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.

macrophages, logic and bio-logic

The French are, at least in part, a hippophagous people.  Caterpillars are phyllophagous, and, with population growing,

humans will soon be entomophagous.  Yes, it’s not hard to guess, the Greek root phagein means “to eat.”  It might be horses. It might be leaves.  It might be insects. In each case, there is an eater and an eaten.

Something similar occurs on the cellular level. The eater in this case is a type of white blood cell.  It becomes a “big eater,” a “macrophage.” Despite their formidable name,

macrophages are mostly an organism’s friend. What they eat are intruders and trouble makers, nasty bacteria, parasites, rogue cells. Macrophages thus provide protection. They serve an important function.

In official philosophical terminology, this end-directed, or goal-directed activity has a specific name, “teleology.”  We shiver, for example, when cold. This helps us keep warm. Ditto, but in reverse, for perspiration. Dr. Walter B.

Cannon’s well known book Wisdom of the Body, detailed the various processes contributing to, here comes another big word, “homeostasis.” It means keeping the body’s key activities within an established, familiar (“homeo”) and stable (“stasis)  range.

Walter B. Cannon was even willing, as we saw above, to speak of “wisdom” as the body preserved its harmonious, well-functioning operations.  At one time, the “big eaters,” the macrophages, fit well within this paradigm. Their activity, gobbling up troublemakers, made of them a sort of poster child for the “wisdom of the body.” Then came a bit of trouble.  

It turns out that, for some ailments, macrophages actually aggravate the problem. Atherosclerosis, autoimmune disorders, and even cancers provide the best-known examples. When it comes to cancers, the “big eaters” should be  “tumoricidal.” Instead, they often become “tumorigenic,” fostering tumor growth.

Just as Cannon used a human descriptor “wisdom” to describe our physiological functioning, so Barbara Eherenreich in a recent book discussing macrophages, also uses human descriptors. Hers, though, are negative. She speaks of macrophages as “treasonous,” as having a “mind of their own.”  The “wisdom” of the body may thus need to be rethought. Instead of the smooth functioning of harmoniously interacting components, the organism should be seen as a “battleground where its own cells and tissues meet in  mortal combat.”

At the same time there is something discomforting about alternating between harmonious “wisdom” and all-out combat.  It would be good, Ehrenreich thinks, to have a new paradigm, one moving away from the sharp utopian or dystopian models.

She could be helped by taking a page from the realm of food. Salt, sugar, fat.  Are they good

for us? “Yes, assuredly.” Are they bad for us? “Definitely.” It’s not all that unusual for the same factor to embody both beneficient and maleficient possibilities. The technical term for this comes from ancient Greek.  The word is pharmakon.  It means both “drug, in the medical sense, and “drug” in the sense of poison.

Humans seem to have a natural aversion to holding opposites together. In strict formal logic the contradictory claims “sugar is good” and “sugar is bad” simply can’t coexist.

Logically, a pharmakon makes no sense.   Bio-logically it’s fairly prevalent. Logic may be neat and clean, but life if often messy, context-sensitive, subject to contingencies,  and full of surprises. In logic, strict determinism is assumed. In bio-logic it’s all about probabilities.

Using metaphors is hard to avoid. But they can be misleading. An organism is not a “machine.”

At the same time, it is not a conscious being able to possess “wisdom.” It can’t be “treasonous.” The same thing, sugar or a macrophage, in conjunction with an organism, can be both beneficient and maleficient.  

If a paradigm switch is needed it’s one in the direction of a favorite phrase of Aristotle, a biology-inspired philosopher: “always or for the most part.”  Today, we might tweak it a bit and say “usually, or for the most part.”

Neither pure determinism nor sheer randomness, neither peaceful harmony or treasonous betrayal can faithfully describe organic operations.  The biological realm need not follow any other pattern, certainly not that of machines; not that of generous-spirited or nasty humans. The biological is sui generis, unique and complicated. Teleological flexibility in light of homeostatis is real.  It works well “usually or for the most part.” The pharmakon dimension is also real. What is good can also be bad.

