This question—“What does a tree represent?”—raises the profoundest problem of all: what is a tree for? What is the universe for?—as Ionesco has asked. And of that question, it isn’t just that there is no answer, it’s rather that the answer is that that is not the question to ask. That is the question asked only by somebody who hasn’t really seen the tree. Because if he really saw the tree, he would never ask the question, “What is it for?” It would answer itself.
I’m not trying to say that there is no value of any kind whatsoever in the science of dietetics, and that one ought not to consider the matter of the nutritive components of food, its vitamins, and so on and so forth. What I am going to say is that that additional knowledge about eating is really of no use to us at all if the only use it has is to give us a future. The point is: a future is of no use to people who are not able to appreciate the useless. A future has no value if it is only survival value.
The problem is, I think, that the people in an age of plenty—for we are all today, compared with former ages, fantastically rich—we’re still tied to our survival value as the only value, and therefore are unable to play.