Unlocking the Food
by Benjamin ShenderOne of Daniel Quinn’s most famous points is that civilized cultures have “locked up” the food. The importance of this observation cannot be overstated as it is one of the most powerful ways in which civilization retains it’s control over humanity, including those of us which would otherwise want nothing to do with it.
At the core of Quinn’s point are food memes. As food is the most basic of all needs, along with water and air, any meme dealing with food is quite powerful almost by definition. In the case of locking up the food, the memes are those that determine what is “food” and what is “not food.” Every culture has these memes, and the definitions vary from culture to culture, but they are always quite arbitrary. However, the arbitrary nature of these memes does nothing to diminish their strength or effectiveness. Stories abound in which people starve to death because their “food” supplies ran out and they had nothing to eat, regardless of the fact that they are often surrounded by a cornucopia of “not food.”
In the specific case of civilization, in particular American-brand civilization, food is only that which humans specifically raised to be food. The only exceptions to this rule being fish and occasionally hunted meat. But even in those exceptions many only fish or hunt for “sport” and have no intention of ever eating their victims. But this meme is what holds so many of us in our shackles. Even once we’ve reached the point in which we can look at a forest and know that it is full of food, this knowledge is worthless if we’ve never learned what is edible in that forest, and therefore “food,â€? and what is not edible, and therefore “not food.â€? Ultimately this knowledge is the lever by which we can pry open the bars of our cage. Once we reach the point that we only have to walk down the street to earn our dinner, civilization only offers stress and pain, both of which we can do with out.
Further, this knowledge is relatively easy to gain, the human mind is meant to have this knowledge, why would it be hard to learn? But it is a powerful realization, and that is as true for civilized people as it is for primitivists. Once a civilized person reaches the point at which they see a field as being full of food, whether or not they recognize the dandelions, plantain, and clover as each being edible and delicious, it nullifies the meme “food is only that which people grow.” And without that cornerstone meme many others become less effective at holding a person in civilization. But even if a person does not question any further, when civilization collapses their personal odds of survival will skyrocket.
First, everyone welcome our newest author, Benjamin Shender, IshCon’s prolific “Hypnopompia.” Ben and I have been working on a lot of concepts behind the scenes, so it’s really great to be able to host some of his public work.
Just some concrete examples to back up Ben’s excellent article:
So why is cannibalism such an option of first resort? Because cannibalism is floating around in our cultural consciousness. We know that when all else fails, we can eat each other. We know that we are food. To the Greenland Vikings, fish was not food–but Greenland Vikings were food. To the Donners, pine nuts were not food–but Donners were food. For all our disgust, we leap to cannibalism very readily, because we have severely restricted the things we call “food,” but we’ve left ourselves on that short list.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 September 2005 @ 10:35 AM
I think it would be cool if fruit trees were grown everywhere around communities. But maybe the reason they aren’t is to keep the food locked up.
Comment by planetwarming — 15 December 2005 @ 1:06 AM
Jason
Your example #2
2. The Greenland Vikings ate their dogs, the calves of their cow herds down to the hooves, and finally each other. But never once did they touch the fish teeming outside their doors. Not even with the “skraelings” (Inuit) living well off of the fish in plain view. It simply didn’t register as food.
seems contradicted by article, “C-14 dating and the disappearance of Norsemen from Greenland” in Europhysics News (2002) Vol. 33 No. 3 that you site elsewhere.
Gary
Comment by Gary Ewell — 20 January 2006 @ 12:22 PM
Re: planetwarming’s comment.
Ah, but there ARE lots of fruit trees growing everywhere in most communities. All of those “ornamental” flowering trees are fruit trees. But the fruit is not gathered to eat. It is raked up and bagged into the garbage as a nuisance that goes with the pretty spring flowers. I’ve been eating crabapples, pears and apricots around my neighborhood that others don’t see as food.
Comment by ChandraShakti — 12 July 2006 @ 10:45 PM
Coming in late on this…
Or mulberry. I read in my local paper a couple years back, in the gardening section, that a reader considered mulberries “trash trees” and complained bitterly about the mess they left in his yard. Mulberries. Food. *headdesk* I bet he’d have thought nothing of going to the local Middle Eastern market and picking up mulberry syrup, though, if he’d taken up ME cooking.
We also have loads of black walnut trees around my neighborhood whose crops go to waste every single year (I would take advantage but I need to figure out where to put them so their hulls can rot off), plus violets, wild strawberries, dandelions, and wild chicory. The only reason we have the latter few plants is this is a “bad neighborhood” where nobody can afford to call in landscapers to kill off all those damn weeds. It’s just as well.
Comment by Dana — 29 December 2007 @ 9:22 PM