Went to a local sandwich/hoagie/pizza restaurant last week. The subs are big, about the size of the U.S.S. Nautilus. So, two of us split one. Maybe in my youth I might have eaten a whole sub by myself, but, well, we all reach limitations, one imposed by material substance and another imposed by immaterial guilt. Do I want to be seen as a gourmand or a gourmet?
And then I got to thinking. Everyone knows that portions in restaurants are larger than they used to be; bagels are larger, too. Yeah. People in an affluent society eat a lot. TV reporters have even used the size of portions as filler stories (pun intended). But are we the first to gorge ourselves? Is gorging—relatively speaking, of course, because I’ve seen tiny people eat tiny amounts to my eye and say, “I’m stuffed”—part of the human psyche? If the evidence from old poop is correct, yes; we’ve always been gorgers.
Apparently, some hunter-gatherer living in the Lower Pecos region at the junction of the Pecos and Rio Grande ate an entire snake, maybe a rattlesnake. * One of the fangs passed through the individual and was left behind in a coprolite. I can hear the conversation.
“Hey, you gonna eat that whole snake?”
“Yep.”
“Aren’t you goin’ to rip out them fangs first?”
“Nope.”
Not a long conversation, but then how long are our conversations about choosing a whole sub over a half sub in a local restaurant? Eating the whole thing isn’t new, so who cares? What are you going to say? “Are you going to eat the hot peppers, too?”
Anything to be learned here? I can think of one. From our origins through our evolution as humans, we really haven’t changed as much as we would like to believe. There’s a primitive snake-eater hiding in each of us.
Online you can find many comparisons of restaurant portions served over the past half century, all of which point out the trend toward increasing sizes—of the food and of us in general. I suppose the only difference between us and our gourmand ancestors is the size of the snake. By comparison with that meal on a rattlesnake, our meals are pythons. Yes, we’re eating bigger and bigger snakes in restaurants. And we wash them down with a sweet tea or soda with more dissolved sugar than a small inlet has salt. Well, at least we finish off the meal of snake and sugar with a healthful green tea—a Venti Tazo Green Tea Frappuccino with only 560 calories (or, in winter, a hot Venti White Chocolate Mocha with 620 calories).
In those same fifty years by contrast, we appear to be gorging ourselves on a diet of smaller and smaller books, thinking smaller and smaller philosophies, and having smaller and smaller attention spans. Not all of course, but many of us—and I humbly include myself—tend to seek shortcuts to knowledge and wisdom. Mentally, we’re consuming smaller snakes—though we might argue that we consume many more of them in a world that throws information from everywhere in the snake pit of collective media. Such a diet gives us a wide range of knowledge equal to that of a Jeopardy champion.
Small snakes might be easier to consume than big snakes, but they can be poisonous. Pay attention not only to the size of the information you consume, but also to its nature. A large mental snake might be better for you than a small one. It depends on the nature of the snake.
You might find that in the restaurant of life, wisdom comes by mentally consuming a large portion of the same thought. Sometimes it's better to choose a whole sub over a half sub, hot peppers and all.
*Yirka, Bob. Evidence found of early hunter-gatherer eating an entire venomous snake. Phys.org. April 24, 2019. Online at https://phys.org/news/2019-04-evidence-early-hunter-gatherer-entire-venomous.html Accessed April 27, 2019. The researchers, Elanor Sopnderman, Crystal Dozier, and Morgan Smith say that they also found someone had eaten an entire rat. The snake might have been eaten as part of a ritual.
And then I got to thinking. Everyone knows that portions in restaurants are larger than they used to be; bagels are larger, too. Yeah. People in an affluent society eat a lot. TV reporters have even used the size of portions as filler stories (pun intended). But are we the first to gorge ourselves? Is gorging—relatively speaking, of course, because I’ve seen tiny people eat tiny amounts to my eye and say, “I’m stuffed”—part of the human psyche? If the evidence from old poop is correct, yes; we’ve always been gorgers.
Apparently, some hunter-gatherer living in the Lower Pecos region at the junction of the Pecos and Rio Grande ate an entire snake, maybe a rattlesnake. * One of the fangs passed through the individual and was left behind in a coprolite. I can hear the conversation.
“Hey, you gonna eat that whole snake?”
“Yep.”
“Aren’t you goin’ to rip out them fangs first?”
“Nope.”
Not a long conversation, but then how long are our conversations about choosing a whole sub over a half sub in a local restaurant? Eating the whole thing isn’t new, so who cares? What are you going to say? “Are you going to eat the hot peppers, too?”
Anything to be learned here? I can think of one. From our origins through our evolution as humans, we really haven’t changed as much as we would like to believe. There’s a primitive snake-eater hiding in each of us.
Online you can find many comparisons of restaurant portions served over the past half century, all of which point out the trend toward increasing sizes—of the food and of us in general. I suppose the only difference between us and our gourmand ancestors is the size of the snake. By comparison with that meal on a rattlesnake, our meals are pythons. Yes, we’re eating bigger and bigger snakes in restaurants. And we wash them down with a sweet tea or soda with more dissolved sugar than a small inlet has salt. Well, at least we finish off the meal of snake and sugar with a healthful green tea—a Venti Tazo Green Tea Frappuccino with only 560 calories (or, in winter, a hot Venti White Chocolate Mocha with 620 calories).
In those same fifty years by contrast, we appear to be gorging ourselves on a diet of smaller and smaller books, thinking smaller and smaller philosophies, and having smaller and smaller attention spans. Not all of course, but many of us—and I humbly include myself—tend to seek shortcuts to knowledge and wisdom. Mentally, we’re consuming smaller snakes—though we might argue that we consume many more of them in a world that throws information from everywhere in the snake pit of collective media. Such a diet gives us a wide range of knowledge equal to that of a Jeopardy champion.
Small snakes might be easier to consume than big snakes, but they can be poisonous. Pay attention not only to the size of the information you consume, but also to its nature. A large mental snake might be better for you than a small one. It depends on the nature of the snake.
You might find that in the restaurant of life, wisdom comes by mentally consuming a large portion of the same thought. Sometimes it's better to choose a whole sub over a half sub, hot peppers and all.
*Yirka, Bob. Evidence found of early hunter-gatherer eating an entire venomous snake. Phys.org. April 24, 2019. Online at https://phys.org/news/2019-04-evidence-early-hunter-gatherer-entire-venomous.html Accessed April 27, 2019. The researchers, Elanor Sopnderman, Crystal Dozier, and Morgan Smith say that they also found someone had eaten an entire rat. The snake might have been eaten as part of a ritual.
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