• ABOUT

thinairfactoryblog

~ A topnotch WordPress.com site

thinairfactoryblog

Tag Archives: Maslow

Leftovers, watching your language & living the dream

13 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

10 Food Commandments, 3 for 2, BOGOF, Fearnley Whittingstall, Fod Thrift, Jay Rayner, Kardashian, Knit Your Own Yoghurt, landfill, Leftovers, Living The Dream, Maslow, Sustainability, Truck Stop

Spaghetti frittata.jpg

We keep being told that the food that we eat, why we buy it, how we buy it, how we cook it (or get someone else to cook it for us) and how, ultimately, we dispose of it speaks volumes about us.

I’d like to make one small addition to that: the language of why, when and how we dispose of it speaks volumes about us and our broader concepts of thriving, success and prosperity.

I’d like to focus us specifically on the subject of food thrift and particularly, leftovers.

Now if you’re that way inclined or have a grandparent who puts you straight about profligate waste and showing off with food, the topic titles are just fine. But be aware that you are in the minority.

For most people, grinding through the weekly job, making ends meet and trying to rise above it all, thrift and cooking with ‘old food’ just isn’t going to roll. In fact, their response to the kind of language I’ve used above is probably slightly more of a DOUBLE ALERT. GO TO DEF CON 3. KLAXON WAIL. WHOOP WHOOP nature. With a massive warning of impending Tree hugging and shirts knitted from mung beans not far behind.

For most people the first massive language klaxon is the phrase Food thrift. God alive. Save us all from sack-cloth-and-ashes cooking. A trip to the supermarket, even with a price checker in hand, is an exercise in thriving, culminating in a trolley overflowing with goodies, some with the wrappers already off (profound evidence of our new found right of entitlement – no more do children get sent to the work house or have their hands cut off for pilfering what they haven’t paid for – we’re civilised goddammit).

Food is meant to be joyous, piled high. An ‘eat all you can buy, buy all you can eat’ algebraic equation of y= 4in1x3for2+BOGOF to the power of XtraFill  mountain. 36 pack of pre seared barbecue burgers only £1.99!!

Or if your tastes run a little fancier, food is an exercise in sumptuous delights via plates of tantalised veal and gizzard cuts in jus de truffe and beluga-drip-drenched jaune Tuna slices, three rib of beef, salt and rosemary rubbed, amidst curlicued cures of pork, slices, rips and knuckles of lamb savoury seasoned, steamed and sugared pudding syrups running with sweet blood, an avalanche of oaten crackers and thick sourdough crusts decorated with glancing blows of soft and hard sharp cheeses, iced sponges, jam schmeered and chocolate vanilla’d delights. A Captain Bligh-scale of Bounty.

Whichever; whatever: food is meant to be plentiful and a sign of ‘we’ve made it’.

Food thrift?! We’re standing on the shoulders of Maslow, mate. And you can stick your  hierarchy where the sun don’t shine.

As an aside, I think Sackcloth & Ashes would make a fabulous new and urbane food establishment somewhere very mauve and happening – given the current popularity of ashes and charcoal in leading edge bread baking, cheese rolling, beast searing and the higher order philosophies of brutalist retro-cooking circles. I see the interior of Sackcloth & Ashes as having a faint whiff of the medieval Cistercian façade – the odd weathered sandstone gargoyle: and a large blackened stone-mantled fireplace (obvs). There’d be a little light Gregorian House Chant muzak for a Clash of Cloths (as I like to call the collision between one elevated Christian house and another). And of course we’d frame it as a post-modern tapas (main course size dishes) – and fill the world with all manner of sackcloth slung ash-rind cheeses and charcoal cured meats, coal bleached fish, charcoal-truffled beast cheek bricquettes (though I am uncertain as to whether the truffled briquettes can double as a sustainable fuel source or whether they are a sustainable fuel source doubling as a main course).

Anyway, I digress. Food Thrift is a complete turn off for most people chasing a shiny life and, as a phrase, is best avoided if you’re trying to appeal to those who simply wish to live the dream and tie one on in life.

Second Klaxon: the word Leftovers. Oh here we go again. More bleeding heart student stipends and stories from the back of the fridge. Leftovers is a poisoned chalice of goodness to the average person seeking to Live the Dream of a prosperous and socially advanced life.

Leftovers are for losers and food geeks.

In his book, The 10 Food Commandments Jay Rayner points to the issue directly in his chapter helpfully titled Though Shalt Eat Leftovers.

‘There is only one problem with leftovers. The word. Leftovers. It speaks of expediency and second best.’

Not a dissimilar issue to the one where people view the words Ethical and Organic as euphemisms for sub-standard – a trade-off between higher morality and lower quality.

