Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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-49

Is "food" a social construct? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hear me out. There's nothing innate to an object that makes it "food". It's an attribute we give to certain things that meet certain qualities, i.e. being digestible, nutritious, perhaps tasty or satisfying in some way, etc. We could really ingest just about anything, but we call the stuff that's edible "food". Does that make it a social construct?

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"digestible" and "nutritious" aren't social constructs, so no. If your body can transform it chemically in a way that produces energy, it's food. Otherwise it's not. The same things are food regardless of your culture.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

yea this seems to be the deciding factor. but cant we think of something that we wouldn't normally consider "food" and have it meet all these criteria?

like if you saw a spider's nest in the corner of your house, would you say "I have some food over here"? Why not? what if they were not poisonous, etc? what nutrients do they need to have in order to be considered food?

what about non-digestible fibers that we may consume? are they not food? aren't there some parts of plants that we don't digest or something?

you can see how this can be more ambiguous the deeper you look! it's honestly such a shame that so many lemmings are SO off-put by even the idea of it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

People are hostile as fuck because that’s the dominant culture right now. Some of it is modulated by bots posing as people to model approved opinions, some of it is humans doing that in a conscious effort to give us this defeatist culture, and some of it is the actual organic, natural culture of the USA lately.

Honestly, after reading the Three Body Problem series (haven’t seen the show; unsure if it creates the same effect) it’s been a lot easier to sort of conceptualize and face overwhelmingly asymmetrically unbalanced and weird warfare tactics. And it just seems like we’re actually legitimately under cultural attack.

But whether it’s all a big conspiracy or if it got that way organically, it’s a dominant culture to be negative right now.

Here’s the key thing: you can see past it if you recognize that it’s there. One small thing is: use a lemmy client that shows you up and downvotes separately, not just the sum score. That way when you get buried by the haters you’ll still see the times you’re connecting with people.