Gluttony

I became interested in gluttony a while back, when I encountered the Sydney Airport Food Court.

On my way to the departure gate to fly home to Melbourne, there it was: a giant amphitheatre filled with the sound of chomping teeth and food sliding to the bottom of stomachs. Burgers, sushi, souvlaki, stir fry with rice, salads, chips, fried chicken, tacos, baked potatoes were landing on plastic plates around the perimeter while in the centre hundreds of people were in the process of eating, getting up or sitting down to eat. The constant movement, noise and sight of jaws hard at work made me think of a plague of locusts; a voracious swarm in a brightly lit field of plastic and metal chairs.

Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, a collection of vices proscribed to the faithful Christian. The others are envy, pride, greed, lust, wrath and sloth. The prohibition against them is to encourage moderate behaviour – which is socially and morally beneficial – and to turn the mind away from purely physical and emotional drives to a spiritual orientation. 

I turned on the TV recently and noticed one channel was running three consecutive cooking shows that evening. Popular culture is obsessed with food at a time when obesity is rapidly on the rise in countries like Australia and the US, and when it is acknowledged that human beings are depleting the world’s resources. What’s behind this obsession? 

Gluttony is symptomatic of our age, a time of gross materiality when “more” means “better”, and which may well be the peak of human global excess. There is an ever more tantalising envelopment in matter, an ever closer entrapment, as if the material world is all there is. Perhaps perversely it represents a great yearning for the spiritual life, a displaced drive for meaning and fulfilment.   

Author David Tacey, building from the work of Carl Jung, says in his book Gods and Diseases that physical and psychological ailments are not simply signs that something is wrong, but opportunities for healing and messages for wholeness. Seen in that light, the problem of gluttony offers humanity a great challenge – to move beyond animal, instinctual nature as the primary and overall motivation for action. Animal nature is an organism acting according to innate needs and desires: procreating, consuming, satisfying whatever urges it holds for its increase and benefit.

One of the defining features of our species is the development of consciousness in concert with animal instinct. This gives us the ability to choose how we act. Indeed, over the ages civilisation has evolved a complex web of controls and channels for human animal nature: systems are in place for food, water and shelter; laws govern right behaviour and punish wrongdoing; cultural mores mediate urges for power and sex. We could not live collectively if there was no management of instinctual drives. And individuals continually make decisions to override animal nature in many mundane ways: for example choosing healthy food instead of eating whatever is immediately gratifying, or giving up the comfort of a seat on a train to an elderly person.

Yet even in this developed state humanity as a whole is governed by short-sighted instinctual motivations that are solely about us and our increase. If we and other species on Earth are to survive, there needs to be a quantum leap in human consciousness. This would mean a broadening of the collective human psyche, a whole-hearted turning outwards to all creation and the needs of the planet. It would involve a reappraisal of our position in the universe, from the source of all value to recognition of humble interdependence in the grand scheme of life. In sum, it would mean moving beyond our animal concern with “us” to a concern about the welfare of life generally.

How would this translate practically? I believe it would result in conscious choice to limit and reduce the human population, while redistributing global wealth so that as many people as possible are able to share in the basics and goodness of life. Of course, the economic system would have to be overhauled so that growth and wealth are not ends in themselves but serve society and nature. The political system could no longer be about the perpetuation of elite power but would rather serve community and nature. This all seems very pie-in-the-sky if not for the fact that many individuals and communities are already acting in ways that transcend sole concern about their own material wellbeing and are making choices that involve a broader recognition of the sanctity of life. Perhaps such a great shift is nearer than we think.

It needs to be said that moving beyond animal nature does not mean abandoning it. It is not a retreat into asceticism, the renunciation of the material world or old Judeo-Christian notions of the worthlessness of the body in relation to spiritual reality. Rather, we value our material existence and instincts while taking the next step of the human journey.   

Matter does, however, for the present particularly in the still affluent parts of the West, need to be kept in perspective. It is not the answer to everything, and awaits the bountiful redeeming breath of spirit. Gluttony need not be an eternal condition of humanity.