All You Can Eat

“All you can eat.”  “Ice cold beer.”  Signs meant to attract when they should repel.  What is it about us which finds attractive an appeal to food for bulk; to a liquid so chilled that subtleties of taste have disappeared?  Naturally, as readers of this blog realize, it all goes back to philosophy.  

For a long time, evaluation, determining what is most worthy of selection, was dominated by familiar themes: moderation, limit, balance.  Take the ancient Greek exhortations: “Know Thyself” and “Nothing in Excess.”  

These are closely related.  By knowing ourselves, (1) we realize the importance of  achieving moderation, the right mean between extremes.   In turn, moderation makes little sense without (2) an appreciation for limits, and (3) a sense of multiple variables that have to be kept in balance.  The food world offers ready-made examples: salt, sugar, fat.  Each of these is good, in moderation, within limits, as part of a balanced diet.

The “nothing in excess” philosophy held sway for a long time.  Like any position, it could be pushed to excesses of its own.  “Limits” morph into rigid social structures and oppressive moral codes.    So the Modern, post-Renaissance, world  was inaugurated by a challenge to limits. The Modern era

was liberationist. Freedom, i.e. rejecting limits, constraints and restraints, became the highest good.  

One positive result was the establishment of democratic republics.  Once again, though, the “nothing in excess” rule came to be violated.  Not just violated, but the very rule was put into question.  Limits became inherently bad. They all needed to be transgressed, subverted, overcome.    We have here an oft-repeated pattern: overreaction.  Proper attempts at reform come to be dominated by simplification and short-cuts.

Nothing offers a more convenient short-cut  than quantitative measures. Such a move also helps encourage another human temptation: evading responsibility. Instead of responsibility, we seek neat algorithms, easy formulas to follow.

The “nothing in excess” position made evading responsibility difficult.  “Moderation, by its nature, is an elusive target.  Success depends on many factors: Individual circumstances, the right cluster of ideals, tradition, experience,  evidence from experts. This mix hardly provides a clear-cut, knock-down, "just follow this" algorithm. In other words, uncertainty and anxiety are built in to the “nothing in excess” model.

How circumvent uncertainty?  Minimize anxiety? Reduce responsibility?  Simple: abandon the “nothing in excess” philosophy and adopt a “challenge limits/seek quantitative  measures” approach.  “Good” can now come to mean (a) ignoring limits by seeking always to overcome them, (b) ignoring balance by  maximizing one outcome,  and (c) ignoring moderation by taking guidance from quantitative measures.

Daniel Yankelovich, the public opinion analyst, well described this last strategy:

 "The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide."

Step three is where “all you can eat” and “ice cold beer” fit in.  The simplification/short cut is clear: the best food “deal”  provides the most bulk for the price; the best beer is chilled to the max.  Both standards are measurable.  Both isolate a single factor.  Each rejects limits.  Neither aims for the right mean between extremes.  Both, indeed, identify good with a rejection of moderation.

So, why are we drawn by such invitations? We have bought into a “know thyself” attitude that is quite different from the “nothing in excess” one.   The self we know today is a bundle of desires seeking satisfaction.  The “good” life is one which maximizes satisfaction of desires, breaks boundaries, and finds comfort in quantitative standards.

In short, today’s response to ‘know thyself” is “I am a consumer.”  The "citizen" of ancient and modern republics has given way to the "consumer."  “All you can eat” turns out to be a siren song. It’s a feel-good, don’t-let- others-limit-you, kind of call.  In the end, though, Nemesis, the Greek goddess of comeuppance, returns.  Subversion of food limits comes with an inevitable non-monetary cost:  weight and health suffer.  Our value system is badly distorted. Signs like “All you can eat” and “ice cold beer”  should send a clear signal: stay away.

Avoid Laziness: Dispute Tastes

A poet addressing an audience of 14,000?  It happened. The speaker: T.S. Eliot. The year: 1956. The place: a Minnesota athletic stadium.  How things have changed!  Today, beyond athletic events and rock concerts, stadiums are permeated by what has become most pervasive: advertising.   Best slogan for the last 60 years: from poetry to advertising.

