If i wrote verse these days, i'd probably compose a sonnet about what a delightful day this is! It's cold and snowing lightly, but i'm sitting in my bedroom toasty-warm, in my favorite reading chair sipping a Campari-and-soda, watching the best Poirot to ever play the part (David Suchet) on Netflix.
Generations of our ancestors -- centuries upon centuries -- never knew the security that we have. Most of the poor around us, even, enjoy an immunity to many sorts of catastrophe that's absolutely unprecedented in history. Many people suffer from the poor nutrition that is epidemic in the developed world, but very few actually STARVE. This, again, is remarkable -- though only those of us who are students of every-day history may think of it often.
Do most people realize how extremely fortunate we are? I often wonder. I have relatives and acquaintances who do nothing but grouse about stupid, petty little grievances. So-and-so doesn't live the way i want them to! Their styles are so unlike my ideal! Even my child can see what's wrong with your world-view! I can't seem to lose that last five pounds! I can't eat my favorite dish because it gives me a belly-ache! We mustn't regulate that industry, because it will cost them more to operate and they might reduce their workforce and their stock might be worth less! Ad nauseum....
Learn to count your blessings and worry less about what your neighbor thinks. The tribe on the other side of the hill is VERY unlikely to be about to invade your village.
Showing posts with label perception/reality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perception/reality. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Sunday, June 3, 2012
the glamour of the unknown
I almost wrote a post about the "problem" of advertising influencing children, the availability of proscribed substances to them (AND to adults), and the place of the parents in all this brouhaha.... It's hard to discourage the immature mind from pursuing deleterious substances and behaviors, especially when they may be looked on as something of a rite-of-passage into an autonomous style of existence. The young long for adulthood, because they see all of these shiny "toys" they aren't allowed to play with (yet), and suppose that attainment will mean happiness ... or at least a less limited life.
We seem to be hard-wired to want to push boundaries, even into the realm of ugliness and degradation. The bad boy/girl is an attractive image in our culture -- someone who breaks free and goes after what they want, no matter who gets trampled in the rush. I believe the appeal lies in novelty, escaping routines and seeing enticing possibilities. In actual experience, after the initial excitement is past, new routines will assert themselves and the limitations will be just as great as before. It may be "different" but it can also be mighty uncomfortable.
When we grow up, all of the "toys" become less of a joy and more of a responsibility. Now that we are allowed to stay up as late as we want, eat and drink what we will, buy anything we can afford -- essentially, do whatever we please -- we learn to see the downside, and why limiting our pleasures increases our enjoyment of them. The grass IS green ... but there's a bunch of dandelions in it, and it needs mowing regularly. We can shirk the responsibilities that come our way, but there are repercussions ... some of them nasty.
We see the hypnotic effect of this "glamour of the unknown" VERY often in living history. A huge number of people are enamoured of the past; i'm very curious about how they think their personal lives would really be different, had they been born 100, 200, 500 years before. DETAILS would be different, but you get up in the morning, do your allotment of work, interact with your family, eat, sleep and wear clothing, don't get everything you want, have experiences you'd rather avoid, and get your heart broken just the same as nowadays. Without internet. New reenactors dash out and get fancy clothes and equipment, but the ladies lace their corsets less tightly with every passing year....
This may be the reason why a good fantasy never goes out of style: being "impossible" to experience, the bloom can never be lost from it. But it isn't just the fancy trappings that create the appeal of those "far-away places with strange-sounding names" -- is a palm tree better than an oak, a rum cocktail better than a glass of wine, 100-degree heat better than 20-degree chill? What we really want when we make a cultural escape is to start over, and maybe get it right this time. We carry our problems with us, though -- inside our heads and hearts. A different locale, more toys, prettier clothes, A THINNER BODY, etc. is not going to improve things a bit without a mental adjustment as well.
Wanting things we don't have, because an advertiser convinces us to think THINGS will make us happy, is a cycle of frustration. This includes "things" like vacations, taste experiences, new lovers, almost anything! Thumb your nose at them, and teach your kids to do the same.
