Look to the West Volume VII: The Eye Against the Prism
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Continuing the prior thoughts on the viability of Societist eccentrism... turns out that OTL we had "ideological cuisine" too. And no, I mean something more imaginative than Khmer Rouge rice gruel with scavenged rat-meat.
I present to you: Futurist cooking, or "Trying to get Italians to eat literally anything other than pasta."
View attachment 516515 (You're supposed to squeeze the lemon into your eyes afterward. I'll let you figure out if I'm joking.)
While pasta was the lowest of foods for being nothing but fattening carbs (and therefore not fit for young, strong, soldier-inventors!), good foods include... music. Yes, one recipe includes instructions to listen to the autumn wind and then a violin solo before touching a single ingredient. Meat and fish are also quite good, but since "traditional" cuisine makes use of it in such diverse ways, Futurist meat must be even more boundary-pushing! Pineapples and sardines! Sausages marinated in perfume! It could almost be considered self-aware parody, if not for the fact that the Futurists dedicated their lives to this sort of thing. They consciously tried to design food that aspired to certain values (physical/mental strength, decisiveness, sophistication, warlike aggression) and demanded a different kind of experience. Thinking about having a dinner with your family? No! Listen to some piano music, then pop like twenty vitamin pills and you're good, or maybe down some cheese and sardine salads served in half of an orange peel. Food, like all other aspects of society, should be unrecognizably transformed into something faster, sleeker and yet capable of doing more-- more flavor, more nutrients-- in a single bite or tablet than boring old pasta could do in a lifetime. I'm serious about the pasta fixation, dudes genuinely regarded it as everything wrong with Italy.
So if we're approaching Societist food as not just something meant to deliver nutrients but something that aspires to certain values, I think more important than "homogenization" is making a clear statement as to what society after homogenization is supposed to look like. People are still supposed to have families, so there should be provisions for family-size meals, stuff that can be shared. The kind of small, individualized tapas favored by Futurists may also be undesirable for another reason-- they're just so outrageously expensive and snooty. Societism acknowledges class divides, yeah, but it's all about exercising power responsibly. If Zonal Rejes aren't supposed to use their offices to build pleasure-gardens and harems maybe they shouldn't be able to make little trees out of caviar and eat them with ripped-out piano keys held like chopsticks for every meal.
I present to you: Futurist cooking, or "Trying to get Italians to eat literally anything other than pasta."
View attachment 516515 (You're supposed to squeeze the lemon into your eyes afterward. I'll let you figure out if I'm joking.)
While pasta was the lowest of foods for being nothing but fattening carbs (and therefore not fit for young, strong, soldier-inventors!), good foods include... music. Yes, one recipe includes instructions to listen to the autumn wind and then a violin solo before touching a single ingredient. Meat and fish are also quite good, but since "traditional" cuisine makes use of it in such diverse ways, Futurist meat must be even more boundary-pushing! Pineapples and sardines! Sausages marinated in perfume! It could almost be considered self-aware parody, if not for the fact that the Futurists dedicated their lives to this sort of thing. They consciously tried to design food that aspired to certain values (physical/mental strength, decisiveness, sophistication, warlike aggression) and demanded a different kind of experience. Thinking about having a dinner with your family? No! Listen to some piano music, then pop like twenty vitamin pills and you're good, or maybe down some cheese and sardine salads served in half of an orange peel. Food, like all other aspects of society, should be unrecognizably transformed into something faster, sleeker and yet capable of doing more-- more flavor, more nutrients-- in a single bite or tablet than boring old pasta could do in a lifetime. I'm serious about the pasta fixation, dudes genuinely regarded it as everything wrong with Italy.
So if we're approaching Societist food as not just something meant to deliver nutrients but something that aspires to certain values, I think more important than "homogenization" is making a clear statement as to what society after homogenization is supposed to look like. People are still supposed to have families, so there should be provisions for family-size meals, stuff that can be shared. The kind of small, individualized tapas favored by Futurists may also be undesirable for another reason-- they're just so outrageously expensive and snooty. Societism acknowledges class divides, yeah, but it's all about exercising power responsibly. If Zonal Rejes aren't supposed to use their offices to build pleasure-gardens and harems maybe they shouldn't be able to make little trees out of caviar and eat them with ripped-out piano keys held like chopsticks for every meal.
