Mu

1. Chunks of dead pig's flesh, heated over a gas flame until cooked, covered in a sauce made from cooked fungi and fermented grapes, and accompanied by root vegetable tubers, sliced thin and heated in oil derived from the reproductive seeds of a large flower.

2. Succulent pork chop, in a white wine and wild mushroom sauce, served with fries cooked in sunflower oil.

OK, both abstract symbolic descriptions of non-symbolic, sensory/sensual events in space-time.

Neither of these descriptions, of course, is any good to a hungry person. If you saw a hungry person eating a print out of these descriptions, you would, as a sane, rational person, consider them deranged. The menu is not the meal.

It is a convenient, arbitrary token that enables us to communicate about the real, literal, 'meat and potatoes'. Only the real, literal meat & potatoes will satisfy your hunger (apologies to any vegetarians).

Neither of the two descriptions is any more 'real' or 'accurate' or 'true' than the other. They both serve their purpose in a specific context. Out of context, they are inappropriate and, possibly, absurd.

This common mistake, of 'believing' a description 'is' the thing it describes, seems particularly prevalent among those of a religious nature. And like the poor, deluded crazy who, in his or her hunger, eats the menu, I would suggest that these types are suffering a form of psychic malnutrition as a result of confusing the menu for the meal.

So strike me down with great vengeance and furious anger.

DarkBronzePlant

No striking you down with a furious anger, just moving this post to a different forum with a furious keystroke...

Bree

On the other hand, what happens if you order the meal and it turns out the restaurant lied to you - what if it turns out they really didn't have any pork chop meal in the first place?

Mu

Call the waiter a cunt, and refuse to pay.

Also, piss on the floor in the men's room.