Instinct and civilization

At the basis of all civilization, there is fire. Does this mean that without the control of fire there would be no civilization?

There would certainly not be the same forms of civilization, all the technological development, metals, chemistry, cooking, deforestation, pollution would not have been possible. We would still be building houses of branches and earth, eating raw food, fighting against wild beasts in the middle of the virgin forest, shivering in animal skins in winter… This seems unthinkable, and it must be admitted that fire has enabled remarkable progress.

However, among these advances, there are some useful ones, and others which make us prisoners of false needs, even destroyers of planetary ecology. A certain step back from the benefits of civilization in general, and of our modern civilization in particular, would not be useless. This is what instincto offers, starting with a sector of our culture that is generally not questioned: the culinary art.

What would civilization be if the culinary art had not existed? The question is more complex than it seems, because the effect of diet on behavior does not only concern eating habits. Today’s science has not necessarily covered this, for the simple reason that it has never taken the culinary art itself into its sights. She considered that cooking would be an integral part of the human condition, and that everything that can result from it belongs intrinsically to the history of man.

However, this position is not based on a critical approach: our ancestors at a certain moment in history invented cooking, and today we inherit its multiple developments. Since Roman times, recipe books have accumulated and constitute an imposing library, with countless variations depending on the region of the world. But what would another twist of fate be like, if culinary artifice had never existed? And what would happen to us and future generations if, for whatever reason, culinary artifice was abandoned entirely?

This eventuality is unthinkable, some will say. It would represent a total upheaval of many parts of our economy, our agriculture, our habits, our relationship with nature. This does not mean it is impossible: cigarettes, a universal landmark of macho culture a few decades ago, are now banned by many states. At the origin of such a change in lifestyle, there is science: medical research, which has raised awareness of the harmfulness of an ancestral habit and initiated a new consensus, going against the majority cultural patterns and the interests of the tobacco industry.

However, it is very likely that science will also reveal, as instinct has done, the harmfulness of culinary habits. The issue is approximately the same: the major diseases, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, are directly related to diet, as they are with smoking; the culinary art aims at pleasure, as smoke aims at giving us a certain euphoria; in both cases, the economic stakes are enormous; cooking and smoking derive directly from the control of fire and have disastrous consequences on health, on our psychological state, on the environment. The awareness that has arisen against all expectations in terms of smoking, could be raised in terms of diet, even if the process requires more effort and more time.

How then can we imagine a civilization without culinary art? No difference in the possibilities of technological progress: the tools, machines, structures of industry do not technically depend on the food of its artisans. At most, we could expect greater caution in the face of the risks of the chemical industry, inspired by greater vigilance of the senses (most chemical odors are clearly more intolerable to the nose of an instinctual person than to that of a culivore); greater trust in nature, therefore greater respect for the environment, particularly for the tree as the source of the fruit; unless there are false needs, thanks to less disturbed psychic and physiological functioning, therefore to a different distribution of industrial development.

This brings us back to the converse: what are the harmful aspects of our current civilization attributable directly or indirectly to the culinary art? We have two ways to answer this question: the theoretical way, starting from scientific knowledge to deduce the consequences of dietary factors on physical and psychological functioning; the emipiric way, to synthesize the elements of observation taken from the instinctive approach. Where the two paths meet, certainties can emerge.

One of the bases of civilizations is agriculture. For millennia, it has represented a connection to the earth, arduous work, subjection to weather conditions, desertification, famines, submission to the good will of the Gods, to religious power, to the power of the chemical industry, a certain sense of property, the defense of the territory, the peasant family, hierarchical social structures, flight into the metropolises, epidemics, politics, land and real estate speculation, distractions, prostitution, pornography, delinquency. A natural diet, without large herds or fields of cereals, would undoubtedly have produced a different picture. Without returning to hunting and gathering, tree crops, outdoor work, team work, village communities, love and respect for nature, biodiversity, ecological and hydrological balance, mutual aid, less weather dependence, a sense of sharing more than individual property, less pillaging, less or no agricultural machinery, industry, chemistry, pollution, desertification… would predominate.

What about science? A large part of the knowledge which structures the current scientific paradigm arises directly from the contradictions and harmful effects of the system which has been put in place around the culinary art, cereal agriculture, breeding, diseases and existential deprivation. Removing these disturbing factors would make it possible to settle for a less sophisticated culture, to erase individual differences and the spirit of competition, as well as anxieties of survival and inferiority. To free ourselves from medicine that is ever more costly and a source of degeneration of our genetic heritage. This simplification would not prevent scientific research, it would perhaps direct it towards more human, more philosophical, more spiritual, less technological, political and warlike values.

Rather than wasting incredible resources in the name of a conquest of space, which will only ever interest a tiny minority of billionaires or explorers, men would give priority to the preservation of their living space and seriously put an end to its systematic destruction.

This only illustrates a more general debacle: our civilization is leading to the destruction of the biotope on which our existence and that of future generations depends. Even the greatest efforts made in the direction of renewable energies and organic agriculture will not prevent environmental problems from worsening due to the population explosion, with famines, suffering and inevitable wars. There is a contradiction here between the positive idea that we have of the concept of civilization and its inevitable consequences. Knowing that the food problem has major repercussions at the level of individual and social behavior, particularly at the level of sexuality, questioning the culinary art could contribute to finding a constructive solution.