Jay goes on to write that ‘As history has shown us, excess food should simply be thought of as an ingredient rather than something left behind.’

As always our desperate, socially-climbing, gene-pool-elevating selves play an enormous role in there somewhere.

Toffs and Nobs use the act of leaving a plate, meal or table still laden with uneaten food as an act of social and genetic exceptionalism.

I can afford to not scrabble for crusts. And my largesse knows no bounds.

Leaving food behind is a mark of not starving. The American Dream was a relentlessly infinitely rotating buffet of food, and a never empty plate (more specifically, one that required some form of funicular to get from the top to the bottom of it). Because the American Dream represented the journey from Nothing to Something. And Somethings don’t scratch for food.

And the post-meal gesture of ‘hey ,can I have that to go’ – that throw-back to the pioneer settler thrift of nothing is wasted – is just code for I’ll take it home, pop it in the fridge for a few days; then landfill it.

Leftover food is a slightly twisted sign of prosperity. Yeah. Eat my trash. I’ve eaten my land-fill. The clue is in the language.

Leftover is short-hand for lacking utility; the debris and detritus left over from the functional and precious act of preparing and then eating food: food that is unwanted, or worse, unneeded and therefore devalued (as if anyone doesn’t need food or the money it took to buy it to throw it away).

Leftovers are Ex-food. Like GFs and BFs, leftovers are destined to turn up on MyExF[ood] revenge sites and Landfill Porn.

The language is the issue. As always, what some view disdainfully as fluff and word-smithing can make the difference between dismissal and engagement in a rather fundamental way.

LivingTheDream are a team of people seeking to shift the narrative of sustainable living and prosperity in a more ordinary and meaningful direction – from the likes of the glass half empty reduction language of Sustainable Living Plans to the glass half full aspiration language of Smarter Lighter living – and as one of them I think that perhaps we need to sort the language of Leftovers and food thrift while we’re at it.

The whole language of leftovers needs a restart. An Extreme Makeover.

So what should we do?

A national school’s competition perhaps; to rename Leftovers so your Mum and Dad actually take an interest because its socially cool to do so?

(And when I say Mums and Dads I don’t mean the 7-12% of the Luxury of Conscience brigade who embrace every purist green and sustainability trend in much the same way a fading actor might clutch a new script, as if it every one might be their last, the most precious fragile cornerstone of their identity.)

We could give them some buckets or examples to start them off.

Perhaps we could start by looking at the physical geography of it all.

Leftovers, either at the ingredient stage – off cuts, scrapings, tops and tails, bones, etc. – or the post cooked stage – on-plate, on-table scraps – find themselves at the ‘edges’ of the cutting board, plate or table – pushed to the periphery of the working or functional space. So perhaps we could get windswept and interesting and introduce peripheral cooking or Peripherique Cooking as a whole new movement – or ‘food at the edge’ as we’d get the critics to call it. Who knows, given all that empty shelf space left by the dear departed tomes of Clean Food, perhaps we can sneak in with a small volume on Peripherique cooking.

Then again we could look to word play, opposites, antonyms and synonyms – Left Over replaced by the idea of Right Under. Right Under recipes are those recipes that are right under your nose and you can’t see them for the left overs. I would class Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Spag Bol Omelette as one of these sublime moments of ‘ under my very nose’ stokes of genius.

Or we could leap headfirst into Kardashian land and talk trash. We could go junktrunk cooking or we could go the whole hog – Truck Stop Trash Talk Cooking – because we all love trashy.

#eatmytrash as a movement of pure self-celebration – even my food trash makes exceptional dinner party cuisine – cue Instagram.

And admit it – #eatmytrash could be so much fun, mainly because it’ll get hijacked and turned into some bizarre sexual euphemism eventually – and a website after that.

But if, in the meantime, it reignites the mass populace’s interest in divesting themselves of excess and waste in favour of taking every piece of left-over food and turning it into something, that would be, well, something.

So Leftovers are a beautiful thing, but there is an element of Boy Named Sue about them. Their name has forced them into a life of having to fight their corner – stand up for themselves – but in this case, it ain’t making them stronger – not any more at least. Quite the opposite.

So let’s relaunch Leftovers – unfetter them from their current name and give them a chance to be their fabulous agile and resourceful and mostly delicious selves.

Who knows what fun we could have.

The Luxury of Conscience & how the end of the month comes before the end of the world

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#squeegeemylife, Apprenticeships, Dream In A Box, everyday idioms and insights, Helter Skelter, John Stuart Mill, Kerring, LifestyleApp, Luxury of Conscience, M&S, Maslow, NGOs, Popper & Berlin, privilege, Re-imagining Prosperity, streetwise, UK Dream, Unilever

ivory_tower_defenders  There are two phrases that I use often:

The Luxury of Conscience.

