On Tuesday, I picked up the local newspaper The Oneonta Star. A story on p. 2 said that 15% of American households had "trouble keeping food on the table."
This was not defined further, so my imagination went to work. First, I wondered if they had uneven tables, and the food was rolling off. Secondly, I wondered if that was a common goal of Americans, to keep food on the table. In my house, we keep it in the refrigerator.
Is this perhaps too literal?
It's as if someone said, "many Americans have trouble keeping a roof over their head," and I was to say, "Many Americans like to go for a hike in nature. For them, it would be an odd priority to keep a roof over their head."
Or if you said, "I have trouble keeping gasoline in my car," and I replied, "Have you checked for a leak in the fuel line?"
Maybe some Americans keep live chickens on the table, and the chickens run off.
But let's imagine the phrase ending in "table" was meant in a figurative sense, in which "table" represents food, and the ability to buy it.
A report issued last week by the USDA entitled, "Household Food Security in the US 2009" was the basis for the article in the Star, so I googled it. It had charts, prevalence of hunger in various states (worse in the deep south than the northeast). Hispanic hunger is prevalent and growing, and probably off the charts in illegal alien populations (it's difficult to track).
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err108/
The Socialist Weekly warns that lack of food resources will become the basis of a revolutionary uprising:
"The American ruling class is creating the conditions for an explosion from below..."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/pers-n17.shtml
In this area (upstate New York), many people shoot deer to make it through the winter. Fortunately, the local elementary school has food programs that give out free lunches. This program has some dreary name, but is useful for many children who get to eat at least one good meal a day.
There have been times when it's been difficult for my family to eat well. I find it hard to buy fruit or vegetables because of their cost. Crummy yogurt with lots of sugar replaces the better creamier Greek yogurts that I prefer. I would like to drink organic orange juice and eat organic chocolate, but find it's too expensive. I get huge drums of oatmeal because it's filling and relatively inexpensive. I look for Bogos. For people who have lost their job, and have children, the situation is worse. With no access to government programs, can churches fill the bill for illegals? Should they?
The "Household Food Security in the US 2009" report says that thanks to food stamps, and WIC, and some other sources, the situation is not too bad, but there are still 43% of the underfed who don't have access to these programs (illegal aliens?). Few would like to admit that they use these programs, but they are important to many. 42 million Americans receive food stamps. Obama is trying to cut back on the program, according to the Socialist Weekly World. According to their article, there are often "one or more people" in a family who went without food each week due to lack of money.
In graduate school in Seattle, I went one summer eating only potatoes with margarine, and a dash of pepper or salt. I went to food programs, and stood in line with people who looked like extras in a zombie flick. We loaded up on out-of-date cottage cheese, and flexible carrots, a carton of day-old milk, and wobbled out the door to prepare to see if we could keep it down. I couldn't and threw it all out and went back to the potatoes. I had a rich friend or two (I had several professors for friends) who would invite me over every week or two, and I would eat everything on my plate (French cheese and real salad!) while they talked about Being and Nothingness.
I have never had "keeping food on the table" as an objective. I keep food in the refrigerator. If it is the objective to "keep food on the table" I suggest velcro, nails, or glue to keep it there. If that doesn't work, I suggest using the refrigerator.
If however the phrase is meant figuratively, I think getting a job would be a high priority. If you're not legal, go home.
For Americans, we can no longer think that our borders are the ends of our ethical obligations, nor can we accept all people around the world moving here, since we already have millions of starving people. People starving all over the world (one child starves to death every five seconds) need our help, but the help has to be structural, not literal. We need to think about how to ethically reduce the population worldwide (not with bombs but with condoms), and raising awareness of how to create sustainable solutions to hunger.
We should also develop ethical ideals toward animals and farming.
28 comments:
Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.
Not so "scandalously inadequate" after all.
I'd forgotten this Heidegger quote. Strangely, one of my professors often discussed Heidegger, but not this specific quote.
