Cheese and Spirituality, Part 1: Why Does Spirituality Matter?

 

In the previous “Great Dispersal” posts, we explored the diffusion of dairying and cheesemaking from their region of origin in Southwest Asia across thousands of miles over thousands of years. Along with the spread of cheesemaking technology came the spread of other cultural elements, preeminent among which, in my view, were newly crystallized spiritual aspirations that were integrally linked to dairying and cheesemaking from the beginning. Spirituality has been foundational to human identity and the unfolding of the human story since the latter stages of the Paleolithic. Therefore, I cannot help but conclude that the linkage between cheese and spirituality is worth pondering and warrants more than a single post on this blog site.

So let’s start at the beginning, and the first question that we need to tackle is: what do we mean when we speak about the spiritual nature of humanity? I am not an anthropologist, but what I have gathered from poring over many anthropologically centered journal articles and book chapters is that spirituality is very complex and multifaceted, and that there are four specific elements of spirituality that are particularly relevant to cheese history.

First, spiritual yearnings are closely tied to our unique awareness as a species of the finiteness of our time in this world; i.e., the fact that this journey called life is bounded by birth and then bookended by death. We humans are intensely aware of this, and we tend to view birth as somehow sacred and joyful, and death also as somehow sacred, yet usually somber and often fearful. For these reasons, birth and fertility, and death and preparation for what might lie beyond, have always loomed large in the spiritual and sacred realms of human communities.

Second, spirituality also involves an awareness of a non-material, or transcendent, dimension of existence, something of which we are a part and that we somehow sense is real and present yet is bigger than we are and extends beyond the natural world. This sense of the transcendent defies logic and reason. It doesn’t seem to belong in a natural world populated by biological machines, yet we humans thrive and rely upon transcendent notions such as meaningfulness, beauty, virtue and goodness, evil, love, and so forth. During the second half of the 20th century, the collapse of the so-called “Enlightenment” project of the last 500 years and its culmination, “modernity”, taught us in stark terms that humans cannot escape from these notions, even when they rationally reject the existence of transcendence and ascribe to the view that humans are biological machines, nothing more and nothing less.

Third, although spirituality is deeply personal, it is also a shared experience and is almost always practiced in community. Communal participation has always been a central theme throughout the ages.

And fourth, it is hard not to conclude that humans require guardrails to constrain their natural self-centered inclinations, so that the common good can prevail over rampant narcissism. Speaking from personal experience, I would argue that without guardrails, humans like me are vulnerable to non-virtuous behavior that can even become self-destructive and destructive to those around us. Furthermore, it seems that we as a species possess a fundamental need to seek outside help, to point the way, as it were, to what constitutes moral behavior and virtue. We can’t seem to get there by ourselves; therefore, spirituality has always played a central role in providing a foundation upon which to build a workable moral code that leads towards virtue, kindness, goodness, empathy, love, the common good, and so forth, and leads away from the unspeakable evils that humans are capable of perpetrating upon one another and upon our planet.

In my view, each of these four elements of spirituality are of particular interest because they intersect with cheese history in profound ways, often as recurring themes that cannot be fully appreciated if one relies exclusively on philosophy and secular reason as an interpretive framework. Even if one is an atheist, one must (again, in my view) enter the realm of religion, theology and spirituality to probe this facet of cheese history, which I personally find intriguing and exciting.

So how did spirituality enter the scene for Homo sapiens? One can argue that the context for spirituality has roots extending back at least 100,000 years, when Paleolithic hunter-forager communities began to leave evidence in the archaeological record of concern and reverence for their dead, as inferred from sophisticated burial practices that left enough evidence behind for the first time to be securely interpreted as funeral rites. Shortly thereafter (i.e., around 50,000 years ago), evidence of symbolic representation in the form of complex cave drawings appeared in the archaeological record. This was a game changer for the human species because the capacity to imagine was now enabling Homo sapiens to envision things that did not yet exist in the material world, which only existed in the “mind’s eye”, but which could subsequently be crafted into material reality through the process of human endeavor.

