February | 2010 | The Practical Dilettante

No Body

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Seonaid

You do not have a body

“What?!” I hear you respond. “Clearly ludicrous! This woman’s insane.” Very good, very good. Glad to see you’re listening. I’m afraid it’s not as exciting as all that, though. I’m not going to claim that existence is an illusion, that the body, or life (or the world for that matter) is a delusion created by some sort of strange solipsistic consciousness. Although those are interesting explorations, and we haven’t really disproved them, I’m not really interested in that tack right now.

No, this is a mere challenge to the notion of Cartesian duality. Nothing new here. But, it has been my observation that the language we use to talk about ourselves still reflects an implicit belief in the split between mind and body… In essence, the idea of our “having” bodies distances our consciousness from them, and leads to many of the difficulties we currently experience with food, exercise, consumption, and general disassociation from the natural world.

Descartes has a lot to answer for: I think, therefore I am, indeed. He posits the existence of something that asks the question, and therefore, since something must be doing the asking, that something must exist. Fair enough. But the self is more than just the part that thinks. I experience, I perceive, I make sense of, I feel, I move, I breathe, I live and eventually, I will die. I manifest the universe in a small locality, and my Self is the process of that manifestation.

So what?

The body turns out to be a lot more than just a life-support and transportation system for the brain. The mind, that very slippery self-aware conceptualization, is not simply the firing of neurons in a mass of grey matter. The mind/body split doesn’t exist; the mind and body are one, neural components extending out into the very tips of your extremities, memories laid down in the soma, physical experiences stored in the tensions and inflammations of the muscles that we contract in response to stress. The floods of hormones and chemicals that take place in aroused states impact the body; in the same way, the tensions of the body create emotional states. If we remain insistent that ‘psychosomatic’ is equivalent to ‘not-real’, we cut off the most effective paths to healing.

The idea of ‘having’ a body creates an illusion that somehow it, like the other things around us in this worldview, can be disciplined, punished, controlled. Things that we ‘have’ can be possessed, taken from us, thrown out and replaced. We become irritated with ‘our’ bodies, resent their incessant demands, their biological functions, their need for warmth and touch and exercise, feed them junk because it is expedient. We wind up treating ‘our bodies’ as something outside our self – like a car, for which any number of oils are equally valid, and which, if we err in care, we can replace. They also become something that requires an operating manual: What sort of exercise should I do? What should I feed this annoying thing that seems to keep breaking down? Can’t I just skip this meal and eat potato chips? My God, it’s not after sex again, is it?

We don’t want to accept the body and ‘its’ hungers. We can blame the Protestants and the Puritans, we can analyze the system and who benefits from this disassociation, we can throw our hands up and accept it as the way things are and have always been… or we can reclaim the body. The modalities are innumerable. We can perform magic, shamanic dancing, yoga, qui gong, energy work, reiki, running, meditation, mindfulness training, awareness in our eating, play, tantra, and on and on and on…

But any of those things can be used as yet another tool of control. Disordered eating, too much of anything, trying incessantly to fix, or worse, perfect, your errant physical form… the sense that your illnesses are related to imbalances that you can correct if only you do the right thing becomes a source of self-blame. The key is to release that sense of ownership… you and ‘your’ body are One. The key is Being – in the body… being the Mind in the Body, extending your awareness to the edge of your physical form and beyond – the body is the mind interacting with the universe. You are a seething mass of sense perceptions constantly telling stories about the universe you touch, see, hear, smell and taste. Life arises and then spends its limited time trying to stay in the world. Ironically, because it is so focused on staying, it misses what it is staying for. We tell our stories in an attempt to make sense of the universe, so that we will remain fed, sheltered, loved, and in contact with beauty (however we see it). But we get so caught up in the Story, so keenly open to threats of loss, and paths to non-Being that we risk missing the Being part completely.

