Self-loathing at the British Colonial

Self-loathing, along with the accompanying trait ingratitude, is the defining characteristic of the Whig or leftist progressive. In the progressive worldview the heritage and circumstance into which one is born is necessarily a restriction since it is not the product of free will. In this view only that which one chooses is authentic; all else is imposed and therefore, by extension, oppressive. Free choice is the highest value in such an ideology, and so it follows that all that might impede free choice and all that is not freely chosen must be torn down and rejected. We see an extreme example of this in contemporary gender politics. The notion that one is born with a particular gender identity is perceived by progressives as essentially oppressive. It denies one the right to choose whether to be male or female or neither or both. More generally, progressives typically develop an aversion for all those aspects of selfhood and identity into which they were born, leading to a general rejection of heritage and tradition. Heritage and tradition - history -, by definition, are received by inheritance; they are not freely chosen. One does not choose to be a white Anglosaxon middleclass Australian - it is a circumstance and an identity into which one is born (against one's will). For the progressive, typically, freedom consists in rebellion against this imposition. 

This is in contrast to the conservative. In the conservative worldview the inheritance one receives at birth - place, country, ethnicity, language, gender, history - is a providential gift which one should love and for which one ought to be grateful. Freedom and happiness consists not in rejecting this inheritance but in embracing it, exploring it, developing it, expanding it. The conservative, by temperament, accepts and rejoices in his own history and loves and honours the traditions into which he has been born. If the circumstances of his birth are difficult, it is a challenge to be accepted and overcome, but it never leads to self-loathing and ingratitude. The conservative is happy to have been born a man, or a woman, and feels none of the self-disgust and guilt the progressive feels at being born pale-skinned and prosperous and English. He is not ashamed of his forefathers. He is thankful for their sacrifices and labours and grateful that he is the recipient of the traditions they forged. This is an utterly different mindset to progressivism. The conservative embraces the many aspects of self he received from providence. The progressive is in rebellion against the same in the belief that authenticity is only found in what is freely chosen. 

Finally, these two dispositions represent two divergent relations to time. The progressive - as the name implies - prefers the future (in the vain hope that it can be engineered) and despises the past (because it is fixed and irrevocable.) The conservative - as the name implies - seeks to conserve the best of the past and is apprehensive about the future (because it is inherently uncertain and is very likely to be messed up by progressives.) We see these two dispositions clashing everywhere. They are the two political types of the modern era. An excellent account of these dispositions, especially that of the self-loathing leftist, can be found in an e-booklet at Oz Conservative here. 

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The salubrious and tasteful ambience at British Colonial Co., Brisbane

The self-loathing leftists were at their keyboards again recently  - they constitute the core of the aptly named twitterati - taking aim at a newly opened eating establishment in Brisbane, Australia. In a previous post the present author reported on the bullying and hysterics directed at a fine food restaurant in Seattle named the  Saffron Colonial. See here. The incident in Brisbane is a virtual replay of the same event. Australians rarely set their own social agenda, and the Australian political Left is especially prone to importing and reverse engineering ideas from their English and American fellow travellers. On this occasion, enterprising restaurantuers had the timerity to open a restaurant in Brisbane with a British Empire theme, celebrating the marvellous fusion of otherwise bland British fare with the exotic flavors and textures of food traditions from the various outposts of British colonial expansion. 

At the mere mention of the hated British Empire the perpetually outraged raced to their laptops and shouted their disapproval across social media. That was predictable. So too was the fact that, at this point, the main-stream media (increasingly irrelevant and parasitic on social media) found it newsworthy (as if "leftist twitter outrage" is news!) The hapless restauranteurs, having invested large amounts of money and a wealth of creativity into the venture, found themselves at the centre of a confected "controversy" concerning whether or not their eatery is "racist". This follows a previous incident in which a Brisbane couple opened a Vietnamese-themed restaurant named 'Uncle Ho's' - a cheeky dig at revolutionary darling Ho Chi Min - that so appalled and unhinged the twitterati that the restauranteurs received death threats and had to abandon the project. Yes, we now live in a world where people make death threats if they don't like the name of a cafe!

Since this web journal came to the defence of the beseiged restauranteurs at Saffron Colonial (long may they prosper!), it is only appropriate that we do so for British Colonial in Brisbane as well. The owners have expressed genuine surprise at the twitter stir  their establishment has created, although they are probably thankful for the flood of free nationwide publicity. The fact is that the miserable do-gooders who vent their rage on twitter about the supposed evils of the British Empire are not really the type of clientele who would ordinarily frequent refined eateries like Saffron Colonial or British Colonial anyway. Both restaurants appear to have conducted their market research and have a good knowledge of the restaurant-going public. Nothing in their research told them that offending the post-colonial sensitivies of vegan lesbians with majors in Gender Studies was going to be bad for business. The owners of British Colonial presented a rationale for the decor and design of the restaurant on their Facebook page, as follows:

'The sun never sets on the British Empire' is the oft-repeated quotation used when trying to explain British colonial style. In a nutshell, the style is a result of English citizens travelling the world during the empire's heyday, bringing with them typically heavy wooden furnishings and adapting to hot local climates with lighter local fare. These travellers also bought back exotic pieces from the Caribbean, India, the Far East and African as a way to show off how far they'd travelled. They tried to travel relatively light; campaign furniture (light, foldable and portable) also became part of the look. The results can mean a wild mix of light bamboo or cane furniture, heavier pieces, plaids mixed with animal prints, dark floors next to white walls and paisleys mixed with chintzes.'

