for sharing and so sorry to hear about your recent health struggles! I particularly enjoyed the ending thoughts, 'To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.' You got across so clearly how the manosphere relies on making despair the reality. This was recently exemplified with Clavicular walking out of the interview with Andrew Callaghan when Andrew didn't subscribe to his worldview of 'looksmaxing' and being content with his own appearance.
While the phenomena is now seemingly at it's peak there have always been forces that have sought to take shortcuts and sow despair. CS Lewis 'The Screwtape Letters' touches on this so well. The radical alternative has been the quiet hope that was promised. Psalm 37:7 'Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.'
In the meantime, I hope the health professionals can find what is causing these issues for you and help you return to full health!!
He is my favourite too! I even wrote an article inspired by your 'Economics Lessons from the Screwtape Letters' talking about the deleterious effect of disquiet. How it clouds our judgement and takes away our joy, much like some of the themes touched on here. I'd be honoured if you got a chance to read it! https://tobydavidson07.substack.com/p/clique-claque-the-train-of-disquiet?r=5xx4jl
I think you might be wrong about the root cause of the Manosphere. Yes, the economy certainly plays a role in it, and it's hard to have an internal locus of control when you are working 40-hour workweeks at a local fast food joint and still living with your parents. But I would argue that at its root, the manosphere is a reaction to the death of community. Social fragmentation means that you often don't get to know people in depth enough to connect with them on a personal level. As a result, people have to resort to dating apps and social media to connect. Both of these places place a HUGE emphasis on how you look. Looksmaxing is a direct result of this emphasis on looks above all else.
The manosphere is a loose community, but underlying it is the fundamental feeling that something has gone wrong with being a man, and people look to solutions like Clav and looksmaxing, or Andrew Tate and misogyny, to reconcile that feeling. The sad thing is, I don't think this in any way solves the underlying issue of a lack of community. You can see this in the way that Clav and Andrew Tate lash out at people who don't share their assumptions that looks, money, and fame are everything. Even being the very peak of the manosphere, they are still very much lonely, not able to conquer the disillusionment that brought them to the manosphere in the first place.
Amazing piece. You just came right out and said so much of what I’ve been struggling to put together on my own. Never quit and hang in there with the stomach stuff - not fun!
'11 I(t) does appear that President Trump is functionally manipulating markets.' He's been playing at market manipulation since the 1980s; this is just Hog Heaven for him. I am supposing that returns on easy money are the reason the Republican coffers runneth over.
I'm on side with the African Ranger leaning against a resting black rhino, who says, on the Nature documentary (as I remember it), "Life is interdependence, that's what I think." Control is an illusion, or maybe a simulation, as you put it. When your boss talks about control, your part is to humor her/him/them and do what you can.
Desperation is rocket fuel. Profound desperation drove me to work long hours and save and invest. I was both blessed and cursed with circumstances that instilled in me a probing, suspicious nature, so I mostly stuck with DIY. Agentic(ness), as you describe it, sounds to me like the capacity to feed off other people's desperation and steal it for oneself. There's a thing in Real Estate Practice called Undeclared Agency, where you do not disclose who you are working for. It is supposed to be illegal. Enough said.
About Doing. I live in the Silicon Valley area sometimes. I used to think that most people go through life without actually doing anything, but I changed my mind long ago (see interdependency above). But what you said triggered a memory in me. I was gandy-dancing with an old guy from Kentucky who told me a story about his uncle. His uncle was walking through the woods one day, and he heard shooting. He walked on a bit, and he walked up behind a guy who was shooting from behind a fallen tree at another guy behind a tree on the other side of a gully. One guy would pop up, take a shot, duck down, and the other guy would pop up, take a shot, and duck down. After watching this for a while, my comrade's uncle, who had been pulling on a jug of corn whisky all day, got restless and said to the fellow, whom he did not know, "You can't shoot for shit. Give me that rifle." and the next time the guy across the ravine poked his head up, he drilled him through the forehead. The State of Kentucky sent him away for a year for manslaughter, and he was just trying to help. It could be apocryphal, but I think the point is that some things that can be done aren't worth doing.
Finally, I wanted to thank you for your posts. They make me think. I don't think people normally enjoy thinking, which takes a lot of calories and can stress the liver. Thank you for your service.
My instinct is that you'll figure out what's making your body not absorb food well.
