A poignant look at empathetic encounters between staunch ideological
rivals, all centered around our common need for food.
While America's new reality appears to be a deeply divided body politic,
many are wondering how we can or should move forward from here. Can
political or social divisiveness be healed? Is empathy among people with
very little ideological common ground possible? In A Decent Meal,
Michael Carolan finds answers to these fundamental questions in a series
of unexpected places: around our dinner tables, along the aisles of our
supermarkets, and in the fields growing our fruits and vegetables. What
is more common, after all, than the simple fact that we all need to eat?
This book is the result of Carolan's career-long efforts to create
simulations in which food could be used to build empathy, among even the
staunchest of rivals. Though most people assume that presenting facts
will sway the way the public behaves, time and again this assumption is
proven wrong as we all selectively accept the facts that support our
beliefs. Drawing on the data he has collected, Carolan argues that we
must, instead, find places and practices where incivility--or worse,
hate--is suspended and leverage those opportunities into tools for
building social cohesion.
Each chapter follows the individuals who participated in a given
experiment, ranging from strawberry-picking, attempting to subsist on
SNAP benefits, or attending a dinner of wild game. By engaging with
participants before, during, and after, Carolan is able to document
their remarkable shifts in attitude and opinion. Though this book is
framed around food, it is really about the spaces opened up by our need
for food, in our communities, in our homes, and, ultimately, in our
minds.