Regarding their appeal and menu they say:

We believe that our décor and menu has great synergy with Brisbane’s climate and the expansive palette of our clientele, who are looking for a melting pot of food and beverages to enjoy in a relaxed atmosphere.

They also said, in reference to the haters:

We are very proud of our brand, dining experience and the loyal clientele we have [already] established...

While they have said they are "saddened" by the twitter storm, and they had no intention of offending, there are no signs that they are ready to concede to the online bullies. Their website promises "A refined modern dining experience with the adventure of east meets west in a plantation style club setting." They clearly view the historical encounter of east and west and the consequent synergies that were the British Empire as a fact to be celebrated rather than a travesty to be lamented in self-loathing fits of guilt and ideologies of recrimination. 

Needless to say, this is in Australia - the British colony par excellence. Yet there is, in Australia today, an entire sub-class of Whigs who hate and despise the British foundations of their own country and, by extension, must hate and despise that part of themselves which is necessarily and irrevocably British-Australian. It is a sign of maturity that one comes to terms with the complex and often nuanced and contradictory realities of one's cultural inheritance. Maturity is not something of which the outraged twitterati, pathetic puritans of 'safe spaces', can be accused.

 

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It should be clear to readers that the present author has a generally enhanced appreciation of the historical legacy of the British Empire. This is an honest response to his many travels in India and Asia and elsewhere. He remembers a conversation he had in Indonesia recently where a Javanese gentleman inquired as to where the author had been prior to arriving in the East Indies. "Malaya," the author replied, and added innocently that Malaya was very nice. "They were lucky," said the Javanese. "They were colonized by the British." Similar attitudes are not difficult to find elsewhere in Asia too. Leaving aside the small but very loud minority of resentful intelligentsia who have been educated in post-colonial angst, the British and their extraordinary Empire - the greatest the world has ever seen - are generally well-regarded. At very least, the British Empire is seen as comparatively benign where it is not admitted that it was an agent for good. The British have no cause to be ashamed of their imperial past. And a modern, prosperous nation like Australia - which began as a penal colony - speaks well of the merits of the entire British colonial enterprise. 

More generally, readers of these pages might also note the author's great fondness for east/west synergies. It is for this reason that he counts himself a neo-orientalist, and does so without the slightest hint of post-colonial guilt. He has no qualms about the Western appropriation of things oriental, nor with the eastern acquisition of the ways and means of the West. No doubt there are episodes of east/west encounter that are regrettable, and some lamentable consequences sometimes, but the positive synergies and hybridizations far exceed the failures. This is true in all aspects of culture. This present blog often features instances of the art and literature that is a product of east/west encounters, especially in a British context. The same, though, might be said of food. Authenticity is over-rated. Often, the British or more widely European versions of the foods of the east are - let us not be shy of saying so! - better than the original. A British curry can be better than any supposedly authentic dish one can find in the seething unsanitary mess that is Madras. What the French do to Vietnamese flavors is often better than anything you can find in French Indo-China. Chinese food in British Hong Kong or Singapore, nurtured to colonial tastes, is certainly better than what you find in the People's Republic today. So why not a restaurant, or many restaurants, that celebrate this brilliant east/west cuisine? 

For fine dining the British Colonial is located at 274 Hawthorne Rd, Hawthorne, Brisbane. Their website is here.

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Alex Podolinsky & Demeter Bio-dynamics

Modern Australia has produced two systems of organic agriculture that are now well-known the world over. One of them is profound and shows the way ahead for natural farming; the other is rubbish and is a retrograde throw-back to hunter-gatherer methods. One is populated by serious farmers, men of the soil, who are producing high quality chemical-free food on an industrial scale for a hungry world; the other is populated by greenies, scavengers, ferals, hobby farmers, retired sociologists and a wide assortment of hippies with dubious standards of personal hygiene, all of whom make a lot of noise but produce very little. The profound system is Demeter bio-dynamics.  The hunter-gatherer throwback goes by the name of permaculture. 

The present author has vented his objections to the second of these in an unpopular post to this journal some time ago and makes no secret of them. See the post here. After nearly thirty years of dealing with permaculturists in southern Australia, he is confirmed in his low opinion of permaculture, its results and its clientelle. On the other hand, he has been actively involved in and also loitered on the fringes of the biodynamic movement for the same length of time, and has recently become reacquainted with long-time bio-dynamic farmers, and his positive experience of that system and high regard for it is undiminished. 

