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Modern Eating and Festivity

Human culture has changed in many ways over the span of recorded history. However, the shift of culture into the modern era has brought some changes that have not been as fully positive as some would like. Throughout The Hungry Soul, Kass ends up arguing against a modern, materialistic view of the world through how we look at eating. This alone, however, is not the only way for one to look at how the world has changed because of our change in perspective. Pieper, in In Tune with the World, sees how festivity has changed within the modern world. Although the two of them look at this from different perspectives, both of them end up looking at many of the same things to show how this change has happened. Overall, the shift of our culture into modernity can be seen in both Kass's perspective on a materialist view of eating and Pieper's discussion on the rise of pseudo- and anti-festivals.
One of the main themes running through Kass's argument is that an entirely materialistic view of eating misses a lot of the finer details that point towards something greater. The reason he has to continue on about this is that the materialist view has risen in popularity with a change into modernity, and so to counteract one, he has to argue against both. The biggest problem that he notes is in the modern sciences, and what they focus on. He states that although he is happy with “the insights [modern science] provides regarding how things work or happen,” the problem that is facing the sciences is “its apparent indifference to questions to what and why things are” (Kass 8). This focus continues to come back, looking at how materialism places an importance on the causation of actions (and why deterministic beliefs have become more prevalent than free will in modern times), at the cost of not caring about the natural state of how things should be.
This objective view for sciences leads to a certain perspective on how eating goes. From the growth of seeds to the decomposition of proteins, modern science can explain really well how the process of eating happens. Additionally, by throwing further sciences in, more and more details of this can be stated, whether it's evolutionary biology to look at how different animals developed the ability to eat different things, or behavioural psychology to see the behaviours of how people eat. For modern sciences, eating can be reduced to a chain of different actions, all leading to how different animals get energy to perform all the necessary actions.
Kass argues against this strictly materialistic view provided by the modern sciences for multiple reasons. This argument ends up showing barely any difference between how humans are and how other animals are, which Kass believes is a vast oversimplification, and that there really is something special about humanity to differentiate itself from other animals. The second is that they still eat as they normally would; looking differently at how eating is than how they actually eat, or as he puts it, “[their science] also has nothing to do with their own tacit understanding of themselves as eaters” (Kass 10). A strictly materialistic view led by modern sciences comes to a conclusion that they should immediately reject because it does not fit in with their own observations.
The material view of food stems from the basest observations, that to most animals, food is just lunch, and not anything more based on what it has been. This view is right to the core of materialism, in that the only thing about food which is important is what it is made up of and what it can become, never mind it is now or what it could be. Food is thusly, according to Kass, some relationship between different creatures, if taken only materialistically. This ends up seemingly paradoxical to him, as something could potentially be both food and something else at the same time, when looking solely at the material.
The materialistic shift in modernity also leads to a focus on the usefulness of food in doing all of the work within the body, and what can be made from all the products in the food. The problem Kass has is that modern science does this by breaking down all the parts of the body into their constituent parts, when one should look at the whole, instead of just the material basis, or as he says, “when the elements are truly concretised into the whole, they are no longer actually what they were. They exist in the whole only potentially” (Kass 30). Because the materialistic view keeps only looking at the composition of things, Kass believes that those who take this view are missing details that can only be found in all of an object; that there is something else besides the material which makes up humans.
This focus on the immaterial portion of humanity is not something which resonates well with the materialistic view in modernity. Throughout Kass's argument, a majority of time is spent looking at past details or on interpretations of facts. Because of how much time is spend on these, the argument can be made that this view which Kass is rallying against is the main viewpoint within a modern world. The emphasis that modernity places on a materialistic view is seen throughout both his and Pieper's arguments.
