Human nature is fascinating. Observing human nature is there for also fascinating; especially if you have kids and you eventually realize that kids are just adults without the filters.
One universal of human nature an ability that apparently comes in handy and job interviews: that is, the ability to spin our vice and weaknesses as virtues and strengths.
Read the job books and blogs: when asked questions like, “what would you say is your biggest weakness?” The experts uniformly suggest crafting an answer that disguises ones weakness as a strength: “well, I’m just so motivated and so efficient, that sometimes I have a hard time remembering to keep others up to date as I recklessly bang out project after project and break sales records.” Haha. Big weakness.
I’ve noticed that people you have not been forced to come to grips with health issues do the above maneuver, almost without exception, whenever the question of food challenges their comfort zone.
“Well you see, it’s a balance! I don’t want to be so obsessed with my body, or my material health, that I lose focus on things that really matter! Everything in moderation; I know of so many people who are way too obsessive about their diet, and I think that’s more unhealthy than eating normal foods. Obviously one could be excessive, but as long as you’re not merely eating microwave dinners all the time…” Etc.
Let’s back up. Think about what it means to be a human person: on a purely natural level, to be a human person to be someone who achieves meaning and happiness through relating to other persons (which is why fewer and fewer people feel happy or meaning). In terms of materially relating to other persons, there are two avenues that by definition force us as humans to come together.
The first, obviously, is reproduction, the family relationship. This is why it’s absurd whenever somebody claims to not care “what people do in the bedroom.” – what people do in the bedroom is literally the most extensive and far-reaching social act that is the starting gate for literally every life. This is also why there’s no such thing as a bad action that only harms yourself – as a human being, you are necessarily related to the rest of humanity, and therefore, each action you perform, good or bad, it’s performed by “[you]-son or daughter of so-and-so parents, brother/sister/nephew/aunt/even etc.” Pretty easy to see; you’d have to be pretty educated to miss that one. “Peopling” the earth requires at least two people to come together, which then results in more togethering.
But the second, and only other avenue that by definition materially forces humans to congregate, is eating. No one is more keenly aware of this reality then somebody who has drastic food problems and can’t eat with others – “mawwige” may bring us together first, but then eating brings us together several times a day. St Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century mystic, points out the fascinating fact that the material act of the first sin, Adam and Eve, was eating. She notes that this should drive home the fundamental relationship that we have with eating. One of these things is not like the others – eating is unique (*also interesting: two commandments in Eden are the two avenues of material community: “fill the earth” = relating to the world and specific human beings via family; and “subdue the earth” = relating to the wild earth and other humans generally, overseeing the world to foster and perpetuate man’s newly created image together – which primarily and directly happens by eating, as pointed out by subsequent events in Eden).
At various points in my life, I have been involved in various types of outdoor communities. Observing the different kinds of outdoor communities, it struck me that although the backwoods/backpacking/hiking communities look closer and more in tune with nature, in reality, my observation is that communities oriented around eating (e.g. agrarian, herbalist, homesteaders, etc) are more deeply and more concretely “grounded” in nature. (Which is not a knock against “outdoorsie/hiking” crowds, by the way – humans need all kinds of avenues). After thinking about it, it made sense to me: traveling through and viewing preserved natural settings is definitionally less “connected” than eating. Visiting somewhere is great, but literally taking that somewhere, ingesting it, and making it you is next level. Thrillsvill. But like most things wonderful, we take it for granted because it’s frequent.
All this is to drive home something that I believe is (very very intentionally) undermined, disparaged, and contradicted in the industrial world of today: namely, that eating and food are actually extremely fundamental to who you are, and carry a great deal of weight in your life, powerfully disposing you to either virtue or vice. (If the God thought eating was important, then his Church would have implemented fasting laws, and laws about food… oh wait)
We instinctively know this, which is why we work so hard to make excuses for ourselves when challenged, and spin our affinity for convenience, sugar, and addictions as virtue, or at least a backseat to our real and pressing focus.
