Inertia

Even at the best of times I am not a model of decisive action, but I have to say that it feels more and more difficult to set goals and maintain personal momentum in the present environment.

It’s not just me. The bureaucracy in which we are all increasingly enmeshed is failing. A wave of indolence or “quiet quitting” is washing over the white-collar workforce.

Case in point: earlier this year I applied for a new passport. Since then I have rung the issuing office twice. Twice they apologized; twice I was told that the process would be fast-tracked. Nothing. No communication from them. When I handed in my application I was assured that the passport would be ready within six weeks. I have now been waiting more than four months.

I had hoped to begin my travels some time ago. The lockdowns, curfews and travel bans may finally have been lifted but it is difficult to make concrete plans without a passport – especially when one has no clear idea of what is causing the delay. Only when I have the new passport in my hands will I think seriously about booking flights, etc..

This passport business is relatively trivial – in my case at least. No grave implications. But it is certainly emblematic, and indicative of wider problems.

Here is a short list of some of my current (non-travel-related) preoccupations…

Health concerns are always there, even in the absence of (known) serious illness or disease. This is particularly so as one ages. Personally I am prone to health-related anxieties and, consequently, try to minimize my interactions with Dr. Google and the medical profession. So long as I can function more or less normally and have no new or alarming symptoms, I feel justified in putting my focus on other things than the inner workings of my body. One health-related area I do take an interest in, however, is preventive medicine, and especially the effect of diet on health.

I had expected (or hoped) that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would be fading from the scene by now but it continues to spread. Worse still, bad news is coming through on the long-term effects of COVID-19. If (as seems to be the case) the virus was a product of gain-of-function research conducted under the auspices of various national governments and official agencies, this is not only a tragedy of epic proportions (it obviously is that) but also a scandal which, by further undermining trust in ruling elites, will have deep and lasting political implications.

Though they don’t concern me in a direct or personal way, I am following geopolitical developments closely. I am concerned by the belligerent stances being assumed by all major powers, and by the lack of leadership and intelligent diplomacy being exhibited by major Western powers.

More generally, I am appalled by the transformation of our media into an integrated propaganda machine. News has always been propaganda to an extent but the balance between propaganda and hard (factual or critical) content varies from time to time and from place to place. What we are seeing now in the West is somewhat reminiscent of old communist and fascist models and of World War 2-era American and British newspapers and newsreels, etc.. But arguably the situation is worse now than it was back then because of the intrusive nature of current technologies. The combination of digital news services and social media has produced an integrated – and insidious – framework of communication which is being effectively exploited by governments, powerful corporations and other favoured organizations.

As a preparation for possible future writing on social, economic and geopolitical themes, I have been reading (or rereading) the work of some early 20th-century thinkers, including Louis Rougier. Born in Lyon in 1889, Rougier was an intellectual historian and social philosopher who, unlike many intellectuals, had a good grasp of fundamental social, political and economic principles. In his best writings (from the 1930s and 1940s especially) he takes a refreshingly down-to-earth and non-ideological approach to political and economic questions. More on him later perhaps.

Improving the odds

I recently sided with Lucy Kellaway on the importance of traditional social conventions and rituals in relation to eating and drinking, and mentioned in passing that I had reverted to drinking ordinary tea made in a pot rather than tea-bag tea.

That piece may have given a slightly misleading picture of my views because, though I certainly do feel – and no doubt will continue to feel – an emotional attachment to the rituals of eating and drinking, I must confess that my basic approach to food is more utilitarian than aesthetic.

I certainly share Kellaway's view that food itself, no matter how good, is "curiously forgettable" and that most of the real pleasure comes from the anticipation and the ritual.

Furthermore I see the current cultural obsession with food and the taste of food as being symptomatic of real cultural decline.

But my personal approach to food is in practice more closely linked to hypochondriacal tendencies than to conservative ones. When I was in my twenties a doctor asked me if I had read Three Men in a Boat. He was thinking of the (once) well-known passage describing how one of the characters leafs through a medical dictionary and finds he has symptoms that match virtually every disease in the book.

My usual way of dealing with perceived symptoms is to tweak my diet and hope they go away. I'll resist the temptation to give details of my current symptoms beyond saying that they are not painful or debilitating, just vaguely suggestive (as my symptoms invariably are) of very dark possibilities.

Of course, dark possibilities crystallize into dark realities for all of us in time; the trick (and it is a trick) is to keep that inevitable reckoning out of sight (and so out of mind) for as long as possible.

Part of this is psychological game-playing but the most important part relates to real choices impinging on general health.

And food choices, along with decisions relating to sleep and exercise, etc., give us – within the limits set by our respective genomes and other factors beyond our control – the ability to maximize (or minimize) our chances of longevity and well-being. We can alter the odds considerably, in fact. And this, to my mind at least, is hugely significant.

Maintaining traditional habits and patterns of eating and drinking is all very well. But the simple truth is that any such habits and customs – however appealing – will get short shrift from me if they stand in the way of my latest dietary prescriptions.*


* Just to give a sense of where I am at the moment... No alcohol, no sugar, no white flour, minimal caffeine (and no caffeine late in the day). Staples include: anchovies; lettuce mix; various fruits and vegetables; yogurt; heavy grainy bread; cheese; tahini; peanut butter; yeast extract; brewer's yeast; pea soup (with ham) and other types of soup. That's the bare bones of the 'what'; I may elaborate on the 'why' – on my rationale – another time. (The concept of glycemic load is important; and recently I decided to increase my intake of purines...)

The cult of food

There are two broadly distinct ways of dealing with food as a cultural phenomenon; and, you guessed it, one is good and one is bad.

One of these food cultures is eclectic and multicultural and puts food into the foreground. Food becomes a constant topic of conversation, as there is a constant need to choose, constant pressure to assess, to compare tastes and textures. Food becomes something of a cult object, an obsession even. This is the bad food culture (and, increasingly, the dominant one).

A good food culture (in my admittedly conservative opinion) puts food into the background, as is the case in any community which maintains the traditions of its national or regional cuisine. There is a limited repertoire, a pattern or cycle to go with most of the time, and no need continually to make choices and assessments and judgements, no need to talk about food much at all.

There is the health side of things of course. We know a lot more now about how particular diets can have dramatic effects on one's health and longevity, but, interestingly, traditional diets do pretty well on this front, certainly when compared to the sorts of diets encouraged by the proliferation and ready availability of convenience foods and confectionery. Eating used to be more restricted to certain times and places, healthily constrained by certain rituals.

But these rituals also had a civilizing function. Only when such traditional practices are functioning - and the focus is not primarily on the taste experience - can food and eating play their social and civilizing role.

Food talk is fine - to a point. But it is well to bear in mind that food is one of those dangerous topics which tend to expand exponentially to fill mental and conversational voids.*



* Like some forms of gossip. Or talk amongst older people about ailments. Or talk about the achievements of one's children. Or - worst of all, and worse than food talk by far - accounts of plans for the renovation of one's home and the implementation and progress thereof.