Kenneth Rufo, a co-collaborator at Long Sunday, has recently discovered buddhism. (Or re-discovered – either way, I won’t claim to know and I wouldn’t ask.) Kenneth has also been committed to a renewal of the “progressive” wing of the American Democratic Party. (Something, I assume, but, once again, I don’t know, comparable to our own left Liberals or New Democratic Party.) The question isn’t so much regarding his proposals – he right identifies me as sceptical of his ‘meditation is a time-out for politicians and activists’ as it strikes me as just as ludricrous as the ‘slow’ movement – as it is regarding the framing of his proposals: Schmitt plus the Buddha. A proposal for a renewal of progressive democratic politics animated by buddhism seems to have a false start in Schmitt’s Concept of the Political. But, perhaps my comment is animated by similar hesitation towards all other “Really Western Guy and Buddhism” style scholarship. (Stuff on both Nietzsche and Heidegger comes to mind; Nietzsche’s frequent comments on buddhism notwithstanding.) But, perhaps, my skepticism makes me unable to see his point.
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Actually, and I apologize if this was unclear, I’m not proposing Schmitt + Buddha, but rather that mindfulness has a rich tradition – Buddhism being the longest and most obvious source for that tradition – that provides an alternative (of sorts) to a enactig of the “political” thought through a strict allegiance to the partisan and friend/enemy distinction. But I think that the question of politics vis-a-vis Schmitt is a different question, and requires a struggle on a different terrain. I don’t want to get rid of that, by any stretch. But I think it’s worth using less combative and dichotomizing strategies as a counterpressure so that this Schmittian political isn’t the only political game in town.
And not that it matters, but it was more of a discovery. And not of Buddha, but of zazen (sitting meditation), which I realized had profound and totally unexpected benefits (for me, at least).
Your skepticism aside, I would love to hear your objections or concerns. This is a rather inchoate idea on my end, and I’m still thinking through whether or not it’s workable, valuable, even theoretically coherent. So feel free to shoot it down :)
Why is the ‘slow’ movement ludicrous? I ask with your vegetarianism and interest in fair trade goods in mind…
Perhaps something more along the lines of a sneer at sneering gentrified yuppie airheads was intended?
Eating soy-based foods, for instance, is actually “faster” than eating animal based foods – and leaves a smaller (insofar as my kitchen is concerned; I don’t know about the point of origin) environmental footprint. A tofu or tempeh based burger will cook through in five minutes on a barbecue. Even when I did eat beef, I wouldn’t have eaten a burger of comparable thickness cooked in that time at the same temperature. A “tofurkey” cooks for less time in the oven then a comparable sized turkey. And so on. There’s no slow cooking the briskett here. Similarly, fair trade coffee brews in the exact same amount of time as Folgers in my cup. There’s no committment to “slow-ness” or “fast-ness” at all.
From the little I’ve read of the slow movement, much of it involves avoiding McDonalds (which I do) and, instead, sitting down at a restaurant, having a starter, a main, a dessert, a glass of wine and a cup of coffee; i.e., spending an hour to an hour and a half eating your lunch instead of ten minutes. Consider, for a moment, if you will two significant factors: the time and price differential. You need a lot of “free” time to live slowly and, because it costs more, a lot of “free” money. It’s nothing but cosmopolitan let’s-feel-good-about-our-selves crap.
Having said that, I am presently living a semi-rural fantasy where I heat my house with wood instead of gas, where I (pretend) to enjoy cutting the grass with a push mower (no gas, no electricity) and raking my leaves, where I have my own garden, etc. (I’m not particularly good at the latter, by the way. My cauliflowers didn’t get heads until the end of September, and then it was too late: early frosts this year.) But, despite all that pretention, I still regularly drive into the city (about fifty to fifty-five minutes) and infrequently drive to Toronto.
It’d be “nice” to pretend to live a life of indulgent refinement having multi-course meals everyday and then run off to the gym to do some “rock” climbing to work off the meal and then hop into my Smart Car to go pick princess up from the montessori, but in all, it’s just silly.
Alright, that explains your problem with slowness; what of your skepticism towards mindfulness?