I hope it's okay to say... please try evidence-based medicine first. I used to think that doctors didn't know everything. That's true, but they know an awful lot. Many are using special medicine AI models now, too, in their practices and those things cross-reference thousands of papers in seconds. Our capability to diagnose using the best available evidence is growing exponentially.
ironically traditional chinese medicine is based on 6000 years of carefully documented evidence based medicine. known as case studies. its quite sophisticated and its been an exciting 150 years of adding to that huge wisdom pool with new tech. just saying.
Kyla, I dont know how to make this private so.....Please be careful with the elimination diet. While they can be helpful, it is often a method employed by "functional" medicine. It would be quite unlikely that you have developed a new onset food allergy at your age. You have certainly been running yourself hard over the past few years. Nothing wrong with pacing yourself, sleeping more, etc.
If you would ever like to have a second (third, fourth, fifth?) opinion from a doctor well versed in evidence based medicine but skeptical of much accepted practice, please let me know.
You are certainly correct that alpha gal is an acquired allergy that can occur at any age. Celiac disease is more likely to have been missed if not diagnosed until the fourth decade. This is often because of increased awarenss of the disease, both by patients and doctors, or a significant change in diet.
My wife was diagnosed with asymptomatic celiac disease at age 60 after suffering the same symptoms you mention. She never had any GI distress, but after further investigation, doctors found that her gut was eating itself — low nutrients, low calcium, etc. Her endocrinologist suspects that there’s a lot of undiagnosed celiac disease that’s asymptomatic. Good luck figuring it out!
Good luck with identifying the culprits. I became FODMAP intolerant aged around 35 and went through the same process of food elimination. I eventually landed on fructans as the culprit - this a category of long chain sugars that contains gluten, but also onions, garlic and other things. It takes time to reorient your diet, but it gets easier with time - as you say, change is a laborious and slow process with lots of mistakes along the way. But the end result of slow and laborious effort is knowledge and confidence.
It took me years to really get comfortable with managing my diet - I would often buckle in front of a mouthwatering slice of freshly made pizza or garlic bread. But eventually I learned to enjoy what I could eat and not mourn what I cannot.
I have learned much more self control and I really enjoy eating . definitely positive side effects to avoid bread, pasta and pizza although it talk ok me some time to work it out.
I eventually stopped re-stacking because every word of this is gold. I’m just linking the article to my friends. I write mainly sociocultural (and some legal/ethical) commentary and critical theory (unpublished), but I lack your formal Econ/finance background perspective, so I always appreciate your insights. Also, feel better!
I hope you can take time for yourself, Kyla! Keep talking to folks until you bump into a solution or at least an improvement in the malabsorption situation. Good luck and god bless.
Good luck with identifying the culprits. I became FODMAP intolerant aged around 35 and went through the same process of food elimination. I eventually landed on fructans as the culprit - this a category of long chain sugars that contains gluten, but also onions, garlic and other things. It takes time to reorient your diet, but it gets easier with time - as you say, change is a laborious and slow process with lots of mistakes along the way. But the end result of slow and laborious effort is knowledge and confidence.
It took me years to really get comfortable with managing my diet - I would often buckle in front of a mouthwatering slice of freshly made pizza or garlic bread. But eventually I learned to enjoy what I could eat and not mourn what I cannot.
In the end, there are hugely positive side effects to avoiding bread, pasta and pizza! You definitely won’t need ozempic when you hit middle age on a healthy, balanced diet without the gluten-carbs!
Fantastic analysis of the tangential direction of health. Whatever is going on in your gut, your economic thinking and creativity are on the level of John Maynard Keynes combined with John Kenneth Galbraith. That brain requires nourishment, so gut care is critical to nurturing your talent. The breadth of food restrictions beyond standard celiac management sounds like it may be guided by an alternative medicine practitioner. Very important to have a gastroenterologist on the treatment team.
For audio fans! The audio version will be available later today wherever you listen to audio. Thanks everyone!
Audio version now live!
Kyla narration > AI narration. Great piece!
Get well soon! You’re a treasure to all of us… hope you’re treating yourself with care, finding opportunities for rest when needed- which is, under the circumstances, understandably rare but so needed. My heart goes out to you.
Thank you! And mine to yours!
Great article! I hope you find the cause of your illness soon and that you find primary care doctor. Take care!
Thanks for the support!