Flexibility and pharmakon as pivots of a new paradigm can help make good sense of “usually or for the most part.” For a long time philosophers were fascinated with certitude. This might work well in deductive logic.  However, in bio-logic, it’s all about probabilities. Start with a large enough sample, recognize flexibility, admit a pharmakon dimension, and atherosclerosis, diabetes, arthritis and various cancers will appear in the population. It’s not about wisdom having failed or treason succeeding. It’s just about bio-logic.

 

MINDFULNESS or WHOLEHEARTEDNESS?

Mindfulness is everywhere.

When a movement is so popular, it (1) has something going for it and (2) will bring out detractors.  Cue Barbara Ehrenreich and a chapter entitled “The Madness of Mindfulness.”  Distractedness is a real problem. But, “mindfulness” as a solution?  The economic dimension, as usual with Ehrenreich, dominates. Mindfulness has been co-opted by commerce.  Smartphones foster distractedness. We might, therefore, be wary of purchasing any of the plentiful

mindfulness apps that bind us even more to our glowing rectangles.  There is also the disconnection from roots in Buddhism. Mindfulness is now understood as a tool for solving specific problems. It’s not a practice that gives rise to an enlightened awareness that might challenge the entire context that occasioned the problems in the first place.  Finally, she asserts that scientific support is weak. While recognizing “neuroplasticity,”she claims the benefits of mindfulness can be arrived at by other means: muscle relaxation, medication, and psychotherapy.

Ehrenreich overreaches with her blanket condemnation. After all, if it brings benefits, without drugs or psychotherapy, why not appreciate mindfulness?  She is on stronger ground when she emphasizes how mindfulness has shed much its Buddhist context.

Her way of phrasing it, though, is questionable. Mindfulness, she says, has been “drained of all reference to the transcendent.”  This is a very Western way of identifying the religious dimension, i.e. associating it with a higher power in a different realm. One of the great Zen texts is the work of Dōgen (1200-1253) who

introduced a form of Zen to Japan. It’s called Instructions for the Zen Cook. He focuses on the here and now, on humble activities involved in food preparation.  As the book’s introduction puts it, Zazen is neither an escape from the world, nor an attempt to achieve a separate goal. In fact, the practice is “tainted” if it aims  at some external, separate gain.

Eating, if not cooking, was central to  contemporary mindfulness. The source of

it all,  Jon Kabat-Zinn, suggested a simple initial exercise: eating a raisin mindfully.

The raisin example  highlights a difference with  Dōgen’s cook. Learning to savor a raisin means training the mind.  Dōgen emphasizes concrete practices involving the entire person: cleaning/sorting rice, getting/heating water, actually cooking food for a group of people.  Such an involvement, in turn, is not separated from natural and social circumstances. It’s not: me, alone, learning to savor a raisin.

Since “mindfulness” can suggest a withdrawal into one’s conscious self, Dōgen’s translator suggests “wholeheartedness” as an alternative.  The entire person, situated in a natural and social context, and engaged in magnanimous and caring practices is the focus.

Ehrenreich’s criticism, focused on attention deficit, misses a deeper pathology.  Today’s technological wonders do not just encourage truncated, limited attention. They also intensify something that has been central since the Renaissance: conceiving ourselves as, at bottom, self-sufficient and autonomous. Martin Luther’s criticism of this tendency

was harsh, insisting that the activity of turning in on oneself, incurvatus in se, was the heart of sinfulness.    

Buddhism, also concerned about incurvatus in se, challenges the tendency at its very roots.  Its guiding assumption: nothing is autonomous. Everything is connected to everything else.  Buddhists also emphasizes anatman, “no self.” By this they do not mean that humans are not unique persons in the world. Anatman indicates that the non-connected, non-dependent self is an illusion. The so-called “self-made” man,  would, if he examined his life in detail, find loans from banks (with money deposited by lots of other people), architects. engineers and contractors to build edifices and make machines,  employees, clients, a legal system allowing him to operate, and many other ways of being connected to and dependent on others.