The tying link between modernity and this materialist view is the focus on the causations within actions, as Kass stated, a staple portion of modern sciences. These have strayed away from questions like 'what is gravity' to questions more likely to produce a direct answer in 'how will gravity affect this'. These questions can be applied to more than just physics, and the argument is made that in matters of nutrition and eating, sciences have gone over to these alternate questions that do not address the root of the matter. Kass notes that these modern advances have changed over to looking at the parts of the process of eating instead of the whole thing, and that dividing up for analysis, just like with the view on animals and food, is missing some part of the process beyond everything else which helps to give some form of definition to the whole thing beyond simply the parts.
Throughout the rest of his book, Kass looks at the problems of a strictly materialist viewpoint and the problems that that has, through the lens of food and eating, and all the rituals associated with it. However, this complaint on modernity is not only able to be looked at in this way. A different view, but still looking at modernity through rituals, is Pieper's take on festivity, and his critiques of a modern society as well.
Pieper notes that the modern world's take on festivals is a much different one than that of the world before then. The main problem is that in a world which does not focus on bigger details, “festivity becomes a caricature of itself” (Pieper 56). This modern take ends up producing activities which look like normal festivity on the outside, but do not conform to what is actually going on when looked at further. Pieper ends up dividing these into two main types of problems, the pseudofestivals and the antifestivals, both of which have arisen in modernity and both of which are things which he thinks should be avoided.
Pieper notes that the true festival is important, as its roots carry a fair deal of important history. He even notes that it is thought that our language originally came from festal origins, and the fine arts are intricately linked (a conclusion he continues running with throughout the entire argument). However, the festival in its prior form seems to be dying out from the change into modernity. Quoting from Eisner's Feste der Festlosen, he makes note that “Perhaps the time is approaching when festivals as mass manifestations of an intensified sense of life will be nothing more than curiosities to be studied from old pictures and artefacts preserved in ethnological museums” (Pieper 56-7). This change in what has defined a festival in previous times is of a concern to him, because of all that had been contained in festivals prior compared to what happens in modern takes on festivals.
Throughout this all, Pieper thinks that the only thing worse than a world with no festivals is one with sham festivals, ones without any inside meaning. These pseudo-festivals of his provide no sense of any passing of time or development, and ruin the society that has to deal with them. Even if there were still real festivals, the addition of all these poor mockeries renders them unsatisfying and just a pale shadow of their former sense of importance. Because of how commonplace these are becoming in modern times, this is what has Pieper worried for the shift into modernity and what it is bringing on the fine art traditions.
The largest problem with this strengthening of pseudo-festivals is that even older, normal festivals can become corrupted with these ideas in an attempt to make them more modern. One of the biggest examples of this he notes is Christmas, in which “the real festival is almost disappearing behind the commercialised folderol that has come to the fore” (Pieper 61). The commercialisation of Christmas that has happened more and more every year is taking Christmas away from the traditional festival roots into a more pithy and modern variety.
Thankfully, the base form without the commercial trappings is still celebrated in many places, enough so that it is probably not under any threat for the moment. However, the difference between the festival Christmas and the pseudo-festival “X‑mas” shows how modernity's impacts have changed things to a more materialistic approach, as it focuses most on what things can be bought, and how much things are worth, as opposed to the meaning behind all the items. Christmas is not the only festival suffering form this, but it is one of the most publicised and most visible cases of this.
The true pseudo-festival, however, does not have any saving graces whatsoever behind what it is. One of the most common occurrences to get one of these pseudo-festivals is one that is solely legislative in nature, usually created solely for the purpose of advancing the ideas of someone in power. However, the problem with these festivals is the lack of information behind them, in that for them to have the guise of something more legitimate, there needs to be something behind them. One of the things which could end up being used is some sort of force or manipulation to keep a festive nature going, and if this ends up going too far, then there are a lot of problems which can result, giving rise to the idea of some sort of anti-festival.
Pieper notes that quite frequently, one of the defining portions of modern created festivals is some form of coercive nature, forcing people to celebrate these occurrences without any real reason. This usually has to be done because of the modern festivals not having any of the necessities for real festivals due to a materialist approach. The thought has to be that if something looks like a festival, feels like a festival, and people act like it's a festival, then it must be a festival, even though that may not be the case. Both of the first two can be covered using well‑designed practices, but the third still requires everyone celebrating it to believe in its reality to help make it reality, which seems somewhat paradoxical. This is why the coercion must ensue in the first place, to get beyond this circular start.