This endorsement requires qualification, though. There is a generic form of bio-dynamics, and then there is Demeter bio-dynamics. It is the latter of these two that deserves every praise. Both have their origin in a series of lectures on agriculture by the Austrian mystic and polymath, Rudolf Steiner, in the early 1920s. These lectures spawned a movement that has since taken many forms. What we will call "Demeter bio-dynamics" is one such form, and is a specific adaptation of Dr. Steiner's ideas to the realities of modern farming, in the first instance as they are encountered in the challenging environment of rain-starved poor-soiled broad-acre Australia. We will call it Demeter bio-dynamics because it operates and sells produce under the Demeter trademark, thus:

This trademark distinguishes this particular system of bio-dynamics from others.  Practitioners of the system found it necessary to set up appropriate legal definitions and commercial safeguards in order to avoid unneccesary confusions. To be frank, many expressions of generic bio-dynamics are rubbish too and attract a similar cohort to permaculture with much the same outcomes. Demeter bio-dynamics, on the other hand, is a first-class professional affair with a long track record of solid results backed up with a coherent body of theory and a tradition of independent research. It goes about its mission quietly and without fanfare. It is, without exaggeration, the premiere mode of organic farming in the world today. There are hundreds of successful, profitable farms and millions of acres of Australian farmland under Demeter bio-dynamic cultivation, along with smaller operations all around the world. Demeter is, in fact, the biggest producer of organic food on the planet today. 

Although many fine people have contributed to the development and refinement of Demeter bio-dynamics, it is finally the child of one man, a post-war European immigrant to Australia, Alex Podolinsky. This post concerns him. Although a versatile genius with many accomplishments to his name - he is an architect, amongst other things - he will go down in history as the man who saved bio-dynamics from half-witted hippies and converted it into a viable system of practical farming for real farmers as Dr. Steiner always intended. Born in 1925 - and so over ninety years old as of this posting - he is the grandson of the pioneering Ukranian eco-economist Sergie Podolinsky. He was himself instructed in the theory and methods of bio-dynamics by direct students of Dr. Steiner in Switzerland in the late 1930s and studied it thereafter, deciding at an early age that farming was his calling. 

Nothing in his early experiences of European farming, though, prepared him for the vastly different conditions under which farming is conducted in Australia. After immigrating to the great south land he bought a dairy farm near the mountain hamlet of Powelltown in the state of Victoria and from there set about completely rethinking the bio-dynamic system for Australian conditions. In particular, he realised that Steiner had said nothing relevant to the broad-acre dryland farming that was the norm in Australia; the whole matter would need to be reconsidered. For decades he worked closely with Australian farmers - real farmers - and honed his methods into a successful system. The turning point in this development was perfecting a mechanical means of stirring the "preparations" that Steiner had outlined in his lectures. Steiner had insisted they be stirred by hand. Podolinsky knew that this was utterly unfeasible in Australian conditions. He defied the purists and, assisted by a farmer named Trevor Twigg, designed a stirring machine that matched hand-stirring as nearly as possible. It was a breakthrough. With such machines it was possible to apply the bio-dynamic "preparations" to Australian-sized farms.

He also realised that Australian conditions, far more than the conditions prevailing in Europe, required special emphasis upon the "cow horn preparation" - enumerated 'Preparation 500" - that Steiner had sketched in his lectures. Steiner had indicated that much experimentation would be required before this preparation, like the others, could be perfected. Having learnt the basic technique of making the "preps" in Switzerland, Mr. Podolinsky set about refining the method through careful observation and application. Others, taking Dr. Steiner's sketch as gospel, went about making the preparations in a slap-dash way and supposed them to be either some form of pagan ritual or else a magic potion. Podolinsky understood them to be adjuncts to the inner processes of nature and approached them in that way. The Preparation 500 he produced on his farm in Poweltown was vastly superior to that being made and used by others.  He called it a "humus preperation", the purpose of which was to increase the consolidation of organic matter into stable humus in the living processes of soil. This, he realised, was exactly what was so lacking in Australia's mineralized, depleted soils, a land devoid of large ruminants for aeons. 

The cornerstone of his farming method became judicious applications of the "cow horn preparation" - a sort of potentized dilution of cow manure - stirred in his stirring machines and sprayed upon pastures using carefully adapted farm equipment. Using Preparation 500, without superphosphate and the other chemicals which are standard in Australian agriculture, he was able to revitalize tired and depleted soils, renovate soil structure and increase the humus content to depth. Combined with other bio-dynamic farm management techniques, in many cases the results were nothing short of miraculous. His own farm in Powelltown was the model. While surrounding farms withered and waned during droughts, his remained green and productive using no chemicals or brought-in fertilizers, artificial or natural. The ideal farm in bio-dynamics is a self-contained organism. It can produce a surplus year after year without any imputs from outside. This is at the centre of Steiner's agricultural vision, a vision that Alex Podolinsky made real: the farm as a living, breathing cornucopia drawing on the vital forces of the wider cosmos.

