Feast or Famine
On March 12, 2020, Broadway theaters shut down. Even though I had been paying attention to the spread of COVID19 around the world, that was the moment that I knew it was going to be really bad. And then I couldn’t get an order from either of the grocery stores that I normally got my food delivered from. Do you remember how distressing that period was? Everybody was freaking out and getting food safely became a huge concern. Going to the supermarket felt like you were taking you own life in your hands. People were lysoling their groceries and food that was normally always available was out of stock.
The tv show Station 11 is about the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic that wipes out the majority of the human population on Earth. About half way through the series, in episode 5, the character Clark gives a speech to the unaffected refugees at the Severn City Airport, saying “We have to abandon the future, all that matters is the now.” The refugees had been wandering around, sort of waiting for the crisis to end, most likely experiencing shock from the suddenness of the change in their circumstances. What Mark is explaining to them is that, from that point forward, there is no familiar life paths left and that they must create a new world out of the ashes of the old.
This is an experience that many, if not most, humans experience to greater or lesser degree throughout their lives. The most dramatic and terrible are the wars and natural disasters, when, in a moment, your home, your family and friend’s homes, your entire community is destroyed and yet you still live, still have children who must be fed and kept safe. The shock and horror wear off and you must adapt to a new environment, new conditions, a situation you have never believed could ever happen to you. You bury the dead, care for the inured, pick up the scraps of your before existence, and start searching for shelter, food and water.
Even in these interconnected, technologically modern times, much our lives still resolve around our most basic needs. Our complex society obscures the connection between our daily activities and our basic human needs, substituting a cultural requirement for meeting that need, such as going to work in an office instead of gathering our food from nature. Food is our greatest need and generally speaking humans need to consume between 1200-2000 calories a day. Food also costs a lot, no matter how ever you measure it, whether you pay for it, grow it, or collect it, it takes a lot of energy.
Throughout the course of human history, there has been a continual evolution of human technical skills and one of the primary areas of cultural evolution has been in food production. From the basic scattering of wild seeds or tubers to create quality foraging to the current high tech indoor hydroponics green houses, humans have been constantly working on how to increase the amount of food available to them and the stability of their food sources. Most human food not only has to be acquired, it also has to be processed in some way
Food processing had made a greater variety of food sources available that are only consumable if they are processed in some way, such as acorns or wheat grains. Food preservation technology has also been evolving over the millennia, from smoking, salting, and drying food to the high tech processed food we have today. Each type of food production over the course of history has determined how many humans can survive in that time. One could say that the entire world economy exists primarily to support the survival of the most people on Earth ever.
Societies throughout history have traditions involving large communal gatherings that are centered around sharing food, often with an emphasis on generosity and abundance. Abundance has always been a symbol of human success, from the North West Indigenous peoples’ potlatch’s to Medieval feasts. Necessity and frivolity, serious and playful, necessary and luxurious: Nowhere is human adaptability and creativity more apparent than in our food culture.
In 1944, the University of Minnesota conducted an experiment on the physiological and psychological effects of starvation. The experiment lasted for one year and in only one part it were the participants starved. During the study, they received half the normal amount of calories. And they became obsessed with food, thinking about it, talking about it, even dreaming about it. Two of the participants were so distressed in this phase of the experiment that they had to leave the experiment. Not surprisingly, a lack of sufficient food causes people to think about food constantly.
This experiment revealed not just how people behave when they lack sufficient food, but also when other needs are not met. People who believe resources, including financial, emotional, or social resources, are scarce become preoccupied with what they lack. A scarcity mindset drives hoarding and competition. And if the need is life threatening, or feels life threatening, they will not be able to think of anything else. But when people have an abundance mindset, when they believe there are plenty of resources and opportunities for everyone, optimism, cooperation, and an openness to change are prominent.
Capitalism has created conditions where people lack basic necessities due to unequal distribution and artificial restrictions. It fuels the myth of scarcity in order to justify huge wealth disparities and prevent an awareness of abundance and equitable resource distribution. People are so preoccupied with getting their basic needs met that they do not have the resources to combat the system that starves them for wealth. Capitalism uses artificial scarcity in order to maintain an unequal distribution of wealth that benefits some while limiting others.
In Station 11, one of the characters, Alex, who was born right at the beginning of the apocalypse, is playing with a non-functioning iPhone. She is talking to here friend Kirsten, amazed at all the things you could do on it “Let me just read everything and speak to everyone, everywhere”. This scene highlights how in our current society, which is filled with opportunity and abundance, we are more focused on what we lack than what we have. In our strange technological present we are confused about many things, what is plentiful and what is scarce, what is important in life, necessary, and what is not.
What would the world look like if everyone had enough all the time? A world where no one ever worried that there wouldn’t be enough food? There is currently enough food being produced to feed everyone, but unequal and inefficient distribution and waste leads to poor people starving while the rich waste a sickening amount of resources. Those who are profiting from a scarcity mindset have created the illusion that there is not enough to go around, but that is not true. By recognizing our beliefs about how limited resources actually are, we can begin to move towards a society based on sharing instead of hoarding.