Humanized eating and drinking come with moral values attached to
them, foremost the rule of sharing. Pragmatic rules regarding
cleanliness, waste, and variation in diet are also part of the
experience of nourishment. These associated elements- values,
expectations, rules-are rarely perceived as constituting an
extension of the practical experience through which humanity
distinguishes itself from sheer naturalness. Literacy
appropriates the rules and expectations that acknowledge and
support ideals and values. Once expressed in the literate text,
however, they appear to be extraneous to the process. Changes in
the condition of religion, civic education, family, and the
legal code, as well as progress in biology, chemistry, and
genetics, create the impression and expectation that we can
attach to food whatever best suits the situation morally or
practically. The self-control and self-denial of previous
pragmatic contexts are abandoned for instant gratification.
In the competitive context of the new pragmatics that renders
literacy useless, the sense of a right to affluence developed.
Parallel to this, institutions, founded on literacy-based
experiences, were set up to control equity and distribution.
Against the background of high efficiency that the new
pragmatics made possible, competition is replaced by controlled
distribution, and the experience of self-nourishment is replaced
by that of being fed. Absorbed by tax-supported social programs,
the poor, as well as others who chose giving up responsibility
for themselves, are freed from projecting their biological and
cultural identity in the practical experience of taking care of
their own needs. Thus part of the morality of eating and
drinking is socialized, in the same manner that literacy is
socialized. At the same time, people's illiteracy expands in the
sphere of nourishment. Today, there are more people than ever who
could not take care of themselves even if all the food in the
world and all the appliances we know of were brought into their
homes. Dependencies resulting from the new status of high
efficiency and distribution of tasks free the human being in
relative terms, while creating dependencies and expectations.
The problem is generally recognized in all advanced countries.
But the answer cannot be so-called welfare reforms that result
only in cutting benefits and tightening requirements. Such
reforms are driven by short-sightedness and political
opportunism. A different perspective is necessary, one that
addresses motivation and the means for pursuing individual
self-constitution as something other than the beneficiary of an
inefficient system. The pragmatics that overrides the need for
literacy is based on individual empowerment. As necessary as
soup kitchens are under conditions of centralism and hierarchy,
the dissemination of knowledge and skills that individuals need
in order to be able to provide for themselves is much more
important.