It's a strange quote though because food keeps people alive, whereas the extermine camps, deliberate creations of famine, and bombs, do exactly the opposite. So why did he say this? I'd rather eat a Hot Pocket than just have the gas turned on. There is a similarity in terms of the technological aspect, but the intentions are vastly different. I still see this as evidence of Heidegger's ghastly mind.
No, I think the overwhelming evidence of the destructive capability of the motorized food industry (see Food, Inc. for an example) bears out the truth of Heidegger's statement.
Also, why are all philosophers such awful people?
I'm not sure they all are awful people. Some that weren't too bad include:
George Berkeley
Immanuel Kant
Saint Anselm
William of Ockham
William James
Aristotle
Socrates
These people weren't noticeably worse than the societies that surrounded them, and in some instances (Berkeley) seem to have been quite good eggs.
There is always something wrong with everyone (fallen condition), but I don't think philosophers are worse than the others.
Even Heidegger if you think about him as a Nazi, as Nazis go, wasn't really that bad. He had his lederhosen, his affairs (with Hannah Arendt, among others), and he was a member of the Nazi party, but he also liked to hike, and was eloquent.
His major problem was that he didn't seem to have ANY sense of humor whatsoever, nor to have even noticed that humor exists in the world. In that sense, he was a diminished human being, but certainly a better human being than Himmler or Hitler or the others, even if he wasn't seemingly averse to the Final Solution, and saw the Extermination Camps as similar to a Hot Pockets factory (if you've ever eaten a Hot Pocket you might agree with Heidegger!).
He had affairs.
At least one. With Hannah Arendt, a Jewish woman. Most feminists think he took advantage of her. But Arendt also broke the law against adultery by sleeping with Martin.
It's odd that almost no one inside of Arendt Studies considers her culpable. They only see her as a victim.
It's so weird!
In terms of food production, not all food production is horrible. Some is done with a sense of social concern. There are various places you can rate your food, and look at it from a number of angles. This page looks at diversity of work force, at quality of ingredients, and at other issues.
Most companies will dump sugar and fat in their products because most people love that stuff and can't stop eating it. It's almost like selling heroin. It gets you hooked.
A similar thing would be pornography. It's not good for you, but the idea is to get you hooked.
This page looks at decent contrasts with Hot Pockets Panini sandwiches, for instance.
Amy's has a good reputation, as does Bird's Eye Stir Fries.
Heidegger thought all industrial production was horrifying, because he wanted people to have an individual relationship with the things they touch. He thought industrialization killed BEING.
Not so much.
Factories have sped up production, but they have also enhanced efficiency and in some cases, quality, and certainly, prices.
Prices have to be low enough for people to be able to afford the things that are being sold.
And most American products are more ethically made than the same things made in China.
But then of course some people have trouble keeping food on the table. This could be because the food is lopsided, or the table is lopsided, or both.
I forgot to link the page:
http://www.goodguide.com/products/247562-hot-pockets-panini-sandwich-bruschetta-chicken
The San Francisco Chronicle reported a few days ago that the ethnic composition of California Schools was now over 50% Hispanic--self-described. Doubtless, there are many who don't want to be described as Hispanic, so the number is probably higher.
I think a lot of people have become complacent about this problem. They're living in, say, an imaginary 1972, in which minorities are still small percentages of the population. When whites made up the vast majority of people residing here, and our schools were predominantly white.
A lot of the complacent tolerance of illegality in our state is, I believe, founded on just this kind of ignorance. "Oh, illegals comprise such a small minority of the total population, that we can afford to entertain their presence, it's a small price to pay for their diligent work and law-abiding habits."
