Allegory of the Long Spoons

There is a story that has permeated various religions about two rooms. The first room is in hell, where the people have row after row of tables with laden with a feast of delicacies. Yet the people sitting around these tables are emaciated, moaning in hunger. In their hands, each held a long spoon, but their arms were splinted to wooden flats, so they could not bend their elbows to bring the spoons to their mouths.

In heaven, there is an identical room, with people in the same predicament of spoons. However, in heaven, the people sitting around these tables are comfortably sated. There, the people had discovered that it was only possible to feed each other, by reaching across the table with their long spoons to bring the food to each others' mouths, being fed depended on everyone being kind to one another.

Recently, Mark Bittman had an article in The New York Times called, Why I'm Not A Vegan. It's more a promo for his book, VB6 (Vegan Before 6), a lifestyle choice he made for health reasons. The idea behind VB6 is to basically eat vegan until dinnertime, although he admits to frequent cheating. It's very similar to meatless Mondays, forms of scheduled moderation for diet and health.

I've written previously on this blog about the concept of ahmisa, but today I'm thinking about community, and how eating is a communal act.

Even when a person dines alone, rarely did they grow or hunt their food themselves, or at least, not all of it. They are the end of a (typically) long producer/consumer chain. In most cases, this chain is invisible. It brings to mind an article I read several years ago about how the definition of "cooking" has changed in America to include opening and heating up a can of soup.

With its invisible status, this producer/consumer chain is not considered part of most people's communities. But what if our thinking were to change? What if we started seeing eating as a form of engaging with community - not just through dinner conversation, but through product consumption? It might mean that we want more of connection to said products - by knowing the farmers, by shopping locally, by gardening ourselves, and that a faceless corporation is not a good dinner companion.

And what if we went beyond that? Aldo Leopold suggested the idea of in A Sand County Almanac, "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." What if we considered the pollinators such as bees, or the microbes in the soil, part of our community? They certainly contribute to our food production. What does it do to our thinking then?

What sort of spoon could you extend?

Indulgences

I was at Southern Exposure earlier this week for a meeting, and ended up telling folks there about this project. One interesting thing that was pointed out to me by Dave was that, if he were to become a shareholder, he could call himself a vegan while continuing to eat animal products. He would just be paying someone to eat vegan for him. As the purchased vegan in question, I hadn't considered this viewpoint yet.

Which brought to mind the idea of indulgences - the original meaning of the word. I'm not a Catholic, and although I think they were supposed to be more than "get out of hell free" cards, they basically were transactions of absolution.

Which is absurd - and also brings to question, is it really forgiveness/absolution if a person has to purchase it? Shouldn't something like that be freely given? And if it's not freely given, is it authentic?

Which brings me to carbon credits. Some environmentalists have criticized the idea of carbon offset dealing, because they feel it commodofies nature and things that should be free to all living things (ie. the atmosphere and temperature of the planet). Today I'm wondering if they, along with eating organic food, are the 21st Century version of indulgences.

Basically, it could suggest that as the vegan for sale, I am being paid to do good deeds in someone else's name.

Carbon Cube

In January, this project will be featured in the Wilson Gallery (no relation) at Moore College of Art and Design, as part of the exhibition, Beyond... Moore is my undergraduate alma mater, and the opportunity to launch this project there is a great honor.

As part of the exhibition, I've proposed to build the structure diagrammed above. It will be a cube built of PVC pipe, measuring 8.5x8.5x8.5 feet. It equals the space that 35 kilograms of CO2 takes up it the atmosphere. That amount is the amount of carbon dioxide that is prevented from being released in one week of vegan eating, according to this study.

The cube will be in the gallery space, and visitors will be able to walk around, into, and through it to understand how much carbon dioxide would be saved. The piece is a visual reference to Christophe Cornubert's piece in Copenhagen, although mine emphasizes what can be prevented through changes in diet.

I'm not sure seeing how much can be saved will convince a dedicated meat eater to change. But I hope it will open up some dialogue. It remains to be seen in January!

