Empathy and Anarchy

Slow Food has always been my thing, even before it existed. This year I decided to get more involved again - I've been a member for years but I haven't been an active member for a while. Yesterday I went as a delegate to the annual "discuss boring stuff" meeting, which is never a problem in good company - and yesterday I was in good company.

I've been involved in lots of stuff in my life, lots of campaigns and movements and associations of this and that but I often feel like I don't have the correct level of passion to really get involved. That bothered me. But Slow Food is different - I don't support Slow Food with my head, agreeing with what is said (though I do agree), I don't support it with my hunger for good food (though I do have that), I support it with something deep inside of me that knows it's right - as the out-going president of Slow Food Switzerland said in his speech yesterday, it's about having the affective intelligence to actually feel the struggle of small producers, to understand the importance of local traditions and customs, to feel the identity of the other and to respect it. That's the empathy bit. And then, to have the correct measure of anarchy to not want to abide by the rules dictated to us by the food industry but to go and search for our own food - food that acknowledges that eating is an agricultural and a political act and that we can not only change our own health and lifestyle but we can also positively effect the lives of others - both human and not-human - through our choice of what to eat.

Empathy and anarchy, that's something I signed up for a long time ago, possibly at birth, and I'm happy to carry the flame for that for a good while yet.

This photo was taken shortly before our evening of local food and music at the Hoher Hirschberg, Appenzell