Belief in the autonomous self has been prominent in Western thought since the 16th century. There are even people who extol “individualism.” This is not to be confused with respect for this or that particular person.  It is rather the conscious belief that one is fundamentally self-sufficient. It’s a belief that culminates in today’s culture of loneliness.

When cooks practice their craft wholeheartedly, with loving attentiveness, they recognize lots of connections: to the gifts of nature: sun, soil, rain, bacteria, worms; to the gifts of other humans: people who plant, till, harvest, ship; to the gifts of technology:  cleavers, pots, stoves, dishes.The tenzo ( Dōgen’s “cook”) cannot work as a non-connected, non-dependent individual.

 Mindfulness, isolated from its Buddhist roots, might help counteract attention deficit, but it can also worsen rather than challenge the faulty picture of ourselves as self-sufficient individuals.

FRANKENSTEIN: ABSTRACTION IS EVIL

One of the great scenes in Young Frankenstein is when the creature wanders into the home of a blind man (Gene Hackman at his best).  Blind man and Creature have lots in common: they

are different (blind in one case, large and ugly in the other); because they are different, they are lonely; because they are lonely, they need companionship.

“Companionship” literally means “bread with” another. As a story, Young Frankenstein emphasizes something earlier films missed. The creature is

unloved.  He has no one to break bread with, no companions. What he longs for is a stable, loving family life.

Such domestic felicity is, sadly, closed to the creature because he is so different.  What he most longs for is a companion, someone to share home and hearth, someone who, based on such sharing, will get to know him beyond the physical impressions at which others recoil.  Victor Frankenstein promises that he will put together another creature, this time a female, the much needed, much desired companion. Alas, Victor reneges on his promise.  The creature, betrayed and hurt, turns vengeful and a violent.

It all goes back to “bread together,” and to the awareness that comes from time spent in loving companionship.  The book of Genesis famously has Adam

“knowing” Eve, a kind of knowing that leads to pregnancy. This use of the term also indicates a kind of knowing that emerges from companionship, from spending a life together. It’s a term that suggests awareness of what another is like based on familiarity, on relationality. When we make a claim like "I know her/him really well," it's quite different from knowing that 3 plus 2 equals 5 or that water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.

The sad aspect of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that no one takes the time to “know” the creature along the model of companionship.  The people with whom the creature interacts cannot get past his “otherness.” Instead of thinking and being thoughtful, they remain on the level of abstract, immediate sense perception.  What results is a truncated kind of awareness. The concrete, whole self is ignored. One aspect alone, ugliness, is highlighted

There is an important lesson here for philosophy. Abstraction, often touted by philosophers, is actually an ally of evil. Those who judge the creature based on  his looks are reacting abstractly, just as those who would judge by skin color alone, or gender, or religion.

The surprising lesson for philosophy is one that has been articulated by Alfred North Whitehead.  Philosophy is not the arena for abstractions. Rather, philosophy

should be the critic of abstractions.  Humans feel a strong tug in the the direction of abstracting, of simplifying, of separating, isolating, disconnecting.  Philosophy, tied to wisdom and to thoughtfulness, has a special role to play: it must provide a counterbalance.

The hard corollary: thinking and abstraction do not go together.   Logic and abstraction go together. Calculative rationality (planning in terms of fixed goals and the most efficient means to arrive at them) depends on abstraction.  “Thinking,” or being “thoughtful” is quite different. Indeed, abstraction is a hindrance to thinking and thoughtfulness. The latter’s mode of reflection results in a particular sort of claim, the “I know" that results from companionship.

Martin Heidegger made much of the link between “thinking” and “thanking.” Thinking (and its partner thoughtfulness) is a grateful response to our being in the world. It is not separated from affectivity. Its aim is full awareness about what is, an awareness not accessible to those who remain detached from what they are seeking to understand.

