RELATIVISM, YOLO, FOOD

Swans, YUM!  Squirrels YUM! Dolphins YUM!  Well “yum” is kind of an imaginative stretch, at least for some of us today. At other times and other places  “yum” made/makes sense.

Can we generalize from this?   Should we, to adopt a philosophical label, embrace “relativism?”  After all, food practices seem to indicate the “yum” reaction has no foothold apart from contingent, changeable cultural conventions.

What might give pause is the radical relativism embraced by the early 21st century “You Only Live Once,” fad. YOLO was (1) encouraged by philosophical

relativism (better and worse are just social constructions) and (2) accompanied by a particular ethic: experience all you can.  The ramifications were problematic: YOLO, so get drunk and drive wildly; YOLO, so, go ahead, urinate and defecate wherever and whenever. Soon came the realization “YOLO is dumb.”

When it comes to food, YOLO can find both defenders and opponents. On the support side: “YOLO, so eat some dolphin ( squirrel, swan).” On the negative side: YOLO, so I’ll just chow down on some fugu, even though the chef is not properly trained.”

A stalemate? Not quite.  A more fine-grained analysis suggests the need for a paradigm shift.  First, eating is interactive. Second, food ingestion exists along a continuum: inedible, somewhat inedible, somewhat edible, culturally approved edible, edible in desperate situations, commonly eaten.   

The relativist position need not adopt the simplistic YOLO pattern.  A better defense is entitled “Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response.” Despite the nuanced, and thus adequate, title, the article goes on to defend a rather strong relativism.  Here is where interaction and continuum make a difference. One thing even refined relativism assumes: a bi-level backdrop. Humans here; world there. Values here; neutrality there. Reason is neutral/Evaluations are non-rational.

These bifurcations are challenged by stressing interaction and continua. In terms of the food continuum, there is, at one end, the biologically inedible (e.g. soap); then, “inedible” in the “it can kill you sense” (emperor Claudius).

“Inedible” could also mean, it’s ok physiologically, but hard to stomach (see disgust museum).   Then, there is the “inedible now in this form” (cashews which are toxic before being heat treated). We could add   “inedible because of allergies;” and the well known “inedible for cultural/religious reasons.” At any point on the continuum a judgment has been made.  The judgment does not result from bi-level (culture here/nature there) opposition. It results from interaction. Intelligent agents try to to figure out clues and indications.

A medieval phrase is helpful here. It’s  cum fundamento

in re, “with a basis  in reality.” Plants and animals do not come with placards that say “tasty but deadly,”  “healthy and nutritious,” “disgusting in odor, but good in taste.” Nor does the absence of such placards mean that all valuations are subjective constructions.  Humans, as hungry creatures, seek to establish which entities are edible and which not. The resulting judgments emerge from a collaboration between inquiring intelligence and properties operative in the world ( cum fundamento in re).

Living in a post-Medieval era, we could add a partner phrase, one sensitive to  cultural pluralism: judgments cum fundamento in tribu.  Interaction would still rule, but in these cases it would signal the the interplay  of intelligence and the practices of a community (or “tribe,” tribus).  

Even here, though, we move too hastily if we apply the relativist label.  Differences are culturally conditioned. This is not the same as being merely subjective. The fundamento dimension (there are clues) remains. Judgments are recognized and welcomed. They just depend on more than clues from nature. Religious judgments build their warrant by including intangible factors. Food regulations, for example, can encourage solidarity via shared behaviors, equality, since the practices impact everyone, and self-improvement, fostered by discipline.  

The paradigm shift that highlights interaction and continua helps draw attention to concrete practices. The totalizing labels “absolutism” or “relativism” offer a bifurcation that is neat. Lived experience is intricate and complex.  Humans are active participants, involved, willy nilly, in interactions. Judgments neither simply read off what is there, nor impose structures. They pay attention to operative factors, aim at properly reading indications, and hope the resulting assessments are accurate.

This (a) leaves plenty of leeway for variation. Variation is not the same as relativist subjectivism. It also (b) allows for intelligent discussion. But, such discussion, technically, for the relativist (recall the non disputandum, in de gustibus non disputandum est) should represent nothing more than an empty exercise. E.g. Gratitude and greed, why bother discussing their relative merits/defects? Non disputandum rules.

