The Joys of McDougallism

I've been a vegan for ten years, and have always considered myself to be in good health. This year, however, I noticed in some photographs that I had a protruding stomach - not a beer belly, but the beginnings of one. I bought some scales and to my shock and horror, discovered that I weighed 82 kilos. I'd always assumed that I weighed 75-77 kilos.

I became determined to lose weight. I'd been aware for some time that Australia did have a growing weight problem and that Australians and Americans seemed to be more obese, or at least more pudgy, than they were decades ago - in the 1970s and 1980s. Watch any film or TV show from that period and you'll see how skinny the actors are. Being skinny came naturally to male actors in particular back then - look at how skinny Harrison Ford was in the first three Star Wars movies, for instance - but now male actors and celebrities, it seems, have to fight to stay in shape. I looked at some of the extreme diets taken by celebrities Matthew McConaughey, Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Bateman and Al Sharpton. If you want to follow any of these, you need get used to eating very little. Gyllenhaal subsisted on a diet of kale and chewing gum while filming Nightcrawler (2014). I tried a variant on this - I ate only two slices of toast for dinner every night, for example - and lost a few kilos. But as could be expected, this sort of self-denial proved to be unsatisfactory and unsustainable. So Hollywood methods didn't really work for me.

The work of Dr John McDougall turned out to be my salvation. I had read one of McDougall's books - The McDougall Program: Twelve Days to Dynamic Health (1990) - the year before and had attempted to put its recommendations into practice in a desultory way. I gave up coffee, and bought all the food in his 12-day diet program with the intention of eating it.

But I didn't have the time to prepare three different meals a day for 12 days - really, I needed a chef to do it for me - and I couldn't stay from coffee for long. I did introduce one permanent change to my diet, however: I stopped using vegetable oil and oily foods such as peanut butter and potato chips.

To find the easiest to read summary of McDougall's ideas, download this PDF of 'Doctor McDougall's Color Picture Book': "Food Poisoning" - How to Cure It by Eating Beans, Corn, Pasta, Potatoes, Rice, etc. here. I characterise McDougallism as the reverse of the high-carb, high protein Atkins-type diets. McDougall advocates a high fibre, high carbohydrate, low fat and low protein vegan diet. He likes 'starches' - bread, rice, corn, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, legumes and the rest - and doesn't like vegetable oil, meat and cheese (tofu) substitutes, dried fruits, nuts, avocados, caffeine, alcohol, fruit juice, processed food (especially sugary processed food) and vitamin supplements.

As stated before, I ditched vegetable oil, but really didn't follow McDougallism. Then I chanced across these chance comments from supply-side economist and blogger (and occasional raw food vegan) Nathan Lewis. When surveying the popular diets of today - including the Paleo diet, the raw food vegan diet and the McDougall diet - Lewis concluded that they worked for the following reason:

These strategies do work, and they work for much the same reason as the raw vegan approach works. It's not because "meat makes you healthy," and bananas and mangoes don't, or vice versa. It's what you're not eating.

If you take a "lotsa meat and nonsweet vegetables" approach, here's what you're not eating:

1) All processed foods, including all junk foods, soda, etc.
2) Foods made from the "white food" white flour, dairy, white sugar complex
3) All the GMO foods, including things made from corn and soy
4) Anything with nasty additives like MSG or artificial sweeteners
5) Possibly little or no dairy, depending on your diet strategy ("paleo")
6) Maybe less booze and coffee.
7) Probably a lot less salt, most of which is in processed foods.

I found this quote intriguing:

"Body fat" (actually a lot of it is water stored in the fat tissues) is affected by all kinds of things, including the amount of salt, alcohol, caffeine and other toxins in the diet. The body needs water to purge these toxins, so if you consume this regularly, the body naturally stores more water so that it has enough on hand. Douglas Graham says that he finds that long-term raw vegans generally have bodyfat well below these levels, even as people get older.

