ISOLATOES

A recent news story has provided fodder for comedians.  It’s about a practice for which new words had to be invented:  “Solomoon” was one, “Unimoon” another. Despite the suffix, the practice has nothing to do with celestial bodies. It’s about changes in what used to be called “honeymoon.”

What’s indicated by “uni” and “solo”?  Getting married and taking separate holidays. A New York Times story got  the buzz going.

Sociologically, the trend is understandable.  Many couples, at the time of their wedding, have already got years of shared living behind them.  The post-wedding trip is just another vacation. Some vacations work best together, some apart.

Philosophically, the move is also understandable. It’s part and parcel of an important, post-medieval, shift in self-definition.  The ancient world had been overly focused on community. Community, in turn, meant rigid and oppressive social roles. Modern European thought offered an alternative: individualism.

As is often the case, a pendulum swing from one extreme can, after many centuries, move far in the opposite direction.  A dominating strand now thinks of humans as fundamentally, essentially, basically, individuated units. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick coined an appropriate term: “isolatoes.”

For an ancient thinker like Aristotle, this simply falsified our experience. Humans were “political animals.” By this Aristotle

did not mean that we all aspire to political office.  He meant that humans were, by nature, social entities. “Isolatoes” were either gods or beasts. Humans, after all, come into existence only after the conjunction of sperm and egg, gestate in a female, live in communities, speak a language, and are not totipotent (i.e. need others). Those who think of themselves as fundamentally isolated and autonomous can be described as idiotic, using a word whose Greek root means “personal,”  “peculiar,” “private.”

Because our mode of being is social, one great good for humans is friendship. “Even a rich man,” Aristotle said, “needs friends.” Friendship, as Aristotle described it,  exists on a continuum. There is (a) the optimal sense of friendship in which people wish the best for each other and occasion mutual transformation toward the better.  Other friendships are (b) those of “enjoyment,” when the companionship is based on the pleasant company of others; and (c) companionship built around services that people provide for one another. Optimal friendship is rare, but, like 20-20 vision, remains the aspirational norm.  

Where there is friendship, Aristotle also claimed, there is no need for justice. Aristotle does not mean that friends will be unfair to each other. He is saying that, in friendship, disagreements can be resolved without fixed, antecedent codes of law.  Such codifications, i.e. contracts, are needed when the relationship is less than that of friendship in the fullest sense.

Key strands in Modern philosophy altered this Aristotelian landscape.  Humans are not inherently social, Jean-Jacques

Rousseau (1712-1778) and John Locke (1632-1704) will argue.  Humans are basically separate units, wholly independent in the state of nature. As inheritors of this tradition, it makes sense that our practices would include honeymoons alone.  This trend follows a pattern traced by the Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. It also helps explain the growing phenomenon of eating alone.

Within such a setting, contractualism, rather than being a second-best arrangement, now becomes primary. Pan-contractualism becomes the order of the day.  All relations are envisioned through the lens of contract.

This means that even for friendship, the older Aristotelian continuum fades away. What Aristotle considered second-best now becomes the general default.

The special friendship called marriage has to make its way in this new semantic landscape. As a result, the two individuals will (1) think of  themselves as primarily autonomous units; (2) consider their partnership on the model of a contract; (3) assume the relationship has been entered into for some combination of Aristotle’s two lesser forms of friendship, pleasant companionship and mutual usefulness; (4) marginalize, if not ignore entirely, the Aristotelian outcome of mutual transformation.

At the time of the wedding, if no contractual clause precludes separate post-wedding trips, then why not, especially if such honeymoon-alone arrangements serve to foster greater enjoyment or utility.

Honeymoon alone, bowling alone, eating alone.  There is a trend here. It’s not a trend that comes from nowhere.  It has been prepared by a paradigm shift in philosophical anthropology. The main ingredients of that shift: humans as primarily isolatoes, pan-contractualism, understandings of friendship that overlook Aristotle’s optimal type, concentrating on enjoyment and utility. Given the new climate of opinion it’s kind of surprising that it took so long for the monomoon trend to emerge.