This is the danger of ‘having’ a body: you may miss out on the essence of what life has to offer. The world of ideas has a compelling appeal; for generations we have been told that the ability to question, to postulate, to hypothesize… to Think is what separates us from, and by extension, elevates us above, the animals. The body, that lives, dies, copulates, gives birth, eats, burns calories and defecates is what we have in common with our kingdom. We resent the insistent reminder. Like the animals, we will die. Our mere need for food and water is called into question. Fasting and self-control become indications of moral superiority. Not having time to move the body is an indication of the incredible importance of the intellectual work of the person in question. The freedom from the need to grow food, perform manual labour, or even to cook for ourselves is considered advancement. Not only do we not need to hunt, gather, fish, or farm – we don’t even need to light a fire and slap the meat on the grill (except at parties). The sexual drive is certainly to be mistrusted, controlled, legislated, manipulated and objectified.

To take responsibility for our urges and deal with them in healthy ways, we have to first integrate them into our Selves. I want. I need. I feel hungry. I feel lonely. I feel afraid. I feel afraid that something bad will happen and all my friends will find out and then I will be lonely all the time. I feel afraid that I will not be able to earn enough money and then I will lose my house and all my beauty will belong to somebody else. When we start to take responsibility for the feelings, touch them, and not dismiss them as the actions of the body, we can start to defuse their power. Not, “My stomach aches when she is away, and therefore she has to come back to make my stomach feel better”. Rather, “I feel afraid that she won’t come back and then I feel lonely because I imagine how bad that would be.” It’s in the moment, it’s a feeling, it’s a story, and it won’t kill me. Many of us walk around carrying chronic low-grade anxiety on the shoulders, in the stomach, in the back, and in the muscles of the face. By reconnecting the body and the mind as one system, we can reclaim their power to alert us to the universe, and we can reclaim the power to choose to listen to the story without letting it take us away. We can feel the links, feel the tensions in our bodies, experience the memories that come up, and then release them. By being the body instead of owning it, we can become more fully animal, and by that path, become more fully human.

Filed under: Essays and Musings, WorldView | Tagged: the body | Leave a Comment »

School Gardens – or not?

Posted on February 13, 2010 by Seonaid

Sierra on Strollerderby asked us what we thought about Caitlin Flanagan’s article on School Gardens in the Atlantic Monthly. I did make a comment, but it left me thinking all evening, so I guess it goes in here.

If you read my last posting, you will rightly predict that I’m in favor of school gardens, because I feel that our lifestyle in 21st century North America is almost completely divorced from reality. In response to Flanagan’s objections about whether gardening actually has anything to teach, I find myself reluctantly dragging out my credentials. I actually AM trained as a curriculum developer, albeit at the university level. I have spent several years deeply immersed in the problems of who needs to know what, and moreover who gets to decide and why. Additionally, given my close association with the farming community in my province, I find her dismissal of all agriculture as menial labor, frankly, offensive. Production scale market gardening and small scale farming are skilled labour and the planning of succession planting, harvest schedules and marketing strategies rivals or surpasses that of other small businesses. Her assertion that, somehow, we can improve the lot of the underclass by simply lifting some members of it up into the middle class ignores most of the critiques of our class structure that have been produced in the last 90 years…

And yet… I *can* see that there are unexamined class and race issues being swept under the rug by the local food movement, that the needs of the middle and upper-middle class to reconnect with the truth of where their food comes from may not be appropriate goals for a classroom full of students who are likely to work summers in the field. I don’t want to dismiss this point out of hand. I’m just not sure I believe that she really believes it. There’s something in the original article that doesn’t ring true… I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it has something to do with the way that, on the one hand, she scoffs at the ‘volunteerism’ of white-middle-class women of a certain age, and, on the other hand, mentions what she has observed volunteering at the food bank. It has to do with her sly mention of Progressives and subtle jabs at liberals, all the while arguing from a liberal philosophical view point. It has to do with the conflation of poverty, gang violence, and the working class, as though escape is the only option, as though no valid life could be lived without emergence into the middle class. Yet I recognize that I hold this position from a firm footing as an educated white woman of a certain age, and I find myself suspect even in my own eyes. I can only hold up in my defense the possibility of being only two generations removed from the farm and the general store, and growing up instilled with some fairly working class, depression era values. In my world, the poor can have dignity as long as it is not stripped away. They are not all criminals or one step away from it. Moreover, there are many valid life paths that don’t include university. Who are we to say that somebody who doesn’t “laugh at the right parts” of a Shakespearean play but can rebuild a car from the ground up isn’t walking a worthy path?

