Eat/Die

EAT/DIE.  Nothing could be simpler.  Life reduced to two words encased in a famous set of diptychs by Robert Indiana. Organisms must eat. At some point, they die. Eat/die. Both guaranteed, both straightforward.

“Guaranteed,” sure. But “straightforward”?  Maybe. At least until thinking gets involved. Then philosophy interferes with “straightforward.” It asks: “what exactly is meant by "eat" and by "die?"  Philosophers are not just being difficult. They take on the tough job of thinking, seeking to grasp how things are--even if “how things are” is not straightforward.  

Robert Indiana said he got the diptych idea from the last word spoken by his mother: “eat.”   

As a mother’s last in injunction, “eat” ranks way up there.  Mothers, after all, are, for the period of gestation, food for the fetus.  Mothers also, in general, have carried the burden of supplying family members with nutritious, tasty food. And this, not just as a one-off thing, but every day, multiple times a day.  

“Eat” also distinguishes humans as a species. The philosopher Martin

Heidegger made much of how the German language sorted out, with two different words, what animals do, i.e. “feed,” fressen, and what humans do, “eat,” essen.  Animals relieve hunger, most often individually even if they are a pack feeding side by side. They ingest whatever is identifiable as food. Then they move on.

Essen, “eat,” as a mother’s last utterance, conveys an important message.  Keeping the fressen/essen distinction in mind, it suggests “be fully human.” And, what, in turn, does this mean?

1 Don’t eat alone.  Eating alone, let’s face it, is kind of a drag. Counselors report how, for first-year college students, one of the most anxiety-inducing situations is sitting alone in the cafeteria, an anxiety made famous in Mean Girls when Lindsay

Lohan, worried about being alone at a table, retreats to the rest room with her food. We are social animals. One manifestation of that sociality is eating with others.

2. “Savor.”  “Relish.” Eating is a value-laden activity. We make distinctions between better and worse. What’s on the plate may be rated somewhere between tasty and bland as well as somewhere on the ugly to beautiful spectrum.  Preferences and avoidances are enacted.

“Taste” is something to be educated and cultivated. “Eating,” can, of course, be reduced to “feeding,” to a straightforward intake of calories. The latest attempt in this direction is the “meal replacement drink”  Soylent. To choose feeding (whatever rationalizations are offered in terms of efficiency and convenience) is, in effect saying “no” to being fully human.

3. “Connect.” All food was once a plant. Even meat  is from animals who fed on plants. Intelligent awareness associated with eating highlights dependences and connections to our natural surroundings. It draws our attention  to rain, sunshine, fertile soil, bacteria that keep it fertile, insects that pollinate, and, within ourselves, the bacteria that help us digest. It also links us to fellow humans, unrecognized mostly, but without whom, seeds would not be planted, farmland not tended to, plants not harvested, animals not butchered, fruits, vegetables and meats not delivered.

4. “Thank.” The religious word “Eucharist” means thankfulness.  It’s not clear whether pets are grateful. Some sure seem to be. But for humans, gratefulness marks a mode of relating which manifests full bore humaneness.  It’s beyond simple economic exchange, i.e. more than “I offer this service and now you owe me in return.” That exchange can take place without any sense of “thank you.”  What used to be uttered before meals, “grace,” like “Eucharist,” originally indicated thankfulness. A common prayer, “Bless this food,” can, by contrast, be misleading. It suggests that food is, initially, just stuff.  Such stuff would require a special effort to make it enter the realm of the sacred. If we pay attention to etymology, though, even “bless,” this is not surprising, carries within itself the sense of giving thanks.

Of course we can choose to live a life in the mode of exchange, the mode in which all objects and actions become commodities, one in which human relations devolve to contractual transactions alone. Gratitude at table helps inoculate us against such retrogression.

Today’s fast food world is one which offers temptations to which we can easily succumb: to think of ourselves as above and beyond the ordinary pleasures of the table, to prize individual autonomy, to think solely in contractual terms.

A mother’s exhortation to “eat” urges us not to succumb.  It suggests that we embrace and welcome our humanity in its fullest and best possibilities. Not bad advice

What about "die" the other half of the diptych? That's for another blog.