The American industrial food complex is inching this country towards disaster. The living soil upon which we stand is disappearing as we mine it and line it with corn. The blue air through which we move is eating through our ozone layer as we feed our addictions to red meat and gasoline. The creeks in which we wade are tinted with the toxins of our technologies. And the very bodies with which we laugh and love are collapsing under the stress of our easy living.
But there are signs of resistance, bumps in the rolling inertia of the industrial machine. Small-scale farming movements are gaining momentum. Farmers' markets full of organic produce and pastured proteins are popping up in most cities. Awareness is spreading, and voices are being raised. People have awakened to the fact that convenience and homogeneity are not the criteria of a good lifestyle.
Last week I had lunch with a friend who is a long-term vegan. When she ordered her veggie burrito with no cheese or sour cream, I asked about the reasons for her abstinence. I personally avoid conventionally raised meat products and try to only eat pastured eggs, and I was interested in learning what led her to the more extreme position of veganism. As she described the reasons for her lifestyle, she spoke of the violations of animal rights and the environmental damage caused by the industrial food system. She confessed to loving cheese and how difficult and expensive it is to find a decent substitute. But she saw her boycott of the products which depend upon the use or abuse of animals as a way to have a practical impact upon those industries.
Before I could object that actually supporting those small farmers who did things ethically would have an equal and opposite positive impact upon the industry, a funny thing happened. As she lifted her forkful of beans and vegetables towards her mouth, a long string of cheddar stretched from her plate. The sneering exclamation at the sight of the very thing she had just been praising surprised me. She acted as though she had narrowly escaped a mouthful of poison.
The accidental consumption of that stray shred of cheddar would have had zero practical implications. She was not paying for it. She was not complicit in the questionable ethics of its production. It would not affect her health one iota. She had no logical reason to be repulsed. Her terror at the delicious string of cheese was based upon the logic of fairy tales; it was borne in a world in which a single bite from the forbidden fruit, a single stroke past the allotted hour, a single kiss from the destined mouth has the power to turn the world inside out.
Fasting is a non-rational abstinence. It is not the abstinence of the lactose intolerant, who forgoes milk because it will make her ill; it is the abstinence of the Hindu, who forgoes milk because it will damage his soul. This kind of thinking is illogical. It is imaginative. It is rare, and it is powerful. This kind of thinking is utterly absent from the reckoning of the industrial farming complex. The absence of non-rational empathic or narrative thinking is the mark of madness. It defines the neurophysiology of sociopaths, and it defines the cutthroat business ethics of our food system.
As my friend carefully scanned her burrito for any further sign of cheese, I realized that her veganism was a fast. Behind her reasons is a conviction that regardless of the logic of the issue, there is something sacred about her relationship to that cow which would be violated if she ate its cheese. We live in a secular society. This does not mean a world devoid of the sacred, but a world where the sacred is loose. It might emerge in any place, at any time. Ours is a world in which the destruction of the systemic, pathological idols which line our streets and fill our bellies might lead to the emergence of truth. We live in a world in desperate need of fasting.
I am not advocating veganism, vegetarianism, or any other ism. I am advocating a way of relating to the world. The solution to the hyper-rationalism and hyper-efficiency of our food system cannot be a competing rationalism. It must be a solution born of feeling. It must be fueled by the illogical conviction that the earth is sacred; that the way we interact with plants and animals who inhabit it, and the brothers and sisters with whom we share it, has a direct and unfathomable effect upon our souls. If our society is going to become a force for healing and for growth, it must be through the realization that the stories we are living transcend the rules that we impose upon them; that a tiny shred of cheese in a burrito might really make all the difference; that the recognition of the sacred in something simple, honest, and good might actually change the world.