Thinking about food can serve as a good source of examples for an epistemology of cum fundamento. How? First by replacing bifurcation with a continuum. Second, by emphasizing how eating is inherently interactive.  Both of those factors help overcome the great human temptation toward the hasty generalization: it’s all objective or it’s all subjective.

PYTHAGORAS, MEAT-AVOIDANCE, DEATH, TRUTH

Pythagoras, all high schoolers know, was a mathematician.  He was also, they might not know, the leader of a religious cult, and a vegetarian. Math/religion/vegetarianism--what’s the link?

Most of what we know of Pythagoras comes from later lore.  One strand in those stories: a clear line is drawn between mind and body.  Math, religion, avoidance of meat, fall on the side of mind.

A life purified of bodily entanglements would,  so fans of Pythagoras claim, take up the math/ religion/ vegetarian package. In general, the combination emphasized life over death.  Mathematics dealt with the unchanging and everlasting. Religion promised eternal life (reincarnation for Pythagoreans). Vegetarianism avoided the killing associated with carnivorism.

The last point is well-disguised for those of us who are meat-eating urban dwellers.  In one of her cookbooks

Maya Angelou describes a different, rural, setting. There “after the first frost,” “men killed the hogs and cows selected for slaughter.” It was impossible, in that setting, to avoid the key preliminary to meat eating: kill something.  Avoidance of what is actually the case is to falsify. To falsify, in turn, means setting truth aside.

The connection between truth and inclusive attentiveness was highlighted by the ancient Greek word for truth, aletheia.  It meant, as Martin Heidegger has reminded us, “un-forgetting.”  Lethe was the river of forgetfulness, the river through which humans passed in their post-death return to another life. Extending the meaning of un-forgetting, philosophers stressed that “truth” meant paying attention to what is fully the case. Leaving out details, “forgetting” was what identified falsehood.  Un-forgetting, truthfulness, as the fulness of what is actual, meant inclusive attentiveness.

This is not as easy as it sounds.  Attention can’t help but be selective and partial.  In addition, selective attentiveness (“willful blindness” it is often called) can serve to help humans avoid responsibility.

With regard to food, one basic occlusion for urban dwellers is the meat-death connection. The grocery store is a grand celebration of lethe, forgetfulness.  As is often

remarked, all that grocery store customers get to see are neatly wrapped packages. This fosters the creation of "good," i.e. unthinking, consumers. It does not make for a good grasp of truth as aletheia. Much of what is real continues to be ignored and forgotten.

Occluding the meat-death link does not just take place in grocery stores. On the more expensive side of things, there’s another venue for occlusion: restaurants in which food on the plate has little or no resemblance to the original source.  Often this is accomplished in the guise of bringing “artistry” to food preparation. Within the Pythagorean framework, one which succumbs to the tug of elevating oneself above physiology, “art” becomes the province of a refined, creative realm. Wassily Kandinsky explicitly made the connection in his

defense of the “spiritual” in art.  His canvases, waves of colors, are removed from the push and pull, physical and material world of ordinary experience.  

Food presents a problem for  whoever would identify “art” with those higher things in life. Take a turkey on the Thanksgiving table.  There is plenty there to remind (aletheia) eaters of the living bird that once was. It is in

fancy restaurants, especially those aspiring to aesthetic creativity that the “lethic” temptation remains strong. A piece of meat or fish may be so combined with other ingredients that the plate resembles a modern art canvas.  One old-fashioned critic complained about a famous Spanish chef this way: “This isn’t food.  It’s got nothing to do with food, with the earth, with Spain, with what his grandmothers cooked.”

To be “food,” this critic is arguing, the “lethic” temptation must be avoided.  Aletheia, truth, must be allowed to manifest itself.  When it does, forgetfulness will be diminished, forgetfulness about the the earth, its plants and animals, along with the traditions of one’s ancestors, traditions, yes, that include awareness of death-dealing.

The “lethic’ temptation  encourages separation, veiling, opposition. Exclusion and occlusion dominate.   The “a-lethic’ dimension, on the other hand, encourages integrationist awareness. For the latter, there is even room for a proper kind of meat eating.  

