Baerren: Raw water is the latest nutty consumer movement

It should not surprise you that there exists a raw water movement. Raw water is probably a bad way to put it. Untreated water is more accurate. It’s drinking water that is either entirely untreated or chemically treated and then run through reverse osmosis. If you get into the weeds, the definition is probably as diverse as is the definition of vegetarian food.

The movement is very similar to the backlash against industrialization that had hippies moving to the forest to live in communes. It holds that anything manufactured by industry is necessarily unnatural and unhealthy.

It reminds of an episode of the old Star Trek where the Enterprise rescued a gang of space hippies, who later stole a shuttle and landed on a planet they believed was Eden. They all died after eating poisonous fruit. Somewhere along the way, Spock jammed on a Vulcan guitar.

The moral of the story is that natural isn’t necessarily healthier. It’s a truism that we get reminded of every time whooping cough is in the news because various people actually bought into the notion that vaccinations are filled with evil chemicals and confer no benefit.

For most of humanity’s tenure, life has been short and brutal. If you weren’t murdered in tribal warfare, you probably died of infectious disease, which was everywhere. A wood splinter could turn into a deadly infection. A cough in the morning could turn into an outbreak that kills half your family by week’s end. Get unlucky in where you got water and you could die of dehydration after a few days’ of agonizing cramps.

It’s true that a lot of our approach to the natural world has been wildly myopic. We actually think of wilderness as a thing rather than a imaginative construct borne out of fears of the unknown. Our approach to rivers, mountains and animals has been to conquer. Today, we face a crisis in climate because of it.

Some of the backlash against industrialized society is warranted, healthy and part of a brighter future that places humanity inside the natural spectrum instead of as an outsider trying to smash it down.

Some of it, well, an adherent told the New York Times this week that if his water sits around longer than “a lunar cycle” it turns green.

Capitalizing on the idea that the more natural a product can be sold as the better, sales of raw water have helped create a new, niche market of bottlers. Where they get their raw materials if the movement continues to grow will be an interesting question, since there are only so many places where untreated water flows free from the risk of disease or other contamination.

Value in the movement ends where it begins to be driven by half-truths and a failure to appreciate just how awful life before technological innovation often was. Water that eventually turns green was not all that safe to drink to begin with. It’s worth noting that much of the raw water movement is driven by a belief that fluoride — a chemical that exists naturally in most sources of groundwater — is a mind-control additive.

The anti-fluoridation movement, like the anti-vaxxer movement, draws support from both the right and left. Alex Jones has been pimping water purification systems alongside doomsday survival kits and seed caches for as long as he’s been pimping the angle that the New World Order brought down the Twin Towers.

This means the movement probably has durability, and whatever coming outbreak of waterborne illness that results will only further the resolve of its members. Proof of problem is evidence of a conspiracy. Precious bodily fluids, y’all.

Eric Baerren is a Morning Sun columnist. He can be reached at ebaerren@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ebaerren.