 

Corn horns. These are filled with cow manure, laid in pits (as shown) and buried over winter to make "Preparation 500". 

No great pioneer is without his detractors, however, and Mr. Podolinsky, it must be admitted, found an unusual number of enemies over the years. To achieve the success he did required upsetting many people along the way. As all who have encountered him over the years will testify, by temperament he is a "my-way-or-the-highway" sort of man, unbending, convinced of his own methods, and not inclined to suffer fools or dilettantes. In character he is more like a temperamental and authoritarian European orchestral conductor or violinist with personal traits that often clash with the more casual and egalitarian side of Australians. His involvement in the Steiner education movement ended in schism and lasting resentment. The monopoly he created of bio-dynamic methods was unwelcome in many quarters. He happily alienated the aforementioned hippie contingent and other useless types who have tended to populate the alternative agriculture scene. Even more, his disgressions from Steiner purism and claims to know better won him a wealth of detractors among Anthroposophists, members of Steiner's Anthroposophical Society. A certain Steinerite of the present author's acquaintance once described Mr. Podolinsky to him as "evil". Others have not hesitated to call him an "egoist", a "Nazi", a "fascist", or worse. This is to say nothing of the fact that the mainstream farming establishment were always ready to dismiss him as a crank or a charlatan and to call his methods "muck and magic." 

Wisely, Podolinsky went his own way and refrained from engaging with his critics; instead he let his success speak for itself. As opposed to his army of detractors, there is a legion of dedicated followers and enthusiasts who regard him as the herald of a coming good. This includes many very sober, down-to-earth, salt-of-the-land, no-nonsense, hardworking Australian farmers, a good many of whom Podolinsky saved from bankruptcy and ruin. Desperate, at their wits end, drowning in debt, facing divorce, living on farms destroyed by artificial fertilizers and pesticides, these men would ring him at Powelltown in the middle of the night, purely on a rumor that he had saved other farms with his unorthodox methods. After hearing their plight, Mr. Podolinsky would inform them that, yes, he could save their farm - and possibly their marriage too - but only on the condition that they do things his way and follow his advice to the letter. Bio-dynamics is a delicate and subtle thing. Some of it might seem strange, but it works if it is done correctly, and, if they complied with the rules, he could offer them the prospect of selling their produce under the Demeter label at good prices in Europe, Japan and elsewhere. In an age when more and more family farms are going to the wall, and agriculture in general is unprofitable, Demeter bio-dynamics has an expanding market. And better still, it rehabilitates the land so that farms are a worthy legacy for future generations. If it is easy to find people who have clashed at some time with Alex Podolinsky, it is also easy to find people who regard him as an agricultural messiah, a man who has done more for honest farmers than almost anyone else. 

Some might say that Podolinsky's methods would work just as well without the "magic potions". If so, well and good. He has, however, conducted extensive research and has built up a considerable body of evidence to show that his "500" - if applied correctly and in the right conditions - has a marked impact upon root growth and soil structure. One of the keys to Demeter bio-dynamics is the distinction between water roots and feed roots in plants. Conventional wisdom says that plants take their nutrients through soil water and that nutirients must be water soluble to be effective. This is only partly true. Rather, it is the case that, ideally, nutrients are held in suspension - that is, in a colloidal form - in humus, and plants draw upon this reserve in proportion to sunlight and other factors. The "cow horn preparation' is said to assist in this important process. This is the area of greatest difference between bio-dynamic farming and what ordinarily passes for so-called organic farming. Bio-dynamics has a different understanding of plant nutrients and place of those nutrients in well-structured soil. What appears to be "muck and magic" is underpinned by a solid body of sophisticated, if unconventional, plant science. Like all of Dr. Steiner's enterprises, bio-dynamic agriculture is based in the scientific tradition of Goethe and a practical application of Goethe's approach to the study of nature. 

The present author has heard Mr. Podolinsky lecture several times, the first occasion in the 1980s. There is no question that he is a charismatic man with an extraordinary knowledge of Australian farming and, more than that, a truly deep acquaintance with the processes of the natural world. No doubt he has very fixed opinions on a wide range of topics and is very ready to share them. What it usually amounts to, though, is simply that he is old school, as they say, and finds much that has come to pass in popular culture to be degenerate and abominable. His hatred of pop music is prodigous, for example. Also his contempt for television and the popular media. As a father, it is said, he was strongly authoritarian and forbade his children even the slightest exposure to the music and manners of their peers. There are stories that as teenagers his children would have to sneak off to the toilet to listen to a transistor radio in secret for a taste of rock n roll. People who worked for him or with him described him as a slave-driver and an uncompromising task-master. Many people could not tolerate his manner and demands, threw up their hands and stormed away. He could scandalize audiences with seemingly old fashioned generalisations about race. He could also slap down interjectors or fools with vicious effectiveness. At one lecture this author attended a hairy hippie tried to make much of a coming documentary on the bestselling permaculture favorite 'One-Straw Revolution' by Fukuoka. Podolinsky was unimpressed and, putting the interjector in his place, dismissed Fukuoka as "unimportant" much to the shock and horror of many in the audience. The great Fukuoka unimportant?! The gentleman sitting next to the author muttered something like "What an arrogant bastard!" And so it may have seemed. But the interjection was a distraction and it was imperative, for Podolinsky, that no one confuse the serious farming of bio-dynamics with the "do nothing" Zen agriculture so beloved by the "do nothing" malcontents of the counter-culture. Arrogant? Forthright, at least. 

