A Reflection on Ceramic Plates
Reaffirm your dignity by eating from a ceramic plate.
I used to wonder about my father's obsession with eating from a beautiful plate. After all, it is just the boring activity of eating—just do it and do away with it. Why should I bother myself to eat from a fragile, well-crafted, floral-printed ceramic plate when I can eat from a plastic plate; or even better, a disposable styrofoam? Why can’t I move my hands and jaws quickly in that boring fashion so that I can move on to the next thing? Must I bother myself with eating from a white, well-made dinnerware that is best reserved for important events? It seems needless. However, the questions lingered with my father's insistence. And thus I proceeded to reflect on the issue. This then is the result of my meditations.
Upon meditating, I saw first and foremost—and I see it quite clearly—that those lingering questions reveal an interesting teenage angst which if well resolved, can lead a boy to become a man. They are interesting and must not be avoided nor shooed like noisy birds. The questions themselves are a gift from God; a means by which we can engage our rational faculties. It is good if we entertain them. As they —the questions— are a type of awakening: where a moral agent comes alive by inquiry, seeking to not sit back and let things happen to him. It is a response to that special quality in us that allows us to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to us; things not explicitly prescribed by our situations but are instead, an act of that thing we call creativity. So, no one should dismiss such questions as trivial. Nor should parents silence them — that is how parents and children make themselves dumb. Out of such trivial questions, more eminent answers have come.
Look at it this way. Those questions are not questions that a calf would ask his mother cow as they graze together in the field. Now I don't speak beef. Yet, I am certain that when the calf moos to his mother as they chew grass in the field, the calf doesn't ask his mother "why? Why mother, do we chew the cud; why do we ruminate?" But a little boy—after a hard day's work of playing with legos—may ask his engineer dad as they sit at the dining table why they eat or why eat from a beautiful plate. If a calf would not ask, but your little boy would, you may have stumbled upon an important difference between a calf and a little boy; and animality from humanity. The little boy may choose to act like a calf and chew his greens, moving on like that is all that matters. But as soon as he steps out of that exigency; to pause his pressing interest in consuming vegetables; to ask why we ought to eat from beautiful plates, he has ceased to behave calf-like, no matter how trivial the question seems. It is now left for his father to answer.
The father may answer this way. A cow chews grass and looks about his grazing field. And the young boy chews meat and stares down at his plate. Both entities chew, both entities stare. Both are interested in their meal as far as satisfaction goes. However, they do not stare alike. So that while both appear to stare, their staring does not contain the same character. The cow stares in awareness of his environment; perhaps checking for predatory activity or for greener grass. Taking an interest in his surroundings for his—the cow's—sake. In human terms, being interested in something else for our own sake is the Animus of lust. For the man who stares at a voluptuous woman for his own sake does it to satisfy his base desires. This represents how the cow gazes at the field: it lusts after the greenness of the field. Thus, we are sure that the cow is not interested in the view, neither does he admire the lushness of the landscape for its—the landscape's—sake. But you and I are. Just as we can recognise a pretty woman for her beauty without feeling a rush of lust—that is, the bid to satisfy our desires with her qualities. We can be interested in the view; in the lushness of the landscape. Not only if we need to be aware of our surroundings. But because we think the landscape is simply worthy of our attention whether it satisfies a primal desire or not. We recognise its beauty. And we can point to it as an object of a rational interest rather than a primal one.