This is such a great article Kyla, thank you for sharing and so sorry to hear about your recent health struggles! I particularly enjoyed the ending thoughts, 'To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.' You got across so clearly how the manosphere relies on making despair the reality. This was recently exemplified with Clavicular walking out of the interview with Andrew Callaghan when Andrew didn't subscribe to his worldview of 'looksmaxing' and being content with his own appearance.
While the phenomena is now seemingly at it's peak there have always been forces that have sought to take shortcuts and sow despair. CS Lewis 'The Screwtape Letters' touches on this so well. The radical alternative has been the quiet hope that was promised. Psalm 37:7 'Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.'
In the meantime, I hope the health professionals can find what is causing these issues for you and help you return to full health!!
CS lewis is my FAVORITE!! And that's my favorite book ever. Such beauty in his prose. And thank you!!
He is my favourite too! I even wrote an article inspired by your 'Economics Lessons from the Screwtape Letters' talking about the deleterious effect of disquiet. How it clouds our judgement and takes away our joy, much like some of the themes touched on here. I'd be honoured if you got a chance to read it! https://tobydavidson07.substack.com/p/clique-claque-the-train-of-disquiet?r=5xx4jl
I think you might be wrong about the root cause of the Manosphere. Yes, the economy certainly plays a role in it, and it's hard to have an internal locus of control when you are working 40-hour workweeks at a local fast food joint and still living with your parents. But I would argue that at its root, the manosphere is a reaction to the death of community. Social fragmentation means that you often don't get to know people in depth enough to connect with them on a personal level. As a result, people have to resort to dating apps and social media to connect. Both of these places place a HUGE emphasis on how you look. Looksmaxing is a direct result of this emphasis on looks above all else.
The manosphere is a loose community, but underlying it is the fundamental feeling that something has gone wrong with being a man, and people look to solutions like Clav and looksmaxing, or Andrew Tate and misogyny, to reconcile that feeling. The sad thing is, I don't think this in any way solves the underlying issue of a lack of community. You can see this in the way that Clav and Andrew Tate lash out at people who don't share their assumptions that looks, money, and fame are everything. Even being the very peak of the manosphere, they are still very much lonely, not able to conquer the disillusionment that brought them to the manosphere in the first place.
Amazing piece. You just came right out and said so much of what I’ve been struggling to put together on my own. Never quit and hang in there with the stomach stuff - not fun!
It's seriously no joke! And I am glad the essay was helpful!
'11 I(t) does appear that President Trump is functionally manipulating markets.' He's been playing at market manipulation since the 1980s; this is just Hog Heaven for him. I am supposing that returns on easy money are the reason the Republican coffers runneth over.
I'm on side with the African Ranger leaning against a resting black rhino, who says, on the Nature documentary (as I remember it), "Life is interdependence, that's what I think." Control is an illusion, or maybe a simulation, as you put it. When your boss talks about control, your part is to humor her/him/them and do what you can.
Desperation is rocket fuel. Profound desperation drove me to work long hours and save and invest. I was both blessed and cursed with circumstances that instilled in me a probing, suspicious nature, so I mostly stuck with DIY. Agentic(ness), as you describe it, sounds to me like the capacity to feed off other people's desperation and steal it for oneself. There's a thing in Real Estate Practice called Undeclared Agency, where you do not disclose who you are working for. It is supposed to be illegal. Enough said.
About Doing. I live in the Silicon Valley area sometimes. I used to think that most people go through life without actually doing anything, but I changed my mind long ago (see interdependency above). But what you said triggered a memory in me. I was gandy-dancing with an old guy from Kentucky who told me a story about his uncle. His uncle was walking through the woods one day, and he heard shooting. He walked on a bit, and he walked up behind a guy who was shooting from behind a fallen tree at another guy behind a tree on the other side of a gully. One guy would pop up, take a shot, duck down, and the other guy would pop up, take a shot, and duck down. After watching this for a while, my comrade's uncle, who had been pulling on a jug of corn whisky all day, got restless and said to the fellow, whom he did not know, "You can't shoot for shit. Give me that rifle." and the next time the guy across the ravine poked his head up, he drilled him through the forehead. The State of Kentucky sent him away for a year for manslaughter, and he was just trying to help. It could be apocryphal, but I think the point is that some things that can be done aren't worth doing.
Finally, I wanted to thank you for your posts. They make me think. I don't think people normally enjoy thinking, which takes a lot of calories and can stress the liver. Thank you for your service.