Even so, he was also charming, engaging, persuasive, intense, and since his physical stature is slight, almost fragile, unthreatening. He walks with a limp and a walking cane. During the war he fell asleep on guard duty one night and badly burnt his foot on a kerosene heater. This infirmity, matched with his zeal, almost reminds one of the maniacal Captain Ahab. Like Ahab, he wants 110% commitment from those prepared to follow him. This is what the present author found both fascinating and unsettling about Alex Podolinsky in his heyday. He was not merely trying to inform or even impress an audience: a man on a mission, he was looking for those who would nail their coin to the mast and join him on his quest.

This quest, moreover, entailed something far beyond just farming. The invitation to join him is an invitation to embrace an entire package. As his grandfather understood, agriculture cannot be separated from economy, and nor can economy be separated from questions about the value of human labour and the whole premise of human endeavour. Alex Podolinsky, that is to say, is more than a farmer: he is a philosopher. It just so happens that farming is at the centre of his philosophical outlook because he regards it, not unreasonably, as the foundation of human civilization. His lectures would often stray from agricultural matters into areas of art and aesthetics. To illustrate a point about the root growth of clover or rye he might deviate into a long disgression about a certain piece of music by Bach. Many of his lectures are informed by architectural and sculptural analogies. It is wonderful to relate that on several occasions he has taken cohorts of rough, rugged Australian farmers - beef farmers! - and insisted on giving them classes in clay modelling so that they might better grasp his teachings about form, shape and volume. It is also wonderful to relate that his teachings on social organisation mean that he is, as he says, "totally anti-bureaucratic" to the point that the Demeter corporation, though it handles millions of dollars of produce, does not even have an accountant. There is no "middle management", no "human resources department", no "committees", nor any of the usual parasites that clutter up modern organisations and make people's lives a misery. Not only is Demeter bio-dynamics an unorthodox mode of farming, the Demeter organisation is a profoundly unorthodox organisation, run according to Mr. Podolinsky's economic and social philosophy. Just as he regards bio-dynamics as the farming of the future, so he has built Demeter to be a model of how corporations should operate in a better and future world. 

All of this is an extremely ambitious undertaking in any one man's life, and yet Mr. Podolinsky's accomplishments are concrete and undeniable. He has written several books, or rather collected and published several volumes of transcripts of lectures and public talks, and he has been subject of a short documentary made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. See here. But one does not need to believe anything he has written or said. Instead, one need only visit one of the hundreds of farms and gardens that operate according to his methods and with his personal oversight to see the tangible applications of his philosophy. This is where Demeter bio-dynamics is so dramatically distinct to permaculture and this is why the present author is inclined to praise one and decry the other. The latter functions more like a pyramid scheme of expensive courses selling certificates to people who in turn set up expensive courses selling certificates, and yet very rarely does all of this certification translate into real results. Permaculturalists think of themselves as somehow alternative, but in fact the entire permaculture show is very conventional in its epistemology (which is crudely quantitative), its view of human labour (as quantitative "units"), its view of nature (utilitarian and materialistic) and its mode of promotion which is really just an extension of a landscape and planning course from a two-bit university in Tasmania. Alex Podolinsky has never charged anyone a cent for his advice. He lives by farming. The contrast between the trajectory and results of permaculture and those of Demeter bio-dynamics over the past three decades cannot be more stark. The sad fact is, though, that the pioneers of permculture win popular acclaim and are hailed as among Australia's gift to the world while an eccentric genius like Alex Podolinsky will most likely die an unsung hero even though he has made the preparations and planted the seeds for the renovation of a viable agriculture, post-industrial, worldwide and is, by any measure, one of the outstanding figures of our time. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

    

Loose Thoughts on the Vegetarian Spectrum

The Trang vegetarian festival

The provincial town of Trang in southern Siam is known, amongst other things, for the vegetarian festival observed by the region's Chinese population during a full-moon every October. The festival is Taoist in origin but now includes many Boodhist appropriations. It is said that the Chinese, who came to the Malay peninsula for tin mining, temporarily lapsed from their ancestral customs and that, because of this, a visiting opera troupe was stricken by disease. To make amends, the Taoist priests instituted a nine day period of purification featuring abstinence from meat-eating as recompense - the disease was allayed, the opera singers healed and the period of abstinence has been observed ever since. The rules of purification are: those participating wear white garments for purity for the duration of the festival, they abstain from meat, animal foods and the pungent vegetables (onions, shallots, garlic and tobacco). 

