Podcast Episode Details

337: Why we feel miserable under lockdown

Episode 337

I discuss the connection between perceiving lack of variety in food made from scratch and feeling miserable and bored under lockdown, despite having access to all the world's art, music, literature, and culture ever recorded and more material abundance than kings only a few generations ago, despite our material abundance being only slightly less than a few months ago.

Here are the notes I read from for this episode:

• Yesterday recorded episode with Rob and my stepfather
• Talked about food variety, said mine lacked variety
• Only tried three times
• People always see theirs as varied, others as not
• People say I don't like Chinese or Indian, billions, huge variety
• I see McDonald's and Taco Bell as same
• Count Chocula versus Froot Loops
• I made something with broccoli versus zucchini or cauliflower as different
• I see industrial food as the salt, sugar, fat, convenience treatment
• Add sugar versus add salt, people see as different, but to me corn flakes and Fritos are basically the same
• Supermarket carries same things year-round. Seems like variety because at any given moment lots of choices
• But once the prime pleasure becomes salt, sugar, fat, convenience, same to me.
• Because there's the raw flavor, which can differ, but we've reduced that variety to monocrops so only a few varieties of mango here, despite abundance in nature, and zero radishes for most people
• To me variety among apples is huge, which I cherish
• German beer law -> abundance and just local ingredients is huge compared to their four
• People lived since dawn of our species on local ingredients
• When did we become so entitled that we should get anything we want whenever, wherever?
• What's so bad about not having berries every damn day?
• A farmer nearby wants to provide food for me and you
• Instead a large part of your money goes to Saudi Arabia for fuel, Madison Avenue for advertising, Wall Street for finance, and Venezuela for farmer now not feeding their people
• So my parents, who have lived here for over a decade, say there's nothing available local this time of year
• It's like someone who played loud music their whole lives to deaf saying there's no bird songs
• The human aspect is important to me. I would probably eat meat, which until just before this time of year would be our option, and we'd cherish it, not take it for granted and ship from all over the world
• Then treat with salt, sugar, fat, convenience
• So no, I don't consider Filet-o-Fish as different than a burger, nor Taco Bell as different from McDonald's, Olive Garden, etc
• They all treat the raw ingredients as commodities.
• I want to treat them as a painter treats paints on a palette or a musician treats notes on a scale. A piano has 88 keys. A trumpet three valves.
• No variety?
• Let's get to bigger picture.
• I've also come to see our educational system as equally tone deaf
• Some will see history as completely different subject than economics
• Or even humanities as different than science
• Even there, most humanities people will see math and physics similar
• Most science will see history and philosophy as similar
• To me, if they all teach the same skills of reading, listening, taking notes, analyzing how they teach to analyze, but not to learn their own values and create own skills, teaching the same compliance
• That most Americans or people in East and West, when confronted with new problem, can't help
• Mandela, in prison 27 years, lived more free in 10x10 foot cell with forced labor than people today.
• How do I know? Because he created his happiness despite few raw ingredients, yet people today with much more comfort, convenience, and variety feel depressed and bored.
• I learn from Thoreau, who lived off the land. R

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  Published on 5 years, 7 months ago