Food for Peace

On this 3rd anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, I thought I'd share with you the column I published three years ago, in the run-up to the Iraq war.  Sadly the lessons here still need to be learned, and require a voice far louder and more persuasive than mine.

-kmf

It's About the Food

By Chef Kurt Michael Friese

Food for Peace

Companion, (kom-pan-yon) n.1. A person who accompanies or associates with another; comrade. [Latin com-, together + panis, bread.]

Modern societies are a conglomeration of age-old folkways and mores that have evolved over the centuries to accommodate circumstances.  Break them down into their constituent parts and what you find are families, a term I use here in the broadest possible sense.  The bond that holds families together is their desire to share food with each other.  Think about that fact in reference to your own family: take away the willingness to share food and the household quickly descends into chaos.  Looked at from the other direction, most likely the happiest moments of your life were spent around a table with people you love and great food in front of you.

Sharing food is certainly almost as old as eating; at least it is for all us primates.  Recall that image you store in your head of what pre-historic man was like.  Perhaps you picture scenes from films like Quest For Fire or 2001: A Space Odyssey.  You "B" movie fans might think of 1,000,000 Years BC.  All these images show the hunt and the meal as central preoccupations of the familial unit.  When they have food and share it, everyone is happy.  When they have food and do not share, somebody gets clocked with a mastodon bone.  Thus has it ever been.

It was Robert Fulghum who pointed out that you learned this simple truth in kindergarten: Share everything.  The reasoning behind this could fill several dissertations, or it could be encapsulated this simply: sharing reduces fear and breeds understanding; where fear is diminished love reigns, and where there is love there is peace.

In that frightening moment after the September 11th attacks, in the build up to the military actions in Afghanistan, an eMail began circulating through the inboxes of various softhearted peaceniks like myself.  Its subject was "Bomb Them With Butter," and its premise was that showering Afghanistan with food would go much farther in securing peace in the world than showering it with bombs.  It is an argument reminiscent of the old bumper sticker, "Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity."  Simple old truths are hard to escape: Sow war, reap war.

Stop and think for a moment what it might have accomplished, if we had invaded Afghanistan with columns of supply trucks instead of tanks.  Though no pacifist himself, Abraham Lincoln said that the surest way to defeat an enemy is to make him your friend.  If you sit at a table with someone, break bread, share a meal from that person's kitchen you are far less likely to kill him.  The old adage, "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are," could be amended to say, "Share what you eat and I'll better understand who you are."  People who understand each other do not attack each other.

And so, as we enter our third holiday season - "The Season of Peace" - since those infamous attacks in New York and Washington, pause for a moment and reflect on the awful fear and hatred that caused those people to brutally murder so many innocents.  What caused it?  Surely Americans as a whole are not entirely evil, I'm not and neither are you.  So these suicidal/homicidal extremists must have thought so, must have misunderstood something about us in order to be willing to attack us so wantonly.

A companion, we learned from the American Heritage Dictionary definition, above, is someone with whom you share your food; just look at the etymology.  The word "enemy," by the way, is also from Latin: inimicus, meaning "not friend."  Breaking a piece of bread and offering a piece to someone else, whether literally or metaphorically, is the simplest act of peace we can do, and one we should do more often both individually and as a nation.  We all need all the companions we can get.

I am not the first to say this but I wish I could be the last.  Every action has its consequences, and the cycle of violence will not be broken with more violence.  Until someone in a position of power amongst us has the fortitude to offer up butter, we will continue to deal in bombs, and so will they.