The End of the Month comes before the End of the world.

They are my way of arriving at the same point: just from two wholly different ends of the social, strategic and storytelling spectrum.

The point I am usually making? That the narrative that will transform desire, reframe sustainability and re-imagine prosperity is potentially being shaped and moulded by the wrong people.

So what constitutes ‘wrong’ you might ask. And I would venture ‘those who might struggle to empathise with their audience – the 85%+ –  through a lack of real everyday insight and socio-cultural understanding into their lives, needs and desires: that of the ‘lived it been there’ kind.

The Luxury of Conscience is a phrase that I sometimes use when describing such a person – someone who has ability to sit back and engage in the bigger conversations around climate, environment and more sustainable lifestyles, their minds uncluttered by making ends meet, either spiritually or financially.

The ability to exercise and expend their energies and passions on designing a higher order human existence predicated on sustainability is indeed luxurious – proof that they exist in the upper tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

They have the luxury of a ‘comfortable security’ – financial, educational, social and cultural – to see beyond the scrabble for immediate provision; for themselves and their families – of the tyranny of bills, eking out the money until the end of the month comes, trying to avoid the pay day loan light bulb in a head clouded by debt.

It is for this reason that those with the Luxury Of Conscience should never be the people who shape the final vernaculars and narrative for a populist movement towards a more sustainable life.

It is indeed a luxury to live in what seems (to the average bank worker or electrician at least) a rather pompous dislocated 6th Form debating society world, extrapolating concepts and frameworks of improved human existence more akin in discourse to the letters of Hitchens’ and the treatise of Popper and Stuart Mill than the average pub banter.

There needs to be a real understanding in there somewhere of the everyday insights, idioms, influences and irrationalities that really connect with everyday people. It is exactly these subtleties that might tip the balance on whether that new narrative flies or fails. And they seem to be desperately lacking here.

Much as the Old Etonian politician who kisses the cheek of the docker’s baby has absolutely no idea what living their life entails (and should therefore be barred from influencing or creating policy that affects their lives in any substantive way), so it goes for the CEOs, the NGOs and the Activist Academics who populate the world of Sustainability. They are amazing. But they are dislocated from the truths of people’s everyday lives to such extremity, that they should be dissuaded from taking to the soap-box or typing the manifesto on behalf of those people they have such little real understanding of.

The people living in the mode of making ends meet are those most likely to be buying products and maintaining lifestyles that offend every statute in the sustainability rule-book – and doing it at scale.

They rarely do this maliciously. The concept and detailed understanding of whether a 3-blade razor or food product threatens the ecosystem of the planet, a precious resource or a community is the furthest thing from their mind – and therefore not something they are wilfully disregarding.

Saying that, equally, they do react badly when someone steps up into their eye-line with a message that seems to expect everything of them with little immediate benefit.

Breaking the line of sight between them and the end of the month with a fairly long-termist do-less/reduce/recycle/reuse message does not go down well.

Many people – the majority bloc of the 85%+ who are currently disengaged in this conversation – are living in a bi-polar world: a world whose greater potential for immediate gratification is bluntly counterpointed by an equally great potential for immediate disappointment or failure.

And we have to respect this – and shape and present narratives and solutions that are meaningful and positive in light of the world they live in: that enlighten them and enable them to make a considered and fully informed decision for themselves and the lifestyle they the choose to adopt.

We must also remember that the idea of a diminished or diminishing lifestyle fundamentally goes against the evolutionary gene pool imperative of acquire, appropriate and accrue that most of us are compelled by. It is hard to dismiss and de-list that which you have yet to have the pleasure and experience of.

It is far less onerous task to flick off or set aside the tyranny of the gene pool imperative when you come from the elite tier – as someone that already enjoys the benefits of being at the top of the socio-cultural ladder of humanity.

Having been liberated from the striving and surviving mode, you are free to discard that which others are still struggling to acquire.

You are free to discard the clutter of beliefs, attitudes, behaviours and material things that you or those generations before you have spent so much time collecting and curating.

The populist agenda and narrative can never solely mapped by people in rare places and cocooned in a bubble of otherness, set apart from the everyday lives of everyday people. They might try and inspire it, prod it, provoke it or record it: most certainly provide the substantial sustainability truths that underwrite it – but the Great British Story Book of Enduring Human Prosperity is being written in the pub, not the library.

Laws of similarity are what work in our highly tribal stratified social world.

There are many anecdotal instances where people from marginalised and degraded tribes, cultures and communities rued and resented the day that (predominantly) white middle class liberals started having anything to do with any form of their social development or increasing well being – devoid as they are of any of the cultural background or deeper understandings of what makes these people who they are.