Because of this coercive nature, another modern problem that shows up in these anti-festivals is some form of dishonesty with the celebrations. Going back to the Christmas example, although many people might have some form of reservation about at least part of the celebrations that ensue, there is no way that they are not going to have to partake in everything and seem to enjoy it, for fear of ostracising themselves. Indeed, this shows up in a game theory idea of the Abilene Paradox, where no coercion directly happens. The idea presented in such is that in a group, everyone might go along with a decision that they dislike, simply because they believe that everyone else in the group is for it, and don't want to stand out. To get this to happen, everyone would dishonestly show their intent for the action, and then throughout the whole time, when under their own volition, would be otherwise inclined. This helps show why these modern anti-festivals still can occur, even without the initial coercive force in place, simply because nobody is willing to break up the standards in a group where everyone feels the same way.
One of the earliest sorts of these festivals, right at the beginning of some form of modernity, is all of the festivals associated with the French Revolution. These festivals went through some extravagant planning to reach the levels that the leaders thought that they needed to be at to fully symbolise what was happening, to try and infuse some sense of real festivity into these fake ones. For an example of how extreme this sense of festivity was thought to be, Robespierre in his anti‑atheistic speech proclaimed thirty-six days of festivity, fully one-tenth of the year. With so many new festivals being declared, it became dually hard to both have some level of festiveness through all of those days even with coercing, and to make the days of festivity that were thought to be most important stand out from all the others.
The difficulty in creating these pseudo-festivals comes up in different ways. Pieper notes that although some of the aspects of festivity have to be found in these to make it appear to be a real festival, that how it happens ends up being done incorrectly, that “some of the basic features of festivals in general, which otherwise tend too often to be neglected, are stressed in sham festivals” (Pieper 69). Without the natural formation of these festivals, the focus in modernity on the material details of objects can lead to this emphasis. In trying to get everything to match up technically with what a real festival should look like, these pseudo-festivals can and do incorrectly place emphases.
The worst modern attempt at a festival, in Pieper's beliefs, is the attempt to create a working holiday for May Day. Only becoming a declared festival around the turn of the twentieth century, it falls into one of the most recent pseudo-festivals created. Additionally, its purpose, as a celebration of the regularisation of working schedules, is not something that would have been found before the rise of modernity. All of this allow it to be one of the prime examples of what is an anti‑festival created by the change into modernity and a new, materialistic view of the world.
The biggest change for this festival, as compared to all of the others, is its utmostly materialistic celebration when it was appropriated by the Bolshevist regime. Instead of taking time off from work to perform the celebrations needed to try and legitimatise the festival, the prescribed celebration was to do more work. This backwards logic helps to show exactly how coercion plays a serious part in these modern pseudo-festivals; the extra work pushed by this agenda was “voluntary” in name only.
This serious reversal of the original purpose of festivals is what allows this to be called a striking example of the anti-festival. Another, equally modern, addition to the celebrations was the displays of all the militaristic might of the nations which held these festivities. Not only were these celebrations driven by propaganda within the nation, but also were acting as propaganda to other nations, showing that this festival, instead of being for the people, was solely for the powers that were creating it. In displaying all the power to everyone else, the serious result is a new and wholly modern anti-festival, based on deception and the materialist view.
Both of Pieper and Kass complain about the modern rise of different things, and how that has affected how everyone is. Although attacking this problem from two different directions, both of them still come to the conclusion that the modernisation of society has produced more ills and distracted everyone from true meanings. For Kass, too much of a materialistic focus takes the actual emphasis on what we can learn from the whole of eating away to specific details devoid of any practical significance, while Pieper says that the modern deceptive focus on festivals ruins a larger sense of time. Both of them offer very negative opinions on modernity, but little in ways of ideas to improve it beyond that.

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