And I think slow foods is about more than that – it supports local agriculture, sustainable farming practices, and collective cooking. As a working member of the local coop, and someone who enjoys cooking with friends, I find it less expensive, enjoyably slow, and a totally different sense of time than the one governed by the concept of work. At its best, slow foods is a response to the idea that the efficiency model of time, imposed by capitalist agencies for fairly obvious reasons, should govern all of our lived experience. Yes, it’s indulgent, and it’s a luxury, but it the alternative seems to me to simply cede lived temporality to a rather vulgar, capitalist mode.
Sorry for not returning to your comment yet, Kenneth. I’m between the computer and other assorted chores – I haven’t had my requisite dose of coffee yet and, consequently, am not yet awake enough to extend beyond whining. (c.f., reply to Tim in this thread and to Swifty in another.) Would you mind if I took the time re-read your post (and your suggestion about a “center” for mindfulness) and get back to you later this evening? (Need to go take my walk in the woods – that’s my daily luxury – go to the grocery store and do some of my own reading in the meantime.) I’m not trying to avoid your question, but, rather, trying to give it the time it is due.
See, you do love the “slow” movement :P
Sure, whenever you get the chance, it will be appreciated.
Kenneth up there beat me to it, but the ‘slow’ movement, in addition to being about actually physically preparing and eating food slowly, is all about fair trade and is a direct rebuke to agribusiness.
And while maybe in North America it’s associated with a ‘sneering gentrified [I don't know what that word means in this context] yuppie’ culture (Matt’s words, not yours, but certainly your sentiment, you have to admit) in its home country, Italy, the slow culture is meant to be a revival of an ethic unrelated to class. The rural Italian farming family doesn’t live a life of ‘indulgent refinement’ – they just eat slowly, and what they eat is grown locally.
‘Convivium’ obviously sounds to North American ears like necessarily effete bourgeois nonsense, and it’s hard to separate it from class (i.e. only those with money have the luxury of having taste – as if this formulation isn’t intimately part of the logic of capitalism). I don’t know if it’s possible to put the idea in operation in North America the same way it works in Europe. It might be possible to relate slow food to a North American rural ideal, but one that’s been dead for a long time now, and would inevitably be bound up with cheesy ideas of rural living associated with The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie. Slow food is either for hicks or yuppies, I guess.
I brought this thread far off topic. I’m not even particularly invested in slow food – I mostly eat the unprepared elements of food as fast as I can while standing over the sink. I just don’t think the concept of slow food is a particularly bad one.
Tim – I’ll take the moment to note that last winter, imported fair trade and organic green peppers were $12CDN/pound at the local natural/organic grocery store. I’ll also point out that a half pound of decent fair trade and organic coffee costs about $15CDN at the same store. I’ll take the tofu and tempeh, thanks, and hope for the best. Not particularly addressed at your point as such, but there certainly are extreme class barriers to participation in this idealized peasant’s life.
Kenneth – it isn’t so much the “slow” as “lazy” movements, maybe. Sign me up for the latter.
However, Tim indirectly raises an interesting point, a question that could be asked of you: how can what looks like an ethic be aimed at a politics?
I’ll take your word on that, I don’t drink coffee. However, I do know that locally grown produce costs as much as or less than the ‘products of Peru’ you get at the supermarket.
Yes, but only in season. I assume you eat green peppers and onions year round! In late August through September, you can certainly get red and green peppers around $1.00/lb CDN – and here is another I’ll agree with you on: Loblaw’s, Loeb, YIG, etc will often buy imported vegetables even when they’re in-season locally. That is, YIG, for instance, is contracturally prohibited from stocking local field grown tomatoes. There seems to be some exceptions to this: it isn’t uncommon (as you know) to see local (although local doesn’t necessarily mean the nearest farm or even a farm in that town) strawberries right beside strawberries imported from California – with the imported ones costing more than twice as much! When possible, a farmer’s vegetable stand or the market is better than the grocery store, but, when you go to the farm you’re often disappointed to see that alongside produce, the farmer has a bunch of calfs chained to a tiny hut to make veal.
Yes, only in season. But that’s better than nothing, isn’t it? Plus, part of the slow food movement (as far as I know) involves reviving or continuing to use preservation techniques. Naturally, not everyone has a root cellar. But do you, in your large rural home?
Actually, I don’t!
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