But illegals are not only overwhelming our economy, and our welfare rolls, they're overwhelming our schools. Demanding bi-lingual instruction, and extra attention, and extra time, and extra consideration, and free tuition, and free expenses. It's a free-for-all! Come all ye starving and huddled masses of Mexico and Central and South America, we have plenty of room, and plenty of jobs, and free medical care, and free schools, and free legal assistance, and they're all world-class. We Americans are a generous, accommodating lot, we'll take care of you, we'll give you what you need. If you have to sneak under fences and inside car trunks and cargo containers or in the holds of makeshift submarines, that's just fine. We don't care how you got here, or what you may have done in your previous life. Once you're here, you're welcome to everything on our table. You can have our houses, our jobs, our insurance coverage, our schools, our transportation systems. This is YOUR country--it's waiting for you. What took you so long? Tell your neighbors, tell your relatives. Stop all deportations now! Annex Mexico! Annex Honduras. Annex all of Central America! We can handle it. We're rich. Our bounty is unlimited. And we want to! We want to save the world from hunger and hopelessness. We're the saviors of the earth! We're God's angels. Come share HIS bounty!
A California high court also just ruled that illegal aliens don't have to pay out-of-state tuition charges at California institutions of higher learning. If you're a citizen of another state and want to attend UC Berkeley, you'll pay five times what an in-state student will pay, but if you're a California illegal alien, you get to pay in-state tuition. This conflicts directly with Federal law regarding equality of treatment of tuition charges, but the California court doesn't care. California taxpayers can damn well pay for Mexican citizens to get a higher education. Certainly it's our due. We deserve this burden. Oh come all ye scholars of Mexico! We'll give you bachelors, we'll give you masters, we'll give you doctorates! Free of charge! WE CAN AFFORD IT!
Our State may be drowning in debt up to its ears, but WE CAN AFFORD IT! It's the least we can do for you Mexicans. After all the horrible things that we've done, all the agony and tyranny we've perpetrated upon you. YOU DESERVE IT!
Anglicizing the names of more than half of the cities might be a good starting point.
Are you having a Christmas poetry contest?
WW
My GoogleID keeps rolling off of the table. Google finally set up a diagnostic trouble shooter on their Help line. They put out five different URLs for the same page and asked how many of them I could open. I opened 1, 2 and 3 with no problem, which means the problem isn't on their end. I could open #5, which means the problem isn't my computer, but #4 was a clinker, incontrovertible proof that the snag is my local ISP. They fixed it yesterday afternoon and it still works now, but if I close my browser or turn off my computer my ID will probably roll off of the table again.
Wendy, yes, but will probably wait until about the 20th of December to open it.
The San Francisco Chronicle article on the California schools, also had the audacity to suggest that, rather than spending more money to teach all the Latino kids English, maybe it's time the American kids learn Spanish instead.
This is called taking over a country. It isn't assimilation, it's occupation.
Spanish is part of a vast collapsed colonial empire that lapsed into total inconsequentiality. To learn the language is to doom yourself to economic inconsequence. To foist it on children is to doom them to dumbness. This is why everybody is trying to get OUT of Mexico, S. America, the Philippines, etc. They are useless communist countries which -- like Cuba -- are taking a cautious look at capitalism.
But they are basically the countries that gave us Cheech and Chong and really have nothing else to offer.
I think many people inside the Anglophone tradition don't realize that we function so well not because of gangsterism, but because of the Protestant work ethic, and the notions of fairness worked out by centuries and centuries of English legal and theological thought.
It's the same thing if we adopt Sharia law.
One of the great crimes of our current government is to not recognize the beauty of our legal system, and to begin to try terrorists in civil proceedings. You won't hear anything about the crimes being tried in NYC this week on any mainstream channel.
We are vying with many different cultures. We have pretty much put paid to communist cultures, and yet they persist. Never forget that China (which is eating our lunch) is a communist country.
We have all the exploded vestiges of Spanish colonial empires trying to move here, and take over our functioning system.
But we have also the creeps of Al Qaeda and those who support them. The Democrats are pretty much in league with Al Qaeda, offering ot try their operatives in civil courts. A man named Ghailani whose work includes the purchase of a Nissan refrigeration truck and packing it with a thousand pounds of TNT and also oxygen tanks and other stuff that turned it into a WMD, was acquitted on all but 1 of some 299 charges. His bomb managed to kill 244 people.
Most of the socalled multiculturals think it's great these people got killed.
