Stone Soup

Sometimes the stories we hear as children return to us with a new significance. I heard the story of Stone Soup (or Rock Soup) when I was young, but it wasn't until I was in my 20s that it occurred to me what a profound allegory it contained. For those who have never heard the story, it goes something like this:

A village is on the brink of famine, when a Charismatic Stranger appears and begins boiling a pot of water with a stone in it. When asked what he is doing, he explains that he is making an amazing new dish called stone soup that he would love to share--except that it could still use a few potatoes. It just so happens that one villager still has some potatoes and he offers them to the stranger, who then notes that the soup could probably use a few onions, too. This continues until all the villagers have contributed an ingredient to the soup and, instead of going hungry, enjoy a sumptuous feast together. They all praise the stranger and his amazing stone soup.

So in the end the villagers cooperate, share their surplus, and survive the famine--but only because of the stranger's lie. This lie, the stone, has become the unifying myth which binds the community together. Or rather, it is not the lie itself, but the universal belief in the lie. The idea of a socially useful lie was probably first discussed in Plato's Republic, but the lies themselves are as old as humanity. It is impossible to conceive of a society without a stone lying somewhere in the depths of the pot.

Yet the trouble with a useful lie is that it is still a lie. We have never heard what happens to the village after the original pot of soup is finished and the stranger has gone on his way. Doubtless the villagers begin a new pot--but if they truly believe in the stone, then gradually they may begin to omit all those unnecessary extra flavors, choosing instead to eat just the stone's own broth.

And who will they blame when they discover that their soup is no longer good? Will they look for another stone or another stranger, who may remind them of all those "extra" ingredients that they had been forgetting?

In writing this, I have purposefully avoided attaching any specific correlations to the allegory. Yet a thoughtful reader will see his own and doubtlessly many that I myself had not considered. I believe that the idea of the useful lie is of such wide application that we will find examples of it in every human activity.














The original reason I decided to discuss this theme is because of its significance to the modern health and nutrition movement. I would say that most theories about nutrition are actually recipes for stone soup--useful, but not for the reasons that are claimed. Among these stones is the rejection of the diet of civilization and, in particular, the gluten-free diet, which has had miraculous effects on many people's health, but not necessarily because of the restriction of gluten itself.

So why is gluten-free soup becoming so popular? Why is this soup so effective at achieving its goals, even for those without true gluten sensitivity? I'll get there in the next post.