For example, humans began to imagine that they could represent a three-dimension object in the material world (such as an animal) in two-dimensional form on the walls of a cave. This process of imagination was initially confined to the “mind’s eye” of the fledgling artist but was subsequently crafted into material reality by the skillful hands of that same artist; what didn’t exist in the material world was thus brought into material existence.

Presumably around the same time, in parallel with the blossoming of imaginative artistic representation, human communities began to employ imaginative capacity to marshal sounds produced by the human vocal cords to represent a growing portfolio of elements within the natural world that one might encounter in daily life, thereby opening the door to a new advanced form of communication, oral language. Language then blossomed into the capacity to consciously think using language, which in turn opened the door to the capacity to reason through logical connections, truly a quantum leap in cognitive ability.

An essential point to note here is that imagination preceded reason and logic. Furthermore, imagination not only gave birth to reason and logic, but also simultaneously gave birth to notions of transcendence and symbolic representations of a greater reality that exists beyond the confines of natural world; i.e., a parallel spiritual dimension of reality. Why does this matter in the context of interpretating cheese history? Because much of cheese history is about the imaginative genius of cheesemakers across vast expanses of geography and time. This imaginative genius cannot be fully fathomed using logic and reason alone, because both logic and reason and spiritual acuity are derivatives of the imaginative process; as such, they are both just as valid and insightful. There is no a priori reason to elevate one above the other.  Consequently, like it or not, spirituality and reason occupy a level playing field, both parked comfortably side-by-side under the umbrella of imagination; that is what the collapse of modernity taught us. Bottom line: it makes sense to reach into the spiritual epistemological toolbox of religion and theology, along with the toolbox of secular reason and logic, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the imaginative process that underpins cheese history.

I know that the argument gets a bit esoteric, so let me try to illustrate this in simple cheesemaking terms. I have worked with artisanal cheesemakers all of my professional life. These are very smart human beings who work extremely hard at a very physically demanding and unforgiving enterprise (cheesemaking), which requires great sacrifices to be made in other areas of the cheesemaker’s life, generally with very little financial reward. Being very smart human beings, these cheesemakers have career options, indeed many of them had very successful lucrative careers before entering the treadmill of artisanal cheesemaking. You tell me how logic and reason can fully explain why these talented human beings willingly, indeed passionately, choose the seemingly illogical path of the cheesemaker over other available options. Based on conversations with many artisanal cheesemakers over the years, in the U.S. and internationally, I would argue that the toolbox of secular reason alone is not sufficient to interpret the history of these cheesemakers; one also must access the spiritual toolbox to attain a comprehensive understanding. In my view, the same is true of cheesemakers throughout cheese history.

Enough said, let’s get back to the origin of spirituality and its intersection with cheesemaking. With powerful imaginative capacity and new and advanced cognitive abilities in hand, humankind now seemed poised for cataclysmic advances, which indeed took place at the dawn of the Neolithic. You will recall that our cheesemaking story commenced around 11,500 years ago at the Göbekli Tepe site. In addition to its stunning monumental architecture, Göbekli Tepe is noteworthy for the complex spiritual iconography that was etched into the massive stone pillars of the temple complex, which included numerous images that depict death and danger, images representing a menagerie of animals that were viewed as somehow sacred or transcendent, and images that seem to be related to fertility and birth. Clearly, this was a communal space of gathering that attracted hunter-forager bands from far and wide to observe spiritual aspirations likely associated with death, birth and the investiture of transcendent sacredness upon the animal world. These aspirations were obviously compelling enough to inspire the monumental effort needed to erect the massive temple complex.

In the next post, “Cheese and Spirituality, Part 2: The Great Dispersal”, we will explore the linkage between milk, cheese, butter and spirituality and consider the cultural preservation of that linkage by migrating peoples following the momentous 6200 BC climatic event.