BILLIONAIRES and CHOICE

Life expectancy, claims a report from late 2018, is moving in the wrong direction, at least in the US. This is occurring at a time

when Silicon Valley has people who believe unending life is a reachable goal.  Sergei Brin, of Google fame, for example, envisions a time when we shall be able to “cure death.”

Since folks like this are flush with cash, they can bankroll projects meant to lengthen life and overcome death.  Here we get into a key valuational issue: choice. Another web billionaire. Bill Gates, spends money toward a different aim: toilet research. People living in areas without central sewage can benefit from toilets that self-containedly  dispose of human waste.  

Philosophers often discuss how freedom and responsibility are linked. We make choices and should accept accountability. Allocation of resources stands as a blatant area for choice-making. Some

choose longevity research; others, off-grid toilets.  Is there a difference? Can philosophy help at least clarify the terms of intelligent discussion?

The answer, for “choice,” is yes.  Because the word is honorific and partnered with freedom, it often evades evaluative reflection.  As a result, two quite different meanings are not properly separated: (1) choice as “electing among options for good reasons;” (2) choice as “determining a course of action based on preference.”

The difference may not stand out at first sight, but it is significant.  Sense “1” strives to balance objective and subjective considerations. Sense “2” leans toward subjectivity.  “1” emphasizes

how choice is always a selection among options. It encourages intelligent examination of the options as part of the choosing procedure.  “2” emphasizes personal preference. It minimizes exploration and evaluation of competing options.

Getting the balance right, “moderation” as the ancient Greeks put it, presents an elusive target.  The temptation to laziness compounds the problem, encouraging a sharp either-or. The ancient world tended toward the objective side.   Within 20th century philosophy, the movement called “emotivism” tilted most famously toward the subjective. “Emotivism” sharply separated science and morality. For the former, choice was based on fact-centered evidence. The latter was relegated to the realm where choice arose from non-rational factors, mostly subjective feeling. “Choice” here lost its sense of  “electing among options for good reasons.” It transformed into “act of will based on personal predilection.”

Here is where food-related discussions can help.  Describing responsibility, people often claim something like  “it’s up to the individual.” This claim is both accurate and misleading.  It is up to the individual (subjective) to make choices about diet. At the same time, it is definitely not up to the individual whether those selections will maximize nutrition or not .There are standards, physiological standards, to which we need align ourselves(objective).  

It’s true that evidence is hardly ever perfect. (i.e. eggs are good for us, no, wait

a minute, eggs are unhealthy).  Evidence exists on the continuum of stronger and weaker. The subjective component, “(I choose, for good reasons, to accept this evidence as sufficient”) hardly ever disappears completely. The combination of objective evidence and subjective commitment is almost always in play.

The dream of perfect certitude leads to a common  temptation: “no evidence is perfect, therefore personal preference is the way to go.” This is the path of skepticism.  It is based on disappointment at not being pure minds. It is problematic because it begins by projecting a false ideal, and then framing the issue as a false dilemma: either perfect certitude or general skepticism.  Rephrased in terms of “choice”: if the evidence for selection (choice) is not perfectly compelling, then “choice” becomes mere preference. The mixed, more human, path, the one aiming at a proper blend of evidence and personal commitment is set aside.

The mixed approach is not all that tempting because it is arduous.  The tug of laziness can draw us in the direction of “perfect objectivity or pure subjectivity.”  In neither case is the difficult exercise of intelligence called for. Temptations to laziness, though attractive, mislead us about who we are.  The more challenging path has the advantage of accepting our condition as it is. It is the one which restores “choice” to its status of selection for good reasons based on evidence.

OUTHOUSE

Some contemporary scientists, with plenty of time on their hands, have figured out how long is the ingested trajectory for a piece of lego, i.e. how long before it is excreted.  Yes, this was indeed a research project.

