What makes a meal? This past week, I’ve written on the need for communal action to generate meaning and play to overcome the contradictions we experience, and now I’d like to propose an example of just such an action: Making a meal.
The need for community, at least in my generation, and definitely in the generation after mine, is significant. We spend so much of our time online, living vicariously through screens, and engaging only with virtual communities. These communities are, for all intents and purposes, lifeless. Nameless and faceless people overwhelm these groups, eventually becoming naught but a number. The people these groups are centered around (the group’s totem, if you will), use their followers as a signification of their worth and popularity; another vehicle to brand and sell themselves. For these people, bonds become transactional; commodities to be bought and sold. One may critique such groups as anti-human, which I think is an apt term.
These anti-human groups produce feelings of anomie. Online, there’s the object we seek, yet when we reach for it, we realize it's depersonalized; the identity we saw in it: a mere illusion of our desire. The hollowness in us, which we sought to relive through the online group, is made greater by the recognition that the group we placed our hopes in is void of comradery, fellowship, and sincerity.
In response to this, you may find a select group of people, nearby you, whom you can meet up with, share common interests, and weave meaningful bonds with. For all of this to occur, what is required most is not the ideas we share – while those are important – but the things we do with and for each other. I mentioned on Monday, the Sixth of March, that without a performative action, there can be no meaning. When we perform an act, we are not just doing something for the sake of doing something, we are aiming for a goal. In this sense, it is not like Play; Play is done for its own sake. When we perform, we aim to wholly complete something. In aiming for this goal, we feel a sense of purpose and meaning.
Unlike a potlach, where everyone brings a dish with them to a meal, making a meal is just the kind of performative act that I think is both fundamentally meaningful and playfully creative. I also think it is an essential starting point for building a community. The potlach meal, which the group does sit down around, still has that air of lifelessness, it also has the potential to be highly competitive. No one wants to look as if they’ve brought a dish that is less important than someone else’s, so they’ll spend a lot of time making a dish or they’ll feign cooking and buy a dish from a local food market, bakery, or restaurant. I am not saying these are bad – I’ve done them before – but they miss the point. The point is to engage in an activity that builds bonds, brings forth the sense of cohesion we are looking for, and makes something meaningful in the process.
To cook a meal, you have to know what you want to cook. Secondly, you have to source all of the requisite ingredients and materials necessary to prepare the dish. Thirdly, you have to make sure that all necessary prep work is done before the dish is made, which requires organization and planning. Fourthly, you have to work under heat and pressure and, as anyone who’s watched Hell’s Kitchen or worked in a kitchen themselves can tell you, it can get very hot. Lastly, it requires patience and communication, especially if you are working with others. A group meal, wherein everyone cooks, requires all this and more – it requires group organization, measuring strengths and weaknesses, and communication between all members of the group.
This latter requirement is essentially what makes the act a meaningful group performance. The very nature of it being goal-oriented instantiates a hierarchy and requires honesty and trust, the validity of which is revealed through participation in the performance. The end product, the food, then becomes not just a thing to eat, a commodity to consume, but a reflection of the identity of the group, what they can achieve, or what they need to work on. Under heat and time pressure, the masks we place upon ourselves melt away; our nature is revealed. For a group seeking to build bonds, this is essential; we must know each other, who we are, what we can do, and what our weaknesses and strengths are.
At its core, this act is also a form of play. It is practice for the tasks we wish to achieve elsewhere. If we wish to organize, engage in political action in the real world, and achieve goals as a small group, the act of meal-making is like a test run for just such action. Again, play is done for its own sake; we cook, as a game, to see if we are good at cooperating in another game, i.e., to see if we are good play-pals.
The act of cooking a meal as a group tests the group; the kitchen is hot, organization is a prerequisite, planning is a must, coordination is essential, and only cooks can be in the kitchen. Preparing food under pressure challenges the group's ability to keep cool, but it also affords them the opportunity to reconcile their frustrations; to work out those unspoken and unconscious expressed modes of being. Meal-making is, thus, not just a transfiguring exercise for the individual but for the group of meal makers.
