No Salt

A few points:

1. History and evolution are ongoing things. They aren’t “done” and in the past. Today, right now, people use food as an important part of their culture, whether that be immigrant parents teaching their kids recipes from their home culture, a brother making food for his dying sibling (as in the link), or two friends having dinner.

And that’s only on the consumption side - not to mention the entire production industrial complex that employs millions of people globally to make and prepare food - and has done so for thousands of years. “Food gatherer and preparer" probably has a claim to being the oldest profession. Food is so ingrained in human history and culture it’s basically impossible to imagine civilization without it. Which was my point about it being a human thing.

2. Your mention of religion is actually helpful too, because I think a similar attitude is prevalent when discussing religious beliefs: “That was a historical thing and it doesn’t have much effect on anything today.”

Which is very much not the case; everything in the contemporary world has been shaped by religious beliefs, from the concept of the Self, individualism, the structure of political systems, democracy, universalism, on and on. Modernity is in no way a fresh beginning or clean slate in which the past doesn’t apply. That doesn’t mean you need to believe in XYZ religion today, but to deny that it has any contemporary relevance is just incorrect.

3. On the evolutionary front, the fact is that you evolved to eat in a group - the possibility of someone sitting alone eating a meal made by others basically didn’t exist until a century ago. So it formed who you are today, whether you like it or not.

4. Personally, I like to cook alone. It requires a focused approach that prevents you from scrolling TikTok or being distracted by innumerable other things. I also like to cook foods that remind me of my origins – for example, I like making pierogi, as I'm Polish and from the region where a certain type of pierogi are from. I make them using the rolling pin that was my late Polish grandma's, which also makes it a special experience. Food culture doesn't need to a social thing at all.

I don’t want to assume what your opinion is but it seems to be something like, "None of that matters, all that matters is that it tastes good, comes in ready-to-eat packaging, and can be eaten alone."

Which seems to me like the most depressing, reductive approach possible to something with so much cultural significance and history. Do you think the same thing about art or architecture? Literature? Films?

This being HN; I’m gonna guess you’re a technical person, and so you might gain more of an appreciation for food by watching some YouTube videos on chefs working. The skill and craftsmanship can be truly impressive.

It should be remembered that most aspects of culture developed because they have a purpose. In the case of cooking and eating good food, there are definitely practical benefits, largely psychological.

One part of it is about directing attention. If you cook for yourself, you pay more attention to what you're putting into your body, and in learning how different flavors come together you learn intuitions about taste and aesthetics. In directing your attention like this, cooking can also serve as a kind of meditation / mindfulness practice.

In knowing how to cook, you become able to cook for others, which is a very common way for people to connect. If a loved one is sick, making soup for them can make them feel loved and cared for, just as it can make you feel good about putting in effort to help them feel better; especially when it comes to things that you just have to wait out, like flu, something like this is an excellent way of maintaining a connection. Conversely, in knowing how much effort it takes to make a good meal you become more appreciative of meals others make for you.

And finally, in cooking with someone else you learn about them and about yourself, about subtle differences that you might not have encountered otherwise. In solving a relatively easy, low-stakes problem together, you gain a sense of closeness without much risk or cost.

Overall, cooking is a practice centered on ideas that are underappreciated by people too engrossed in "hustle culture" etc, so it's important to have it as a tool in today's world. Of course, everything that it provides can be found elsewhere, but these are the reasons it's so deeply ingrained in human culture. I think you would also struggle to find other things that give you all of the above, and more that I didn't go into, for so little investment. It's not that cooking makes you human or something, but cooking does help you to connect with a lot of the deeper parts of yourself that do.

but I don't agree that it's something very important about being a human being

You don't understand that the preparation of food is important to being a human being? Both physiologically and socially? Across every culture on the planet?

Someone trying to impose that on me is as unconvincing as a religious person trying to convert me. Give me practical arguments.

Nobody is imposing anything on you. Nobody cares to convince you. Go ahead and eat your meals alone.

The food distracts me from the conversation but the conversation distracts me from the food, and all of a sudden it's gone before I even had the chance to reflect on the taste.

Chew carefully. Eat slowly. Sip water. Your digestive system will thank you for it.

I understand the importance historically but I don't agree that it's something very important about being a human being. Someone trying to impose that on me is as unconvincing as a religious person trying to convert me. Give me practical arguments.

What one values, or does not value, in life is a fundamentally impractical subject. IMO you're asking for the impossible.