The present author has encountered vegetarian customs throughout his recent travels through Hindoostan and Farther India, and his most recent sojourn in Trang has brought many matters concerning the whole spectrum of vegetarian practices, east/west, traditional and modern into focus. The following are some loose - which is to say unedited and unarranged - thoughts on the topic, along with relevant scattered observations from his travels. The main point to be made, however, is this:

Throughout the Asian traditions (and there is no reason to think occidental traditions would be any different) vegetarianism is, first and foremost, a purification and specifically a purification of the life force (chi, etc.) as manifest in the breath (spiritus, pneuma). This is why in vegetarian traditions abstinence from meat eating very often goes hand in hand with abstinence from onions and other pungent vegetables. The breath is the life force of the organism. Onions, garlic, tobacco etc. stain the breath and are therefore believed to impair the life force. 

Similarly, meat-eating causes bad breath as well. Meat is therefore believed to be polluting. Purification consists of abstaining from all things that stain the breath. This is the whole basis of vegetarianism in traditional oriental culture. It has very little to do with 'compassion to sentient beings' and similar constructions typical of Boodhist modernism and neo-Hindooism. On the contrary, throughout these traditions - let us call them the 'dharma' traditions, Hindooism, Jainism, Boodhism and so on - animals are universally regarded as 'failed human beings' and one abstains from eating them so as to not be dragged down to their level. Animals are inferior and unclean. Eating meat is an impurity. One abstains from meat-eating not out of love for animals but out of a horror for the lowness of the animal state. 

Accordingly, traditional vegetarianism has a completely different foundation and motivation than modern, Western vegetarianism, and the real basis of the traditional doctrine - purification of the life force - is forgotten in the West.

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Rubens - Pythagoras proclaiming vegetarianism

Some meditations on the vegetarian spectrum:

*In most eastern traditions, and elsewhere, vegetarianism is rarely a 'lifestyle' but is only practiced at certain times for the purposes of prufication.

*Even where Indians advertise ‘Pure Veg’ you might often find fish on the menu. This is especially the case in places like West Bengal and Kerala. Many Hindoos do not regard fish as animal flesh. The present author was told with confidence on several occasions that “there is no karma attached to fish” – the Hindoo piscatarian. Note that eating fish (and other white meats) does not stain the breath like eating red meat and accordingly fish and white meats are often exempt from traditional vegetarian strictures.

*Even where the Boodhists of Siam – a kingdom where a good 95% of citizens count themselves Theravadan Boodhists – proclaim themselves ‘vegetarian’, everything is nevertheless soaked in fish sauce.

*The traditional Japanese had no word for ‘vegetarian’ – it is an English loan word. This is despite there being a genuine vegetarian tradition in Zen Temple cuisine. Again, vegetarianism is a seasonal practice, not a 'lifestyle' or an identity. 

The Zen Temple Cuisine, especially as preserved in Kyoto

*Outside of Jainism, the oldest form of vegetarianism in the Hindoo world seems to come from Udupi. Thus 'Udupi' restaurants are found throughout India. It is further adapted in the diet of the Hare Krishna and related movements and is spiritually anchored in the incarnationist spirituality of Vishnoo. Avoiding the 'pungent vegetables' is as important as avoiding meat. 

*The idea that the 'pungent vegetables' and meat are to be avoided because they 'stir the passions' is a moralistic rationale. The real basis for such practices, however, lies in alchemistic vitalism (which is much older than such moral explanations and is now largely obscured or forgotten.) 

*In certain parts, the sign ‘Pure Veg’ outside a restaurant or street stall in India might often mean specifically “Muslims not welcome!” In the Indian context – and in general - Mohammedans are meat-eaters by definition. Quite apart from more mature considerations, contemporary Hindoos will eat vegetarian (or some version thereof) in order to distinguish themselves from the Musselmans, and the Musselmans will eat meat (in copious quantities!) in order to distinguish themselves from the Hindoos.

*In the Hindoo spectrum you meet many people for whom ‘vegetarian’ just means ‘no beef’. So you can find ‘Pure Veg’ eateries that serve chicken and fish. For the average Hindoo beef-eating is the great dietary sin that incurs karmic retribution. Thus many eateries specify ‘No beef’ on the menu. Again, note that red meat impairs the breath to a far greater degree than does fish or white meats.

*In deference to the Hindoo, of all the creatures it is an affront to slaughter for meat, it is surely the cow, the most serene and most beautiful of animals, emblem of the contemplative soul.

*Forms of vegetarianism found through Hindoostan and nearby are often not especially diverse or healthy. Meals will often consist of over-spiced lentil dishes (dal) and rice or bread, with vegetables, as such, conspicuously absent. The most common ‘vegetable’ is aloo (potato) and sometimes a wrinkled up old gobi (cauliflower) but there are few, if any, green vegetables in sight. Fresh leafy green vegetables are rarely seen at all. Carrots are commonly eaten as a sugared dessert (halva) in season. The contemporary Indian ‘vegetarian’ diet is surprisingly degraded, notably by sugar and potatoes and a dependence on spices rather than substance to provide satisfaction.