Since my health crash, I have perhaps talked to thousands of people about diet. Very very often, I hear objections like I described above – it would be obsessive, it would be imbalanced, all things in moderation, it would detract from my focus on other important areas of life, etc.
But let’s shine a spotlight on that, let’s take a closer look. Is that really true? Essentially what one is arguing when one makes those claims is that one is so busy with overridingly important virtuous activities, that one simply cannot take the time and energy (and, to be fair, money) to learn how to do well something that they do several times a day everyday: eating.
In other words, the “job interview” stunt: “My biggest weakness in this situation is that I just can’t pay attention to this minor thing because I am so wrapped up day in and day out with major and monumental good things.”
A better way, a more honest way, to phrase the above would instead be: “I actually don’t think eating is important in one’s life.”
Probably still more honest, but a little more brutal, would be: “I prize convenience and the good feeling I get from sugar and addicting ingredients over the benefits of eating food that will enable me to better be who I am – I don’t need to be deeply connected to nature, I can do what I do and satisfy my tastes.”
Which, if you’re beginning premise is “food doesn’t matter much in one’s life” is a relatively tenable thesis – not going to win any awards, but it would be allowable. But if you think food matters, if you think is one of the two fundamental ways to “root” and “subdue the earth”, if you think eating definitionally results in a disposing oneself to vice or virtue – then eating – or rather, getting eating right – becomes extremely important. Nunc.
A way to sum this all up is the simple observation: pretty much no one is out there eating seed oils, gasoline, agrotoxins, addictive chemicals, and constant camouflaged sugar who is eating them because they just can’t afford to spend time to take control of that part of their life, they’re simply too overloaded with the requirements of living virtuously. Maybe, if you weren’t in charge of your life, and someone else provided all your food (Monastery, college, whatever) that could fly. But chances are that really when it comes down to it, supermarket foods are easy. And craved. (And there’s a reason for the latter!) And it’s suffering to change, hard to be intentional, versus defaulting to buying what you’re told to buy (“normal”).
One may recognize it as a necessary evil, a feature of the world we (Americans at least) live in, but these things should be recognized as that: an evil, not a “balance.” The subtle difference is that “balance” (in practice) means a it’s always there but not your main meal, while “evil” (in practice) means that, like any evil perpetrated on oneself, we occasionally have to endure it, but go out of our way to protect ourselves from it. And yes – the poisons and antifoods are worth protecting oneself from.
But I also think there’s a better way to look at it, rather than viewing it as drudgery and eternal exclusion from fun and happiness.
People of ye olden days, since time immemorial, have had intense lives. They had to go outside in the freezing cold to do their business. They had no AC. They had to etc etc etc – endure more hardship in a month than we do in a year. But the world has changed: we’ve fittingly created our own prisons, in so many ways. Instead of ensuring the freezing of an outhouse, we now have to ensure that we do challenge our bodies – many people do cold plunges. Instead of no AC, we now have to ensure that we’re using energy responsibly, that even though we could afford it, we’re not being wasteful. Instead of… etc. The hardships of today tend to be of strange origin – not forced upon us by nature and discomfort, but forced upon us by knowledge of long term consequences. And food is no different.
I mentioned earlier: protecting oneself from perpetrated evil. One of the key horrible features of the modern era is that they’re after your kids: the goal is to indoctrinate now, capitalize later. I firmly believe, and my experience is, that feeding your kids clean wholesome food is a huge component to protecting them these days: from depression, from conformity, from instant gratification, from addictions, from obesity, from rage bait, from the endless permutation of emotional assaults that come with our time. Good food alone won’t do it – but grounding your child in nature is a huge anchor – and there’s no deeper way to ground in nature than eating, specifically from the land where you live.
Maybe I’m just a radical. Now, at least. Because this is coming from a guy who literally had to almost die to confront this topic. I understand how hard it is, even to think about. But perhaps the first step is recognizing it as a weakness, as a proclivity for convenience and addiction, rather than cloaking it as a virtue. That’s just my observation anyway.