The unquestioning race away from having to do anything to do with dirt and farming presupposes that the industrial food system, replete with migrant labor and all its attendant abuses is the only way of the future. I know that my own food security is improved by what I grow in my back yard, and I think that the women of insecure incomes that I was recently teaching to cook would be well-served by releasing the sense that needing to grow your own food is degrading. What I have seen in my own volunteer work is people who are willing to go hungry rather than work the soil. This is a sign of a deep problem in our society as a whole, not simply for the women who hold this belief. I am concerned that doing away with school gardens, or only providing this learning to the middle class is a good way to make sure that (once again) only the middle class gets the necessary skills to own and RUN the farms of the future. Urban farming is a very small but growing movement, but it is an example of (mostly educated) people putting their “money” (or, more to the point, their life energies) where their mouths are… If we believe (and many of us do) that peak oil is a reality, that industrial food is a contributing factor, and that food security and our future livelihoods may depend on reconstructing and improving upon other forms of food production, then not to do something about that seems… Erm. Irresponsible at best.

I don’t hold any illusion that my little 1/4 acre garden with 30 chickens is going to save the world. But it might question it a bit, and that’s really what I was going for when I started this project. And yes, I am hoping to start an educational component to the mini-farm. Unfortunately, the growing season here is almost completely misaligned with the school year, but we’re working to follow in Eliot Coleman’s illustrious (if muddy) footprints. These are skills that take years to master, and I’m really glad that my ability to survive in the world is not linked to my ability to coax the right number of the right kind of plants from the soil. I hope that somebody maintains this knowledge… you know, just in case we do turn out to need it one day.

Filed under: Essays and Musings, Rural Living | Tagged: food, garden, social commentary | Leave a Comment »

The Dinner Blues

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Seonaid

Let’s be up-front about this: I recently found myself saying to my husband (and not even in the heat of the moment), “I hate having to feed my children healthy food.” Sometimes it is tempting to throw my hands up in the air, and simply declare a moratorium on these family dinners that everybody says are essential to the well-being of my brood and let them eat cake. Now, I may have more hang-ups about food than average, having waded my way through piles of books on nutrition, food, and how to get your kids to eat healthfully… but if the existence of those piles of books is anything to go by, I’m not the only one at home thinking this.

The other day, though, I looked my husband in the eye, stared him down and asked, “Why do we care so much? What difference does it make whether they eat what we put in front of them or yogurt, fruit, and a peanut butter sandwich?” It’s an ongoing conversation in our household. At various times, we have instituted any or all of the following rules (You can guess which ones are for the adults and which are for the children.):

Everybody has to try a bite of everything on offer. Which became:

1 a)Everybody has to try anything that we already know doesn’t make you gag.
I unilaterally updated the original rule after it became obvious that squash and rice were never going to make it past my oldest son’s reflexes no matter how many times he forced it.

No fighting at the table
If you have somebody else’s fork in your hand, you are over-controlling their food (this one is for those of us who are tempted to get that ‘just one biiiiiiite’ into the toddler who has said, “I don’t wike it” to the food that they were eating with gusto last week)
No badgering
No lecturing
No turning up your nose at and making faces about the food We Have So Lovingly Prepared!

I think this last one gets at the heart of a lot of why dinner stops being about food, and starts being an Issue and a power struggle. It’s not just about food; there’s culture, gratitude, frugality, obedience, morality, and Being A Good Parent all tied up in the ability to “make my children eat what I have so carefully put together!”