Food Police

I had a conversation recently with someone who misunderstood this project, who happened to ask me, "So, how much weight do you think you're going to lose?"

It took me a second to realize she wasn't joking. After clarifying the focus of this project, her comment has led me to think about the moralizing of food and eating that has happened in America. It brought me back to a night out with friends in my early twenties, when a friend turned to me as we placed our order and said, "I'm being bad: I'm drinking soda." Now, I'll admit soda is not a healthy option for a beverage, but her words implied a punishment was deserved for her crime.

I spent some time thinking this morning about how food moralizing is inflicted on women versus how it is on men in America. Women in this country learn, very early on, that thinness is equated with healthiness and our value as human beings. (This is not to discount the growing fat positive movement, which is awesome.) We are not taught to recognize healthy bodies, or even how to define a healthy body. I actually don't know how to describe what evaluation could be used to describe a healthy body based on non-medical knowledge and only on appearance, other than something like, "No evidence of rash, post-nasal drip or flu symptoms."

Which has led to dieting being a moral act, rather than a healthy choice. Kate Harding has a great post in the Shapely Prose archive about the "Fantasy of Being Thin," and how women are encouraged to diet as a means of coping with depression or saving a marriage, and how women often are convinced that weight loss will grant the prize of the good life. Or inversely, someone who is not thin does not deserve happiness.

Which leds me to food policing. Women do it to ourselves, telling ourselves that by eating the fat-free/low-carb/sugar-free/whatever we are being good, rather than making a choice about what we want to put into our bodies at that particular moment. This is not to criticize someone who is making informed food choices for personal, religious or health reasons, however they are defined by that individual. Instead, it is to clarify that eating a certain way does not equal virtue. The reward for dieting is not angel wings, a Ryan Gosling look-alike, or something else.

Not being a man, I can't claim familiarity with how men absorb America's perception of food morality. Though from the outside, I do think it is less focused on what is perceived as healthy for men and more focused on eating food that is equated with strength and hierarchy over the food chain: meat. Eating meat, by extension, suggests hunting and butchering, activities that are regarded as male. Additionally, the stereotype of eating meat is defined as pleasurable, while eating vegetables is perceived as work.

These concepts, albeit implying heteronormativity and generalizing though they may be, are examples of how our food morals are tied to gender roles - women must preserve their bodies in order to be beautiful (read:pleasing,acceptable, virtuous), men must eat that which demonstrates power.

Which brings me back to the comment about me losing weight. I'm not sure if the person automatically assumed that a woman doing a project about eating a certain way meant weight loss was a goal, but I think it may have been part of it.

So let me clarify: this project is not meant as a judgement on myself or anyone else. This project is not about altering my body or my weight. Not to deny the scientific evidence of the health benefits of a plant-based diet, but this project is to investigate how my carbon footprint and the carbon footprint of others intersect in the food system and food choices.

Click here to read the introduction and description of this project.

Introduction

Carbon Corpus is a project examining environmental issues and alternative economies. This project aims to not only educate others about how to make less of a carbon footprint, but also to examine and critique the difficulties of achieving this goal in modern society. I am beginning this project by selling the animal-based carbon credits to my own body to purchasers. In exchange for their purchase, I will eat a vegan diet for the period of time they purchase. Buyers will also receive certificates of the authenticity certifying my commitment and the amount of carbon offset. As the project develops, I will document the process, my decisions, my successes and failures photographically on this blog.

During this project, I aim to engage in a dialogue with those who purchase my body’s carbon credits, by asking questions as to what permissions they feel such a purchase grants them, and how they are choosing to behave. On my part, in addition to a vegan diet, I will make an effort to source my food as locally as possible, either from my own garden or local farmer’s markets. I also plan to build my own solar cooker, to further reduce some of the carbon generated in my own cooking processes.

I invite others to comment, critique, or suggest alternatives and possibilities with the goal of finding solutions for food system based global warming. Please feel free to leave comments or to contact me at michelle(at)michellewilsonprojects(dot)com.