Rick Ogden Questions Jacob Ghitis On:
* Thought For Food *
Jacob, without a doubt this will be the most pleasant consciousness exercise yet created. To do this exercise you need a tool. That tool is selected by
you. Go to your favorite store and buy your favorite ice cream or fruity
sorbet. Sixteen ounces (half a liter) will do nicely, but if others are
going to also do this consciousness exercise with you, then they must all
have their own full containers, right? Otherwise, do this exercise alone!
The exercise. Get comfortable, and dress warmly in case you decide to
really rush through this exercise. Have your favorite spoon handy, and open
the container. Do this slowly, very slowly, very very slowly, but don't
take more than about one or two seconds.
Now start eating! Also very slowly as herein aforementioned.
RULES:
1. While you are eating, do whatever else you feel like doing except that you MUST NOT SHARE with anyone, and you must finish the entire container.
2. You should try to constantly be aware of the taste of the delicious flavors.
3. While you are eating, you should silently read the follow-up questions below.
Ask yourself, Jacob:
What does the container mean to me before I open it? Why am I having some pleasure now before the first taste? Is this at all like "opening my life" when I was born? Where is that feeling now?
How often am I actually NOT paying attention to the tasting but am thinking about something else or "lost in another perception?"
Why doesn't my ego join in and provide all sorts of commentary about how good it tastes, how wonderful the experience is, how lucky I am to have a consciousness exercise instructor instead of an exercise instructor? What is my "talker" saying about this? Wouldn't I consider myself to be enjoying this "a lot more" if I had "a lot more" words to accompany this experience?
At what point in the consumption did I notice "taste bud burn out"? When did I note that the pleasure of those first few mouthfuls was definitely not being matched by the subsequent spoonfuls? Where does my pleasant gustatory experience turn into plain old eating? How often do I, in daily life, eat past this point?
How does the taste of the spoon affect this experience?
What side of my mouth is "getting more fun"?
Do I have any food issues? Is part of me feeling "bad about enjoying this"? Should I feel bad about eating this? Or should I feel really really bad about eating this?
If tomorrow the government decreed that only this flavor would be permitted to be manufactured and sold from now on, how would I feel? What actually happens when I get tired of this same flavor? Why does my brain quit enjoying when the flavor remains the same?
What does the container mean to me when it is empty and I am full? Is this how I will feel when I am about to die? Would that be the right way to die?
Can all my desires be met right now without me dying?
If their is a God, does God eat?
************
Rick, You are offering a very long list of questions as if you believe that I am in the capacity to answer them by means of scientific facts or by a reasonable philosophical approach. You well know that I follow the principles of D-SP, which may be defined as a Philosophy of Science. I must find a common denominator of all or most of your questions in order to present a valid response.
You are presenting situations that are related to H. sapiens, in his capacity to meta-think, that is, to think about what he is thinking or doing. Then, you concentrate on matters of food and emotional reactions to it. While responding to your previous questionaire on emotions, I discovered that evolution is not exclusively a matter of improving organisms's fitness
for survival or multiplication. By D-SP methodology, I realized that our species takes in stride new evolutionary traits that simply appeal to its taste, and allows them to expand, for sheer pleasure or convenience. The example I offered was scripting, a word I use loosely to mean tracing lines either for drawing or for writing, since I believe that early drawings and paintings served actually as a means of communicating before writing proper evolved.
By the same line of reasoning, our taste preferences and sophistication are luxuries with no survival value, being called cultural determinants. From physical, emotional or moral aspects, personal reactions to foods are so vast in their differences, that there is no way of generalizing.
Nature comprises the results of the physical laws, H. sapiens included. But he is a unique creature capable of using those same laws to create artificial things better than the spontaneous --natural-- ones. A classical example is genes that confer clear-cut benefits to plants.
Neither nature or man have found a way of obtaining energy from foods without the need to excrete waste.
Can one really imagine a god making man in his image having to say, "Excuse me, I need to go to the lavatory"?
D-SP deals exclusively with subjects that can be placed in a frame of reference, meaning, that can be delimited. Then, it looks for their origin at some point since the big bang, following then a possible evolutionary pathway. Emergents and Resultants, leading to Complexity, complete the process.
