A sobering comparison between wine making and civilization
I am a mead maker. You might not know what “mead”is but it’s really simple to understand. Mead is wine. But instead of being made with grapes it is made with honey.
Any type of winemaking can be extremely complicated with an enormous array of variables to get an amazing spectrum of wines. It is an art and a science.
But I don’t want to talk about it from that perspective.
What I want to talk about is the simplicity of wine or mead making.
When it comes down to it winemaking is adding yeast to water and some kind of natural sugar which could be grapes or honeyor any number of fruits. And then waiting time while the yeast eats the sugars.
And when yeast eats sugars it excretes alcohol. Yup, that’s what happens and it’s a very simple process.
And here is where my comparison between wine making and modern civilization comes in.
The thing about alcohols is that it is a poison.
And with winemaking as the yeast eats more sugar and multiplies to create more yeast it excretes more alcohol and the percentage of alcohol goes up! Eventually the alcohol level gets to the point where it kills the yeast! So, the yeast, in effect, eventually kills itself. It dies in it’s own excretion.
Yeast can be nothing other than yeast. It does what it was meant to do.
And I find my self wondering if the same thing is happening to us as humans. And the parallel I am drawing isn’t really about excretions in the literal sense of the word. It is more metaphorical. Are we creating the circumstances, in various ways. That will eventually be our own demise?
Are humans meant to do what humans do? And will we eventually die from our own excretions?
Let’s not drink to that.