So, why do we care so much?

Well, after talking it through with my family members, I have realized that I can only answer for myself, but my conclusions might have some bearing on your own question. I have a lot of values that turn out to be entangled in food. Since I’m alive and intend to stay that way as long as possible, I’m concerned about the long-term health of my body and mind, and by extension, that of my children. This means that I’m inclined towards whole foods, vegetables, legumes, and eating the way that the Harvard School of Public Health suggests. I am also a dedicated environmentalist, and I’m deeply concerned about eliminating suffering on my behalf, so I’m averse to the industrial food system in all its guises, but particularly in the “production” of animals. I remain an ambivalent omnivore, but the consequences of CAFO operations are more than I’m willing to bear responsibility for. We have eaten very little meat over the last few years, increasingly as a matter of habit, but originally because we couldn’t afford the meat we were willing to eat – which brings me to the frugal motivation. Our weekly budget for food is $150 to feed three adults and three children under 10. On a week that we run out of flour and rice at the same time, this can cut things a little tight. We have another $50 to play with that usually is used for such things as shampoo, cleaning products, and toilet paper, but can be diverted on a good week to a couple of extra special ingredients. (Oh, just for fun, imagine my struggle in having to choose between old-growth forest and an itchy bum.) To add one more factor to the mix, we live on an island on the east coast of Canada, in a dark, cold, wet land that is covered with rocks and trees, and that therefore has almost no farming. Our 100-mile diet would consist of cabbages, carrots, beets and potatoes for much of the “winter” (October through May).

That being said, we still need to eat. And, in case this all sounds a little joyless, I happen to be a food lover from way back, and cooking is a favored hobby in our house. We get as much as we can from Fair Trade, small scale, local, organic, sustainably-harvested and ethically-raised sources as possible, and pay the premium for each adjective. We have started raising and preserving a fair amount of our own food, learning season extension techniques to broaden the scope of our gardening, raising bees and laying hens, and generally developing a slough of alternative homestead rural skills. But realistically, we don’t want to go back to a rural medieval peasant lifestyle. There are too many other things to do with our lives! Clearly trade-offs are necessary.

After my husband saw a documentary on banana plantations, he said, “That’s it. No more bananas, EVER. They’re a tropical fruit anyway, and we just shouldn’t be eating them.” At that point, bananas were the go-to food for the toddler. I finally persuaded him to compromise on organic bananas, because, I argued, at least the exploited plantation workers aren’t also being sprayed with toxins? Note the question mark. Most of my justifications sound like that. In fact, my thought processes were a lot more like this: “NOOOOOOO!!! What in the name of *$# are we going to feed him if you stop letting me buy bananas?!? Please, please don’t be right about this!”

It’s not just dinner; it’s a curriculum! Given the amount of thought that goes into it, it is hardly surprising that I get a little agitated when looking around the table at an array of nearly full plates, and the kids are each picking at a single food, and sighing. Michael Pollan finally offered me a kind help in his acknowledgments section, though, when he described his son as the ‘pickiest eater [he] knows’. And I thought to myself, “Oh, thank God.” Even my food guru has this problem. So, as I try to help children by helping myself, I have worked through some of the following issues, intellectually at least:

Wasting food. This is only an issue if we put too much on their plates in the first place… we always eat the leftovers that are still in the pot; they are my preferred lunch, as a matter of fact.
Frugal/cost. The one rule that we have stuck to consistently is that the kids are not allowed to have cereal for dinner. In fact, they aren’t allowed to eat any of the ‘single serve’ foods that we do purchase for occasional lunches. Their preferred substitutions for dinner are peanut butter, homemade whole grain bread, and a piece of fruit. I can’t reasonably fault them on this one.
Disrespect for the effort involved in making the food. This is about something other than food entirely, and doesn’t seem a reasonable justification for making people ignore messages from their body about what belongs in it. I’m still going to insist that rolling of eyes and sighing are not appropriate responses. Also, comments that sound like, “Eeeeew” are right out.
Health. We want them to eat well now so that they don’t get sick. This is entirely tied up in feeling like good parents, and this one I’m not willing to lose. However, it relies upon them eating a balanced diet, not necessarily upon them eating whatever weird vegan fair-trade organic produce we were keen on this week. We also want them to learn good eating habits so that they aren’t prone to pervasive and chronic illnesses as they get older. But I have to wonder, is this really an issue worth fighting over at the dinner table night after night?