Poetry is thick with allusions, references, ambiguity, the blend of sound and sense.  Its aim: revelation. The poet has something to tell.  Advertising relies on stripped down language.  It’s aim: manipulation.  The advertiser has something to sell.

Food studies people pay attention to advertising and its impact on health.  Now we have a philosophy book whose reflections begin by noting how ads are everywhere (see urinals, airplane tray tables, gasoline pumps). Not only that, the book uses the example of a cook both prominently and positively. Matthew Crawford is the author. The World Beyond Your Head is the title.  

Crawford’s concern is with “attention,” especially how our attention has been colonized by those with something to sell. He realizes, it’s a philosophy book after all, that this state of affairs was prepared by a general understanding of who we are, a particular “philosophical anthropology.”  This anthropology describes humans as minds (the “head” of his book’s title).  Things and events become neutral items providing data for the mind. We call these data “objects,” items in the “world beyond your head.” One outcome of this picture is expressed in ordinary language as “it’s all subjective,” or the food-related  “there is no disputing about taste,” i.e. the individual mind is the source of value.  Examined psychologically, such assertions reflect  laziness and self-interest. They combine an unwillingness to scrutinize value judgments and the self-satisfaction of the status quo. To say “there is no disputing about taste” is, in effect, to say, let’s not bother thinking about this, let’s leave things as they are.  Examined philosophically, as Crawford does, such assertions are part and parcel of a picture which, forgetting hands and stomach, artificially characterizes the human situation as  “head” and “world outside your head.”   

In the realm of food it is a commonplace to recognize that as the stomach-hand connection is interrupted, the more “de-skilled” we become. One example: the less we are able to cook.  In turn, this de-skilling renders us vulnerable to those who would gladly (a) provide the service and (b) shape our judgments.  Attention can be colonized because the de-skilling is  accompanied by  a loss of what alone can provide a defense: standards and measures for discrimination.

Crawford’s concerns are similar. The realm of “it’s all subjective,” thrives in the absence of justifiable, generally accepted criteria.  Why?  Without agreement on standards, we are empty, blank slates, ready for colonization. The colonization provides substitutes. On one hand, as qualitative criteria disappear, quantitative benchmarks, often “narrow economic considerations” become the default.  On the other hand, we are told to reach within and find our true selves, i.e. accept uncriticizable subjective feelings.   “The fact that these preferences are the object of billion-dollar, scientifically informed efforts of manipulation doesn’t square with the picture of the choosing self assumed in the idea of a “free market.”

In all of this, an overarching norm takes center stage: conformity. Why do the hard work of selecting quality-driven exemplars to emulate?  An obvious and easy (laziness again) standard is now available: opinion polls.  “We cannot look to custom or established authority, so we look around to see what everyone else thinks.  The demand to be an individual makes us feel anxious, and the remedy for this, ironically enough, is conformity. We become more deferential to public opinion.”

The best way to liberate attention from its colonizers is to multiply engaged activities, like cooking.    We then attend to our surroundings in ways that, (1) encourage us to recognize factors of significance built-in to surrounding conditions, factors open to reasonable discussion and debate.  Their  significance may be related to ongoing

projects  (what the “it’s all subjective” fans emphasize),  but  the what  and  why of significance are not of our making.   (2) Within any craft tradition there are masters and experts. We learn to appreciate, admire, and strive to emulate role models. It is genuine living models who serve as touchstones not some statistical mean.

Ours is a world dominated by those who have something to sell.  Conformity is crucial for them.  Confusing “norm” and “average” helps their cause.  Having a de-skilled populace is a great boon. Cooking and other hands-on activities allow openings for our liberation.  Crawford seeks to blend hands and mind. To his credit, he wants to make room for those who have something to tell.

Unforget Stomach, Remember Socrates

Rowman and Littlefield has now made I Eat, Therefore I Think available in paperback. This comes as the number of philosophy books addressing food issues  is growing. Some recent examples include:  Paul Thompson, From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone, Corine Pelluchon, Les Nourritures: Philosophie du Corps Politique,  Julian Baggini, The Virtues of the Table: how to Eat and Think.  In addition, there is the book authored by Lisa Heldke and me, Philosophers at Table.

