Indice dei contenuti per May 2017 in New Philosopher

Throughout history people have gone hungry, unable to find enough calories to sustain themselves. Thanks to numerous advances, most of us no longer have to fight this daily battle for survival. We live in an age of abundance, boasting such a surplus that $100 billion worth of food is jettisoned each year. Waste aside, our ‘solution’ to the (Western) hunger problem has given birth to a weighty dilemma: instead of struggling to find calories, most people now struggle to avoid them. Today, the number of obese humans sits at a hefty 1.6 billion – almost double those who are malnourished. When it comes to production and consumption, it’s clear that greed is in the driver’s seat and gluttony is giving directions. Our challenge then in this time of plenty is…

The food waste campaigning organisation ‘This Is Rubbish’ estimates that the amount of food wasted throughout Europe, projected at 88 million tonnes, is enough to feed the amount of people in food poverty in the continent nine times over. In 2013 a US slaughterhouse recalled four thousand tonnes of contaminated beef products – everything it processed that year. The USDA called the products “unwholesome or otherwise unfit for human food”. The first commercially-grown genetically engineered food to be granted a licence for human consumption was a tomato. Developed in California, it was submitted for evaluation to the US Food & Drug Administration in 1992 and was first sold in 1994. Australia is the third-fastest growing vegan market in the world, after the United Arab Emirates and China, according to Euromonitor…

Jean-Paul Sartre refused to eat lobsters because they resembled giant insects. Fresh fruit and vegetables, he felt, were also too close to nature, so he opted for the canned variety. Sartre needed evidence of human consciousness, of the pour-soi. Raw foods, redolent of the consciousness-free en-soi, elicited in him a kind of nausea. For Sartre, and for all of us, diets have implicitly moral, aesthetic, philosophical, and political dimensions. Foods can be virtuous (vegetables) or wicked (chocolate); homely (soup) or exotic (caviar); artisanal (home cooking) or corporatised (soft drinks). Our dining rooms are theatres of morality, where we signal our virtues, vices, and aspirations by what, and how, we eat. Fad diets are an extreme form of signalling, of identity with a dietary tribe – Pritikin (high carbohydrate), Atkins (low…

SARAH FIRTH TOP FIVE BOOKS Top five books 1. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson 2. I Love Dick, Chris Kraus 3. The Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kaulman 4. Consider The Lobster, David Foster Wallace 5. The Weight of Things: Philosophy and the Good Life, Jean Kazez FAVOURITE PHILOSOPHER: Timotheus Vermeulen. FAVOURITE QUOTE: “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” - Albert Camus DOCUMENTARY TO RECOMMEND: Particle Fever, by Mark Levinson. FAVOURITE ARTWORK: Supersymmetry, by Ryoji Ikeda. FAVOURITE PIECE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC: Gnossiennes Nos 1 – 5, by Erik Satie. What is philosophy for you? A key to wisdom. Why is philosophy important? Because it helps us make sense of the fundamental problems of existence, thinking, knowledge, values, reason, and language. What is the biggest problem we face in…

Starved prisoners in Auschwitz fantasised about food almost to the exclusion of everything else. Viktor Frankl describes the situation in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Barely managing on a diet of thin soup and fragments of stale bread, occasionally supplemented with a small lump of margarine, a slice of gristle, or a morsel of cheese, their lives depended on whether the cook decided to dip his ladle deep into the cauldron and fish out a few peas, or skimmed its thin surface. Forced heavy labour made huge demands on their undernourished bodies, and they became skeletal, lost resistance to disease, wasted. The Nazis, by withholding adequate nutrition, turned the prisoners’ bodies – and minds – on themselves. The prisoners watched others dying around them as their own bodies self-digested.…

“Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great.” Henry IV of France “Strange to see how a good dinner and feting reconciles everybody.” Samuel Pepys “How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?” Julia Child, on the US “I live on good soup, not on fine words.” Molière “He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.” Jonathan Swift “Children should come to the table clean and in a merry mood.” Erasmus “Let them eat cake.” Marie Antoinette “What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?” Lin Yutang “This much thou hast taught me: that I should learn to take food as medicine.” Augustine “Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly…

So are you to my thoughts as food to life, Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground; And for the peace of you I hold such strife As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; Now counting best to be with you alone, Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure; Sometimes all full with feasting on your sight, And by and by clean starvèd for a look; Possessing or pursuing no delight Save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away. Sonnet 75: So Are You To My Thoughts As Food To Life,…