People don't really understand that some cultures work better because they are fairer inside than other cultures. It's an odd thing to try to understand, but cultures are COMPETING for superiority. Some are more competitive, and the Protestant work ethic is hard to beat.
The hippies tried to wear it down.
Communists and Catholics also think it's somehow wrong. But the problem is that the alternatives are lazy and sloppy and starve everybody inside of them, and they also kill off scientific initiative as well as entreprenurial initiative.
Race, gender class should not be the ways in which we affiliate. We should affiliate around Anglo-American culture, which is the best.
Even the French suck by comparison.
But race is a very compelling affiliation. It's why Ghailani was freed by Obama, or at least remanded to a civil court. And once there, he was almost freed by one juror who apparently saw him as innocent on the basis of race:
"One clue to the outcome emerged on the third day of deliberations, when juror number 12, a middle-aged black woman, sent a note to the judge complaining that she was being "attacked" by other jurors for reaching a different conclusion than the others that she refused to change her mind. The judge declined her request to be excused, and deliberations resumed. While many trial watchers and participants inferred that note meant the jury was deadlocked, perhaps 11 to 1 for guilt, that was never confirmed, but a leading theory is the result might have been a compromise verdict."
CBS NEws
Some of the people from India are with us. Dinesh D'Souza is with us, and is one of our best interpreters and allies.
twinkies taken out of the plastic wrap and left on the table will stay there for a long time even if the table tilts even if it is tipped over the twinkie will stay so twinkies have a way of being food that will keep right on the table there keep on keeping on till time is no more they tend to shrink and get a little crumby but
a twinkie is a twinkie is a twinkie
the protestant work ethic demands a sort of servitude that is generally inhuman it is a mechanical thing it demands a certain suspension of reason
people should work in order to live
not the other way around
even augustine believed in otium
for christians
the protestant work ethic sounds a lot like a phrase form last century
arbeit macht frei
leisure is the basis of culture
everything else is just frenetic illusion
the mexicans have given us so much
we need to embrace them and let them know we love them a little more
if you get vegetables on your table from california chances are hispanic people harvested those vegetables
it's a good idea for young people to learn languages other than their own and they might as well learn one that allows them to speak to their neighbors
spanish is still the language of love and poetry par excellence
guitars some great guitars coming out of mexico these days
mariachi
chile rolleno
freida khalo
a whole bunch of baseball players
and they were very entrepeneurial in the 60s - 2010 in providing ways for americans to pursue enjoyments that hollywood and shopping malls just could not provide
there are more than enough empty houses and apartments at this very moment in USA to house and provide shelter for people for everyone who is homeless and perhaps an "alien" ( be kind to the alien in your midst- that sounds to me like a good biblical ethical stance that is rooted in the reality of the hic et nunc)...what's the problem - real estate ethics?
think of all the roofs
when the latinos and the chinese finally take over we will find it much easier to digest the social ethos of roman catholicism
more is to be gained by charity and respect than by protectionism and fear
the protestant work ethic does not even consider things like the dignity of the worker
it's compensatorial enslavement
it's the robber barrons
it's the rise of corporate inhuman identities
it's programmatic self abnegation
the protestant work ethic only really works for women
i think we should apply that ethic to them they seem to need to work and keep things all in order but men real men that is need more freedom
we can't be bound by social imprisonment we're not task oriented people
like all women are
no all real men need time to read books and do water colors of clouds
american professional sports is the apex of meaning for the protestant work ethic
now that the girls are getting in on that action it is all over but the cryin
can you imagine women's pro hockey without checking i mean what in the world how could they restrict those girls from checking i mean that's like saying we're going to use a little nerf ball instead of a puck...the hockey rinks are starting to smell of chanel no.5 instead of mansweat
i can't take anymore of it
if we could just get the women of this country to turn their attentions for a few years to the hispanic people and have them do everything that is necessary to make the lives of these people livable here on this sacred soil maybe it would all work out alright
maybe obama could say that to the feminists..hey girls it's time for you to step in and take care of this one problem...and be nice to the men while you're at it
with all the food that is tossed out and wsted every day in this land of plenty you'd think we'd find more creative ways to get some of that food to people who could use it
the melting pot needs some spices it's getting rather homogenous and boring
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The collapsed Spanish empire is not "inconsequential" at all in the country where I reside. It's the reason 80% of the population still belongs to the Catholic Church. Without the church the country would need a democratic government that actually functions. The country was run by Islamic sultans for three centuries before Magellan arrived in time for lunch. The sultanates still exist as a kind of invisible empire in the Catholic sub-basement. The sultanates persist because the country is the main Christian enclave in an archipelago that is predominantly and officially Muslim. There's a cultural geology at work that deeply influences what happens on the surface without consciously directing or controlling it.
