Location: Arkád, shopping mall. Time: Peaking summer. Deep Afternoon.
I am just returning from a store. It is terribly hot outside and I am a chewing gum – sticky, outstretched and spitted. I decided to pump a fuel into my stomach. I stopped by at Burger king, longing for high cholesterol gasoline. I picked up double whopper – double portion of meat, double portion of grinded death. “May I have fork and knife, please?” I am getting what I asked for together with smile. The fork and the knife and the smile...All of them are made out of plastic.
Where to sit? That’s a question! I am in the middle of the hive. People emit buzzing sounds of electric transformer. Their movements seem to be mechanical. I am having déjà vu, thinking about sociological school of mechanistic determinism. Now I am (ob)server, spy. I am capturing smell, texture, taste and essence of a food and a place. Absorbing – Processing – Concluding…
The hamburger, by its very design, is not predetermined to be eaten by knife and fork. In order to enjoy the consistent taste of all ingredients you need to bite a big chunk. This requires squeezing a bun by both hands and fully opening your mouth. The process of eating a hamburger obstructs all verbal and non-verbal channels of communication. Nor you see a person sitting in front of you, nor can you gesticulate. It takes quite a lot of time to chew a single bite, which hampers the communication flow. Thus all your attention is devoted to consumption. And the effect is immediate. Families and couples and friends are sitting together around one table, yet each of them remains on its own island, eating quickly. Remaining silent or uttering incoherent words or producing murmuring sounds.
How strange. We started as hunters, eating hastily with bare hands. Time was short, another predator could always emerge. It had taken a time till we invented a knife and a fork and a spoon. We learned to divide our food into small portions and by dividing food we also divided time dedicated to eating. This allowed us to relish not only a meal, but an interaction with others. And now we are slipping back to prehistoric era, falling back to our existential caves. After all, we are effectively communicating through Facebook, but not face to face.
We are eating like machines, because we have been already eaten by mechanical leviathan of consumption society. Our ambitions – such as good grades at CEU, our strive for survival – such as job/slavery lured us to its jaws. Now we are in the process of digestion. And alas, at the end of the day, only grey prefabricated mass remains from us…
Erik Kotlárik
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