This country is all about innovation
It's all about innovation. The new thing is better than the old. If it can be made easier, it's better and it's the American way. So, in order not have to learn a language, we get a computer to do it for us, never mind the slight inaccuracies that happen in the process. And since it is so easy to do translations via translation programs, we don't need the thinking human translator any longer, or so it seems. Translation thus has become a modified product. But that's so exciting because it's in the name of innovation.
It might be a stretch to compare the process and then the product of translation to the replacement of certain body parts. When the old hip or knee is worn out, we have a more functional one implanted via an intermediary that transforms (translates) our failing body parts into something even "better"? It's all in the spirit of doing it the easy way. Hip replacements, knee replacements, a new heart, a new liver, all those things are so "easily (routinely)" translated, i.e. replaced, that it's hardly worth bothering preserving the old-fashioned way, meaning to take care not to use them up by doing foolish things. And it costs quite a bit. But never mind the cost, if it's a life we are prolonging and preserving the easy way. It has to be better because it's in the name of innovation.
Instead of eating natural food, we buy GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) foods at the store because innovation also means "better" design. Foods have to look perfect. Something that looks perfect must be better because that's what innovation is. Innovation is particularly valuable when it can make loads more money via a patent. The tomatoes have to look prettier. The apples have to be ripe all at the same time so that farmer can harvest them and get them to the market in one fell swoop. We don't buy the famous "little green apples" anymore. They are too ugly and they would spoil too fast. But never mind, we prefer the pretty ones. They have lost all their nutrients before we can find out what they tasted like when they first came off the tree. Sorry, I forgot the pretty apples don't taste as good as the old-fashioned ones used to. But we don't know any better anymore. We have forgotten what a real apple tasted like that came from a tree that hadn't been interfered with by human hands.
Potatoes get mutated into purple things for Halloween. Actually the gene probably comes from a purple eggplant (same nightshade family - the genes can easily be exchanged within the same family). Do we know where all these mutations come from? The nightshade family of plants is a very large one, and among them can be found the deadly nightshade, jimsonweed, angels trumpets (all poisonous). So extracting a gene from one of those into our edible vegetables is not that much of a leap of thought. No leap necessary. It's been done. Of course these genes are only implanted into our vegetables to get rid of "pests". Implanting these genes, that's innovation.
Innovation has made it possible for us to buy all the necessary vitamins at the store. We don't have to get Vitamin D from the sun any longer because the sun that has served us for so long is really an evil cancer-causing menace. The sun is cheap. So, it can't possibly be good.
We are really a bunch of losers in our quest for innovation. We are instituting a middleman whenever possible. We are paying for the novelty and do not think about how our bodies were put together in the first place.
What's really going on? All those things that used to come naturally, are now only available through the industry of others. It's expensive and it gives us a false sense of production.
Just consider the pharmaceutical industry. It is fundamentally not productive. It lives and makes big bucks only off of our sicknesses. It lives because we are looking for the easy way out. But when finally push come to shove, we are not the wiser for it.
The mindset of innovation at any price needs to be stopped. That's why I propose that it is sometimes worthwhile to look for the easy way out.
Start getting back to growing your own! Start baking you own bread! Start living a day without innovation! It might be surprising how novel an idea that might be.
It might be a stretch to compare the process and then the product of translation to the replacement of certain body parts. When the old hip or knee is worn out, we have a more functional one implanted via an intermediary that transforms (translates) our failing body parts into something even "better"? It's all in the spirit of doing it the easy way. Hip replacements, knee replacements, a new heart, a new liver, all those things are so "easily (routinely)" translated, i.e. replaced, that it's hardly worth bothering preserving the old-fashioned way, meaning to take care not to use them up by doing foolish things. And it costs quite a bit. But never mind the cost, if it's a life we are prolonging and preserving the easy way. It has to be better because it's in the name of innovation.
Instead of eating natural food, we buy GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) foods at the store because innovation also means "better" design. Foods have to look perfect. Something that looks perfect must be better because that's what innovation is. Innovation is particularly valuable when it can make loads more money via a patent. The tomatoes have to look prettier. The apples have to be ripe all at the same time so that farmer can harvest them and get them to the market in one fell swoop. We don't buy the famous "little green apples" anymore. They are too ugly and they would spoil too fast. But never mind, we prefer the pretty ones. They have lost all their nutrients before we can find out what they tasted like when they first came off the tree. Sorry, I forgot the pretty apples don't taste as good as the old-fashioned ones used to. But we don't know any better anymore. We have forgotten what a real apple tasted like that came from a tree that hadn't been interfered with by human hands.
Potatoes get mutated into purple things for Halloween. Actually the gene probably comes from a purple eggplant (same nightshade family - the genes can easily be exchanged within the same family). Do we know where all these mutations come from? The nightshade family of plants is a very large one, and among them can be found the deadly nightshade, jimsonweed, angels trumpets (all poisonous). So extracting a gene from one of those into our edible vegetables is not that much of a leap of thought. No leap necessary. It's been done. Of course these genes are only implanted into our vegetables to get rid of "pests". Implanting these genes, that's innovation.
Innovation has made it possible for us to buy all the necessary vitamins at the store. We don't have to get Vitamin D from the sun any longer because the sun that has served us for so long is really an evil cancer-causing menace. The sun is cheap. So, it can't possibly be good.
We are really a bunch of losers in our quest for innovation. We are instituting a middleman whenever possible. We are paying for the novelty and do not think about how our bodies were put together in the first place.
What's really going on? All those things that used to come naturally, are now only available through the industry of others. It's expensive and it gives us a false sense of production.
Just consider the pharmaceutical industry. It is fundamentally not productive. It lives and makes big bucks only off of our sicknesses. It lives because we are looking for the easy way out. But when finally push come to shove, we are not the wiser for it.
The mindset of innovation at any price needs to be stopped. That's why I propose that it is sometimes worthwhile to look for the easy way out.
Start getting back to growing your own! Start baking you own bread! Start living a day without innovation! It might be surprising how novel an idea that might be.
posted by Birgit Calhoun at 10:20 PM
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