Ellen sauntered up while I was packing my gear. “So, did you bring yourself some extra vegetarian rations for the trip?” “I’m all set,” I replied. “Got my black bean powder.” We shared a knowing laugh. We were setting off on a five-day dogsled camping trip in the Boundary Waters region of Minnesota with Paul, the Arctic explorer who owns this dogsledding business. As a guide (Ellen) and frequent traveller with this company (me), we both know Paul to be long on wilderness skills: way finding, dog tending, fire starting, storytelling. But he’s an indifferent eater who lost his sense of smell in a boyhood accident, and Paul cooks with the care and attention of a stereotypical frat boy. He is the kind of cook whose idea of a vegetarian…

Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser Armies of mice The safety of the food seemed to be determined more by the personality of the manager on duty than by the written policies of the chain. Many workers would not eat anything at their restaurant unless they’d made it themselves … several employees at the same restaurant in Colorado Springs independently provided details about … armies of mice that urinated and defecated on hamburger rolls left out to thaw in the kitchen every night. The Physiology of Taste Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Preserve the sensation There are persons who have no tongue or who have lost it, yet preserve the sensation of taste. All the books mention the first case; the second was explained to me by an unfortunate man, whose tongue had…

What do you doubt most? That there is a single definition of the truth. If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be? Death. What illusion do you suffer from? The illusion that one can understand the world. What is your demon? The need to always go further. What role has luck played in your life? All luck; first by being born and then where and when. If you could choose, what would you have for your last meal? Kisses from my loved ones. The question you’d most like to ask others? What makes your lives meaningful? What is your motto? Life is about evolving. Your favourite word? The Greek symbol for ‘change’: ∆. Which thinker has had the greatest influence on your life? Nietzsche. What…

newphilosopher.com Interview with Jane Goodall We are divorced from nature in a disastrous way, seeming not to realise that if we continue living like this we shall end up destroying ourselves. newphilosopher.com/articles/divorced-from-nature/ A new human era Earth has lost half of its wild animals in the last forty years. What does it mean to be philosophical about this? newphilosopher.com/articles/a-new-human-era/ New Philosopher online store Visit the online store for previous issues of New Philosopher magazine, subscriptions, posters, tea, and other gift ideas. newphilosopher.com/products-page/magazines/ Attention in a time of plenty How we direct attention is one of our most ethically-important decisions. Attention leads to awareness, and often to action. newphilosopher.com/articles/attention-plenty/ New Philosopher Writers’ Award Entries are open for the New Philosopher Writers’ Award. Enter now to…

We say nature is a force to be reckoned with, yet it’s also something we’d like to control or bend to our will. Is it possible to respect something one wishes to tame? It’s difficult to draw neat lines between the synthetic and the organic, the natural and the unnatural; yet such demarcations seem forced, if not reductive. Humans inhabit an environment but are products of it, too. If we’re at war with nature, we’re also at war with ourselves. Maybe that’s why the threat of mutation is so unsettling – the consequences are unpredictable and, for the most part, unknowable. The debate surrounding bioengineered (genetically modified) foods is a case in point. The hostility of both camps leaves little room for moderate voices. The epithets fly thick and fast:…

It turns out that the charming pangolin is now the most trafficked mammal on Earth. One year I flew so much that I was awarded Grand Poobah status in an airline frequent flyer program. One of the ‘privileges’ was a personal greeting on every flight by the Mother Superior of the first class cabin, which involved her finding Poobahs wherever we were seated on the plane. I tested it one day from Economy on a 747 and sure enough, shortly after take-off the stateliest crew member tracked me down in Row Infinity. Taking care to target my ear lest I be ostracised by budget travellers, she hissed my name and said, “Can I get you anything from upstairs?” Upstairs was Valhalla Class. It must have had many nice things but…

Our choices define us, right to the very last breath; and bite. Over the past four years we have posed the following question to a range of thinkers in the 13 questions section of the magazine: “If you could choose, what would you have for your last meal?” Tim Soutphommasane Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Vicente Fox Mexican President Kathy Wilcox Cartoonist Jane Goodall Primatologist Simon Longstaff Ethicist Helen Caldicott Anti-nuclear activist John Clarke Comedian Helen Garner Author Andrew Upton Playwright and director Amber Davis Violinist DBC Pierre Writer Natasha Mitchell Journalist and presenter Andrew Denton Broadcaster and comedian Phillip Adams Broadcaster…

Barry C. Smith is a professor of philosophy and director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London, as well as the founder of the Centre for the Study of the Senses, which pioneers collaborative research between philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. He is a philosopher of language and mind who now works mainly on the multisensory perception of flavour and has published in Nature and Food Quality and Preference. He edited Questions of Taste: the philosophy of wine, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, and Knowing Our Own Minds. Smith is a frequent broadcaster, appearing on BBC Radio’s In Our Time and Free Thinking, and also on Start the Week. In 2010, he was the writer and presenter of a four-part series for the BBC World Service…

The Naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc 1707–1788 Insatiable vanity “Man alone consumes and engulfs more flesh than all other animals put together. He is, then, the greatest destroyer, and he is so more by abuse than by necessity. Instead of enjoying with moderation the resources offered him, in place of dispensing them with equity, in place of repairing in proportion as he destroys, of renewing in proportion as he annihilates, the rich man makes all his boast and glory in consuming, all his splendour in destroying, in one day, at his table, more than would be necessary for the support of several families. He abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and…

Why do people eat junk food when they know it’s bad for them? If I had to choose between salad and a burger with ice-cream, I’d go the burger every time. Eventually that would make me pretty unhealthy, so why would I do it? A philosopher named Aristotle thought this was because our desires overpower our minds. Even though we can make good judgements about what we should do, sometimes our emotions get the better of us. Sometimes we act impulsively, without thinking things through. Other times, we know what the healthy choice is but we ignore what we know. In the battle between our head and our stomach, our stomach wins. But Aristotle would also want us to remember it’s not always bad to eat junk food. Sometimes eating…

I The universe would be nothing were it not for life and all that lives must be fed. II Animals fill themselves; man eats. The man of mind alone knows how to eat. III The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they are fed. IV Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are. V The table is the only place where one does not suffer from ennui during the first hour. VI The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star. VII Those persons who suffer from indigestion, or who become drunk, are utterly ignorant of the true principles of eating and drinking. VIII A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman…

“Turn and face the strange.” – David Bowie It has been ten years since naturalist David Attenborough’s documentary Planet Earth aired on television. With the recent release of its sequel, Planet Earth II, Attenborough was asked about the changes he’d witnessed in the decade between the two monumental documentaries. “There are almost overwhelming reasons to be pessimistic”, he said. While we know what the problems are, he says that “more people are out of touch with the natural world than has ever been. But since we depend on the natural world, understanding it is absolutely paramount.” Yet as we head full-throttle into a Trump presidency, it’s clear that many still don’t understand the environment. In the North American spring of 2016, a now-famous grassroots protest movement began against the Dakota…

Food as a weapon Frederick Douglas’s memoirs bring alive the immoral mechanics of slavery and its weapons of control. Chief among them: food. Hunger was the young Frederick’s faithful boyhood companion: “Many times have I followed, with eager step, the waiting-girl when she went out to shake the table cloth, to get the crumbs and small bones flung out for the cats.” npr.org/sections/the-salt/2017/02/10/514385071/ Devil’s Dictionary DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead. Gendered food choices We’re constantly bombarded with advertising and social messaging telling us that eating like a bird and dining on salad is feminine, while eating large portions and plenty of red meat is manly. These socially-influenced eating patterns could in part help explain why men are…

Extraordinary quality in all respects. New Philosopher is one of the best things happening. I love how the writing reminds me that the types of issues we are grappling with today are similar to those grappled with by philosophers for centuries. I love this magazine. I no longer like reading or listening to mainstream news as it is not good for my health. Your magazine is good for me. It has real discussions that relate to life rather than reporting sensational ‘news’. Thank you. Your magazine is so helpful and is churning up the little grey cells, as Hercule Poirot says. Thank you, this world is brighter, more aware, and more meaningful with your publication in it. Great magazine. Finally one worth reading. Will recommend it to all friends. This…

Will Self Will Self is the author of ten novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas, and five collections of non-fiction writing. His work has been translated into 22 languages. Self ’s novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012, he won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1991, and was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction in 1998. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University. Nigel Warburton Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, podcaster, writer, and the Editor-at-large of New Philosopher. Described as “one of the most-read popular philosophers of our time”, his books include A Little History of Philosophy, Thinking from A to Z, and Philosophy: The Classics. The interviewer for the Philosophy Bites podcast, Warburton was previously Senior Lecturer in…

There’s never been a better time in history to be the kind of person who enjoys not eating things. In my corner of New York City – as in most major cities, these days – your dining options aren’t limited to not eating meat or not eating dairy products. There are restaurants you can visit to not eat gluten or wheat; to not eat anything our prehistoric ancestors wouldn’t have eaten; or to not eat food that has been cooked. And you can wash it all down with a milky coffee containing neither milk nor much in the way of coffee (a decaf skinny soy latte, known sarcastically among baristas as the Why Bother?). It’s a strange kind of self-indulgence, this conspicuous non-consumption. Yet the non-diners of contemporary New York…

1 Steven Poole Steven Poole is a columnist, cultural critic, broadcaster, and author. 2 Tim Olds Tim Olds is Professor of Health Sciences at the University of South Australia. 3 Gillian Terzis Gillian Terzis is a nonfiction writer and editor. 4 Robert C. Wolcott Robert C. Wolcott is Professor of Innovation at Northwestern University. 1 A recipe for disaster Western industrial civilisation is eating itself stupid. Cookery programs bloat the television schedules, cookbooks fill the bookshop windows, and celebrity chefs hawk their own branded ranges in the supermarkets. The average Briton now spends five hours a week watching TV food programs, and only four hours a week cooking. It is an age of virtual eating. Worse, the products of modern food media routinely promise to reveal the secrets not just…