A Catholic or a Muslim can join the Lutheran Church, follow and subscribe to its practices, and still have miles to go before Lutheranism is fully ingrained in their Being. Both of my grandmothers died Methodist, but in my blood I have three or four centuries of Lutheran heritage. How do you calculate the influence of cultural geology?
craig it appears that you have completely chucked the protestant work ethic
it's the only protestant move i endorse anymore
everything else that happens in the name of protestantism frightens me
catholic political power can be rather tyrannical when it comes to defending the rights of simple people
benedictines have flourished in the phillipines
is there a form of music that somehow expresses the filipino spirit...what might it be called
the influence of cultural geography
do we possess an inner-landscape?
a city person is generally a bit temperamentally different than a rural person
jh
My understanding is that the Augustinians arrived first, establishing a foothold in the 16th century when it was basically a suicide mission. They were followed by the Franciscans, the Jesuits and the Dominicans at the end of the 16th century.
The Jesuits were expelled in the middle of the 18th century during what Europe called the Seven Years War, but returned to Mindanao around the time of the American Civil War. They moved north to Luzon shortly before the Revolution and were replaced in Mindanao by the Benedictines, who first arrived in 1895 when it was apparent that, one way or another, the Spanish era was at an end. Protestant denominations arrived with the American military after the Revolution.
I don't recollect ever abandoning the work ethic. But I have had a devil of a time establishing a getting paid ethic. Fortunately for me, my mother-in-law is a devout Catholic. Her live-in caregiver is a Carmelite singing nun from Burkina Faso. I just sent them the You-Tube for Dominique. She's fluent in French and will add it to her repertoire.
benedictines have often been the beneficiaries of franciscans jesuits and others who had build churches and schools...although the order can boast its share of daring missionaries as well
a few monks from st johns were integral to the settling of san beda
if a man has some leisure to focus his mind on things of particular importance like gritty history or poetry then nothing else need matter - coffee a little food some good will - these things go a long way
interesting thinking of a young nun today who may never have seen Dominique
that lady sort of rocked
i've heard a thing referred to as "island electric" a way of playing fender electric guitars that is unique to the south pacific
the south pacific
sounds so peaceful
jh
The Pacific island version of reggae is called vude, pronounced voonday. The pronunciation is really more melanesian than polynesian with d and b preceded by an invisible n and with c pronounced as th.
I tutored a student from the Solomons for awhile who graduated from a high school in Hawaii earlier this year and is now doing well in community college. I never would have guessed that the Church of the Solomon Islands was founded by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's great grand nephew. The locals killed him, but not before he'd already translated a major portion of the bible into a local language that didn't have an alphabet when he got there. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner truly belongs to multicultural studies.
The course of nature is used as the underpinning of economic thought in this talk by Epstein, a Chicago economist who disses Obama and Obamacare, as one who knew Obama and says he had way too much confidence for a guy who knew almost nothing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRut_LTJpwI&feature=player_embedded
Table can also be a verb. When the British table something it means they're ready to talk about it. Americans understand that to mean it's not worth talking about, at least for the time being.
Let's table all talk of tabling table talk until we can talk further about what it means to table talk about food.
I pasted your link on Google Search and got no match.
The original is at Althouse's blog, where I find everything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvTagjEmsU0&feature=related
Here's a link that works.
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