This interest in the “view” is the ability that allows us to move past the prison of self-interest; beyond a strict search for how a landscape benefits us. Yet, there is an attitude, a posture of mind, that may obstruct such peering from happening. This attitude is a derision of the superfluous. An overcommitted embrace of only the necessary. A strict clinging to the demands of our loudest desires. Like the minimalist, who sticking religiously to the mantra that “form follows function,” recognises no need for extra decoration that serves no ‘purpose’ for the activity called eating. His mind cannot stretch to accommodate an extra purpose to things apart from their first and apparent function. Just like I once saw eating as merely moving hands and jaws until I fill my bowels, the minimalist—with a critically reductive spirit—boils everything down to "what is just necessary." Like with clothing; he wears just enough to not be naked and he perhaps mocks the fellow who goes the extra mile. With reading; he skims for information and upon finding it, calls everything else needless. With love, he says “it is all a chemical reaction.” Or with the Gothic cathedrals, he might consider its decorations an act of self-indulgenct ornamentation by its builders who could exercise no restraint. The reductionist lives only for the exact, no matter how illusory it is. But this is just living like a cow: calibrating strictly by instincts — being wary of predators and greener grass for feeding. Living only on and for the necessary, hardly admitting that something lies beyond its immediate instinctive interests. But we are more than cows: we can go the extra mile into the purposeless. Into looking at things that show no use or function; which serve no known needs at the moment. We are not hapless in the face of superfluous elements. Thus, we can design things that transcend function rather than things that limit themselves to function—where function itself is limited to satisfying a salient instinct. Therefore, a man can stare at his plate to admire the pink prints of flowers, not for the sake of spotting predators or helping his digestion. But because it is just beautiful. And that answer suffices.
Still, you may choose to take it further and probe what function beauty serves. Yet, the answer won't change. It remains that it is good to look at. And that we have what it takes to look at an object and reflect on it without trying to extract practicalities from it. Not that it helps digestion. Nor that it soothes. Even though it may do these things. We, however, unlike the cow, can take in a view for its own sake without calculating how this view serves our interests. In other words, we know and are equipped to take in appearances and be satisfied thus; we can look at something and enjoy it without calculating what bodily interest staring at a statue serves.
Nonetheless, I'd still like you to know that this ability to lose ourselves in the awe of a beautiful plate does great good in affirming our human dignity. For we can choose to settle in our animality—to chew without refinement, to chew so haggardly without care and courtesy. To be only concerned with moving jaws and hands. Or we can decide to relax and relish the meal. We can go beyond wanting merely to sate our hunger to truly relishing the meal. We are not just satisfied that there is food to fill our bellies. But we also sometimes care about how beautiful our food is. And this is why food aesthetics — of the Instagram variety — is common today. We consistently affirm our dignity by our ability to hold our immediate needs in abeyance and not bow to the pressings of our instincts. This is really what manners and social graces serve to do: to affirm that we are more than animals even though we cannot be less than so. We can decide, even, to not eat a meal because its appearance falls short. Or we may excuse ourselves from the presence of someone who eats his meal monstrously; who chews with his mouth open. With beautiful eating bowls and good table manners, we affirm our dignity in the image of the one who by looking, "saw that it was good."
If you find a man who eats without care and refinement, who eats from the floor, putting his mouth to the ground to pick his food—because it is "just the movement of hands and jaws,"— you may turn your nose up at him for making a fool of himself. But you won't think so of your dog. The man disgusts you because he ought not to do so — as if it were not in his nature. In other words, he acts below his dignity. But when you find a man who cares so much about how his food looks, who insists on being served with proper dinnerware, you perceive him differently—as one dignified.
Just as a king wearing hunting clothes and walking among strangers like a common man will not cease being a king, a man who cares little for how his food is presented will not cease being a man. Because the King's status is sealed into his being (or office) rather than his clothes; so is a man's dignity sealed into his being by his creator. However, should the king dress as kings do, regaled with his crown, sceptre, orb and velvet, lace, and ermine robes, his identity and dignity as king is reaffirmed before all. In the same way, a man who emphasizes the presentation of his meal reaffirms his dignity before all—especially when he eats with proper manners and fine dinnerware. All this to say that although you may not diminish your dignity by eating from a bad plate — because your dignity is secure in your creator— you can reaffirm your existing dignity by eating from a ceramic plate.
Somehow, my father knew all that without having to write an essay. Life is unfair.