Man Does not Live by Bread Alone

Or by bed alone.

Top o' the Stack.

Comments

[Vito B. Caiati]

Bill,

I agree with your definition of gluttony, and in my own experience, I find that contemporary gluttons are not so much excessive overeaters but rather persons with an “habitual over-concern with food, its preparation, its enjoyment, etc.” Today, this “over-concern” is in fact an essential element of the set of lifestyle choices of those who have or aspire to elite status. It serves to demarcate these faux illuminés, many of whom are newly rich social upstarts, from the less fortunate mass of the citizenry that they both hold in contempt and fear. And it is important to see that the food and drink of these arrivisti are, unlike those of traditional European or Asian elites, in no sense a culinary heritage, one that is the expression of the privileged modes of life of past time. Rather, they are merely exotic commodities, things produced for and sold to certain social strata for profit, along with the right kinds of automobiles, clothing, watches, vacation spots, and zip code residences. And as with all commodity production under capitalism, the search for more profit drives producers, importers, restauranteurs, and chefs to search continually for the new and exotic.

Vito

[Dmitri]

Hi Bill

Agree with your meditation that draws on Bourdain's sad end. Too much water drowned the miller... However I believe he was a deeper man than it shows in his The New Yorker piece. To publish in this journal without extensive editing applied by the "clever" editors is not possible. And he was probably mentally sick for a long time.

I'd guess you disagree with the saying attributed to Oscar Wilde: Everything in moderation, including moderation.

[Joe Odegaard]

Bourdain could still be alive today, volunteering at a food bank, helping others to have food. But no. And the nuns at Saint Therese School, who taught us when we were little, were right: our lives belong to God, we have no right to end them, and we must love our neighbor.

[BV]

Vito,

I quite agree with your remarks.

In Vito veritas!

By the way, Tom Tillett responds to you here: https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2024/07/do-we-love-the-person-or-only-her-attributes.html?cid=6a010535ce1cf6970c02c8d3b77d48200c#comment-6a010535ce1cf6970c02c8d3b77d48200c

[Vito B. Caiati]

Bill,

Thanks for pointing our Tom Tillet's response. I am going to read it now.

Vito

[Hector]

Bill,

>>In short, gluttony is the inordinate consumption of, and concern for, food and drink, where 'inordinate' does not mean merely 'quantitatively excessive.<<

Do you think that a cookery writer or professional chef is necessarily a glutton? Their skills and vocation are presumably based on a great concern for food but don't the best of them do a service for humanity? (Help people learn to cook, for example, or improve the general quality of food).

[Trudy VandeMolen]

Letter 17 in *The Screwtape Letters* describes the gluttony of delicacy using the human subject’s mother:

"The Patient’s mother provides Screwtape with a great example of what the Gluttony of Delicacy looks like. This sin usually begins with the phrase “All-I-want.” The mother thinks that she is being chaste, by limiting her food and beverage intake to just a small, non-excessive bit. However, what she wants, she wants perfectly. All she wants is a Goldilocks cup of tea – not too weak, not too strong, not too hot, not too cold, not too sweet, not too bitter, but just like she wants it. And her “properly prepared” cup of tea is based upon an impossible standard of recreating the perfect cup of tea and she remembers it in the past when people knew how to make a proper cup of tea.

The result of this sin of the Gluttony of Delicacy is that she is always disappointed and ill-tempered because her tea is not just right. This harms her relationship with everyone – cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. The magic of this sin, as described by Screwtape, is that the mother does not see the problem. She is not excessive, she just wants it done properly.”

[BV]

Trudy,

I remember that passage well. What a great book!