The Luxury of Ignorance
We have it so good... we almost suck because of it.
I realized I am so ungrateful.
I have it so good.
All of my meat can come perfectly cut and packed in a clean plastic container.
All the food that I could want and need is conveniently selected for palatability...
Then it is shipped to a "supermarket" where it is all readily available for purchase just down the street.
I ask myself: "When was the last time I visited a butcher?
In our life, we don't have to even SEE the unideal parts of the animal, let alone eat it.
How far disconnected are we from where our food comes from?
MOST of us don't have a garden...
MOST of us don't hunt for our food...
But is this bad?
This ever evolving convenience allows us to prioritize other things.
We can put our ducks in baskets that might be more beneficial. Whereas 1000 years ago we would have had other priorities (sheer survival).
Here is another perspective:
It might be beneficial to struggle on the things we have all accepted as normal and convenient.
Let's envision a TEMPORARY situation.
It's 200 years ago. November 28, 1823
You are hunkering down for the winter and you need enough food to last you the entire time.
You did a good job growing potatoes throughout the summer and you bought rice from a farmer in the south.
And you hunted one elk and took all necessarily precautions to prevent it from spoiling.
But, by the time late February comes around... you realize you have only a couple pounds of muscle meat left.
But you have nearly all the organs still.
All of what modern society would generally leave for scrap or "pet food"... you would be faced to enjoy for the sake of survival.
200 years ago... this hypothetical would never happen.
Organs, hooves, horns all had (and still do have) an immediate use.
Organ meat was commonly accepted in the diets of human, horns and hooves could be made into tools like combs and knives. And other bones could be just boiled until everything was extracted from it.
But to us, many of these uses don't even come to mind.
Today... we would need to get a little creative to find uses for it.
We just eat ribeyes and chicken breast.
Imagine how good that would be for us to NEED to use the entire animal?
Of course, nutritionally we would be more sound. More diverse nutrients and more nutrient dense protein sources...
But behaviorally, we would be skewed towards practicality and efficiency regarding food.
This would bleed into other parts of our lives.... how can we stretch our funds, business prospects, and other things?
We would be less consumer and more provider.
This reminds me of a quote from Naval...
"The older the problem, the older the solution."
I can't lie... this whole letter was inspired by a 12pm thought about how "fun" it would be to be stuck in a cabin in the woods, in the middle of winter, with only one large game animal to survive off of.
Gamma state brain waves are weird, but this thought-experiment is fun.
But writing this did make me more grateful of things like butcher's and supermarkets.
I am going to go buy some fruit and organs now.
and maybe hunt for the meat next winter...
KEEP GOING
B.S.
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