Thinking thus gives rise to a kind of concrete knowing, the one Latin calls cognoscere, French connaître, and German kennen. (As opposed to the more abstract scire, savoir, and wissen.)  This awareness, this companionship-based-getting-to-know, cannot happen when thinking and abstracting are confused.  Abstraction, specifically undertaken for specific purposes, plays an important role, especially in laboratory sciences.  In everyday life, though, the allure of abstraction must be resisted.

In Mary Shelley’s novel, only the blind man is thoughtful in regard to the creature. Everyone else succumbs to abstract perception.  Ugliness, size, and skin texture are all they pay attention to. Abstraction is plentiful. Thoughtfulness is rare.

Young Frankenstein may be a comedy, but its take on the creature’s story is revealing. The characters in Young Frankenstein live out the knowledge of

companionship in relation to the creature. Shelley’s novel depicts the sad state that results when abstract knowledge rather than companionship knowledge dominates.  

TABLE TALK

As a young man I ate plenty of “Table Talk” pies.

They were tasty and plentiful in New England. At the time, my interest was mostly in the contents, not the label printed on the box.

The company’s web site says nothing about the name’s origin.  Historically, conversations around the table have a noble heritage.  Plutarch wrote about the “dinner of the seven wise men.” One of Plato’s most famous dialogues is the Symposium, a conversation after dinner, a time when, as was the custom, drinking of wine and conversing were the central activities.  (“Symposium” literally means “drinking together.”) Martin Luther’s home was a hospitable place where associates would drop in.  Conversations around that table were recorded and published as “Table Talk.”

Food and conversation are associated with that most versatile of human organs, the tongue.  The tongue that tastes and the tongue that talks come together at the table. The novelist Madeleine L’Engle, describing her first date with the man she would marry, highlights the intersection: “Hugh and I sat over our hamburgers and milkshakes till nearly two in the morning.  ..We had talked for ten hours without noticing the time passing.”

Good conversation, like good tasting, requires attentiveness.  Attentiveness, in turn, involves a certain amount of care for, and consideration towards, participants. Distraction, interruption,  and inattentiveness sound the death knell of a good conversation.

Attentiveness and its absence sort of mark the difference between an earlier time (say from Plato to the late 20th century) and ours.  It’s not that humans have changed. but our technology has. Here is a

contemporary image: a table, or it could be a park or a living room; a parent and a child. The parent's attention is given to the glowing rectangle, not to the child.  It's a scene with multiple iterations.

When it comes to the shared meals, L’Engle’s first date would today face challenges:  phone beeps, the

temptation to check texts and emails, instagram, snapchat; to answer a phone call immediately.  The practice of phone use is so common that a word “phubbing” has been invented to describe being snubbed by someone else’s use of a phone.

The problem has occasioned attempted remedies. There is a game in which whoever checks a smartphone picks up the checks for everyone at the table. There is also an invention meant to discourage phone use at mealtime.

Two of our tongues, the tasting and the talking ones, once coordinated quite naturally. The tasting tongue reinforced the talking tongue in fostering affiliations. (And, as with L'Engle, often led to a third tongue, the erotic one).

The link was easy because the table itself symbolized a locus of intersections.  Food comes from somewhere.  Its roots are in the natural world, which, in turn, depends on sun, rain, worms, ants bacteria for fertile soil.  There are also dependencies and connections to those who plant, tend to, harvest, package and ship food, not to mention those who cook and clean up. The table thus offers itself as a suitable place for adding connections by complementing the natural ones with new affiliations centered around conversations. 

This presents a contemporary problem.  Attentiveness, heedful concern, care for others, these rank high in a world where personal categories dominate.  In our world, one which worships efficiency, convenience and control, the older modes of interaction fade to the periphery.

When table talk offers little more than bursts of words between bouts of smartphone concentration, we tend, as Sherry Turkle points out, to lose both vulnerability and the ability to empathize, two important ingredients for interpersonal relations.  

Traditional table talk, combining our tasting and talking tongues, requires us to accept a certain level of vulnerability. Its face to face setting prizes our ability to empathize, that is, to read moods, emotions, responses. 

