GODS WANT TO BE HUMAN

For some reason, several religious traditions have their god/gods fixate on food.  Genesis readers know of the famous divine command not to eat from the tree of good and evil.  In Leviticus the proscriptions get more detailed. Animals of land, sea, air: all are divided into clean and unclean.  

The ancient Greek gods were not  as prone to clear-cut commands. They were, to their discredit, prone to  god-awful (literally) behavior. When it comes to food, the god-awfulness sunk to its greatest depths.  Cronus devoured 5 of

his own kids. The youngest, Zeus, was saved by his mother. Continuing the paternal tradition, Zeus tricked one wife into becoming a fly and then promptly swallowed her.

How about regular food?  Well, the gods had nectar and ambrosia. Both words indicate immortality.  It therefore makes sense that they would be the main intake for deathless divinities.  But, let’s face it, a steady diet of nectar and ambrosia would get kind of dull and repetitive.

The human case offered a sort of reversal. No ambrosia, no nectar (the main human/divine difference, after all, was mortality).  Otherwise, humans had it pretty good, even better than the gods. Roasts, vegetables, fruits, seafood--all of these pleased the human palate.

Hesiod depicted the first, “Golden” age of humans in happy terms. They “lived like gods.”   They “made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils.” Earth was good to them, bearing “fruit abundantly and without stint.”

There was not that much difference between Hesiod's gods and  human beings. What Hesiod got wrong was the direction of longing.  It was the gods who longed for the enjoyments available only to humans. Not surprisingly, when a Renaissance painter, Giovanni Bellini, portrayed gods at a feast, they sure (1) looked, and (2) behaved, like regular old human beings.

This makes sense.  Humans are open to pleasurable experiences  closed off to the gods. Living like gods would necessitate being disembodied. Being disembodied would bring immortality. That´s okay. But at what price?  Imagine what a dull existence would ensue. No eyes to see; no stomach/taste bud combination to savor food; no ears to hear; no tongue to speak; no arms for hugging; no lips for kissing; no ability to interact with anything.  Hesiod, I repeat, got it backwards. It is the gods who wish to live like humans (and in Greek mythology this is just what they do). Otherwise, life’s pleasures, culminatory satisfactions, shared enjoyments, are all out of reach.

This reversal is important when humans dream of eternal life. That case also involves a sleight of hand.  Officially, life beyond this one is characterized by what is known as "beatific vision,” a status of direct apprehension of the divinity. Such a mystical experience, however, doesn’t satisfy the imagination. Much better to envision an unending life that looks a lot like the pre-death one, except that all difficulties and challenges have been eliminated. The illogic of this scenario: such a life would be impossible absent the corporeality that necessitates mortality. Existence would be that of disembodied minds or souls. True, it’s possible to envision such a state. Envisioned honestly, with no sleight of hand, i.e. no sneaking in dimensions of corporeality, such existence would be far from desirable.

A disembodied status, for one, would involve an existence without hugs. Deprived of arms and eyes, immortal

grandparents would be unable to see, not to mention offer warm caress-filled welcomes for their grandchildren. The general status would be one of unalterable deprivation: no lovely sights (without eyes); no enticing odors (without nose/taste buds); no melodious sounds (without ears); no movement (without legs). Within traditional theology, these deprivations would be counterbalanced by the satisfaction of beatific vision. But even that experience, to be attractive, has to be described using a physiological metaphor, the corporeal dimension of sight.

Overall, unending disembodied existence does not provide an enticing picture.  The draw of nectar and ambrosia (immortality) is admittedly strong. But, it is so only if we ignore the rest of the picture.  Once we realize how hugs, conversation, music, good company, and good food would be absent, the temptation toward immortal existence becomes less attractive.  We come to realize why it is the gods who wanted to be more like humans.

