yeast inflections

on a poetically poignant metaphor

symbolism really does happen, and sometimes it happens so poetically it couldn’t have been planned. it just had to be so. in this case, it is the man who coined the phrase ‘symbolism happens’ who apparently used the example of ‘heirloom yeast’ sourdough starter as an image and metaphor for tradition in a recent video (i didn’t watch it, but learned it second hand).

in case you don’t know, you can go online and buy sourdough starters claimed to be kept for centuries or even millennia. here are two funny examples:

the ‘celtic’ and ‘monastery’ aspects make it even funnier, in my opinion.

there are many more examples, and i’ve even found (though i have not watched) a documentary about sourdough starters in Mount Athos. since i haven’t watched it i can’t say, but i imagine similar claims are made about the starters there (although i hope they don’t sell it to people).

.

the claims of age are of course impossible to prove or disprove. but even if these cultures had been kept for as long as it’s claimed, it wouldn’t matter. because there is no such thing as heirloom yeast. the microbes that constitute ‘yeast’ are living and dying beings, they exist in the air and are constantly replaced by new beings. it is so specific that the yeast in your house is not the same as the one in your neighbor’s. if you create a sourdough starter in your kitchen and then gift it to your neighbor, it will within a couple of days have completely different beings in the little bread soup. consequently, buying a culture from someone (whether claimed to be hundred years old or made last week) is completely pointless. if you are able to keep it going, it will have nothing in it from the original (at least in objective, biological terms).

the only thing that could be said to remain (assuming again the claims are true) is the spiritual component of human intention and effort in keeping it going for that long. and that’s what makes it such an apt image for ‘tradition’ in the modern world. in quotes because, precisely, it is not traditional. it is very individual and specific. much like selling yeast cultures, selling ‘traditional’ religion in the modern world is a scam. what keeps it alive is the very individual acts of whoever is keeping it alive, but the essence has nothing at all to do with the original ferment that started it.

this of course is no problem at all. in fact, it is a blessing. or it would be, if traditionalists understood it, and were conscious of it, and embraced it.

.

a medieval farmer was traditional and the tradition served him well because, and only because, he had no choice in the matter. it didn’t even occur to him that there was an alternative. but a modern person has alternatives, and cannot help but having them. they are always there. and promoting this unthinking form of tradition (which is the only kind) to people who cannot help but think about things, is the same as telling people to walk to work when even by car they take an hour there and an hour back. they will be always late, and get fired.

jokes aside, the implications and ramifications of this are endless, they affect the relation with spouses, family, friends, society as a whole with all its ins and outs. and lastly, and more importantly, with God, however we think of him or it or what. this is not even theoretical. i have seen it happen over and over and have spoken of it before.

.

why do i care. first, because it is bad to lie, whether to oneself or to others. and ‘tradition’ in the modern world is a lie. traditional people are born and die that way. they have no choice. it never occurs to them to defend tradition because it’s just there: like the yeast in the air. traditionalism is one of the most modern things possible. and most trads are either converts or reverts. but even if they aren’t, they still went through the same very conscious evaluation of faith. and this evaluation is something that most of our ancestors could not do.

conversions in the ancient world were not like this, even when they were individual. they were not a choice, but very obviously a powerful and undeniable epiphany. this is no longer the case. even when it happens, soon doubts creep in, and the rational process of evaluating the intoxication of the epiphany happens eventually too, and will continue until we die, and probably afterward too, otherwise the afterlife would be a step back in consciousness, not a step forward. the only way to have unquestioned faith for a modern person is to suffer irreparable brain damage.

second, even if it is an unconscious lie, it still will have terrible consequences (perhaps worse ones). the image of sourdough starter is very apt again because it is very hard to keep it going. what is likely to happen if you want to bake bread this way is that you will have to restart it constantly. it will die on you many times. over and over. and the same is true of ‘traditional’ faith for modern people. the crashing down that will come when traditionalists realize that they cannot keep the culture going and feel religion in the same way their ancestors did will be very harsh and perhaps lead them to nihilism. and it will happen (again unless brain damage), because what they want to do is impossible. even if they keep the yeast culture alive, it won’t be the same, no matter how hard they want it to be the same. the faith of simple people is not replicable for people who learned to read when they were four and have kept on reading. and when this becomes obvious, and it will, it will also call into question everything else. not just ‘tradition’, but faith itself. and that is very dangerous. it is a long term breeding ground for the most harsh form of atheism, that is, the one born from a broken heart.

(my wife mentioned to me another apt image: in modern times we have a much easier time keeping ‘tradition’, i mean sourdough starter, going; but only because we have access to modern means. in this case, a fridge. you put the bread soup there when you don’t want to use it and take it out when you do want it. this makes it so you don’t have to constantly feed it and thus have less of a risk to kill the whole culture; and it is apt because, whether they admit it or not, traditionalists cannot but put ‘tradition’ on ice all the time, for many different reasons, and that’s the only way to keep it going; though of course, it is a cheat, because real traditional people did not have this option at all)

thirdly, a personal reason is that it too sent me on a very dark downward spiral that was only overcome by encountering Joseph Smith and his ideas, which broke me out of the close loop that is classical metaphysics and theology. but for many reasons, of a psychic (which most people would call psychological) nature, it is unlikely that my unconcern for appearances and attraction to unpopular things is extendable to everyone, and so mormon thought will remain a big no no for most people. the likely scenario is that they cease to be christian entirely and just go the way most perennialists go, to some modified form of indian mysticism, which very obviously is a recipe for disaster, and not only because it too is another variation of the lie of traditionalism.

.

to sum it up in an aphorism:

we can buy all the ‘traditional’ yeast we want, but we will always and only be able to make modern bread with it.

it’s better to be conscious of it.

.

a moment of silence for all the microbes in this starter which, i assure you, are no longer alive even if the jar is the same and was constantly fed since the taking of this picture