Not A Blog™

[Note: The facetiousness rating of this article is 50/50. That is, it’s half joking—but it’s half serious, too, because I really do think this way.]

There are some things in life which are necessities. By necessities, I mean things that, if you don’t have them, you will die. Shelter, while being a necessity in the sense that it makes life very difficult if you don’t have it, is not something that without will kill you. It might contribute to your death if the environment is inhospital, but the lack of shelter itself isn’t causing the death.

Things that will kill you if you don’t have them: air, water, food, sleep. These are super-important; life sustaining. In the 1940’s, a guy named Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a pyramid of stuff we seek. Forming the base are the physiological needs—the stuff we need to not die. In addition to air, water, food, and sleep, he also includes excretion, homeostatis, and sex. Sex is generally excluded as something that without you will die, however, without our species will die, so, in the sense that it’s necessary for a population’s survival, it’s a necessity.

All of the physiological needs of an individual are of supreme importance in life. We generally take them for granted, in our culture, but that doesn’t make them any less necessary. That being said, it would behoove us to go about them in the most efficient manner possible, correct? If we need this thing to survive, let’s not belabor the bush and just get on with it. Indeed, most of the base physiological needs are this way. Most, but not all.

For reasons which continue to bemuse me, food-eating rituals are one of those things that, year after year, necessitate a huge production. In many circumstances, I understand this. For example, people go out to a restaurant. Okay, fine; someone else is preparing the food, you’re paying for it, you’re spending time with some other person. I get it. Then there is the other “food is incidental to the event” eating. A party is thrown, attended, food is served. (These passive-voice parties are notoriously dull.) But the reason for the get-together is to meet with other people and the food is just nice.

But then there are events, the entire purpose of which is to eat. And talk, but this happens with the eating. This is strange.

It has something to do with the social bond factor. I can understand this in the context of acquaintences, particularly business acquaintences. It’s important to make a connection with people who will eventually be your vendors or customers, so the small talk is not completely without merit. It’s making you money, in a roundabout way. Ergo, business lunches, and the ridiculous, bourgeoisie conversations that go on during these types of events, are something I will do with all apparent cheer.

But there are plenty of times when eating rituals are not being so productive as this. In fact, most meals happen among those who are supposed to already have bonded—or at least they did so over numerous decades. Families, friends. Extended families, not so much, which makes the family reunion a bizarre endeavor in social etiquette. Does anyone else feel that family reunions are like trying to tap dance in a minefield? Besides, there’s a wacked-out dichotomy going on, here. If there’s a third cousin or great uncle or someone from the extended part of the family that you see on a regular basis, you don’t need the family reunion to keep up with them, but everyone else are people who you only see during the family reunion, and so they’re no better than acquaintences who just happen to share some genes. In other words, the only reason people attend family reunions is to see people that they only see during family reunions. What happens if you don’t go? Are you afraid you’ll become estranged? If this once-a-year contact is all you get with them, you’re already estranged! Baffling.

My point is that eating rituals with family and friends serve, as near as I can tell, to reinforce bonds that already exist. It’s as if people require validation, and if you don’t eat food with them, they don’t get it, and then all sorts of Bad Things happen.

However, eating food is something you have to do to survive, as I said. You have to do it. So don’t waste a lot of time on it! Do it as quickly and efficiently as you can, and get on with your life. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy good food. I do. But I don’t make it any sort of focus, and it doesn’t matter to me what I eat most of the time, so long as it’s doing its job. I guess you could go for the absurd reduction here, and say that I would be content to just take Buck Rogers style meal-in-a-pill for ultimate efficiency. That’s not really appealing, though I would do it in certain situations. But spending a full forty-five minutes eating isn’t appealing to me, either. I like to eat real food, quickly.

Besides, I find it easier to do the social interaction thing when there’s more to it than lame conversation. In other words, when you’re doing things. In days gone by, there have been two family reunions that I attended with regularity: my mom’s side and my dad’s side. Makes sense. One of these was: eat formally (incredibly mind-numbing hour-and-a-half long meals), then play games. The other was always eat whenever and play games whenever. Or talk. Or whatever. One was fun, the other was dreadful. You can see where I’m going with this.

When one eats and plays at the same time, this is a huge time saver. Not to mention, when you’re playing a game, you have built-in small talk material right there. You just make fun of how badly other people play the game. Instant team bonding with no real effort—at least not on my part, anyway. This is an optimal time-efficient way of having fun with people you don’t know, but should be bonding with because you’re related. In the other example, the structure of the meal and play are such that huge amounts of time are being wasted to do something you already have to do. Arg!