I wasn't absolutely convinced of the 'science' behind this, but I resolved to abstain from caffeine altogether for a few weeks and see what happened. I found this difficult: I needed to go from 1-5 cups of coffee and tea a day (plus fizzy drinks such as Diet Coke or diet V or Mother) to zero, and I experienced withdrawal symptoms straight away - headaches, pains in my legs, and flat moods. Caffeine seems to be the most addictive substance known to man. But I coped with the withdrawal symptoms by taking some paracetamol pills, and they disappeared after a week or two. I was rewarded with better sleep and an improvement in my temper - I became less irritable.

With some sadness, I also gave up beer, and stuck to drinking wine and spirits - also, fizzy drinks and processed foods such as tinned fruits (which come preserved in fruit juice). I generally stay away from pasta and spaghetti, even the high fibre kinds, because I seem to add on weight whenever I eat them.

My next step was to buy an online copy of McDougall's Starch Solution (2013), a much better book than the McDougall Program, and much more concise. Instead of trying to make all the recipes in his crash diet, I concentrated on making two or three of the meals over and over. The recipes seemed better than the ones in McDougall Program. I recommend them over 'normal' junk food - pizzas and the like - because one can't binge on them and overeat, as they're so filling. It's hard to imagine, for instance, anyone wolfing down bowl after bowl of his sweet potato Tunisian stew and rice.

The results speak for themselves. I'm now down to 71 kilos most days, and occasionally drop to 70 (in my adult life, the lowest I've weighed in 68-69 kilos). I have a flat stomach - my 'abs' are showing - and feel pretty good about myself. I seem to carry myself in a different way - e.g., I walk in a different way - and generally find that I'm much more comfortable in my body than I was before. It appears that women notice me before. I'm sure that most men will find that taking up the McDougall diet will improve marriages and relationships... McDougall, in Starch Solution, makes some interesting observations on the relation between physical health and attractiveness to the opposite sex.

The experience has made me reflect on the value of one's body and health. I see now that it's no use having lots of money, and living in a prosperous country, if you abuse your body and run it into the ground. You only get one body in life, and, after wrecking it, you can't trade it in for a new one. That's unlike a storyline - set in a dystopian future - in Jack Kirby's OMAC series, which explored the possibility of body trading: evil rich old people paid to have their minds transferred into the bodies of beautiful young people who had been kidnapped.

The tragedy of many people's lives in Australia and America is that their health has deteriorated significantly, not by the time they've reached 60 or 70, but by 30 or 40. This doesn't come about because of malnutrition and starvation but because of too much of the wrong food. McDougall's ideas can help us beat this scourge. Mark Hootsen signing off.


　

　

Adventures in Socionics

I.


A while ago, I took the plunge after seeing some videos by DJ Arendee (a.k.a. EJ Arendee) on socionics and began looking at some websites and reading some books. I've discovered that while socionics doesn't contradict MBTI - it complements it and explores it in more depth - it clearly doesn't reach as wide an audience as MBTI. Why is this?

The answer, to me, lies in marketing. Americans are the ones promulgating MBTI through the English-speaking world and Americans outshine all others when it comes to packaging and selling things. Quite a few American MBTI consultants manage to make money of MBTI, which is impressive. MBTI has been brought to the masses in a big way. In contrast, one can find only a few books on socionics in English, and the work of Aushra Augusta and Antoni Kapinski remains untranslated and unpublished, so far as I know. In English, I've only found three socionics authors: Ekaterina Filatova, Spencer Stern and the controversial Rod Novichkov.

One of the differences between socionics and MBTI is that the former looks at each type in more depth: it considers eight functions, not just four. This leads to a fuller picture of each personality type. 

The two leading functions in MBTI, that is, the dominant and auxiliary, get lumped into the 'ego' category or block in socionics; the two, relatively inferior functions, that is, the tertiary and inferior, get put into the 'super id' block. A type (for example, the INFJ in MBTI) feels on strong and safe ground with the first two functions (Ni and Fe) and values them; he feels weak and unsure when using the tertiary and inferior functions in the 'super id' block, but still values them, knows that he needs to improve in those areas and acknowledges that they can only be improved with the assistance and input of others.