Feel better.
My instinct is that you'll figure out what's making your body not absorb food well.
I hope it's okay to say... please try evidence-based medicine first. I used to think that doctors didn't know everything. That's true, but they know an awful lot. Many are using special medicine AI models now, too, in their practices and those things cross-reference thousands of papers in seconds. Our capability to diagnose using the best available evidence is growing exponentially.
ironically traditional chinese medicine is based on 6000 years of carefully documented evidence based medicine. known as case studies. its quite sophisticated and its been an exciting 150 years of adding to that huge wisdom pool with new tech. just saying.
Kyla, I dont know how to make this private so.....Please be careful with the elimination diet. While they can be helpful, it is often a method employed by "functional" medicine. It would be quite unlikely that you have developed a new onset food allergy at your age. You have certainly been running yourself hard over the past few years. Nothing wrong with pacing yourself, sleeping more, etc.
If you would ever like to have a second (third, fourth, fifth?) opinion from a doctor well versed in evidence based medicine but skeptical of much accepted practice, please let me know.
You are certainly correct that alpha gal is an acquired allergy that can occur at any age. Celiac disease is more likely to have been missed if not diagnosed until the fourth decade. This is often because of increased awarenss of the disease, both by patients and doctors, or a significant change in diet.
My wife was diagnosed with asymptomatic celiac disease at age 60 after suffering the same symptoms you mention. She never had any GI distress, but after further investigation, doctors found that her gut was eating itself — low nutrients, low calcium, etc. Her endocrinologist suspects that there’s a lot of undiagnosed celiac disease that’s asymptomatic. Good luck figuring it out!
We are suspecting it's the gluten, which certainly blows considering I do love bread. Glad your wife got it sorted!!
Good luck with identifying the culprits. I became FODMAP intolerant aged around 35 and went through the same process of food elimination. I eventually landed on fructans as the culprit - this a category of long chain sugars that contains gluten, but also onions, garlic and other things. It takes time to reorient your diet, but it gets easier with time - as you say, change is a laborious and slow process with lots of mistakes along the way. But the end result of slow and laborious effort is knowledge and confidence.
It took me years to really get comfortable with managing my diet - I would often buckle in front of a mouthwatering slice of freshly made pizza or garlic bread. But eventually I learned to enjoy what I could eat and not mourn what I cannot.
I have learned much more self control and I really enjoy eating . definitely positive side effects to avoid bread, pasta and pizza although it talk ok me some time to work it out.
Fructans is a new word to me... so much to learn! Glad you got it sorted out!!
I eventually stopped re-stacking because every word of this is gold. I’m just linking the article to my friends. I write mainly sociocultural (and some legal/ethical) commentary and critical theory (unpublished), but I lack your formal Econ/finance background perspective, so I always appreciate your insights. Also, feel better!
I hope you get well soon, Kyla. Heal up as quickly and completely as possible.
I hope you can take time for yourself, Kyla! Keep talking to folks until you bump into a solution or at least an improvement in the malabsorption situation. Good luck and god bless.
Good luck with identifying the culprits. I became FODMAP intolerant aged around 35 and went through the same process of food elimination. I eventually landed on fructans as the culprit - this a category of long chain sugars that contains gluten, but also onions, garlic and other things. It takes time to reorient your diet, but it gets easier with time - as you say, change is a laborious and slow process with lots of mistakes along the way. But the end result of slow and laborious effort is knowledge and confidence.
It took me years to really get comfortable with managing my diet - I would often buckle in front of a mouthwatering slice of freshly made pizza or garlic bread. But eventually I learned to enjoy what I could eat and not mourn what I cannot.
In the end, there are hugely positive side effects to avoiding bread, pasta and pizza! You definitely won’t need ozempic when you hit middle age on a healthy, balanced diet without the gluten-carbs!
Look after yourself Kyla and give yourself the space and time. You work too hard ! Best wishes to you.
Fantastic analysis of the tangential direction of health. Whatever is going on in your gut, your economic thinking and creativity are on the level of John Maynard Keynes combined with John Kenneth Galbraith. That brain requires nourishment, so gut care is critical to nurturing your talent. The breadth of food restrictions beyond standard celiac management sounds like it may be guided by an alternative medicine practitioner. Very important to have a gastroenterologist on the treatment team.
Excellent work