This is unprecedented - there is no precedent.
Hasib's Substack - Vol 1.
"To reveal your true heart is to risk your life." I do not remember where I heard this, but I will never forget it. This saying resonates deeply with me, and it encapsulates a fear that has shaped my life. As a social chameleon, I've always tailored my words to fit my audience, always tried to score points. This Substack is my platform to 'risk my life,' to share my true self and ideas with the world. It’ll serve as a journal for my journey as a creative, as a silly guy, as a predictor of the future, as a problem solver, and as a person.
The condition of your mind sets the condition of your life.
Thinking About the Future: What will food culture look like in 10,000 years?
Food bridges time. Dishes like pasta, curry, sushi, and kebabs can be traced back a millennia. Even our utensils have endured the test of time. Plates, bowls, spoons, forks, knives were used before Jesus Christ. If a time traveler from the ancient times were to come into the present day, the only thing that would seem familiar to him is the dinner table. As a species, we have not changed what we eat, when we eat, or how we eat it in thousands of years.
I believe there are 3 major opportunities for evolution in food culture:
Elimination of Time Categorization of Food: One Menu Society
Subjugating food to a time of day is ridiculous, why are we limiting foods to certain times of the day? I do not believe this practice will survive. We will get to a point where people are eating whatever foods they want, at any time of the day. Burgers at 9AM, inshallah.
Threats to the 3-Meal-a-day Structure
When the standardized work schedule was created, so was breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Breakfast was emphasized as an important meal to start the day, lunch provided a midday break for workers, and dinner was a substantial meal to end the day.
What happens with people working from home more and not necessarily having a standardized work schedule?
AI will replace a lot of peoples jobs. If a person is not working/in school, would they still adopt a 3-meal-a-day structure?
Intermittent fasting and eating 5 small meals (similar to an animal grazing) will become more popular. I wonder what impact this will have on the world’s efficacy, and social norms.
Think about how much of social culture is built around breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What would be social ripple effects if the dietary habits/culture of breakfast, lunch, and dinner were to change? Would restaurant and road traffic be reduced?
Hasib’s Dream: I Stan a Stanley Cup Society
My dream society would be one in which every human being had a Stanley cup, and all food could be served in a liquid/smoothie form, but it will replicate the same taste as non-liquid form. This would create a society with minimum dishes, spills, and very easy to measure nutrition consistently. It would also eliminate the ridiculous tip culture in America right now.
I would argue beverage places are the most popular they’ve ever been. Imagine if Starbucks offered tasty meal replacements.
Good Bits for when you see:
Food Coated in Cheese: Cheesus Christ.
Velcro: Velcro, what a rip off!
Escalator: Things are really escalating.
Songs on Repeat - A reflective mood
Letterbox-Sib
A Tribute to E.G.
A young man I went to high school with recently took his own life. His death sparked morbid curiosity in me, how does someone reach the point of suicide? The best explanation I found came from David Foster Wallace, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author:
"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it's the terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling."
David Foster Wallace lost his battle with depression and committed suicide. Do not waste anytime putting out the fires in your life or the flames will consume you. Rest in peace E.G. Though we weren’t friends, I am a better person for knowing you and your story.
