What are you hungry for?
"It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is man's greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating in their effects than the greatest natural catastrophes."— Carl Gustav Jung
People made with a bomb timer, with a countdown, made of plastic bottles, bubble microplastic.People bred in fertilizer, fed on bagged feed, raised among bricks, cement, and asphalt.
The new humanity, mass-produced in front of the phone, shaped by industrial needs and endless desires, is devouring itself and the planet.
It's a predictable civilization, programmed, voice-timed. In every being there's an internal barcode, security cameras, and joystick controls. It's all built to make us believe our wants are our own, that individual freedoms exist, that there are special missions, and that existence is one great business opportunity. An entire life on rubber wheels, foam mattresses, and food wrapped in plastic.
Life is now created in supermarkets and, these days, on e-commerce sites. In this parallel universe, the new humanity searches for fulfillment, for possessive-love-forever, for the protected family, for guaranteed food, for the game of chance and the next round. Day after day it faces repetition disguised as novelty, the same old thing dressed up as new. Living becomes surviving, surrounded by toxic waste wrapped in nature-themed packaging. A life of vibrant packaging.
Hippocrates's phrase from the distant 5th century BC — "we are what we eat" — has never been as clear or as relevant as it is now. Health, illness, and cure are all found in the same place: at the checkout counter of the supermarket and the pharmacy.
The common-sense worldview has little reach, low reach — just enough to wake up the next day with food on the table. The stomach must be kept entertained.
While this gigantic majority runs on autopilot, an absurd minority of eighty families pulls the strings from their mansions surrounded by cameras, precision weapons, uniformed servants, and banquet leftovers tossed in trash bins that could feed entire villages.
This humanity, too, has its timer — the relentless ticking clock. Have faith: this dynamite isn't in a backpack left at the train station, nor strapped to the body of a child bomber. It isn't in the smartphone, the Israeli tablet, or the polyurethane mattress. It's on the plate in front of you, full of wheat pasta, tomato sauce, and a desperate urge to fill the holes.
The urge to fill your belly so you don't have to think about anything except killing off whatever is killing you — that anguished countdown. Even the eighty families will eventually implode.
Bon appétit.