WHEN SWILL IS SWELL

“Swell” and “swill.” One letter separates them. But what a meaning difference it makes.  

“Swill,” I remember as a term of my youth. It was common when people lived on farms.  There, the family’s pigs received, as feed, the “swill,” what was leftover from the kitchen. Naturally, a negative connotation followed. After all “swill’ was that which was rejected.  

“Swell,” by contrast, carries a positive connotation.   Initially it was a neutral term, it indicated a natural formation, something like a hill, or a gentle ocean wave. Today, the term’s more common use is in line with expressions of satisfaction and affirmation.  Two examples: the expression “that’s swell;” the 1937 song “Gee, but you’re swell.” In Easter Parade, Judy Garland

and Fred Astaire, dressed as hobos, got ironic mileage with their song “A bunch of swells.”

Could hobos be “swells”?  No and yes. If to be a “swell” meant well-dressed, then hobos would never fit the bill.  If, though, “swell” meant lovable, as in the song “Gee, but you’re swell,” then character would supersede clothing. Hobos could indeed be “swells.”

“Swill” is more uniformly derisive. Some of what accompanies the preparation of a meal is excluded, set apart, tossed out.  It is appropriately named “refuse.” Yet, even “swill” can undergo a valuational shift.

Take potato peelings. At one time, they fell into the category of that- which-is-to-be-discarded, i.e. “swill.” Today, we are

advised, for health reasons, to to eat our potatoes with their peels. What was once swill is now swell.  

It would be hard to find a human community that did not distinguish swell from swill, better from worse.  There is a lingering temptation, though, to reify the distinction. This results in the creation of an irrevocable, non-revisable, two-column list.  One side is labelled “good,” the other “bad.” We here come face to face with a lingering temptation: create a neat, oppositional, good/evil list. The temptation even has an official, historically-informed, name: Manichaeism.  This was a movement, based on a 3d century Babylonian prophet named Mani. It taught that creation had two sources, two ultimate powers, one good, the other evil. The two- value, double column list was little more than the practical application of this cosmic battleground.  

Any neat division equipped with  unquestionable valuations is bound to occasion a backlash (especially among the groups who fall on the negative side of things).  That reaction, quite understandable, can, nonetheless, be overdone. The excess lies in a proclamation that appraisals are nothing more than subjective impositions. Rather than leave neat bifurcations behind, this position simply creates another one: subjective vs objective. The Manichean assumes that existing value judgments are rooted in objective data.  The subjectivist claims that all evaluations are arbitrary, historically conditioned, contrivances. Either/or is not overcome. It is just reformulated.

“Swell” and “swill” help draw us into a more nuanced, more genuinely human, position.   “He’s a swell” was a way of identifying a spiffy dresser. Objective conditions, the kind of clothing worn, were readily identifiable. Then, as with “you’re swell,” the positive valuation was extended to character.

At this point the evaluation becomes a bit trickier. Without the obvious markers of expensive, stylish clothing,  mistakes are possible. Still the value determination is not just “subjective.” It’s a judgment. This means that although it has a subjective dimension (someone is doing the judging), it also has an objective one (the assessment is based on evidence, behavior, indications of character).

Similarly, what we judge to be “swill” can be up for for revision.  Potato peels, as mentioned above, can move from “swill” to “fit for our diet.”  This is not a purely subjective construction. It arises from information about the nutritional properties of potato skins and the physiological needs of mammals like ourselves.

Could we be wrong? Sure, that’s always a possibility. Future research may once again move potato skins from

“swell for humans” to “swill for pigs” The possibility of error is telling. It’s a sign of human inquiry.  Absolutists and relativists seek an escape from human limitations. One proclaims a perfect, already established, vision of truth. The other dismisses the human struggle to discover more fully accurate truths. Humans, it says, do not establish what is the case, but rather impose values.

For ordinary humans, though, enhanced intelligent awareness can mean that “swill” becomes “swell” and vice versa.