We seem to be hard-wired to want to push boundaries, even into the realm of ugliness and degradation. The bad boy/girl is an attractive image in our culture -- someone who breaks free and goes after what they want, no matter who gets trampled in the rush. I believe the appeal lies in novelty, escaping routines and seeing enticing possibilities. In actual experience, after the initial excitement is past, new routines will assert themselves and the limitations will be just as great as before. It may be "different" but it can also be mighty uncomfortable.
When we grow up, all of the "toys" become less of a joy and more of a responsibility. Now that we are allowed to stay up as late as we want, eat and drink what we will, buy anything we can afford -- essentially, do whatever we please -- we learn to see the downside, and why limiting our pleasures increases our enjoyment of them. The grass IS green ... but there's a bunch of dandelions in it, and it needs mowing regularly. We can shirk the responsibilities that come our way, but there are repercussions ... some of them nasty.
We see the hypnotic effect of this "glamour of the unknown" VERY often in living history. A huge number of people are enamoured of the past; i'm very curious about how they think their personal lives would really be different, had they been born 100, 200, 500 years before. DETAILS would be different, but you get up in the morning, do your allotment of work, interact with your family, eat, sleep and wear clothing, don't get everything you want, have experiences you'd rather avoid, and get your heart broken just the same as nowadays. Without internet. New reenactors dash out and get fancy clothes and equipment, but the ladies lace their corsets less tightly with every passing year....
This may be the reason why a good fantasy never goes out of style: being "impossible" to experience, the bloom can never be lost from it. But it isn't just the fancy trappings that create the appeal of those "far-away places with strange-sounding names" -- is a palm tree better than an oak, a rum cocktail better than a glass of wine, 100-degree heat better than 20-degree chill? What we really want when we make a cultural escape is to start over, and maybe get it right this time. We carry our problems with us, though -- inside our heads and hearts. A different locale, more toys, prettier clothes, A THINNER BODY, etc. is not going to improve things a bit without a mental adjustment as well.
Wanting things we don't have, because an advertiser convinces us to think THINGS will make us happy, is a cycle of frustration. This includes "things" like vacations, taste experiences, new lovers, almost anything! Thumb your nose at them, and teach your kids to do the same.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
"American" diet
Catching up on superficial "news" of my friends and family on Facebook, i noticed the Weston Price posting about rice consumption in Asia. I began idly reading some of the comments....
Most instructive, probably, were ones by people who moved to various oriental countries from foreign lands; the pattern seemed to go, "foreigners always think X, but Y is closer to the truth." I think this observation is pretty universal.
Until you live in a place for a significant time, and are cooked-for by natives of that place in their everyday fashion, it's not easy to tell what those people really eat. I'll use my own home country as an example.
I grew up in the middle of the U S of A, in the middle of the twentieth century. We weren't well-off; my mother worked as a secretary since my early childhood; she did a good part of the cooking, though my sisters and grandmother (who lived with us for awhile) also did kitchen work. We ate "balanced" meals, with animal protein, vegetables and starches for dinner every night (rarely dessert), and various things in moderation for other meals -- eggs, cereal, sandwiches, canned soup, etc. We had minimal snacks and "drinks" (those are expensive). My grandmother was obese, my mother "plump" and my sisters lean -- i, a hypothyroid, was chubby till my teen years.
My best friends in childhood and high-school had different situations, one richer and the other as poor as we (but less organized -- less home-cooking in both); their foods were different but "recognizable," and these friends and their families were also lean. So what was American food in those days, cereal, cold cheese sandwich with margarine on white bread, kool-aid, fried chicken, canned vegetables, hotdogs, lots of potatoes...? Today, i would refuse to eat it.
