Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [178]
An integrated understanding includes an experiential understanding.
"Old World" skills (both Old World Europe and Old World Asia) were grounded on the absolute mastery of the fundamentals through practice and repetition. Only when this foundation was perfected would the student or apprentice begin adding higher skills and knowledge. This is the structure of scientific knowledge as well.
Thus an integrated understanding of health, well-being, nutrition, cooking/cuisine and life itself requires growing some food oneself. Even if it a single tomato vine in a pot, everyone must gain the experience of nurturing, harvesting, preparing and eating real food. Without this experiential working knowledge, then there can be no truly integrated understanding of health, well-being, nutrition or cooking/cuisine.
It is a simple "obvious" truism that what we put in our bodies for sustenance directly influences our health and well-being. No one denies this, yet many stuff themselves with visibly unhealthy foods--mostly packaged by agribusiness/fast-food global corporations for profit, not nutrition.
As a result, the U.S. is a nation plagued by poor health and pandemic chronic illness.
There can be no real understanding of what food is without growing fruits or vegetables or raising livestock/fish and then preparing and eating the results. Even if it a single tomato harvested from a single vine in a single pot on the deck of an apartment, then the experience is necessary to transform one's understanding of food, nutrition and health.
An integrated understanding works back from "the obvious" to the source and then works forward again, grasping each causal link in the entire network.
To understand the epidemic of "diabesity" then we have to trace the causal chain back to our stilted, alienated understanding of food itself.
From there, we can advance through all the other causal links: from the stupor/torpor induced by high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt packaged food to the decline of cooking skills and the saturation of the mass media with messages to consume unhealthy but highly profitable items which are simulacra of actual food, manufactured to stimulate the addiction/reward centers in our brains.
Once a truly integrated understanding is reached, then you stop buying packaged foods entirely and you also lose the desire to consumer fast foods, half-gallons of ice cream and a host of junk-"food" snacks and beverages.
In a similar fashion, there is no way to reach an integrated understanding of well-being without being physically fit along with eating real food prepared at home--even if "home" is a campsite. No gym equipment is necessary to become fit; nothing is needed but two square meters of open space. If one has never experienced well-being, then how can one claim to understand it?
This is a radical departure from the quasi-"scientific" politics of experience which claims a full understanding is possible by quantification alone. This is a politics of experience which leads to quantification traps in which simulacrum of understanding are supported by quantifications which are inherently ambiguous or decontextualized of meaning.
Propaganda favors statistics and quantification because manipulated data can always be presented in ways which support a politics of experience under the control of a centralized, concentrated-power Elite. (Does that list of ingredients on packaged food really tell you anything that adds to your understanding? Or is it designed to obfuscate and deceive?)
The understanding that Americans are eating their way to death does not support a highly profitable complex of "food" and "sick-care"/pharmaceutical industries. Hence it is suppressed and decontextualized in favor of incentives to continue eating oneself to death so that powerful Elites can increase their profits.
The relentless promotion of "free" media is an integral