On a more artistic scale, Alfred Hitchcock once envisioned a film that would trace the urban food trajectory from arrival to sewers. In between, people would purchase, cook, ingest, urinate and defecate.

 

The sewers, culminating point for the film, are a necessity where large numbers of people are gathered. Their absence poses a great global public health problem, something which Bill Gates, promoting off-grid toilets, is trying to address. The past masters of on-grid  disposal were the Romans. Their cloaca maxima (“great sewer”) helped remove waste from the city’s latrines.

There’s a good reason why the cloaca was needed. It goes back to Hitchcock’s project: we live as a result of cycles.  Ingest-food-produce-waste is a major one. Nothing could be more natural. At the same time, as already noted, feces, improperly disposed, can be disease producing.  It’s also smelly. One result: a penchant for keeping the process isolated, if not entirely hidden.

Enter the satirist Jonathan Swift. His poem “the lady’s

dressing room” envisions a young man, “Stephon,” enamored of “Celia.”  He sneaks into her private chamber. What does he find? Not signs of the lovely woman he adores. Rather, the scene is one of towels

“Begummed, bemattered, and beslimed  

With dirt, and sweat, and earwax grimed.”  

Then, horror of horrors, disguised by outward appearance, but not by smell: a privy.  Stephon, no longer deluded, must (in Swift’s blunt phrasing) reckon with the facts: “Oh!  Celia, Celia shits.”

Poetry, though, is varied.  A different take is offered by W.H. Auden’s The Geography of the House. Proper biological functioning, including defecation, is to be appreciated. The poem starts on a note of pleasure:

Seated after breakfast

In this white-tiled cabin

Arabs call the House where

Everybody goes,

Even melancholics

Raise a cheer to Mrs.

Nature for the primal

Pleasure She bestows.

“Mrs. Nature” is not to be bracketed or dismissed.  She is to be “cheered” for her well-functioning ways.  Just as farmers praise a good rainfall after plenty of sunshine,  so we can praise the sequence of taking in food/removing waste. Indeed a successful latrine stop is a good omen:

Lifted off the potty,

Infants from their mothers

Hear their first impartial

Words of worldly praise:

Hence, to start the morning

With a satisfactory

Dump is a good omen

All our adult days.

All the same, “cheering” can be kept within bounds. Swift touched a human sensitivity.  Excrement is excrement. It can breed disease. That is why processes for its collection, removal and treatment are needed.  It also takes us to the “waste” end of the digestive function, an end quite different from the lovely smells, good tastes, and camaraderie often associated with  food-taking.

This contrast explains cultural customs. Humans are, by nature, those creatures who need culture. There must always be a “grammar” of behavior, as there is a

grammar of the universe  (laws of nature). Social customs determined that Celia’s “privy” be, well, private. The same is true of Auden’s “white tiled cabin where everyone goes.” Celia’s secret world just pushed the isolation too far. Complete pretence supplanted suitable propriety.

Propriety or decorum must walk a fine line. On one hand, it must not deny a vital function.  On the other, it needs to respect a socially approved demeanor associated with that function.

Albert Camus’s autobiographical novel, left unfinished

at his death, well describes the balance.  Uncle “Etienne” is a simple, life-loving type, someone marked by “Adamic innocence.” He savored a well-functioning body.  He thus appreciated the healthy cycle of eating-urinating-defecating. Wanting to share this savoring of simple joys, he introduced outhouse-related topics at the dinner table.  In response, Camus’s grandmother would rebuke Etienne with reminders about the suitability and unsuitability of certain topics in certain settings.

Specific table manners introduced at specific times may not always get it exactly right. Table manners,  though, do get something right. Humans are nature-culture hybrids. They depend upon an appropriate grammar of behavior. Functioning without the social grammar of politeness tears away at the threads that hold interrelationships together.  