When the meal is complete, it is time to indulge. After preparing and completing the food, when everyone is ready to sit down and eat, after they’ve cleaned themselves up, then the communal exercise of partaking in the meal can truly occur. This differs significantly from the potlach. The meal is not merely something you can shove down your gullet while you discuss your lives, ideas, or plans. Instead, it becomes a shared experience – the group is reflected in the meal. Each contribution, task, and role is seen in the prepared dishes; the depths and heights of each member are shown for what they are. Maybe Sarah didn’t season the beef properly, but Jacob precisely diced the vegetables, or Allen put too much sugar in the peas, but Simon cooked the fish perfectly. Here, the group faces reality; it ultimately cannot negotiate with bad food.
Here too is a time to share, learn about the skills of others, and genuinely practice listening. Mark may chop his onions one way while Josh slices his another. Jane may prefer using shallots in one dish but Emily may prefer red onion. Alex may like a pinch of ginger to spice up his meal while Jake may want a dash of red pepper flake. By revealing our techniques and desires, we also reveal our mode of being, what we value, and the contextual factors that give rise to that preferred existential mode. By genuinely listening to why our partners prepare food as they do, we learn about them and how they see the world, thus, we can place ourselves in their shoes. By building this other-perspective, we can begin to make predictions about how they might act under different circumstances. Yet, we do not simply acquire a theory of mind about our play-pals. Instead, we build a theatre of mind wherein we can see how our friends might act under particular hypothetical conditions. In this way, the inarticulable focal point of meaning for the group can be realized. Once we can see the world through their eyes, all of their eyes, they (in a way) become part of us. When this occurs, the ability to generate a focal point that can speak to all members of the group, enable group coordination, and give the group purpose becomes much more likely.
The meal or performance is complete when everyone leaves for the night, they take their bows, and say goodbye. Hopefully, every one helped to clean the kitchen after the meal was complete; the eminence of the dishwasher really cannot go unspoken. Still, we know the meal is truly complete when everyone is done for the night, the kitchen is clean, and farewells have been given because the task is complete; the game is over, play is done and it is time to return to our old selves.
Each iteration of this game tests the group's ability to act as a group. This is the key. If only one person prepares the meal while everyone else sits, drinks, and has a discussion, the game is worthless – everyone has to participate. If everyone doesn’t participate, the group cannot act as a cohesive, organized unit. This is the greatest contradiction the group must unravel for it to know whether it truly can work as a group. The group can say it’s organized, that it can achieve goals, that each member knows what the other is thinking, and that they know their physical and mental strengths or weaknesses, but until they act as a group, all of this is hoopla. They must prove themselves to themselves to truly know they can act as one. Meal-making is just one way to achieve this.
It's important to remember that, like any kind of practice, doing this once isn’t enough. If at first you don’t succeed, maybe give it another go. In a sense, this kind of play needs to become a tradition. From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that making the perfect French omelet is surprisingly difficult. However, every time I make a French omelet, even with every variation of an omelet I make, I feel I’ve learned something new. Given the meal-making exercise I’m suggesting is a group project, each group that engages in this practice can learn something new about themselves and the practice, how they work together, overcome their weaknesses, and utilize their strengths. Yet none of these are achievable if this doesn’t become a reiterated practice.
Over time, the group can enter a flow state. Because they’ve engaged in the exercise or its like numerous times, the sense of self one has can eventually divide between the whole; the theatre of mind merged with the activity of meal making; the group, in each of its modes, made one. This is the pinnacle of the game, but it is also what should be aimed for in all games the group seeks to play. The group seeks cohesion, meaning, and purpose, and through this exercise, they can practice acquiring all three.
Through this process, the meal does not just become a thing to eat, it becomes a thing to be.
