For most of my life, I didn’t. I’m in my late 30s now, and a year or two back I walked into a grocery store and the reality of what that store represented absolutely floored me.
It’s absolutely stunning to think about the number of humans involved in making my process of acquiring food simple. Not just the farms and processing centers and canneries, etc. but the sum total of human knowledge required to make it all happen.
I started to pay more attention to “mundane” things, and started to realize mundane is just a label that limited my perspective.
We live in this push-button world where most of what we interact with is an abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of an abstraction. The fact that I can literally push a button and food shows up at my door makes it easy to lose touch with the reality of how utterly incredibly that is.
I’ve started to intentionally spend time each day paying closer attention to the basic things. Making dinner can be a mind blowing experience if you bring your full attention to it and ponder the reality of how dinner is possible. The sheer number of other humans we each depend on without realizing it is staggering. There are unlimited opportunities for this kind of exploration.
I’ve some to see it as some kind of “spiritual awakening”, although I think those are really loaded words. But in essence a cultivation of a broader awareness of the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of everything we interact with.
It brings a kind of awe and wonder that has deeply shifted my perspective and worldview, and has made me want to engage more fully with everyday things.
This was brought into sharp focus during Covid and the supply chain break down. We are so incredibly reliant on so many points in the chain and we take it all for granted. When it works its incredible and when we get a single point of failure, everything breaks down.
> the sum total of human knowledge required to make it all happen.
A couple weeks ago, some idiot wandered into /r/farming with a question and immediately pissed off everyone by referring to "the simple process of growing food."
It really is unfortunate that most people don't think about where food comes from beyond it somehow showing up at the grocery store.
I have this exact same experience about every other time I walk into a grocery store as well. It's hard not to be in awe of the amount of time and effort that went into every single one of those thousands of products. Multiple people studied for years to learn the skills required to create a small part of just one of those products.
> I’ve some to see it as some kind of “spiritual awakening”, although I think those are really loaded words. But in essence a cultivation of a broader awareness of the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of everything we interact with.
Imagining the hordes of humans and machinery behind the simplest of products is truly awe inspiring.
> I walked into a grocery store and the reality of what that store represented absolutely floored me.
During a state visit to Johnson Space Center Boris Yeltsin decided to make an impromptu stop at a supermarket. He was floored by the selection and prices. Apparently that was the moment that inspired him to leave the communist party and begin economic reforms in Russia.
It’s absolutely stunning to think about the number of humans involved in making my process of acquiring food simple. Not just the farms and processing centers and canneries, etc. but the sum total of human knowledge required to make it all happen.
I started to pay more attention to “mundane” things, and started to realize mundane is just a label that limited my perspective.
We live in this push-button world where most of what we interact with is an abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of an abstraction. The fact that I can literally push a button and food shows up at my door makes it easy to lose touch with the reality of how utterly incredibly that is.
I’ve started to intentionally spend time each day paying closer attention to the basic things. Making dinner can be a mind blowing experience if you bring your full attention to it and ponder the reality of how dinner is possible. The sheer number of other humans we each depend on without realizing it is staggering. There are unlimited opportunities for this kind of exploration.
I’ve some to see it as some kind of “spiritual awakening”, although I think those are really loaded words. But in essence a cultivation of a broader awareness of the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of everything we interact with.
It brings a kind of awe and wonder that has deeply shifted my perspective and worldview, and has made me want to engage more fully with everyday things.
And it’s fun as hell.