As is most often the case, there is need for balance. Swift’s Stephon made too sharp a distinction between appearance and biological reality. Auden’s praise for the pleasure of an integrally functioning organism offers one way to redress the balance.  Camus’s grandmother’s admonitions about table manners presents us with another.

CALUMNY: OUTDATED WORD, EVER-PRESENT DEED

False stories abound. In the food world, it’s earthworms in fast food, and that old standby, cat and dog meat at Chinese restaurants.  In the political realm, it’s vicious blood sport. Victims include the late senator John McCain, accused of fathering an illegitimate child with a woman of color, and, in 2016,  Hillary Clinton. One particularly sordid story claimed that she ran a pizza restaurant child sex ring.

Internationally, one of the major fabrications owed its existence to the  well-oiled propaganda machine of the Soviet Union. The big lie: AIDS was really a biological weapon developed by the Pentagon.  Its aim: kill gays and blacks. The story even got a mention on the CBS evening news.  

The tactic of reputation-smearing has a clumsy, now little-used, name: calumny.  The term’s usage peaked in the mid-17th century. The more common synonym, “slander,” is also in decline.

We thus find ourselves in an ironic situation.  As calumny/slander become more and more prominent, the words are less and less invoked. As the act rises in prominence, the pejorative label drops away.

When contemporaries think of “vice” they tend to think of sexual peccadilloes. We are sort of like the judge in a

murder case who, faced with lascivious testimony, admonished the witness that “this is a trial about murder. It doesn’t have anything to do with morals.” Or we might think of how the term “virtue” has moved from indicating probity of character associated with the male (vir in Latin), to signifying chastity in the female.  

Given such a trajectory,  “calumny” was bound to be displaced as one of the great vices. Yes, surprising as it may be, calumny was once near,  or even at, the top of the vice heap, a bad heap, and nothing to be proud of, but at the top nonetheless.

Phrased as “bearing false witness” it’s in the decalogue (the 8th or 9th commandment, depending on the list used).   When Shakespeare wished to create a Satanic character he

depicted, not a murderer, not a thief, but Iago, whose tactic was calumny. Way before Shakespeare, Plato had his hero Socrates complain about the slanderers whose lies culminated in his trial.  After Shakespeare, in Tom Jones, Henry Fielding introduced the particularly nasty fellow, Blifil.  The evil perpetrated by Blifil? Slandering Tom Jones.

Lest readers not get the point, Fielding added this none too subtle editorial. ““Vice hath not, I believe, a more abject slave; society produces not a more odious vermin; nor can the devil receive a guest more worthy of him, nor possibly more welcome to him, than a slanderer. ... for slander is a more cruel weapon than a sword, as the wounds which the former gives are always incurable.”

A little known 17th century thinker, Marie Le Jars de Gournay, articulated an ethics in which calumny was identified as the worst of the vices. Why? Fielding provides one answer: the damage to one’s character is “incurable”.  Also, societies are held together by the invisible thread of trust. Trust and a healthy skepticism (seeking evidence and following its lead) can, and should, coexist. Slander, by contrast, slays trust.  

In the food realm, people seeking guidance face this trust-investigate tension all the time.  Reports and

studies conflict. The disinformation called advertising is rampant. Absolute certitude remains mostly out of reach.  Some trust, some commitment based on strong yet imperfect evidence will always be needed. Such an inevitable need for trust opens the door for calumny to do its dirty work.  

There’s no going back to the era of Marie Le Jars de Gournay.  In that era, personal honor (“I certainly won’t do anything that would dishonor me”) stood as the lodestar by which to guide lives.  Despite some advantages, this older setting, it’s worth remembering, had its own problems. Witness honor killings and duels.

There is no need to go backward.  We can, instead, mix and blend the best of past and present. We can rearrange our hierarchy of vices and virtues.  Maybe, in so doing, we can come to make slander less of a blood sport and more of a familiar term.