Coded gray.

Monday 16 September 2002

Screenshot The Sims

Pic of the day: It's meat - more than you would believe - but is it meat all the way down?

It's still meat?

Introduction: I grew up on a farm, and the small animals were like friends to me – not that I had many other friends. But eventually my furry friends were killed by my family and ended up on the dinner table. This was kinda hard for me. Even now, I find it hard to look at large parts of meat and not see the living creature that once was. Meat is after all just muscles, and there is even the vague feeling that it could have been me. Not bloody likely, but apart from our spirit we are also animals and I cannot forget that.

One nifty thing about modern food is that it is often heavily processed. When made into hamburgers, sausages or spaghetti sauce, the meat doesn't look familiar anymore. This makes it more palatable to those of us who have a certain revulsion against seeing dead bodies, especially of the innocent. But if you think about it, it is still meat.

***

Expansion: Mankind has a long tradition for processing food. More and more scientists now believe that early humans were not so much hunters as scavengers, finding dead or dying animals to supply protein and fat. For some obscure reason, humans don't have the intense instinctive fear of fire, and so came to discover the art of barbecuing, baking and eventually cooking. It may be that our original taste for somewhat softened meat (ahem) contributed to this. Anyway, since long before recorded history we have been in the habit of changing our food through the use of fire. We also added the habit of mixing foods, like meat and grain, also a step more removed from the original form of the food.

Today, food is often so heavily processed that it is easy to forget what it once was. And this is not the only aspect of our life where we do this. We hide (or exaggerate) our bodies in clothes that are far more advanced than needed for protection or modesty. Our homes have advanced from caves to intricate structures with different rooms, shaped and decorated according to their intended use. And our behavior! There are layers upon layers of refinement. But in some ways, it is still meat.

***

Metaphor: We do things for a reason, just like my overly hairy 4-legged friends. Like them, we have basic needs that drive our behavior. But unlike them, we don't just locate food and then apply our mouth to it. No, the food goes through a long chain of processing, and then it is arranged in a decorative way and eaten using special implements and observing various rituals; often the social aspect of the meal is more important than hunger. It is easy to forget that the underlying need, instinct if you will, is still the same.

In the same way other aspects of our advanced behavior can be traced back to simple core needs that we share with animals. The goats, for instance, used to fight to maintain their position in the herd. The stronger goat would routinely humiliate the weaker, just briefly, to make it clear who was boss. This can be useful when food is scarce: The leader will get the food and the weak will fall by the wayside. But today in much of the world there is more food than we can possibly eat. There is no lack of protection against the rain, and carnivores are not nipping at the heels of those in the rear. Yet still the fight for status is going on like before. There are all kinds of reasons given. But that's just processing. Inside, it is still meat – it is still the animal nature doing its stuff.

Being long-lived and part of complex societies, we have also developed such things as romance instead of just doing it the bunny way. Anything from days to months may pass while the most elaborate steps are carried out, circling, circling, trying to get ever closer to the goal. This can certainly be entertaining, in much the same way as a truly elaborate meal has a lot of added value compared to just tearing into the carcass. But deep down, it's still just meat.

And so I have wondered: Is there truly any spiritual part of our life? You cannot define this simply by church membership and such: It is often all too obvious that church people fight like beasts over their position and who to wear the bell and lead the flock. And in the past, churches have been used as meeting places to obtain such earthly goals as closing a trade deal or finding a suitable lifemate. Yet, I like to believe that for some people, there is something left when you subtract all this. That there is something that's not meat at the core.

In the same way with art and music. It isn't all to impress the neighbors or to set the proper mood before satisfying each other's needs. There seems to be something left, not just in the packaging, but at the core. We might evade this by saying that we have a religious instinct or a musical instinct and so on. Certainly sociobiologists seem to believe that it is meat all the way down ... unless it helps bring the genes onward to a new generation, it would simply not have survived to reach us today. It would have been extinct. So per definition everything that has survived from the past must be part of survival of the fittest.

I am not so sure. Yes, I believe there is really really much of what we do that is just meat. Just animal nature processed and decorated and packaged to look different. But there seems to be something that defies explanation. It is easy to see why boys like girls and bees like flowers; but why do girls like flowers? Flowers are generally not edible, and they are not really necessary for reproduction. (Though they are known to help sometimes. Ahem. Or so I have heard ...) There is beauty - and beauty seems to have its own life, that goes beyond need. It's not all meat ... just almost all.

Conclusion: Much of what we do is just what animals do, only we make it horribly complex and indirect. But in this mishmash, there seems to be some small part that is sneaking by, like a parasite on our animal body. This, I believe, is the human spirit. Subtle, almost unnoticeable at times, it still pervades all that we do and all that we are, and make us so unique in this world.


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: Before a fall
Two years ago: Wanting more and more
Three years ago: The Matrix strikes back

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