Thoughts from Terminal D
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about architecture. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the way that manipulated physical space dictates our movement through it. If you enter a house, and you want to get from one room to another, the channels through which to do so are preordained. If you arrive in a city and want to get from midtown to downtown, your choices have pretty much been forced upon you. If you want to go to floor 34 of a skyscraper, options are inherently limited. As much as we value and tout our freedom, the most basic decisions about where, when, and how to negotiate space have trumped our mythical notion of freedom. Architecture is, in essence, a stealthy little tyrant. No wonder architects are so shamelessly arrogant.
As with physical space, so it goes with mental space. Although often harder to recognize, our intellectual and emotional lives are trapped in preexisting mazes every bit as dictatorial as a building or a metropolis. Plus, the more those roads are traveled, the more customary those routes become. When I came to this realization—years ago—I stopped regularly reading newspapers and other mainstream sources of public information. Instead, I sought out the intellectual world’s version of double-secret back roads and relatively unknown trap doors of knowledge and insight. Of course, over time, these too become routinized and dictatorial in their own ways, making alternative ways of living and thinking appear commonplace and complacent. Like early settlers in a new land, we must—to preserve intellectual dynamism and originality—seek new frontiers. No wonder journalists are so shamelessly arrogant.
Very few souls are willing to challenge these boundaries. As a result, internal and external architectures have entered a sort of conspiracy to prevent, or at least dramatically lesson, the prospects of real change, fundamental change, compassionate change. So much about life has been etched in stone. In ways we rarely appreciate, we’ve no choice, if we want to function in civil society, but to follow the paths set out before us. We might push against the edges, but that’s it. Otherwise, we have to drop out. This is why, I imagine, so many vegan activists are angry. I know it’s why I’m angry. Such are the thoughts that arise while hungry, stuck in an airport, and unable to find a single vegan option in terminal D of Dulles Airport.
Thank god for vegan beer.
Just goes to show that if we want a vegan world, we have to make it. Now, who wants to start a vegan restaurant at Dulles?
First original and worthy blog post of the year! Your architecture metaphor is more that a metaphor — it is literal. A function of the expression of the carnist state is to code your environment to control your behavior and the epistemic expression of your mental capacity so that you are in essence programmed to choose to eat meat. The totalitarian (and now neoliberal) biopolitics of architecture are well known. See Wallenstein, The Biopolitics of Architecture
In terms of the actual metaphor of staking out new intellectual pathways, that is every academic’s promise and dream but so many compromise along the way. I think Bernard Stiegler said something about not embracing regression at a conference once.
A subtle point you make about vegan beer as not all beer is free from animal ingredients, additives, egg filtration or processing agents. Stick to vodka. Almost every aspect of modernity contains some use of an animal that we partake in no matter how vegan our diet or politics. See generally, Ayres, May Contain Hooves: Why and How the Government Should Implement Plain-Language Disclosure of Animal Products in Food Labels, Stanford Law Review
John T,
It’s been an odd year thus far without your signature brilliant insights, valuable source reference, and inimitable backhanded compliment. Glad to have them all.
JM
http://www.barnivore.com/ Cheers!
I’ve actually published articles on the history of beer but have never heard of “cock ale.” Thanks for reminding me why I keep this blog.
-jm
I relate in several ways to this post: as a onetime (probably) arrogant journalist, as a current (hopefully) compassionate activist, and as someone who rather late in life began questioning the status quo on every subject imaginable.
When I left my first journalism job, tucked between the friendly parting gifts and cards I received was a conspicuously unfriendly anonymous letter accusing me of the very flaw you describe. It puzzled me then and shamed me years later.
Like you, James, I no longer follow mainstream news, gravitating instead toward the few truth-digging reporters who are bent on restoring the role of the press as public servant. One such journalist, James Aronson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Aronson), came to my attention recently. Actually, his book did: “The Press and the Cold War” (copyright 1970). Though he tried to reform his profession, it would appear Aronson’s criticism of the press is still apt, some 40 years later:
“The press was no longer in the business of reporting or reflecting public opinion. It was seeking to become public opinion by means of the self-fulfilling prophecy: If you said something often enough, people would come to accept it and it would happen. When this practice is followed by adversaries, we call it brainwashing.”
“It is commonly said that history repeats itself. It would be more accurate to say that the forces which seek to maintain the status quo, in each succeeding generation, employ the same philosophy and tactics to prevent change—refining the methods used to persuade the public that change is somehow evil.”
“We [the press] have always had a fairly superficial approach. We are not trained to ask basic questions. We have not equipped ourselves to challenge a changing world.”
Do journalism’s stolidity and superficiality, its self-fulfilling prophecy and its status quo arguments, remind anyone of the enraged backlash of carnism against veganism these days?
Another reformer who, like Aronson, dared challenge boundaries and pioneer new paths was a 19th century New Englander. Mary Baker Eddy defied yellow journalism by founding, in 1908, at age 87, an international newspaper that’s still in operation: The Christian Science Monitor. Eddy took on entrenched — “etched in stone,” to use your words — orthodoxies, whose adherents were stirred up, even antagonized and outraged, by her radical concepts of science, theology, and medicine. Of a pioneer’s tasks, trials, torments, and triumphs, she wrote:
“It is the task of the sturdy pioneer to hew the tall oak and to cut the rough granite.”
“Future ages must declare what the pioneer has accomplished.”
“In every age, the pioneer reformer must pass through a baptism of fire.”
“As a rule the Adam-race are not apt to worship the pioneer of spiritual ideas,–but ofttimes to shun him as their tormentor.”
“The pioneer of something new under the sun is never hit: he cannot be; the opinions of people fly too high or too low.”
Any of these quotes’ life-lessons sound familiar to today’s animal rights pioneers?
My grandfather strayed little from his daily routines, but he seemed content. In more of a groove than a rut.
When it comes to airport food, I’m very routinized. I bring along two vegan Amy’s Burritos/Wraps per meal. They pack easily in a briefcase or other carryon bag. They’re better warm, but they’re fine just room temperature. I take them out of the freezer the night before I travel and put them in the fridge. By late morning they’re good to go, and last at least the rest of the day.
For traveling, I like the ones that stay best intact. These are the Bean & Rice Burrito – Non-Dairy and the delicious Indian Spinach Tofu Wrap.
The Gluten Free Indian Aloo Matter Wrap is also delicious, but it crumbles a bit. The Black Bean Vegetable Burrito can drip a little.
http://www.amys.com/products/product-categories/burritos-and-wraps
Charlie,
I brought my own food: always do. But a delay was a delay and, partially because I did a long run that morning, hunger was hunger, and anger was anger.
JM
So many airports have improved their food options. I wonder why Dulles – and Reagan in D.C., too – are so far behind the curve?