¿Food or Pleasure Value?

 

I've been looking at food lately and the idea that some foods are "non-foods", usually if they are ultra-processed. We're talking about a lot of the packaged foods we see in supermarkets. One contention among many is that the ingredient lists that contain a lot of processed chemical ingredients (those we don't eat in and of themselves) are being emulsified into a stable product that is unnatural and thus interferes with our microbiome profile. Another is that we have a serious excess of protein with little to no fibre, the excess protein being metabolised in exactly the same way as carbohydrates (sugar-equivalents), into harmful excess body fat.

Philosophically interesting is the distinction drawn between two different object values: Food-value and pleasure-value. The food-value of an object is determined by nature, ie. Our bodies. The aim of our bodies is to come into oikeiosis with (or assimilate) the food that we choose, so food-value is obvious: it is the degree to which food can be best-used by our bodies. The pleasure-value of food is a separate matter, because successful ultra-processed foods have been tweaked for immediate satisfaction. These two values are not mutually exclusive, because pleasure is a variable and subjective matter, but the pleasure profiles being produced in factories have a number of ways to give compelling and convenient satisfaction. 

 

It seems similar to the way a lot of received and familiar ideas work in our psyche, and in our civilisation. 

 

Here is what may seem like a cringey clickbait video, but it's quite good in my opinion. watch it if you will and consider the implication if you think of it in this way. 

I've watched a large range of these videos. One thing I've heard from a variety of sources is that the body is nutrient-seeking, so if it fails to achieve a nutrient equilibrium it continues to signal hunger which we generally respond to by giving it more of what's available, until sleep of course. But the takeaway from that is that pleasure-value drives our choices and thus our health is affected until we disincline ourselves to choose in that way. It is, like virtue, down to knowledge. Actually it is indistinct from virtue, therefore it is the virtue of wise-choice (prohairesis). Active knowledge as it pertains to modern life, but of course much less of a concern for the ancients.

 

But which ancients? one might ask. Because such criticisms even arose in 1st century imperial Rome as we can read in Seneca's Epistle 95, although it's important to note that many pathologies remained unknown to the Romans of this time, whether they knew it or not

"Medicine was once the knowledge of a few plants to staunch flowing blood and knit wounds together: after that it gradually reached this manifold variety. It is not surprising that it had less business when human bodies were sturdy and solid, with a simple diet not corrupted by artifice and pleasure; after men began to seek out food not to remove hunger but to provoke it, and a thousand seasonings were discovered to stimulate greed, foods that were nourishment for those who craved them became a burden once they were sated." (Seneca, Epistle 95.15 Fantham translation)

 

One thing to consider is the relation between choice and persuasion. The passions (pathos) are a passive state (pathē), they are what you go through or experience (paskhō) as opposed to those actions you effect yourself. These words are related to the verb 'peíthō' which is to "persuade". 

 

The emotions known as pathos in Stoicism are the most persuasive, they are very basically anger, desire, grief, fear and their more particular pathways, and they are often put in contrast to knowledge, which is the basis of virtue. Knowledge has active potential. Persuasion between persons can be in order to subject them to the passive state they experience, and when that state has negative effects, it is experienced as a negative pathos, a tribulation like in another related word 'pénthos' which is grief or misery. Think about that state in regard to the body: The craving of hunger is for nutrition, just like the experience of the mind is geared toward knowledge. But the body can be tricked by pleasure and not receive the nutrition it really needs, in which case it remains in need. Just so, the mind needs the knowledge that is virtue, but it can be persuaded by pathos and remain wanting. It experiences confusion and dissatisfaction, just like the body experiences ill health effects and sub-par functioning. This isn't a mind-body dualism, by the way, they are just different levels of experience, one of physical energy the other of salient ideas, or flipped: that of energy deficiency and non-salient ideas. Good and bad habits.

 

(Note: 'salient' is from Aristotle's observation of the functioning heart in an egg embryo, translated into Latin as "punctum saliens", a leaping dot, which became "salient point" in English.)

 

Salient ideas are embryonic, and brought into development by dialectic (which is to say logic). The proper functioning of both metabolism and ideas depends on awareness, on being attuned. So dialectic leads to the proper functioning of ideas, just as attunement leads to the proper functioning of metabolism. Dialectic attunes ideas (being brought into attunement/oikeiosis). Attunement is the dialectic of the body. Knowledge assimilated is the assimilation of potential. This is virtue from another angle in which we are all assimilated to each other, and no less, to the greater 'all'.

 

This seems to accord well with Carl Jung's idea of potential as evidenced in this quote from Marie-Louise von Franz (Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales), although it is tied up with the idea of neurosis and psychosis

 

"according to Jung, not becoming conscious when one has the possibility of doing so is the worst sin. If there is no germ of possible consciousness within, if God made you unconscious and you just stay that way, then it doesn’t matter; but if one does not live up to an inner possibility, then this inner possibility becomes destructive."  

 

Becoming conscious is the attunement of ideas and is a process of dialectic. Ideas are potential, so "becoming conscious" is the attunement of potential (cf. 'living up to ... inner possibility').

 

The opposite of the passive experience, the non-choice of pathos, is of course the active experience, which is often contrasted as praxis, but could just as well be poiesis (from poiéō, to make), a creative activity.

 

"... If somebody has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn’t use it, that psychic energy turns into ... poison. That’s why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities." 

 

 I suppose this is the deficiency manifesting in the same way that our body seeks nutrition, but metabolises the input it is given, and if not healthful will not metabolise well. (dramatically: "becomes destructive")

 

"... A neurosis is often a plus, not a minus, but an unlived plus, a higher possibility of becoming more conscious, or becoming more creative, funked for some lousy excuse." 

 

 The easy fallback (the pleasure-value?) is often what surrounds us in the world of modern food as well. Its not really everywhere, but its convenience is persuasive and it allows us not to think. But when our awareness starts to become attuned, the deficiency gains the knowledge of what nutrition it really requires, and the situation is transformed into a "lived" positive.

 

Since we are in the realm of psychology, pathos as suffering is akin to the now depreciated term neurosis.  The compulsive fallback into a kind of pain-value that is not particularly helpful to the sufferer. This is from Carl Jung himself:

 

"We do not help the neurotic patient by freeing him from the demand made by civilization; we can only help him by inducing him to take an active part in the strenuous task of carrying on the development of civilization. The suffering which he undergoes in performing this duty takes the place of his neurosis. But, whereas the neurosis and the complaints that accompany it are never followed by the delicious feeling of good work well done, of duty fearlessly performed, the suffering that comes from useful work, and from victory over real difficulties, brings with it those moments of peace and satisfaction which give the human being the priceless feeling that he has really lived his life."

 

Neurosis/pathos, is the result of a need unrealised (the food-value) rather than an assumed need (the pleasure-value), and I would interpret Jung's cure of taking "an active part in...carrying on the development of civilization" as the realisation of virtue and this knowledge as "food" for the soul. The "strenuous task" that brings about "peace and satisfaction" is the antidote for the uselessly strenuous preoccupations of pathos. The use of virtue as knowledge.