In contrast, he feels weak and unsure when it comes to two hidden functions not considered in the MBTI model - in an INFJ, these are Si and Te - but doesn't value these and doesn't want the help of others when it comes remedying the defects in this area; in fact, he doesn't want other people to know about his perceived weakness here at all. He's ashamed of these two functions. Thus, he consigns them to the 'super-ego' block.

Last but not least, he feels strong with two of the functions and doesn't value them very much; these represent an area of competence and efficiency which he takes for granted and aren't worth celebrating (as Wolverine says, 'I'm the best at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice'). These two functions are relegated to the unconscious, or 'id' block. He remains unconscious of them for the part, that is, he doesn't show much awareness of them (any more than most of us pay any attention to automatic bodily functions such as breathing). In an INFJ, these would be Fi and Ne. 

Socionics differs from MBTI in its notation (which is very confusing to people coming from MBTI to socionics). If someone's dominant, leading function is a judging or rational one, socionics puts a j at the end; if perceiving or irrational, a p. So an INTP in MBTI becomes and INTj: the leading function of an INTP is introverted thinking, a judging function, hence INTj. On the other hand, an INTJ's dominant function is a perceiving one, Ni, so an INTJ becomes an INTp.

This takes some getting used to. But I believe that the socionics approach makes more sense. In MBTI, the type gets a j or a p at the end according to which of the two main functions - dominant or auxiliary - is extraverted. Because of the ISFJ's judging function - feeling - is extraverted, the ISFJ gets a j at the end and becomes known as a 'judger'. In Keirsey, this muddles things. For instance, an ISFJ's leading function (Si) is a perceiving and irrational one, not a judging, but the ISFJ in the Keirsey system is christened a 'judger'.


II.


Socionics, unlike MBTI, focuses a lot on intertype relations - relations of romance, friendship, business - and has identified sixteen different kinds of relationships, one for each of the sixteen types. Michael Peirce does a good, accessible YouTube presentation here on the theory.

The socionics relationships can be used to work out what the function order is - that is, which functions occupy the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and so on - in each type. If you know the leading functions of each type, then you can work out - in perfect order - which two functions go into the ego, superego, id and super-id blocks of your type, as you'll see that each of the four blocks contains a type which you have a fixed socionics relationship to.

Let's take the INFJ, for instance - an INFp in socionics. In the ego block, we find the two leading functions of the INFp himself - Ni and Fe. The relationship between INFp and INFp is one of Identity. In other words: 

I N F p

= = = = 

I N F p

That was easy enough. Are there any couples in popular culture who have a relationship of Identity? I can only think of one: Daredevil (ISTP) and Elektra (ISTP).

What of the super-ego block? Unsurprisingly, the INFp's super-ego block contains the type he has Super-Ego relationship with: the ISTp (ISFJ in MBTI). So:

I N F p

= ¹ ¹ =

I S T p

The Super-Ego relationship doesn't sound very promising: 

If Super-Ego partners cannot find a common interest to discuss and ponder, their interaction can quickly descend into strife. The partners would rather express their own points of view than listen to the other partner's point of view. The latter tries to defend himself by projecting his own confident points in return. This can easily devolve into a vicious cycle. Partners normally show interest and respect to each other if they do not know each other well enough. When partners begin to close their psychological distance, they start to experience many problems understanding each other. 
Super-Ego partners may think that they have each other figured out. However, when it comes to the two collaborating on a group project, they can easily begin to believe that the other is trying to ruin the project. Super-Ego partners do not make each other aware of their intentions. Therefore their actions may look exactly opposite to what was expected. Although the hope of better collaboration between partners remains as before, it does not prevent conflict penetrating their relationship.

Some famous Super-Ego pairs: Batman (INTJ) and Commissioner Gordon (ISFJ); Han Solo (ISTP) and Luke Skywalker (INFP).

In the weak super-id block, we find the leading functions of the INFp's dual type, the ESTP: 

I N F p

¹ ¹ ¹ =

E S T p

Socionics gives the Super-Ego relationship a low rating, the Dual the highest. In one's Dual, one can find one's ideal romantic partner, business partner or friend. I'd say that the most famous Dual pair in popular culture are Walter White (INTJ in MBTI) and Jesse Pinkman (ESFP).

