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“To know is to predict, to predict is to control.” Auguste Comte
Things stay the same until they don’t.
Perhaps it would be helpful to rename our species Homo short-attention-spanicus, or some such. As has always been true, the hyper caffeinated crazy monkey ping-ponging wildly around inside our heads is alive and well.
After the briefest of considerations we are ready to declare any recurring phenomenon as natural, necessary, inevitable, self-perpetuating, and generally unworthy of our attention. Before you know it, we’re on to the next one. So it goes. Thus many of the successes of modernity have set us up to fail, and fail catastrophically at just this point.
So unsurprisingly here we are. The pinball monkey mind is showing signs of running down, and an unwelcome quiet settles around us as the pixie dust of perpetual motion, performance, and competition drifts to the ground. What do we see now that we can see what we see?
Food. Less an accessory to entertainment or an opportunity for social signaling, it is now reverting before our eyes to the humble, communal tables of “The Potato Eaters,” huddled over peasant food, warm nourishment for body and soul.
And what of those who grow it, harvest it, package it and deliver it? Much and many who were utterly invisible to…