Sean Dwyer

4/10/17

WC: 547

“GDP is based on a false assumption: if you consume what you produce, you don’t produce.” (Shiva 2016: 112)

“…Brutalized men brutalize women” (Shiva 2016: 119)

“As a masculine model of production systematically devalues women’s place in the world, women themselves are devalued, displaced, and disappeared.” – (Shiva 2016: 118)

“I just do it by vibration. Different strokes for different folks. Do your thing your way.” (Smart-Grosvenor 1970)

News: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39568631

Misogyny and Artificial Food

When discussing the systematic oppression of women it is important to consider the quiet or not so quiet benefactor. Man’s desire for self confirmation blinds the perception of the symptoms of their own emotional unsustainability, which propagates a type of disease that grows within the false sense of self, yet the symptoms are more easily recognized in others. If one can sustain the self without the perceived “need” of self-confirmation beyond one’s self and limited dependence on a larger system, through homesteading for example, the need for biological and psychological satisfaction becomes channeled through the perspective of preserving one’s sense of self through a new system of personalized accountability. The quote on page 112 from Who Really Feeds the World? clearly outlines the inherent devaluation of self-sustainment present in the globalized colonization of capitalism discussed in the text because GDP measures your personal productivity in the context of what it means for people other than yourself. The female cook’s work is nullified and a woman’s capacity to sustain one’s emotions can become destroyed by a powerful, uncontrolled male intuitive desire to find emotional sustainability within themselves through the proxy of females as a mode of self-confirmation. If a human’s way of being is colonized, the ability to sustain the self slowly becomes terminated given previous methods, and with the use of lenticular logic, participation in the offered culture of one dominant system can be presented as one logically supported alternative to a human’s current experience. This disconnect from past to a forced present was exemplified on page 122 from the text’s example of James Dale’s vitamin-A rich banana experiments in Uganda being presented as a superior mode of consumption when mango powder, lotus stems, amaranth, neem, and rice bran provide incomparably higher portions of the vitamin and have already been in use by indigenous women. Why? The quote from page 119 addresses this subject. Physiologically speaking, diets without consideration of gastronomic health sustained by processed food for example, encourage the development of a prosthetic heart that is more familiar with the use of satisfying an internal placed emptiness by the use of an intuitive emotional crutch as a mode of happiness and in the process of a person trying to satisfy an immediate need corresponding to an artificially manufactured desire of taste, the unmentioned intangibles of a woman outcast by her society (and said intangibles as a sense of identity) become viciously consumed by men, and at times women caught in a similar emotional net. An artificial sense of flavor offered with misleading methods of self-sustainment, that only sustain one’s helpless participation in systematic oppression, unfold through the symptoms described in part by the quote from page 118. The quote from Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor beautifully suggests a mode of self-satisfaction that pleasures us all with a method particular to our own journey for self-empowerment that is experienced individually and can be shared collectively. A quote from Will Allen’s father that was discussed in Will Allen’s book, The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities, states “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die” appropriately describes the crisis of men unable to sacrifice their artificially manufactured sense of identity while continuing their pseudo-reinvention of satisfying human emotion through artificial food, amongst other methods.

Works Cited

Allen, W., & Wilson, C. (2012). The good food revolution : Growing healthy food, people, and communities. New York, N.Y.: Gotham Books.

Shiva, V. (2016). Who really feeds the world? : The failures of agribusiness and the promise of agroecology. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.
Smart-Grosvenor, V. (1970). Vibration cooking : Or, The travel notes of a Geechee girl ([1st ed.].). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.