Annoying as this realization is, it is also quite uesful information. This is the real reason for me harping on this is to reveal the sort of leverage a heartless, doesn’t-care- about-meals person like me wields against more “normal” people.

Before I get into that, let me talk about another neat discovery I made a few weeks ago. There’s a website where people go and ask all kinds of specific and not-so-specific questions regarding life, the universe and everything. Then, anyone else who’s registered there can log on and answer the questions. The site is Ask Metafilter. The very best part? They have an entire section specifically for human relations. This is fantastic. I can just log on there and receive aggregate responses and disections of human interaction scenarios, without all the hassle of actually doing these scenarios myself.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed on Ask Metafilter is that many people consider a refusal to visit or otherwise participate in ritualistic/traditional activities as being “selfish”. I’m totally blown away by this and I don’t understand it at all. Why do other people get to dictate how you’re supposed to spend your time? If you don’t want to go along with them, you’re selfish? What? Because you do things for yourself, I guess. But what does the other person want out of this? They want your participation in activities for their own validation and entertainment, and whatever people get from congregating. In other words, they don’t want you to participate because they are self-less and want you to have a good time. They want you to participate so they have a good time. So when I decline, now I’m selfish? Isn’t the person asking for your company being selfish? I don’t get it. I understand the reaction I will get as part of the larger equation, but I don’t comprehend the underlying maths.

Understanding the reaction is important, because now I can evaluate whether or not I would be bothered by such a reaction. The answer is no, of course—and not because I’m an anti-social jerk, but because I wouldn’t consider it the least bit selfish if someone declined to come to my party. (Note: I don’t hold parties. But if I did…)

Back to the concept of leverage. What I’ve come to recognize is that there are certain people who will take it as a very grave and personal insult if you refuse to share food at a table with them. This is interesting, because I’ve read of this in books. I don’t remember a specific example, but I do recall the idea where one person pisses someone else off, and they come back with, “I won’t eat at your table; I won’t come to your house”, etc, as if this is supposed to offend the other person. But it does! And I’m sitting there reading the book, thinking to myself why would that bother me? It’s obvious that he doesn’t want to be around me, anyway. So go. For the longest time (up until last week, as a matter of fact), I assumed this to be a poetic way of saying, “I want nothing to do with you.” And/or something along the lines of “I’m not going to speak with you again.” But from what I can tell, the fact that you’re going to refuse to partake in food rituals with someone: that is the insult! Fascinating.

What this means, then, is that I shouldn’t actually refuse to go eat with people—as I said I wouldn’t back on Christmas—because people would be offended simply at the fact that I don’t go. Even if I would hang out with them at other times of the year, traditional food rituals at particular holidays apparently hold special significance. In fact, it’s more imporant to many people that I specifically eat in celebration of the holiday than that I eat with them at all. Evidence of this is, of course, the family reunion!

You can make up all kinds of excuses to not see people during the year. Fine; everyone’s busy. Live and let live—until some holiday at which point you’re expected to make time and the rest of the year doesn’t count!? It all comes back to ruining a perfectly good holiday by visiting with someone only because it’s the holiday. Which just makes zero sense.

I’m totally off topic at this point, rambling and angry. The entire point of the rant was that I have figured out to really piss people off, and that’s just by refusing to eat with them. If that’s the case, I’ve been inadvertently pissing people off my entire life, because I already try to eat alone and fast—or at least fast. An acquaintence told me the other day that he’s never seen anyone eat as fast as I do. I’m always the first one done, even when I try to drag it out. I told him there’s a very good reason for that: because it has to be done. He didn’t get it, but didn’t ask for clarification, either, so nothing got explained. (That conversation was part of the reason this is being written at all.)

All that to say that I still don’t have a clue about the way most people work. Aliens, all of you. Nevertheless, I can still use this to my advantage. The problem is that this is not a tactical weapon. It’s a nuclear bomb. I can’t decline to eat with anyone without offending them (or explaining this entire line of thought which would take forever, and I’d lose them after the third paragraph, as I lost you). If I want to piss people off, simple. If I don’t want to piss people off, but still don’t want to eat with them, how do I do this? The only excuse I could think of that would work is the “I’m busy”—but does that work with your family at Christmas? I’m thinking not. I would either have to resort to geographical distance, or just piss them off—which I think I’ve already done.

-Ted