…in a world where you are what you eat, so there is no telling of who you are.
Often at parties, when I don’t have anything better to talk about, I touch upon this primal fantasy of throwing a spear into a river and scoring a lively fish, which I would then bite into alive. I have this fantasy (a) because of the envy I have for men of generations past, and (b) that I am a frequent swimmer and desire the full force of that creature’s life energy. What can I say? This primal romanticism of a world before food cost money is what has begun to drive the gears up in my head.
My mother is a physician for whom food has become a platform for treatment. Her father was a farmer turned aviator who still sustains himself and my grandmother on less than an acre of land. The first book I have ever read has been “Le Petit Prince” by grace of my grandfather. I still refer to it’s day-to-day applications at my job or when reading about the stock market. The book’s Baobab allegory could be applied through many different lenses: finance, running a business, acheiving a successful internet presence, or (let’s not forget, though in an entirely different context) the age old concept of the family tree.
If we can learn one lesson from the credit-system that is about to collapse on itself is that money doesn’t determine the real value of anything. Investors are so fickle; they follow the wrong kind of green and then get themselves and the rest of the world into trouble when the economy goes into overdrive. What’s worse? Their job relies on the news, if that’s not pessimistic enough. Money doesn’t even determine the value of one’s employment in the greater social system. CEOs make bank while teachers struggle. How much does society even value itself, when the most capital investment gets pourred into volitile industries? — yet another acute realization: my position of employment, as an educator, has now become an industry.
I’m a conservationist. We are all aware the wilderness is pricelss, though someone’s gotta make money out of it.
And so let me take you into my aformentioned crisis of identity. One day, I go to the BBC Front page and see: “Vitamin A causes lung cancer” but the next day read: “Eat more Vitamin A” Atleast coffee’s been getting good press lately, which is more than I can say for another one of my morning indulgences…
So amongst all these other social pressures, not even basic human necessities are safe. Many argue that food has no place place as a commodity. The unfortunate reality is that both food and water are spoken for by market forces, but they still haven’t reached a concensus about how they are going to capitalize on air.
So what is a smart ape to do? My social habitat is forcing my existence to be quantified into a series of numbers and decimal points that will inevitably leave everything they compound undervalued. Or, strip away any “essential value” by the very transaction of production. At least I have learned from my interactions with this world this is so.
Though I also want to touch upon a more severe crisis. One that every creature on this planet will soon share. Yes, global warming has something to do with it. But a few degrees increase in temperature does not make me as uneasy as one of it’s ramifications: decreased food supply.