Why the upsurge? There is renewed interest in everyday activities typically ignored by philosophers.  Food studies has burgeoned.  Both hunger and obesity offer contemporary challenges.  Issues of sustainability and the treatment of animals have also provoked reflection.

Where does my book fit into the discussion?  Perhaps the most important lesson is one the book does not explicitly mention: philosophy is not an abstract discipline.  Philosophy, as Alfred North Whitehead put it, is a critic of abstractions.  “But, wait,” readers are probably thinking, “Isn’t philosophy abstract thinking?”  “That’s what we learned in philosophy class.”  

All well and good, but partial and misguided.  In its historical trajectory, philosophy has indeed come to be associated with abstraction and mind puzzles.  I Eat, Therefore I Think aims at changing this take on philosophy.

To accomplish this, I began with a clumsy term:  “unforgetting.”  “Un-forgetting” literally translates the Greek word for ‘“truth,”  aletheia.  My book seeks to unforget that we are stomach-endowed. It might seem obvious that humans are creatures for whom the stomach plays a major role, but philosophers of a particular period have tended to ignore this.   Second the book seeks to unforget, i.e. reinsert, some Socratic elements into philosophy.  

A few Socrates-inspired elements stand out:

Dialogue. Socrates believed that thinking through an issue involved cooperation with others. Thinking is not an isolated activity that goes on in the head. Thinking, in the fullest sense, takes place via dialogue.

Irony. Socrates embraced “irony” in its philosophical sense: an awareness that even our best formulations somehow fall short. Philosophy’s task is unending because our articulations, while they get something right, are, at the same time, lacking in other ways.  Reality is too complex to be captured in any snapshot.

Agora.  Socrates practiced philosophy in the agora, the marketplace, the public square.  The topics he discussed were rooted in the living concerns of flesh and blood people.

What? Socrates showed how philosophy is not concerned with the question “why.” Its purview is the question “what.”  What is friendship? What is love?  What is virtue?  Philosophy means “love of wisdom” and the “what” questions allow for actual, helpful answers that guide “wisdom.” ”“Why” questions, e.g. “Why is there something rather than nothing?”  “Why are we here?” are more the province of myth, non-philosophical ways to deal with questions about absolute origins or absolute ends.  

How does a stomach-friendly help re-invigorate these four Socratic themes?  A major metaphorical alteration is first needed: thinking of conceptual abstractions as recipes. Then, just as recipes, though helpful, can be critiqued and altered, so philosophy can undertake its role as “critic of abstractions.” The same move helps philosophy become Socratic once again.

Dialogue and the Agora.  Recipes involve dialogue.  We start where we are, in the agora. The cultural heritage in which we find ourselves privileges a conceptual framework, a series of recipes.  Engaging in dialogue with that tradition, we critique, we restore, we revise received recipes, we develop new ones. In this process, we are often aided by adding a dialogue with other traditions.  

Irony. Recipes are never fixed, finished and final, i.e. the slippage between formulation and reality, a slippage which identifies genuine irony, is ever-present.  What counts, in the end, is how recipes become manifest in experience.  The philosophical “criticism” of abstractions involves the back and forth between abstractions and the way they play out in lived experience.

What, not why. When we think about recipes, the ‘’what” dimension dominates.  Questions about ultimate origins and ends are unanswerable apart from storytelling, from myths. These, it must be noted, may be religious or they may be evolutionary.  Either way, they are not philosophical.  The recipe focus, which begins by humbly accepting the simple fact of our being here, tends rather to highlight “what” questions.”   What makes a meal delicious and nutritious?  What makes a life good? Starting with only vegetables can we do to come up with a delicious/nutritious combination?  What is the extent of justice?  Does it encompass non-human animals?

I Eat, Therefore I Think offers itself as the kind of corrective that will re-define philosophy as both the critic of abstractions and the friend of Socrates.  Hopefully, the paperback version will allow those ends to be widely discussed and disseminated.