Others that spring to mind, are Wolverine (ISTP) and Jean Grey (ENFJ), an almost-romantic couple; husband and wife Bill Spencer II (ENTJ) and Katie Logan (ISFP) in the long-running soap opera Bold and the Beautiful; in Jack Kirby's Fourth World, husband and wife Mister Miracle (INFP) and Big Barda (ESTJ). 

In the Dual relationship, the leading and strong functions of one type's Ego block make up the inferior and weak functions of the other's Super-Id block. Each of the pair's strengths complement the others weaknesses; development of one's weak functions in the Super-Id block with the assistance of another type leads to self-actualisation.

Finally, we come to the Contrary relationship (also known as Extinguishment). The Contrary of the INFp can be found in the Id block: 

I N F p
¹ = = =
E N F p

The Contrary possesses each of the same functions in the same order as your type, only the orientation (extraversion or introversion) faces the opposite way. The leading function of the INFp is introverted intuition, the leading function of the ENFp is extraverted intuition. The INFp's secondary function is extraverted feeling, the ENFp's is introverted feeling. And so it goes, from the first function to the eighth.

Generally, Contraries don't get along: consider Han Solo (ISTP in MBTI) and Princess Leia (ESTJ) or Rust Cohle and Marty Hart in True Detective, another ISTP / ESTJ pair. Without a doubt, the most famous Contrary pair is Batman (INTJ) and the Joker (ENTP). Generally, Contraries in a movie, TV show or comic book make for exciting fireworks.


III.


In its methods of type identification, socionics leans to, or shows greater tolerance, for visual identification. As Sergei Ganin states: 

V.I. (Visual Identification) is the fastest and most reliable method of Type identification of today. It works on the principle that an inner process will always manifest itself through its outer boundaries - a sack with a brick will have a different shape than a sack with a football.

Analogously, mental processes inside the human head will have their manifestation through the face, the eyes and the appearance of an individual. Since the major part of one's mental activity is carried out according to their Type, there is a significant correlation between the type and the look of a person. In other words, people of the same Type look similar.

In the same way people can tell women from men by their looks, it is also possible to distinguish between the Psychological Types of people. Each Type has peculiar features in their appearance and it is possible to recognise and identify those features. There are groups of people within the same Type that share similar looks. This leads to a number of different looks that can be associated with the same Type.

The little-known book by Rod Novichkov and Julia Varabyova, How to Find Yourself and Your Best Match: Socionics: The Modern Approach to Psychological Types (2007), sums up the visual identification method the best. The book hasn't received good reviews on Amazon.Com and it shows itself to be a poorly-edited, poorly-formatted piece of desktop publishing work; nevertheless, it contains a wealth of information.

In my experience, Novichkov's visual identification method has proven itself to be accurate. Many, many years ago, I took an MBTI test as part of a careers counselling course. I found out my type and agreed with the type description overall, but didn't pay much attention to MBTI until only this year. I've taken a few tests (mostly unreliable online ones) since then, and have gotten results which have differed wildly from each other (I've flipped from being an intuitive to a sensor, an extravert to an introvert...). But Novichkov's methods have confirmed the results of my original test. He declares that anyone my type will have a certain kind of face, pair of hands, neck, posture, gaze, etc., and physically, I match his description of my type a 100%. One of my best friends - an ISFp - looks exactly how Novichkov says an ISFp should look (in fact, my friend closely resembles Elton John, who Novichkov identifies as an ISFp). In the MBTI community itself, we find plenty of self-declared INFJs / INFps, especially on YouTube, and these - for example Michael Peirce - fit the Novichkov physical description of the INFJ to a tee.

Ekaterina Filatova's books use a lot of photographs of types, even though she doesn't endorse visual identification. If we look at the photographs, we'll see some striking similarities. See, for instance, this group from the 'Alpha quadra' (ISFJs, INTPs, ENTPs, ESFJs in MBTI). These, to me, match up with Novichkov's book: the ENTps and INTjs wear the faces of Thinkers; the ISFps and ESFjs, Feelers. We can also detect in the faces in these photos extraversion or introversion. The extraverts (especially the ESFjs) look excited by having their picture taken, so excited they seem willing to jump on you; the introverts, on the other hand, hold themselves back. To me, their faces look opaque, almost doll-like. Type Tips does a good series on the Filatova photos.