Last edited:
I guess American fast food does have some values attached to it-- food ought to be fast, appealing in a basic sense (fat and salt, yum), not overly concerned with health, and kinda fun/quirky (chicken nuggets, fads like the Popeye's sandwich). But fast food isn't meant to make those values universal-- "slow" restaurants are still quite competitive, and there's certain social situations (dates, company lunches) where driving out to Burger King is not recommended. Also, burgers aren't weird. You wouldn't make them at home regularly, but you probably could with the ingredients in an average American home. That's not what Futurism aspires to (also, fattening foods are anathema). And Futurist food isn't necessarily fast either, these "experiences" can be long and drawn-out slogs. But in the process you're gonna be elevating your consciousness to a plane of fulfillment/euphoria that the pasta-eaters cannot even conceptualize.
Alex Richards
Donor
Well, what can you expect from a group who were just full on 'burn the museums and art galleries to the ground so nobody is tempted to go back to the old stuff'.
I find Dada's 'look art is silly and so we're going to poke fun at it to disprove the pretensions of the Art world. Oh they're taking us seriously' more appealing.
Oh, Italian Futurists. So cuddly.
(Fucking Fascist fellow travelers, stupid ones, though the art they made was really interesting. Makes them unforgivable twice).
Speaking as a native Italian who spent some time in the US, eating whatever passes for food there, honestly I feel that American burgers, and more generally the way dressing works in US-American cuisine, are weird stuff to me.
In my (admittedly limited, but fairly global) eating experience, food in the US was the most alien-feeling I ever had. Which does not necessarily mean I disliked it, by the way (Local cuisine in Milwaukee was good, for instance).
And while I am fine with many sorts of US-American foods, no, sorry, what passes for Italian pasta in the US, in my limited experience, is borderline poison.
Deleted member 94708
You were in the wrong part of the country. The Midwest has horrible Italian food, excepting maybe a few places in Chicago. The large Eastern cities are the only place to find Italian that still bears some resemblance to what it is across the Atlantic.
I supposed so. I actually visited Philly as well (briefly) but I did not try Italian food there.
More Societist media, and this one's not just an edit of a real poster.
An air show! How fun. It'll be at Belem, the capital of former Guyana (I'm just assuming they're Zone 4). Addresses come in Via and Costa, which together form a grid over every city. Costa is from the Latin for rib, which makes the Viae the spine(s).
The date is just a random one, 3PR for "Year 3, Postrevolutionary" or something.
And yeah, Alfarus is coming! To survey the planes of the Celatores, which are definitely absolutely only used for surveillance. He's not the only one surveying the scene-- the Americans are also watching this curious display of military might on the opposite coast of a very vital sea, which also appears to be scheduled simultaneously with a mass rally of people from all over the Combine.
EDIT: Another version I liked a bit more.
An air show! How fun. It'll be at Belem, the capital of former Guyana (I'm just assuming they're Zone 4). Addresses come in Via and Costa, which together form a grid over every city. Costa is from the Latin for rib, which makes the Viae the spine(s).
The date is just a random one, 3PR for "Year 3, Postrevolutionary" or something.
And yeah, Alfarus is coming! To survey the planes of the Celatores, which are definitely absolutely only used for surveillance. He's not the only one surveying the scene-- the Americans are also watching this curious display of military might on the opposite coast of a very vital sea, which also appears to be scheduled simultaneously with a mass rally of people from all over the Combine.
EDIT: Another version I liked a bit more.
Last edited:
xsampa
Banned
The Vajra Guard is a organization that’s claims to be nonviolent but acts as the security force of an organization like Celatores https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala_Buddhism#Dorje_Kasung
How interesting. Looking into Shambhala.org's take on it, it seems like these Dorje Kasung are meant to be living Nio statues, though they would probably phrase it as emulating the deities/heroes on which the Nio were based. There's definitely potential in having the Celatores rationalize their contradictory role with meditative practices grounded in UniChurch teaching.
EDIT: Oh dear, looks like the leader of this org is a real piece of work (abuse, physical and sexual). All this is starting to look a little more sinister now, but it seems like the DK generally sticks to its stated mission except for a subsection that pretty much the leader's personal guard. Six of his bodyguards are now testifying against that leader.
Last edited:
Meditation and quiet prayer would have to be the core of UniChurch practice, it's the most (maybe the only) homogenizable common characteristic of all the world's religions. The content of the meditations are gonna be dicey, especially if the Combine really does want its imperial cult to replace all other religions instead of supplementing all of them.
Last edited:
We must annihilate the self and notions of separateness and nationhood.
I mean they could do the "one God with many epithets" thing, decry the pantheons as forms of nationalism misinterpreting universal theological traits and start syncretizing similar ones under newish names.
That is very similar to Hinduism, considering the Hindu view that all the gods are just forms of a singular God.
Kaiphranos
Donor
I would think something heavily syncretic like Caodaism would fit well with Societism (though it obviously postdates the POD by some centuries...)