While i had guests in my house over the past month, i tried to cook meals (when we DID eat "in") that would be a compromise between what i wanted to eat and what they would enjoy; i cooked a liver casserole with onions and bacon (because i knew my mother, sister and niece like liver), fresh vegetables, mashed white sweet-potatoes, oven-braised brisket, grilled steaks, salads, that sort of thing. When we ate out, my guests continued to order what i would call "real food." Is this what "foreigners" consider American food, these days? Or do they think what ALL people eat on vacation is typical of everyday fare?
In hotels, a "free" breakfast is frequently offered which is comprised of the worst possible "food" imaginable -- might as well guzzle straight sugar! The kinds of restaurants which cluster around tourist-attractions and places of entertainment are far from representative of the kind of food which family members (who are less carb-conscious than i) typically cook, eat, or even order in REAL restaurants. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, IHOP, Pasta House, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, etc are NOT REAL RESTAURANTS. Allow me to coin a new term -- these are Junkfood Parlors. They do not serve American FOOD. Americans may eat there, but it's far from typical, just like the statistics on how much sugar is consumed is not typical of me, my family, or of anyone i hang around with.
So it is for a lot of countries, i'm sure. When it comes to white rice in Asia or sweet-potatoes in Kitava, the mere fact that these foods are eaten as a PROPORTION OF DIET means less than what measured quantity of them are eaten at once, and in what context.
Most instructive, probably, were ones by people who moved to various oriental countries from foreign lands; the pattern seemed to go, "foreigners always think X, but Y is closer to the truth." I think this observation is pretty universal.
Until you live in a place for a significant time, and are cooked-for by natives of that place in their everyday fashion, it's not easy to tell what those people really eat. I'll use my own home country as an example.
I grew up in the middle of the U S of A, in the middle of the twentieth century. We weren't well-off; my mother worked as a secretary since my early childhood; she did a good part of the cooking, though my sisters and grandmother (who lived with us for awhile) also did kitchen work. We ate "balanced" meals, with animal protein, vegetables and starches for dinner every night (rarely dessert), and various things in moderation for other meals -- eggs, cereal, sandwiches, canned soup, etc. We had minimal snacks and "drinks" (those are expensive). My grandmother was obese, my mother "plump" and my sisters lean -- i, a hypothyroid, was chubby till my teen years.
My best friends in childhood and high-school had different situations, one richer and the other as poor as we (but less organized -- less home-cooking in both); their foods were different but "recognizable," and these friends and their families were also lean. So what was American food in those days, cereal, cold cheese sandwich with margarine on white bread, kool-aid, fried chicken, canned vegetables, hotdogs, lots of potatoes...? Today, i would refuse to eat it.
While i had guests in my house over the past month, i tried to cook meals (when we DID eat "in") that would be a compromise between what i wanted to eat and what they would enjoy; i cooked a liver casserole with onions and bacon (because i knew my mother, sister and niece like liver), fresh vegetables, mashed white sweet-potatoes, oven-braised brisket, grilled steaks, salads, that sort of thing. When we ate out, my guests continued to order what i would call "real food." Is this what "foreigners" consider American food, these days? Or do they think what ALL people eat on vacation is typical of everyday fare?
In hotels, a "free" breakfast is frequently offered which is comprised of the worst possible "food" imaginable -- might as well guzzle straight sugar! The kinds of restaurants which cluster around tourist-attractions and places of entertainment are far from representative of the kind of food which family members (who are less carb-conscious than i) typically cook, eat, or even order in REAL restaurants. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, IHOP, Pasta House, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, etc are NOT REAL RESTAURANTS. Allow me to coin a new term -- these are Junkfood Parlors. They do not serve American FOOD. Americans may eat there, but it's far from typical, just like the statistics on how much sugar is consumed is not typical of me, my family, or of anyone i hang around with.
So it is for a lot of countries, i'm sure. When it comes to white rice in Asia or sweet-potatoes in Kitava, the mere fact that these foods are eaten as a PROPORTION OF DIET means less than what measured quantity of them are eaten at once, and in what context.
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