One's gaze and facial expressions say a lot about one's character, and one's body affects one's character and how we perceive the world. A cat would behave in a different way in a dog's body, and so would a shark in a crocodile's. 

Some may denounce visual identification as pseudo-science, being no better than phrenology, but to me it's very scientific - scientific in the sense of 'empirical'. You could put all the celebrities identified in Novichkov's book on a spreadsheet and collect photographs and footage of each, and thereby confirm (or disconfirm) his theories against a database of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

Mark Hootsen signing off.

Book Review: The Bolshevik Party's Struggle against Trotskyism (1969)

The Bolshevik Party's Struggle Against Trotskyism: 1903-February 1917 (1969), various authors, Progress Publishers, Moscow

The Bolshevik Party's Struggle Against Trotskyism in the Post-October Period (1969), various authors, Progress Publishers, Moscow

This is a two-volume series published by the USSR's Progress Publishers in 1969 - during the Brezhnev era. It's a polemic designed to assure readers that a continuity exists between the Marxist-Leninism from the period before the expulsion of Trotsky in 1927 and the Marxist-Leninism that came after. Which readers, you may ask? Those on the Left who may be experiencing doubts as to whether or not the socialism of the USSR in 1969 is the same as the socialism of the revolution of 1917. Trotsky devoted much of his post-expulsion career to arguing that, some time after the death of Lenin in 1924, the USSR became 'bureaucratic', 'Stalinist', a 'deformed worker's state'. Many on the 'anti-revisionist' Left put forward a similar thesis: sometime after the expulsion of Trotsky, perhaps after Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, the USSR became 'bourgeois', 'revisionist', 'state capitalist'. Struggle- aims to refute these charges. It shows a Trotsky fighting Lenin every step of the way, doggedly, up until the 1917 revolution, after which Trotsky converted from Menshevism to Bolshevism; but (and this is the argument of the book) Trotsky continues the fight, while in power, against Lenin and 'Leninism' until 1927.

The book makes a good case, simply because, I think, of its documentation. It quotes, at length, from all of Trotsky's published writings and from those of his followers. It's copiously footnoted, and the level of detail makes it far superior to any of the other anti-Trotsky polemics on the market.

The first volume covers the pre-revolution period and how Trotsky's theories of permanent revolution and the untenability of 'socialism in one country' came to dominate his thinking. The highlight of the volume, for me, is a comparison and contrasting of Trotsky's and Lenin's theories on capitalism, revolution, feudalism and (what we today would call) globalisation; it's an argument which still reverberates on the Left today.

As for the second volume, it passes over the period of the Russian Civil War (1918-1921) and goes into depth on the intra-party quarrels inside the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) culminating in Trotsky's dramatic fall. Stalin hardly appears at all in this: the conflict is portrayed as being between Trotsky's faction and the party leadership, who are driven to distraction by Trotsky's constant polemicising, and finally turn on Trotsky after evidence emerges of the formation of active Trotskyite cells within the party. Tens of thousands of party members various party branches and organisations mobilise; they pass resolutions (not always unanimously) against Trotsky and his faction. (The book puts the number of Trotskyists within the USSR as being 2000 - a large number by today's standards). Finally, Trotsky is forced out.

The surprising thing is that Trotsky was allowed to survive in the party for so long, and indeed, we don't see a homogenous, disciplined and unified RSDLP here: even after 1917, and well into the 1920s, there's a conglomeration of mainline Leninists, Social Revolutionaries, 'Left' Social Revolutionaries, former Mensheviks and a multitude of Trotskyist alliances and factions in the party or on the outside of the party influencing it. The book inadvertently lends support to the revisionist scholarship of Lars Lih, and it seems as though the party tolerated a wide number of diverging opinions. Only there came a point when the party couldn't abide with Trotsky and the Trotskyists any more. Dissenting voices, intra-party disagreements leading to vigorous debate, were allowed up until a point when a line was crossed.

　
Mark Hootsen signing off