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.