So one might ask the question: what in any god’s name are we thinking when we task a bunch of PHD+ super rational and highly intellectual predominantly upper middle class people to construct an emotional and compelling argument or story to inspire and convince the 85% + people out there from a C2DE background of anything: the Laws of Dissimilarity seem heavily at work here.

It is no surprise that the majority of NGO activists are seen by the average working class kid as a bunch of bleeding heart liberals without the faintest idea of what living and surviving in the real world actually might entail. Unfair? Possibly. But in the real material terms of security, environment and financial status; quite correct.

So I think we need to do a little bit of filing, framing and a whole lot of question asking – and they need to be the right questions of the right people.

To look at what the right kind of questions might mean we should perhaps look at the context and culture of the different tribes involved in this dash for the answer.

We already know that some 7-15% of people (depending on which and whose sliding scale of insight data we use) have adopted and embraced to a greater degree the idea of changing their lifestyle to some substantial degree to do their part for a more harmonious positive human existence. So focusing a new narrative on them would, to be fair, be a waste of our energy.

Them aside, the top percentiles fall in to 3 categories – there are the corporates and high net worth individuals and of course Brands

Corporates – we have all seen them; the enlightened ones – setting some form of agenda – especially those delivering the props of prosperity up into the god light of the all seeing consumer eye – the multinational FMCG, retail, Food & Beverage, tech and fashion brands. They are hamstrung to some degree by their investor relations but as Unilever has already proven, these relationship can be tested and reshaped – and their consumer perceptions changed – but they need the right narrative.

High net worth individuals – this group are either shaping mass consumption trends through shaping their own business (Kerring leaps to mind) or they are in a position to trade massive blocks of shares in such a way as to heavily influence the people running the companies on which their gaze might fall. They have a filter for seeking exceptional financial performance screwed into their psyche – but they can be the most vocal on the positive impact on Long term profitability and growth from more sustainable and inspired operations.

And we are clear about how the brands that stitch themselves into the fabric of people’s everyday lives can start to shade and shape what they do to deliver a more enduring aspiration without passing on the cost. M&S is exceptional in its ability to respect its place in the fabric of the great British way of life by repaying the society in which it thrives with a smarter lighter and kinder business offering stand out solutions without making the customer foot the bill for Plan A sensibilities in product premiums.

If we look at these super players in the luxury of conscience stratosphere – we can separate them out as demanding a particular shade of micro or ‘shadow’ narrative – linked to the whole yet very particularly tuned to the closed room conversations that fuel their world. The narrative and the ask for the top end is very specific.

If we separate them out (along with the 7-15% who are already playing nice) it enables us to get a clearer view of what I like to call the ‘End Of The Monthers’ – those whom engage their conscience on a strictly Planet Me basis – my family my tribe my community my world.

How do we bring ‘End of The Monthers’ onside?  They do not have the luxury of just turning everything in their life on its head. So how do we facilitate and enable them

Partially that should come in the form of some simple playful tools that help them  and partially in a mode of educating them in such a way as to add value to their lives.

The inspiration for one tool idea came from a UK Dream Workshop. It was a piece of language that came out of one of the workshops around the lighter brighter approach to cleaning up ones slightly dustier lifestyle and consumption habits.

Someone told the story of a Window Cleaner who explained that he had to give something away to get it all back – and to convert a street, he used to do one person’s windows randomly for free. The reason: because until you’ve had your eye’s opened to the before and after you can easily just not bother. So one bit of tasty squeegee work And they became his Word of Mouth campaign.

So we thought that perhaps to inspire a smarter lighter brighter life in a way that was helpful and easy, we could create an app or site experience where people could populate the info on things in their life – finance/insurance – food shopping – car purchase – travel etc, and then ask the site to ‘squeegee that’ – at which point the site would use an aggregated information programme to review the information put in and see whether by post code region profile etc the costs of their lifestyle could be reduced – and their consumption ‘cleaned up’. We could call it, prosaically, #Squeegeemylife.

And perhaps the next wave of apprenticeships that we develop in the UK should include internships at major brands and businesses for young people from underprivileged backgrounds – those without the Luxury of Conscience – expressly to allow them the luxury of learning the benefits of shaping and securing a lighter life: individually, communally, regionally and eventually nationally. And in such a way as to ensure that when they take their ‘stories’ back into the pub, they resonate and have meaning and integrity.

If we don’t engage the man and woman in the pub meaningfully and authentically we are wilfully passing over the clay for the new model of our more resilient and enduring prosperity to the likes of Mr Farage.

Blimey.

 

 

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • June 2021
  • December 2020
  • August 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • October 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • November 2018
  • August 2018
  • June 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013

Categories

  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • thinairfactoryblog
    • Join 93 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • thinairfactoryblog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...