Cosmonogamy

The world’s leading producer of cereal and convenience foods made the socially responsible decision to drop an eight-time Olympic gold medalist as a celebrity endorser of their products. This event is a perfect time to make an equally socially responsible move of divorcing corporate profits from human health.

The company behind Rice Krispies, Pop Tarts and Yogo Bits grew out of one man’s vision of health. John Harvey Kellogg endorsed vegetarianism, enemas and sexual abstinence. Corn Flakes were purposefully tasteless so as not to stimulate anything – especially the libido. He was a sometime surgeon who believed in circumcision and phototherapy.

As odd as his beliefs seem upon reflection a century later, he was living in the heart of the industrial revolution. It was the beginning of the machine age. After millenia of being at the mercy of Mother Nature, humans finally harnessed enough mechanical power to realize their God fantasies.

Machines were pure in their efficiency. They lacked flesh, emotion and a brain. They could work ceaselessly and be easily fixed.

If Christianity taught that humans were made in God’s image, then machines were the image that humans chose to create.

Religious zealotry was rampant at the turn of the last century. It was as though Americans, having fulfilled their Manifest Destiny from God, began to doubt the plan of the Almighty. Perhaps the Lord didn’t just need people to occupy all the real estate on the planet, perhaps He also needs us to improve his work of Creation.

A contemporary of Kellogg, Nietzsche was busy taking care of God’s mistakes in his own way. Unburdened by Puritan Christianity, he simply stepped out from under the illusion of Divinity. He was so radical that he went crazy and died. Any faithful person would you tell that he suffered the fate of any who doubt God’s omnipotence.

And yet, that’s exactly what those Utopian believers were doing. Like the Emperor’s New clothes, the devout were not willing to examine the impact that mechanization had on their beliefs. So, they put all their effort into cleaning up after the Almighty’s apparent mistakes.

This affected medical care. Herbal medicine, with it’s spotty success record in healing, became an example of the ineffectiveness of the Natural. Surgery, with its mechanical efficiency, became the solution to fix that troubling lack of perfection in God’s design. It was the last resort, certainly, but sometimes necessary to overcome the persistent frailty of humanity.

All of this movement away from organic to metallic might have been a passing fad had it not been coupled with the next rising faith in America: consumerism. It’s a bastard child of empirical capitalism and communism.

Just as the robber barons of the 19th century reached the zenith of their wealth, the ideas of socialism took hold in the underpaid, exploited masses. A convenient compromise put the responsibility and profit of the corporations into the hands of the people. Consumers drive the economy! If everyone shares the risk and the profit of business, then there is need for such a radical change like socialism.

There was profit to be made by following the desires and fears of the masses. And, at the beginning of the 20th century that meant medicine and machines.

That’s how a company founded on purity and health became the world’s leader of convenience foods. Kellogg’s Yogo Bits are a far cry from yogurt enemas. As twisted as John Kellogg’s ideas were about sexuality – he advised a genital cage to prevent masturbation – he had a purity in the application of those ideas. He did not compromise his vision for profit. That’s the job of a corporation.

Vision is profit in a consumerit society. If you dream it, you can make money on it. Or, someone else will.

This is true for the food industry. They play on basic biological programming to eat in times of plenty to guard against future famine. They use that built-in response to keep people buying ever worse food-like products. Grocery shelves are lined with products that are more chemical than nutritional.

To entice shoppers to purchase this semi-sustenance, companies employ images of health. The most enduring product of Kellogg’s time is cereal. Children are weaned on tasteless grains, raised on sugary grain kibble and survive on boxed meals well into adulthood. Often, the boxes sit on the table in front the eater, where a smiling celebrity endorser can smile approvingly over the bowl.

Michael Phelps proved his physical prowess. The world watched him glide through the water. He was inhuman in his athletic perfection. Just what we aspired to a century ago in making machines. He seemed to rise above the corporal inferiority most of us feel chained to.

His dominance earned him a lucrative contract to legitimize the food industry’s shadow-nutrition. For his Olympic accomplishments, he endorsed food that has little to do with human health.

The bong hit that destroyed his marriage to corporate America was about much more than legality of drugs. After all, baseball players brazenly defy drug laws to become superplayers who belt homers for our entertainment. And, millions of Americans are supporting a massive pharmaceutical industry that keeps churning out new drugs for every ailment we can imagine. To put a fine point on it, many of those ailments are imagined.

Cannabis is an ancient herbal treatment. It was stocked in apothecaries until the late 19th century. It became an illicit drug at the same time that manufactured, processed drugs rose to prominence. The physical pleasure marijuana brings along with any therapeutic benefits was a direct affront to Puritan ideas about the evils of the body. Pot was filed under “God’s mistakes”.

Michael Phelps cheated on his financial spouse with the herbal harlot. Corporate food gave him money, but not any help as an athlete. Humble, outcast cannabis gave him joy.

He should have known better. He knew the laws. But then, other athletes are allowed their drugs. Of course, those steroids are a human creation.

Why would he throw his career away? What could be worth risking financial and physical success? A hit of some street drug? What does that tell us about our heroes?

It tells me that despite our dreams of immortality, we are still just humans. We crave pleasure. We need relief from the human condition. Our bodies know reality from illusion.

No parade of athletes or cartoon characters can convince my body that Rice Krispies have the vitamins and minerals that I need to be an active healthy person. No law can convince me that one drug is so different from another.

Rice Krispies® cereal has been bringing families together in the kitchen for 80 years. For eight decades, Snap Crackle and Pop have been stunted in their growth. They have been forced to remain childish, impish prisoners of big money cereal.

Let Kellogg’s continue to pursue their path of consumerist fake-food. They are a thing of the past. One hundred years is long for the ideas of human perfection to get a trial run. It’s time to re-examine the inherent wisdom of Natural creation.

The new marriage of human ideas may be to find how we can create a union of technological development and biological design. Then, Snap Crackle and Pop could be released from their cardboard cage to get out into the sun finally and taste food straight from the ground. And, if they wanted, they could sample other delights that come from the Earth.