In the old "Table Talk," dependence, vulnerability, and empathy were much in evidence.  Today, these have been displaced by efficiency, convenience and control--trends reinforced by our technology.  Neither the tasting tongue nor the talking tongue can thrive in this context. 

IN PRAISE OF THE LAUREL (OR "BAY") LEAF

My mother’s maiden name was Deslauriers (of the laurel trees). As it turns out, this is a good name.  Why? For one thing the laurel's botanical label, laurus nobilis  immediately signals aristocracy. That’s why Napoleon chose, as his crown, not what ordinary kings wore, but laurel leaves made of gold. Napoleon was in good company.  Caesar had earlier worn a a laurel crown (made from the actual plant, not gold).

Why use leaves of a particular tree as signs of power and authority?  It goes back to the Greeks and the god of reason and light, Apollo. No matter how much he prized reason and light, Apollo remained a lustful kind of guy. He fell for Daphne who, this even happens to gods, did not reciprocate.  She fled into the woods. To ensure her safety, Daphne’s father turned her into a laurel tree. Frustrated and broken hearted, Apollo fashioned a wreath from laurel leaves, a permanent reminder of his lost love.

Before emperors took up the wreath, it was associated with victors in ancient Greece. The original Olympic games awarded victory wreaths made of olive leaves (laurel’s perennial competitor).  

There were, though, other religious festivals/games. At the Pythian games, devoted to Apollo, laurel was the victory symbol of choice.

The Athens Olympics of 1896 sort of split the difference. Winners received an olive branch and a silver, yes silver, medal.  Second place finishers got a laurel branch with their bronze, yes bronze, medal. Gold medals were first awarded at the 1904 St. Louis olympics.

At the 2016 Rio games, laurel triumphed decisively. The medals feature laurel, not olive, leaves.  Olive branches have not disappeared. They more and more took over one of the symbolisms formerly associated with laurel: peace (what happens after competition is over).

Given the illustrious history of laurus nobilis, it’s not surprising that we honor people by referring to them as “laureates;” we describe someone who, having once achieved distinction, but is now coasting, as “resting on his laurels;”  and we mark educational accomplishment with a “baccalaureate” degree.”

Then, there's food. No respectable kitchen would fail to include bay ("laurel") leaves. The leaves' multiple compounds impart special flavors, flavors best released in long simmering soups and stews.
They do this without  leaving an overly dominant imprint that would ruin the overall taste. Bay leaves are essential for a proper bouquet garni.

Given its pervasiveness and history, it’s not surprising that excessive claims have been associated with laurus nobilis.  It has been praised for contributing to heart health, good breathing, digestion and the reduction of stress.  One fan even suggests rubbing pre-soaked leaves directly onto the scalp.

Such exaggerations, not surprisingly, occasion a backlash.  We live in a fast food world. We prize speed and immediate gratification. By those standards, the laurel leaf falls short. As we saw, it’s best use is in long-cooking dishes.  Short-term cooking of the bay leaf releases a flavor that’s something like Vicks Vaporub. One contrarian dismisses the leaf entirely: "What does a bay leaf taste like? Nothing. What does a bay leaf smell like? Nothing. What does a bay leaf look like? A leaf. How does a bay leaf behave? It behaves like a leaf would, if you took a leaf from a tree outside of your apartment building and put it into your soup."

Still, the noble leaf survives and thrives.  Hopefully, it’s because, despite associations with Apollo, with Olympians and Nobel laureates, its real strength lies in its ordinary use in the kitchen. After all, few of us are like Apollo, Napoleon and Caesar. Few of us will become Nobel laureates. All of us, though, can savor a well

cooked meal.

The laurel is the emblem of slow cooking, slow eating, savoring complexity, “mindful” eating, as we would say today. If the noble bay leaf is ever dismissed, the culture of fast food will have triumphed and my Deslauriers ancestors will be turning over in their graves (especially my grandfather who was a wonderful cook).