*The Hindoo knows absolutely nothing about salad. (Something called a 'green salad' appears on menus throughout India. Do not be fooled! It's not green and it is not a salad.)

*The Chinese culinary tradition (and variations thereof found throughout Sino-Asiatic civilization) is essentially omnivorous – albeit without dairy foods - but its ancient roots are better preserved than that of the Indian tradition and it is more easily adapted to a satisfying vegetarianism and especially a viable veganism in a modern context.

*Important to note: One of the lost keys to ancient ‘vegetarianism’ is a deep cultural abhorrence of cannibalism. In the first instance, meats that taste like human flesh are made taboo. Thus in Japan, for instance, eating monkey flesh was made subject to the death penalty, and in the Semitic order swine flesh was forbidden. (Noting that the instinct to avoid the cannibalistic was less developed in the Chinese world, in itself a spiritual failing of that civilization, although it remains more ‘primordial’ in other respects.)

*As Roger Sandall observes, the deconstruction of the ‘cannibalism narrative’ by the post-colonial counter-tradition is the cornerstone of the new barbarism, the anthropological toxin of our age. we have almost completely lost all understanding of this great theme of tradition now.

*Regardless of what certain New Age manifestations of Soofism propose, a legitimate vegetarianism is a theological impossibility in Islam. The sacrificial order of Abrahamism prevails among the Mohammadans. Islam very specifically does not end the institution of animal sacrifice. There is no way around this fact. Muslims are theologically bound to partake of the sacrifice at least once a year (on the Eid). Christianity, on the other hand, has abolished all sacrifices (or subsumed them in the sacrificial flesh of Christ – noting the primordial cannibalistic theme inherent in the Christian perspective) – Christians are free to be vegetarians, or indeed omnivores, so long as they eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. A Christian vegetarianism is a legitimate spiritual possibility, but in that it has no distinct merit.

*Vestiges of the ‘primordiality’ of a vegetarianism scaled according to an abhorrence of cannibalism is found today in the so-called ‘macrobiotic’ cuisine as reformulated in a modern guise by the Japanese alchemist George Ohsawa. Thus the flesh of mammals and higher order animals is avoided but those lower on the evolutionary scale (fish, shrimp, moluscs etc.) might be eaten sometimes. The less an animal tastes like human flesh – which is to say the further it is from the human on the evolutionary scale – the better.

*In all religious traditions the avoidance of animal foods is associated with a spiritual vocation; it is priestly. In traditional cultures it is never a question of ‘ethics’ and even less of ‘ecology’ or some sort of smug political stance. What modern Westerners rarely appreciate is that a vegetarian (or vegan) diet without spiritual application can be destructive and the cause of psychological and other imbalances. That is, a secular vegetarianism is a nonsense, an aberration, a usurpation, a spiritual danger.

*Vegetarianism is often supposed to be alien to the occident, an oriental affectation, but let us recall that it was a feature of the Pythagorean tradition, and to an extent the broader Platonic tradition too, since ancient times. It is as natural to the West as Pythagoras and Plato.

*Although adored by countless simpering vegetarians and vegans in the West, His Holiness the Dalai Lama – that sanctimonious old phony – is a bad-breathed carnivore. He claims it is “on doctor’s orders.” Sure. (In all fairness, though, the entire Tibetan Boodhist tradition, of which this celebrity Lama is erstwhile leader, is resoundingly carnivorous , which makes the fact that most Western followers of Tibetan Boodhism are vegetarians all the more bizarre. The modern Western cult of Tibetan Boodhism is a strange phenomenon indeed!)

*Aside from vitalism, the whole metaphysical basis for oriental vegetarianism is dharma and hence reincarnation. (This is also true of occidental Pythagorean vegetarianism which has no other basis than metempsychosis.) Without such a metaphysical underpinning it is merely ‘ethical’ and sentimental. In general, if you do not believe in reincarnation/metempsychosis there is not likely to be a firm (deep) basis for your vegetarianism.

*The critique of vegetarianism that begins… “Science has shown that plants are sentient too…” is an instance of a corrosive scientistic relativism. It is increasingly common and we can expect more of it in the future as relativist deconstructions dismantle all reasonable norms in the decadent West. There is a clear and obvious difference between a plant and an animal; it is an abdication of reason and a sinister mischievousness to suppose otherwise.

*While we today associate a vegetable diet with health, in the past, in both east and west, meat was regarded as remedial. If you became ill you ate meat in order to get well. (The idea persists, especially among Jews, in the proverbial remedial powers of ‘chicken soup’.) There are amusing stories from the Middle Ages in whole communities of monks would regularly feign illness in order to get a feed of meat. This might seem contrary to concerns of purifying the vital force (breathe) but it is a question of animal energies. In such cases, one eats meat until one has recovered and then returns to a vegetable basis diet. We should not confuse animal 'health' with ethereal 'purity'.

