[extropy-chat] Kass again

[Jeff Davis]

Extropes,

I've not read Kass at any length.  I only have the
impression drawn from what I've heard.  "Wisdom of
repugnance", bushman, etc.  Then I came across this
(below).  Incredible!  Check it out.

Best, Jeff Davis

"The new always carries with it the sense of violation
and sacrilege.  What is dead is sacred. What is new,
that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive."

                       Henry Miller

               -----------------------

The below is taken from a blog at:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/000831.html

The blogger says:

"While I don't know his exact position on home-brewing
or beer-drinking, Leon Kass definitely hates ice cream
cones, and cone-licking!"

Then quotes Kass: 

"Worst of all from this point of view are those more
uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream
cone --a catlike activity that has been made
acceptable in informal America but that still offends
those who know eating in public is offensive. 

I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many
reader, people who will condescendingly regard as
quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the
street is for dogs. Modern America's rising tide of
informality has already washed out many long-standing
traditions -- their reasons long before forgotten --
that served well to regulate the boundary between
public and private; and in many quarters complete
shamelessness is treated as proof of genuine
liberation from the allegedly arbitrary constraints of
manners. To cite one small example: yawning with
uncovered mouth. Not just the uneducated rustic but
children of the cultural elite are now regularly seen
yawning openly in public (not so much brazenly or
forgetfully as indifferently and "naturally"), unaware
that it is an embarrassment to human self-command to
be caught in the grip of involuntary bodily movements
(like sneezing, belching, and hiccuping and even the
involuntary bodily display of embarrassment itself,
blushing). But eating on the street -- even when
undertaken, say, because one is between appointments
and has no other time to eat -- displays in fact
precisely such lack of self-control: It beckons
enslavement to the belly. Hunger must be sated now; it
cannot wait. Though the walking street eater still
moves in the direction of his vision, he shows himself
as a being led by his appetites. Lacking utensils for
cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen
using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions,
just like any animal. Eating on the run does not even
allow the human way of enjoying one's food, for it is
more like simple fueling; it is hard to savor or even
to know what one is eating when the main point is to
hurriedly fill the belly, now running on empty. This
doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be
kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no
shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful
behavior."

Kass, Leon: The Hungry Soul at 148-149. (University of
Chicago Press, 1994, 1999)


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