Recently I’ve been watching a lot of videos from JustKiddingFilms’ side channel, JustKiddingNews, which consists of the JK crew of comedians and filmmakers talking about a bunch of random news stories that they find on the internet. When I watch them I’m not looking for well researched and thought out opinions, because these videos are basically there for their humour as well as ‘average’ people talking about the topic. Occasionally the group do discuss some thought provoking points in a way that seems genuine and relatable.
Anyway, in one of this week’s stories, JKN talk about a man inventing some sort of formula that can act as a food replacement. Apparently it’s nutritious enough that, if you’re not into the whole ‘food’ thing, you can just take this stuff instead and you’ll stay perfectly healthy.
(The specific story starts at 5:25. Or, if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, skip to around the 8 or 9 minute mark)
Some interesting things were said by the guys on the topic of family meals, and in a lot of ways it can also be related to other aspects of life.
The first thing I want to talk about is the point that eating has, evolution-wise, always been a communal thing. Hunter-gatherers shared the workload in procuring food, and have therefore shared the spoils. Again, I don’t know if this was proven to actually be true, but if it is, it says a lot about who we are as a species. Collaboration and community had a massive part to play in getting us to where we are today (opposable thumbs as well), and it still does.
As covered in a Vsauce video discussing why animals don’t have wheels, humans were able to outstrip their competitors in the animalia kingdom through their capacity to build roads. Whilst other animals do congregate and collaborate, the things that they make are still in a sense made with ‘selfish’ intentions. From an evolutionary standpoint, roads don’t really make sense. ‘Why should I put all my time and effort into building a road, when some other organism or species can come along and use it without any cost whatsoever? If I did that, I’d just be putting myself at a disadvantage in the grand scheme of things.’
It is this kind of thinking that humans were able to overcome. People made roads and, well, infrastructure in general, not because it benefited themselves directly, but because it helped the community, and that would in turn pay dividends for them down the…road. It’s the same with taxes. ‘I’m going to give my hard earned money to the government with the understanding that they will invest it in something that will help me.’
Midway through this I just realised ants are kind of capable of this as well.
And termites.
Completely destroyed what I was trying to say.
Shut up, my other point, that community and collaboration is naturally healthy, still stands. I just haven’t really explained it properly. Sue me.
Or don’t, that’d probably be more preferable.
MOVING ON.
(They also completely missed the whole significance of calling the product ‘Soylent’.)
The other moment I liked from the JKN video was the discussion of those all-too-often ‘too busy to have a meal together’ situations. David (the big swearing guy with the cap) promptly calls out people who use this excuse, saying that you can never not have enough time to sit down for thirty minutes with a loved one and eat. I found this interesting, as often in this subject we discuss how technology is rapidly advancing and we are struggling to keep up with it. It’s often said that, with all this media and gadgetry around us, we’re living busier lives (in Western society) than people who came before us.
For a long time I thought this made sense, but all this talk about food (and the point I discussed earlier) has made me realise: for a lot of us, being ‘busy’ is bullshit. Does being engrossed with your smartphone and taking in information from everywhere necessarily count as making you busier than someone who’s spending their whole day hunting for food just to ensure their survival? Is taking photos of your food or watching random clips on Facebook at the same levels of importance as tending your land and livestock just so you can survive the winter?
Surprisingly, our world doesn’t exactly look like this just yet, so don’t act like it does. (Source: mikeduran.com)
This post isn’t about being negative or calling us spoilt or ungrateful (that’s a whole other discussion), but when you say you’re too busy to do something like have dinner, you’re not really. Maybe you work long hours or you’re far away from your family, and maybe that’s fair enough, but nothing in this life is so permanently fixed that you can’t shift it do something else. Shift dinner, shift work, shift the time you’re playing Candy Crush, whatever. Just remember that, in this culture at least, our lives aren’t rigid schedules in which we’re trapped. Call me naive and idealistic, but the ‘rat race’ doesn’t have to be one. Technology and progress shouldn’t dictate you, no matter how much it appears to be able to do so.
