Musonius Rufus, Lectures 18.6

Thoroughly shameful, he used to say, are gluttony and high living, and no one will dare deny it; yet I have observed very few aiming to shun these vices. On the contrary I notice that the majority of people strive to obtain these same foods when they are not available and when they are at hand are unable to refrain from them, and they use them so lavishly when they have them that they make for the detriment of their health. 

 

And yet what else is gluttony but intemperance in the matter of nourishment, causing men to prefer what is pleasant in food to what is beneficial? And high living is nothing but excess in table luxury. 

 

Now excess is always evil, but here particularly it reveals its true nature in these people since it makes them greedy like swine or dogs rather than men, and incapable of behaving properly with hands, or eyes, or gullet, so completely does the desire for pleasure in dainties of the table pervert them. 

 

I imagine most Americans would agree that we eat far too much, and we eat of all the wrong things, and we get tangled up in the lure of images of food sold by advertising, instead of looking to the health of mind and body. 

 

Yet most Americans continue to be brutal consumers, doing precisely what they say they shouldn’t do. Are we playing that double standard? We stuff our faces, at all hours of the day, and still pontificate at the same time. 

 

When McDonald’s seasonally offers the holy Shamrock Shake, or the legendary McRib, people go a bit crazy, and they line up for hours. There is nothing Irish in the drink besides some green food dye, and there is nothing of actual rib meat to be found in the sandwich. We are drinking and eating corporate hokum. 

 

What is the real content of these advertising masterpieces? Sugar, more sugar, lots of salt, and then loads of fat. It speaks to what is most base in our taste, under the guise of being hip and cosmopolitan.  

 

I may see before me something that I know will provide a lasting good for me, and I may see before me something else that I know will only be temporarily gratifying for me, and the very fact that I hesitate in my choice shows how easily I can delude myself. 

 

When I am overcome by gluttony, the judgment I have made is to bind my very judgment to something far lower than itself; in a way, I am choosing to let the impressions do the choosing for me. It is bad enough that I lean to excess, but the degree to which I can become a mindless devourer, so fundamentally inhuman, is surely what is of such great concern to Musonius. 

 

I might be shocked to see children throwing tantrums when they don’t receive their favorite treats, and then I remember the arguments between adults about which fast food joint they will do their gorging at during lunch hour. 

Written in 5/2000