I probably didn't word it that well; I meant that if you don't enjoy eating food that you like the taste of, there's something wrong with you. It's a normal human thing to like to eat, and to eat things you think are tasty. Unfortunately, modern low-quality unhealthy foods are engineered to be tasty, but this doesn't mean there's something seriously wrong with people who like them. I didn't mean "good food" as only high-quality, nutritious food, just something you like to eat and enjoy eating, even if it isn't that healthy.

The people who really have something wrong with them here are those who actually don't enjoy eating any food, and see it strictly as a biologically-necessary chore. Those are the people who seem to be attracted to Soylent. Yes, I really do think there's something wrong with these people.

If you enjoy eating "good food" (whatever you define that as, since it depends on your taste), that's normal for a human. You don't have to attach a "higher purpose" to it, but it's something that's been important to humans since forever. We have taste buds for a reason, and eating tasty food isn't going to fall out of favor ever, unless humans somehow change into something non-human.

Did OP claim this? I didn't see it, unless deleted on edit.

It's implied, otherwise what's the point of his post?

What is someone trying to achieve by drinking entire meals in a shake, if not optimal nutrition? What other benefits are there?

I agree, but 5-10 years ago "Soylent replaces eating" was very much a trendy cultural thing to believe.

Those are intended for quick meal replacements, not replacements for eating entirely.

And stove less apartments are usually for people that eat out, not people that are trying to replace meals with shakes.

heaven being in "the same place" as we are now

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

I don't see how this implies heaven being in "the same place" as we are now.

I also don't see how our bodies can be made perfect but only if we don't burn them up first. Seems like a major limitation of God's infinite power if he can take someone that's nothing but bones and make them perfect but someone who is a pile of ash is just too difficult.

Another believer with an alternate take on cremation that doesn't require body/spirit duality: God made man from dust, and even without cremation, to dust we shall return. It is really no trouble or extra work for God to raise the dead from scattered dust than it is for a relatively intact body, since that's what most resurrections would require anyway. Besides, when the resurrection occurs, we're getting better bodies anyway, so why worry about what happens to the old one? Intact burials are a tradition (which is totally fine), but not a commandment.

assuming all Christians believe in one of the two forms of the Nicene creed

I guess this is where we part ways somewhat—I'm a devout Christian who does not accept the output of the First Council of Nicea as authoritative. I understand it to be a good faith effort to standardize what had already become a very diverse religion, but I don't hold it in higher regard than any other post-apostolic interpretation of divinity.

That said, I'm not sure that Nicea is relevant when it comes to cremation—the Creed itself doesn't have much to say about death and resurrection except that there will be one, which I accept wholeheartedly, but which at the same time doesn't persuade me that the mortal body sown in corruption is something God expects us to feel attached to or to attempt to keep intact after death.

No one is running away from it. Please don't assume your experiences are wildly different from others without any basis for it.

No one is ignoring, outsourcing, or running away from it — the end result is the same, a person has died and people are grieving.

People grieve in different ways, how it's done is often tied to their communities and past practices. I would spend time with the deceased friends and family sharing our memories about them, often over multiple days together.

To me, fiddling around with the body and concerning others about how it's going to be put into the ground seems disrespectful to me — but I understand that's what some people do and that's fine.

P.S. you should put down goats by shooting slightly above the eyes, or to the poll.

While I understand your general point, this right here is one of the reasons why I'd strongly prefer cremation for myself. Knowingly subjecting friends and family to this feels... selfish, and probably traumatic for them to boot.

how would someone under such a system decide to take a drug or not? what information would they have?

There's a lot of quackery around these days, especially with regard to tech and finance.

There's quite of bit of quackery just with nutritional supplements, too. And people and companies try to bypass the FDA all the time with fake cures, the COVID-19 epidemic was just the latest version of that.

The FDA is over-zealous with their testing requirements. However, without them we will see an explosion of fake cures for everything. The legitimate pharma companies will lose money, or otherwise start cutting a lot of corners in the pursuit of profit.

We need something like the FDA to keep things in check.

I don't see Kibutz as socialist or communist even if some ideas are similar. As I wrote the scale is very different. Kibutz is communal, like a large family. You can't have transactional relationships with family members. Also, you are not forced to be a part of it, you can leave any time. So if I compare it to a communist farm like Kolhoz where the former serfs still were enslaved by the government. So there is a certain difference in the personality of someone who lived and worked in Kolhoz (alienation) and Kibutz (open and not competitive/selfish). I'm saying this as someone who had family members in Kolhoz and knew a lot of Kibutz-born people and also worked in Kibutz(which was privatized).

Of course, I'm also generalizing a lot.