You will feel, taste, and smell the chocolate cake in all its complexity, even feel fulsomely present while consuming it – except that no cake will pass your lips. Life requires nutrition. Atop this Maslowian foundation, peoples throughout history have built the experience of food. Food means survival, but many other things as well: cultures are defined by the physical, social, intellectual, and emotional nourishment provided by food. How might technology influence our relationship with food? Neuroscientist Moran Cerf, my colleague at Northwestern University, and I have been exploring how, due to technology, the experience of being human might change over the remainder of the 21st century. For one, we will experience more of our lives within simulated or enhanced ‘virtual’ worlds. This relatively benign proposition, supported by recent developments,…

I can never get used to the whole-body fat-suit the majority of my contemporaries have now donned. “I am fat. I am disgustingly fat. I am the fattest human I know. I have nothing but excess poundage all over my body. My fingers are fat. My wrists are fat. My eyes are fat. (Can you imagine fat eyes?)” So writes Woody Allen in a New Yorker skit of his from the 1960s entitled Notes from the Overfed. Allen’s conceit is that this is the transcription of an uneasy dream he fell into after reading both Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and The Weightwatchers’ Guide on the same plane flight. Indeed, the nameless and obese narrator of the piece does have a tone that wavers between self-admonition and existential defiance: “I…

The entitlement approach helps to explain why famines occur even when there is no great collapse in the overall food supply. In 1970, as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, agronomist Norman Borlaug sounded an ominous warning: “It is true that the tide of the battle against hunger has changed for the better during the past three years. But tides have a way of flowing and then ebbing again. We may be at high tide now, but ebb tide could soon set in if we become complacent and relax our efforts.” The warning came despite Borlaug’s achievements over the past decades, including developing a strain of high-yield, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf Mexican wheat that dramatically increased food production in large parts of the developing world – an innovation credited with saving a…

England, July 1927. There are storms all over the country, with crops lost to flooding and barns to lightning. The island is “unsettled, thundery and mainly dull”, according to the Meteorological Office. Despite the wet and gloom, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is enjoying his hedonistic tour. Travelling around Europe from his native Sicily, the Italian nobleman is glorying in the United Kingdom’s countryside, architecture – and her food. Calling himself ‘the Monster’ in his letters, he rejoices in creamy milk, cheeses rosy and amber, bloody steaks, and ham “from the heraldic loins of the illustrious hogs of Yorkshire”. For this tourist, soon to be the last prince of Lampedusa, these meals are austere – he is familiar with the far richer fare of his aristocratic home. His posthumously-published novel The…

I eat meat, but find it ethically challenging. In fact, I think there are very good reasons for people to stop eating meat. However the four attempts I have made to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet (twice each) have been aborted after less than two months because I have felt quite ill – low energy, loss of concentration, muscle loss, and generally feeling mentally and physically unwell. On each occasion I was unable to do my job well, I struggled to get up in the morning, and found I my mental agility disappeared. I started and ended each day feeling flat. I have always had a healthy diet and have eaten well, and I continued to do so while on a vegetarian or vegan diet – consciously selecting supplements…

A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public. It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for…

Raphael: the drawings Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Until 3 September 2017 This once in a lifetime exhibition will bring together more than 100 works by Raphael from international collections spanning the artist’s entire career. With a focus on the immediacy and expressiveness of Raphael’s drawing, as well as his restless imagination, the exhibition will transform our understanding of this great artist. The exhibition will also highlight new research on a core group of drawings, following investigation by the Ashmolean’s Conservation Team. ashmolean.org/exhibitions/raphael/ National Puppetry Festival Minnesota, USA 18 – 22 July 2017 The National Puppetry Festival 2017 brings together nearly 400 puppet artists of all kinds, from all disciplines, from all over the country and around the world for workshops, performances, exhibits and people. The nation’s leading puppet artists will offer…

I. CODES Table manners are conventions, mere conventions. We take no notice of them most of the time, until somebody breaks the rules: leaning back and putting his feet on the table while we are eating, chewing loudly with her mouth open, or spitting. Our reaction to such misdemeanours is likely to be immediate, and fierce – we will not put up with them for long. It has taken us years, after all, to learn how to conform to the code of our particular culture at table; most of us have it drummed into us in childhood. This code of behaviour is not natural, as eating is. It is cultural, at best second nature, and normally obeyed without giving it a thought. Human adults invariably share their food – for…