WHITENESS AS PEJORATIVE: THINK FOOD AND WHALES

Once upon a time, someone had the “good” idea to propose single-color meals. “All-white” and  “all-pink” concoctions are among those identified in Donna Gabaccia's  We Are What We Eat.  They were part of an attempt to Americanize immigrants. Fortunately, good taste prevailed, and multi-hued ethnic cuisines came to be celebrated.

Imagine a monochrome, say all-white, meal. Symbolically, it might seem o.k. After all “white” carries positive associations: no impurities, no contaminants, no adulterations. By contrast, visually and gustatorily (if this is a word), an all-white plate would probably carry different associations: blandness, dullness, absence, and lack.

The color white thus reveals, surprisingly perhaps, conflicting associations.  On one hand, white occasions positive reactions. It connotes cleanliness, purity, and virtue. Such associations have encouraged  people to choose, as names, words meaning white, names like Blanche, Finnian, Gwen, Gavin, Genevieve, and Whitney. Wedding dresses, in most European cultures are white, a fad that took off after Queen Victoria broke with tradition and went with white for her ceremony.

On the other, mostly forgotten, hand, white has also carried negative connotations. Before Victoria and her white gown, there

was Mary Queen of Scots. She is depicted in a painting, wearing white to signal mourning. This was typical in her day.   Fans of Clint Eastwood will recall Pale Rider. The film’s title alludes to “death,” the fourth

horseman of the Apocalypse, who rides a pale, i.e. white  horse.

Even when it comes to wedding gowns, white is not universal. Prior to Victoria, red was a

favorite. It still is in parts of Asia.

Even in the West, a small but real trend, reveals brides in dresses other than white. Red, pink, silver, green and blue are among the favorites.  

Perhaps the most famous negative treatment of white is found in  Moby Dick. Ishmael, the narrator, undertakes  a lengthy disquisition on white and its conflicting symbolic meanings. There are the positives: whiteness as a symbol of “gladness” of “joyfulness” of “innocence as with a bride,”  or used as a pledge of honor (the Amerindians’“white belt of wampum”). There is also, this was considered by some to be a positive, the “white man” assuming ‘ideal mastership over every dusky tribe.” (Melville leaves unanswered why Europeans, who are not really white--just holding a sheet of paper next to my skin indicates the gap--nonetheless refer to themselves as white.)

Ishmael then highlights some negatives. As regards Moby Dick,  “it was the whiteness of the whale that above all things” proved appalling. There is an “elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.”  Nature herself, in her “malicious” agencies, enlists, as in snow squalls, the forces of whiteness. Shrouds, paleness, ghosts make it hard to disentangle whiteness from death.

The all-white meal stirs up such negative associations.  Life is colorful. The plants and animals that can grace grace our tables, are colorful.  Red, as in blood, is a hue of life. Green, yellow, red, and orange, are the tints of plants that serve as food. Even white has its place, as with potatoes, rice and turnips.  

The main problem with all-pink, or all-white, meals is not the color itself. It’s the “all.”   Life is mixture, mingling, combinations, amalgamations, as with the multi-hued amalgamation of foodstuffs.  This variegated palate has not ranked high with philosophers. Preferring rational purity, they have looked down on varieties, mixtures, blends. For them, unity and purity rank high. Mixtures and blendings  are relegated to an inferior status and denigrated via terms like “mongrels,” ”’adulterations,” “impurities.”

The draw of purity and unity, along with the fear of mixture, runs deep in the human psyche. One too often unchallenged philosophical presupposition:  the notion that unity/purity is both primal and to be prioritized over plurality/mixture. The Tower of Babel story is typical in this regard.

 

Nutrition should teach us otherwise. Variety is the starting point.  Mixing and blending is the way to go. The way to go not only for pleasurable, but also for healthy, eating.

Maize, for example, is a wonder plant. Still, eaten alone it is disastrous for health. As native Americans realized, it has to be complemented with other foodstuffs, typically beans and squash. Corn-squash-beans; meat-vegetables-fruit.  Multiplicity is our starting point. It does not represent some fall away from initial unity. Getting the right blends and mixes is the challenge. A meal that is all one color favors abstract philosophical concepts over life-enhancing practices. For healthy, not to mention aesthetically pleasing foods, go multicolored.