*A lacto-vegetarianism arises naturally from the Hindoo world. Veganism is more natural to the Sino-Asiatic universe. The Hindoo diet has paneer. The Chinese diet has the soy bean. Milk is alien to the Chinaman. Soy is alien to the Hindoo. These differences are not accidental; they reflect profound differences in spiritual temperament and go very deep. A lacto-vegetarian will have a more Indo-Asiatic temperament, a vegan a more Sino-Asiatic temperament. We might generalize: a lacto-vegetarian will do yoga; a vegan will do tai chi. 

*The compromised 'objectivity' of science in the West - and especially in universities - is on display in the ridiculous reports that seem incapable of conceiving of a viable diet without meat and dairy foods. People are right to hold these judgments in contempt. These scientists only serve the meat and dairy industries - as if the Indian and Chinese civilizations were deficient for their vegetarianism and lack of dairy foods respectively. Western food science, so-called, is Eurocentric in the narrowest possible sense.

*Whatever merit might be attached to it the popular New Age vegetarianism of urban elites, social justice warriors and eco-spiritualists in the West is deeply sentimental and decadent. It is symptomatic of cultural collapse. Its motives are perverse and its manifestations cultish. We cannot overlook the fact that so many vegetarians are dissipated social degenerates. There is an honesty, a sincerity, a simplicity, an integrity, a wholesome attachment to tradition and history, a truthful aversion to fads of cultural vandalism, in the confirmed meat eater. Apart from our notes on Pythagoreanism above, occidental man is essentially and temperamentally a hunter.

*It requires a particularly vulgar insensitivity to not be appalled and disturbed by utilitarian industrial meat production. In no other age has the slaughter of animals for meat – on such a massive scale – ever been conducted without a sense of moral danger and a corresponding need to avoid Divine judgment for such a transgression. Factory farming is clearly an abomination. So secular vegetarianism on ‘ethical’ grounds is understandable in the first instance, but otherwise it fails to meet the depths of the case; it does nothing to appease Heaven and so is finally just self-righteous and narcissistic.

*Industrial halal meat production - where an imam says a quick 'bismillah' before pressing the 'on button' of massive assembly-line slaughter machines - is an especially obscene hypocrisy. The obsession with 'halal' meat among contemporary Mohammedans - absurdly Pharisaic - is one of the most advanced symptoms of spiritual decay in contemporary Islamic externalism. 

Vegetarians in white during the nine days and nights of the festival in Trang. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Saffron Colonial - British Colonial Cuisine

A new café and bakery opened in Portland Oregon recently, catching this writer’s attention, even though he currently resides a thousand miles away. The new establishment has become notorious and is subject to media reports because it is the victim of on-going protests from leftist Thought Police who have taken exception to its theme: British colonial food. The restaurateurs are qualified chefs with extensive training and experience in fine restaurants in Paris and elsewhere and who happen to specialize in the diverse cuisines of the British empire. They have a deep professional interest in the historical synthesis of British foods with the more exotic fare of  the many lands that were once under British imperial dominion. Their restaurant, Saffron Colonial Café, at 4120 North Williams Ave, Portland, has a menu constructed around this theme, along with appropriate furnishings and decorations.

This, however, is simply too much for local Leftists. They have organized petitions and pickets and have taken to confronting and harassing customers on the grounds that all things to do with the British Empire are odious and taboo. The menu is simply too politically incorrect. They have urged the owners to change the name of the place and to eradicate all references to the Evil Empire from the menu. Thus far the owners have resisted. It is in celebration of this feat of brave resistance to leftist bullying that this page is devoted to promoting Saffron Colonial. 

Of course, the present author has not had the pleasure of enjoying either the ambience or the food, but would love to if ever he ventures to Portland. This post is a sort of endorsement in absentia. The fusion of British-influence with local cuisine has been a constant delight in his recent travels. British food on its own, to be frank, has a well-deserved reputation as bland, stodgy and uninspiring, but if you pepper this with the tastes of Hindoostan, or Ceylon, or the Malay Peninsula, it comes to life. The imperial experience has certainly done the British table some good. Conversely, native cuisine is often tamed and broadened and given both body and finesse by exposure to colonial tastes.

The self-indulgent intolerant stupidity of trying to close down a restaurant because it serves British food is yet another example of the political decay of American leftist culture and needs no further comment. We are happy to report, instead, that the reviews for Saffron Colonial are good. Leftist trolls have attempted to sabotage the review pages, but professional review sites such as Yelp have managed to filter them out. Reviews, with pictures, links and samples of the menu follow:

You can visit Saffrom Colonial online at:

Saffron Colonial

And the menu is here:

Saffron Colonial Menu

If you are in Portland, and feeling peckish, ignore the line of angry, unhappy Leftists in the street and venture in to enjoy the food, fine tea and pleasant company. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black