Recently devouring Gyorgy Scrinis’ excellent book Nutritionism, a deep-dive, big-picture assay of the state of nutrition science and dietary choice-making, it occurred to me that his evaluation could apply to literally anything and integrates with some thinking I’ve been engaging in regarding perspectives on gross versus subtle interfaces—and of course, with my own life.
Scrinis (who I discovered researching for my upcoming book, This is Raw, and shared a fantastic article of his in THIS post) highlights the reductionist and unintegrated nature of dominant food paradigms. This reductionism (which he cleverly labels “nutritionism”), includes the near sole focus on/obsession with individual nutrients to the exclusion of the Big Picture—including quality and context of foods. This dove-tails with some of the major themes in This is Raw, and just generally makes much common sense.
Scrinis points out the obvious truth that we engage with foods in a bodily way. We have the ability to experience foods sensorily: what they smell, look and taste like and how our bodies respond to them in other ways. I specify “have the ability to” because I observe many people who have become blinded to their own actual experience in favor of industry (or other) conditioning including intellectual abstractions on the level of what passes for food science (which in many—and perhaps most cases prominently available for lay-people—amounts purely to marketing). As an example, due to the dairy industry’s multi-kazillion dollar ad campaigns for cow’s milk, a general perception that you need cow milk (a false assertion) to get calcium (an intellectual nutritionism—i.e., reductionist—concept not experienced directly) led many (myself included) to drink a lot of it, despite the body’s often clarion calls for help, including mucus, asthma and gastrointestinal distress.
We could apply this to any area of life choices.
Some results of interfacing (with anything) can be delayed and cumulative, while others (most, I would assert), if we’re attuned to our experience, are immediate. I’d hazard that accumulation/delay results from ignoring, misperceiving or not perceiving the immediate. This applies whether we’re referencing a physical event (e.g., mucous) or gut-feeling response (e.g., disgust)—and to this point, can these really be differentiated in any meaningful way…???
In the same way in which nutritionism has fucked us over in terms of actual health, over-analysis of individual components of an interface with just about ANYTHING can similarly obscure the otherwise obvious experiential truth.
This is illustrated in the oft-referenced “on-paper” concept versus actual experience in relationships. We must vet what people say about themselves and their credentials, but within the ultimately important whole of the overall experience of spending time with this person. We must also guard against the ego tampering with this experiential understanding and dismantling, diminishing or dismissing the integrity of the actual holistic experience via the filter of reductionist, conceptual frameworks.
Let’s look at this nutritional example as well: on a whim the other day I ate vegan tacos (cooked) from a local restaurant. Within a few minutes, my lungs tightened up and I experienced difficulty with ease of breathing. I retested a few days later, with identical results. Now, adopting a reductionist perspective, I might ask for an ingredients list, comb through it and spend days or weeks researching and trying to figure out what was in those darned tacos that caused that reaction—meanwhile continuing to eat those tacos because they tasted really good! Or, I could listen to my body’s response on the whole, and never eat those tacos again. (This is the process by which I bracketed down to eating whole, organic, raw foods.)
I’m not saying that nutrition science or looking at the trees (in terms of the forest for the trees metaphor) is never valuable—sometimes it is—just don’t ignore or devalue the holistic response in favor of sifting through minutia. How do you want to spend your life??
I think this whole topic resonated so strongly with me because I see myself falling prey to the reductionist fallacy in various areas of my life at times. While quality and holism are clear as day to me in terms of nutrition, in other areas, due to early childhood conditioning et al., I can really get CF red-herringed. Which brings me, obliquely, to my musings on gross vs. subtle interfaces.
This concept is exactly what it sounds like: some things are obvious, visible and physical (gross), such as skin and bones, and others are perceptible on a more subtle (e.g.,—not i.e.,—energetic) level. But make no mistake, they both impact systems as a whole, whether human, other animal, plant, soil, etc. I’m not going to get into the proof/science of this in this stack, I just desire to point out that it’s true. I observed the other day that someone laying on their horn at a traffic incident, for instance, affected my entire energetic system—as everything will, whether perceived or not.
But the subtle, because it often is unseen and goes unobserved directly (while registering no less actual effect), if one is not attuned and willing to respond accordingly, becomes the playground of marketers, manipulators and doubt—both inter and intrapersonally. Here’s where we get red-herringed, taken off track and shift, often imperceptibly, into spirals of confusion.
The key is always attunement and discernment. Presence and alignment of awareness with what is happening now. Certain charlatans endemic to our culture have long benefitted from our misalignment, unawareness and lack of attunement. Reductionism is a tricky tool that can be used against us, whether by someone trying to sell us a supplement or by our own egos, attempting to gain the illusions of power, security or appreciation.
We must experientially comprehend the whole and respect its integrity, so as not to be deceived by an over-analysis of the parts, before we can dissect to discover anything at all. Often, as in literature and life, to dissect, we must destroy—and the whole, in systems, is rarely the sum of its parts. Whole food natural elements, for example, work synergistically (not in isolation) with each other and with the body, resulting in healthful effects. Though what I’m talking about goes way beyond any systems approach. In any case, I suggest, for myself and others, to defer always to the holistic response in everything. While there can be value in examining one’s own conditioning and the impact of this on decisions, in absence of an emotionally charged reaction, I’d warn not to waste time, in most circumstances, on the dissection.
How do I feel holistically when I engage with:
This food?
This situation?
This action?
This person?
etc.
The gross influences interfacing with the body (physical and energetic), combine comprehensively and indivisibly with the integrated and synergistic subtle, unseen and often intellectually unperceived forces and result in a holistic experience. The point: trust that experience. In doing this, we might find that where we perceived there to be choice, there was none—only the opportunity to deceive one’s self.