My Father Joined a Global Consciousness for a Donut

In the tv series Peacemaker, the team of precisely-crafted-to-be-relatable anti-heroes discovers that there's an alien invasion of butterfly-like creatures that take over human brains and turn into a hive.

One of the clues is that they all consume a nectar instead of food.

More recently, in the series PLUR1BUS, the main character discovers that the hive mind that has taken over Earth are all drinking a clear, viscous liquid derived from a white powder.

Look at our diets from the view of a hunter-gatherer magically imbued with our information, and you might guess that he would react to the sheer amount of corn syrup in our diets in a similar manner.

Across the world, the base of what is normal tends to be a combination of grain extracts turned into dozens of forms, with salt and petrochemicals for flavor.

Hrm. Sugars and gum found an asteroid, you say?

I'm going to put thoughts of alien invasions aside, now.

Let us return to Earth.

A recurring problem with culture is when the feedback loops that keep it coupled to the wider environment are sheared off.

Historically, the culture would die or be "eaten" when this was advanced enough, like an injured animal getting eaten by predators.

However, we've now cheated the gods.

Yet in almost every area, we've figured out how to hide our real conditions. Vast sections of our work are dedicated to just this. In comparison to past cultures, we have access to seemingly limitless energy.

We use it to escape feedback loops, turning our dreams into reality.

Barren, is it?

Well, you just get some methane. Combine it with steam and air to make ammonia. Smash that around with carbon dioxide. Now you have urea.

Pump tons of that in. Not so barren now, is it?

Got the same problem at home? How about some Botox? Maybe you put some human genes in Chinese hamster ovary cells. Take a shot of that!

This would all be wondrous to our ancestors. We are living in their paradise, after all.

Though you see what happens when foragers first encounter corn syrup. While not foragers (though they supplemented diets with foraging), my parents, and many of the people who helped raise me, did not grow up with many of our luxuries.

What led them to join foreigners from a large group of individuals thinking and acting in a single and unified way? As I've mentioned before, the initial contact for a Taoist Uncle (non-blood-related but you understand) was peanut butter.

For my father, it was donuts.

These amazing foods, these alien nectars, refined as they were, opened them up to join this unified intelligence. For life.

We're not done here, but I'm going to leave the rest for next week.