Our current solution to the dinner problem involves holding hands and taking a deep breath together to acknowledge the transition to the dinner table. This one strategy made a significant difference in the number and degree of fights taking place. It is a chance to reconnect at the end of the day, and before the chaos of ‘getting ready for bed’. Since we all have to eat, we might as well eat together. We make something every night The house is full of healthful food, and there are all kinds of whole grains, nuts, legumes, raw veggies and fruit, (both dried and fresh) on offer at heights that they can reach. My kids almost never get sick, they are active and learning well, and, when pressed, I can name at least 20 – 30 athings that each of them will eat… although not the same 20 or 30 things. Oh, well. One thing at a time.

Filed under: Family, WorldView | Tagged: children, food | Leave a Comment »

Idea Collector

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Seonaid

I spend an enormous amount of time pondering the overall arch of my life. In front of me on the desk is a mock-up of a pamphlet that highlights the range of my experience, which goes from nuclear engineering plants (drafting of shut-down systems, studying the materials that surrounds the fuel rods), through universities (teaching physics, professional development for faculty members), to working at a professional theatre company (designing the website and teaching the call-centre staff how to use the new ticketing software). I have programmed computers and taught nursing professors how to structure their courses. I have classified patents and stayed up to all hours of the night grappling with poststructural philosophers. I have studied nuclear physics and the cultural creation of the concept of race. I cannot imagine how anybody looking at my resume in its entirety (which has never been assembled) could make any sense of it at all.

That being said, I have recently encountered Barbara Sher’s book, “Refuse to Choose”. Her assessment of the world is that, rather than being a fundamental flaw in my character, my desire to delve deeply into a new subject, but only for a little while, is a characteristic of being a “scanner”. This is somewhat reassuring, since my own inclination has always been that I was a little irresponsible, flighty, easily distracted… oh! shiny!

For me, the realm of ideas is continually challenging, continually refreshed, and continually confusing. I have recently been reading “real” philosophy (i.e. philosophers that make it onto the curriculum). In a radical act for me, I’m doing so without signing up for a course! At present, Wittgenstein is sitting on my desk. There’s a picture of him looking very thoughtful and intense on the cover, so I have a strange and illusory feeling of communion with the person himself, rather than simply the ideas he presents… if we can, in fact, separate one from the other. He, himself, has given me permission to think, although I do not believe that was his intent. He says on the first page of this book, “… what I have written here makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another” (emphasis mine). Now there is an intriguing thought. I have had a tendency to dismiss my thoughts as a result of conversations that go something like this:

Me: I was just thinking about this issue about the universe, and based on XYZ, I believe the following to be true!
Husband: That’s interesting. It’s very similar to what $well-known scientist/philosopher Q$ had to say about that issue.
Me (deflated): Oh. I thought I’d *finally* come up with something interesting to add to the Conversation. (meaning, I guess, novel)

It is interesting… I must believe something I don’t know. Rationally, that seems like an absurd standard to apply to myself, yet I repeatedly find that my ability to sit down and write is hindered by encountering this objection in my own mind. That’s why I don’t post more often. I find it extremely difficult to branch out into expressing my own thinking, despite the fact that thinking itself has been my primary activity across the years.

A much less well-known philosopher, Anthony Weston, recently gave me a Philosophical Imagination License. I have it posted on my wall above my desk. So, I guess this post might be to say, “Thank you, Anthony. I’ll give it a try.”

Filed under: Essays and Musings, WorldView | 2 Comments »