I'M HUNGRY: HOMER VS PLATO

“I’m hungry,“   “I’m sad.” In some ways our speech bears out an integrative self-understanding.  We could, after all, use disjunctive phrases like “my body is hungry,” “my mind is sad.”  We do, in fact, say disjunctive things like “I’m comfortable with my body.” A best-selling book from 1970 was called Our Bodies, Ourselves.

“I’m hungry” blurs the mind/body distinction. “I’m comfortable with my body” accentuates a difference. It suggests that there is a “me” and there is a  sort of carcass that accompanies me. Are we one or two? Should “my body is hungry” replace “I’m hungry?” The evidence is mixed. Most illnesses impact the physiological side of things (i.e. body). While ill we can still try to keep up our spirits (i.e. mind).  An illness like Alzheimer’s, on the other hand, weakens the mental side of things, even though the bodily dimension remains strong.

As is too often the case, complexities can be oversimplified. Distinctions are transformed into rigid oppositions.  Adjectives become nouns. “Physiological” becomes “body.” “Psychological”

becomes “mind.” In the history of ideas, Rene Descartes (1596-1650) crystallized such reifications into the position known as “dualism.” The two components, mind and body, were not just dual,  but were involved in a constant duel. Still, phrases like “I’m hungry,” and “I’m sad” pull us back from such a sharp separation.

Such a pullback restores the legacy of the ancient poet Homer.  2000 years before Descartes, there was his dualizing precursor, Plato (427-347). Half a century before Plato, there was the more integrative Homer (ca 800 bce).  Homer wrote of humans without sliding into

dualism. He dealt with people as as actants in the world, as clusters of energies. Their physiological dimension did not need to be articulated in terms of “having bodies.”  In battle, a sword would penetrate one’s skin. When Homer used the word “body” (soma) he meant the corpse, the spent leftover of what had once been a full-fledged actant, a human being.

Four centuries later, Plato would frame the situation in the way that is more familiar to us. (We owe words like “in-carnation,” and “em-bodiment” to Plato’s influence.)

For him, there was not just a leading edge (the thinking, motivating, selecting, reflective dimension of our lived energies) but an entity, mind (psyche) that  actually defined the real us.  The physiological dimension then became the “body,” an accompanying presence.

When it comes “I’m hungry,”  it’s not surprising that Homer and Plato would take separate paths. Food and its eating, as demands of the body, were treated by Plato as annoyances. Homer’s Odyssey, by contrast, is, as Henry Fielding described it, an “eating poem.” Food is everywhere.  The Phaeacians are depicted as civilized, cultured people. How do we know? They welcome the stranger Odysseus, invite him to share a meal, encourage him to tell his tale, and provide a boat so he can return to his homeland.

The material need for food is not, in The Odyssey, opposed to the spiritual demand for the noble and the good.   A meal like that hosted by the Phaeacians, or the one to which Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, is treated at the home of Hector, do not in any way represent a lowering of human standards. Quite the opposite. The fullness of virtuous humanity (the queen of the Phaeacians is actually called virtue,  Arete), is manifested in the combination amalgamated  in the meal: hospitality, shared eating, intelligent discourse, reverence, sociability.  Homer goes so far as asking a food-related question to determine cultural, civilizational status: “Are there bread eaters here?”  If the locals eat bread, they are civilized. They manifest practices of planting, cultivating, milling, utilization of yeast, and, as a culminating act, bread baking and bread sharing,

“I’m hungry” emphasizes the holistic, Homeric, self.  

“I’m comfortable with my body,” by contrast, lives within the Platonic pattern.

Given the sedimentation of usage, in contemporary English, there is no going back to Homer. That would necessitate using “body” only as a synonym for “corpse.”  At the same time, English usage, with the presence of phrases like “I’m sad,” “I’m exhausted,” and “I’m hungry,” indicates a tilt in the direction of Homeric wholeness.

Temptations to articulate a divided self will always be with us.  Fortunately, the clumsy constructions required by a divided self, i.e. “my body is hungry,”  warn us against going too far in favor of Plato over Homer.