There's a scene in Angeline Boulley's novel Firekeeper's Daughter where the main character, an Ojibwe teenager, describes her coming-of-age "berry fast." She loves berries of all kinds, so she committed to not eating any for an entire year. She otherwise lived a normal life - going to events where berries were served, going berry picking, and so on. She describes how her aunt even tested her by leaving her alone in the berry patch to see if she'd cheat (she did not).
I have a bumper crop of black raspberries this year. They're coming on fast. There are enough still to ripen, and enough rain in the forecast, that I may have to make jam. I'm not sure I can eat all of these or even give them away. They're a pain in the everything to pick, but they're worth it.
I was limbs-deep in the patch this morning, thinking about that scene in Firekeeper's Daughter. Thinking about how many mainstream Americans I've met who have told me they would "literally die" if they had to give up a favorite food. Thinking about how allergic mainstream US culture is to "building character" that we've turned "it builds character" into a joke meme.
But "character" is really just knowing yourself. You don't know who you are until you pass through various types of adversity. Including the adversity of holding yourself to your word when nobody around you is doing what you are.
I've heard the "I would literally die if I couldn't eat [food]" tale a lot because I have celiac disease. It's not unusual for someone to discover I can't eat gluten, only to announce "I could NEVER do that. I would LITERALLY DIE if I couldn't have [pasta, pizza, donuts, etc]."
First of all, no you would not. The human body does not require gluten to survive. In fact, the easiest thing about avoiding gluten, for me, is how sick it makes me. If I touch a counter where a piece of bread has lain, then put my finger in my mouth, I'm sick as hell for six weeks. That makes it EASY to not want anything to do with gluten-containing foods. (In this way, going gluten-free was nothing like a berry fast.)
Second of all, why do so many people think so little of themselves that they can't imagine just...eating something else?
Thinking about the berry fast gives me a possible answer: It's because we are not a society that encourages people to know themselves through adversity. In fact we avoid it. We turn "it builds character" into a joke to prevent people from testing themselves and thus knowing themselves. If a critical mass of Americans knew themselves, knew that a little self-deprivation was no big deal to them, the US economy would collapse.
I don't even think that's hyperbole. If enough of us just didn't buy things, our neoliberal economy would be in HUGE trouble.
I've posited before that the true "official religion" of the United States is neoliberal economics. Everything else is subordinate to it, including what we think of as "religion." This religion is devoid of fasts, meditation, prayer, and any of the other trappings associated with "religion," because knowing the self is anathema to constant economic growth through manic consumption. To feed our god Economy, we must dispense with ourselves.
"Character" is just knowing ourselves - but we built a society that will collapse if too many of us know ourselves. Is it any wonder that depression and anxiety run rampant in mainstream US society? In the country that just invented the trillionaire, most of us are destitute in every sense of the word.
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(Third of all, I do eat pasta, pizza, donuts etc. I just don't eat ones that have any gluten in them. Yes, that means I have to look harder for ingredients, cook for myself, and order something else at restaurants. I have, actually, LITERALLY DIED before. It's so unlike saying "I'll have the salad" that I don't even know where to start explaining the difference. Fucksake.)
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