What makes us so special?
Wednesday ramblings at Gas Works Park
American culture is diet culture.
Why do we think that we’re the only species who was not designed to have their existence centered around food? Why do so many of us deny or resist our design?
I sit at the park and a goose quietly sneaks up on me, curious about the contents in my bag. It gets within a few inches and I clutch my bag and gently shoo it away.
Half an hour later a pair of ducks circle me, one pecking its beak toward my bag. I clutch it again and the two rejoin, waddling to a couple nearby.
A Labrador puppy chases a bunny who is munching on some vines. Ants climb blades of grass with their dinner in tow. I cannot sit on the hill because there is a temporary fence protecting wildflowers exposing themselves to the sun. Every species around us is seeking food. Pausing here and there for play and rest.
We were designed to center our existence around food - and since our advanced diets have evolved to allow us care about so much more - art, architecture, music, philosophy, mathematics, science, and more - we still find ways to center it. Structuring our days and breaks around meals. Requiring food establishments in or near practically any communal space. Then why have so many of us convinced ourselves that food is not an essential need? That we have no needs? Who did that to us? Who convinced us that food is not a priority? That it will happen when it happens.
Who convinced us that we are not primal? When we are barely different than the ants, and bunnies, and geese, and ducks, and bunnies, and dogs who all gather in the same place?
Are there other primal needs that we do not let ourselves satisfy?
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