ifling

Where are we going in a world where the attitude toward wealth is that it is to be literally consumed by the conspicuous and the frivolous who consider themselves above all others. How can you not draw a parallel to the manner in which we treat the planet as a whole, and who is it that consumes the most of that?

I had intended to open my blog in gentler fashion, and I will perhaps follow up with that essay, but a sad practice has come to my attention and I can now think of no better way to fire my opening shot. So wake up and read.
There is a new delicacy I have recently heard about in the news. Or more accurately, a very old one. Ancient Egyptians were very canny about a lot of things, and had remedies for ailments that are still as valid today as they were thousands of years ago. They had skilled engineers and architects, no doubt. They also performed brain surgery to relieve headaches, and squandered thousands of lives and the economies of nations to build monuments to those who proclaimed themselves living gods. Are these the footsteps we should choose to walk in?
I am referring to the practice of decorating food with fine gold leaf. This practice was thought to be yet one more method of attaining immortality for the self entitled, but is in fact nothing more than the self indulgence of a bored, jaded and over privileged society. In modern times, the practice seems to have come out of Japan whose industry has developed a method of creating an extremely fine leaf of gold mere molecules thick.
Where to begin? What better way to illustrate the attitude of humanity that has lead us to a world not only being consumed of resources, but reordered so that those resources become more difficult, or impossible to replenish than to say we have spent how much time and how many of those resources finding a way to decorate the desert plates of the wealthy with the ultimate symbol of that wealth. Looking around, and I encourage that you do so, how many people could benefit if we invested into education, environmental research, or the economies of failing nations all the gold that is now literally being flushed down the toilet? Is there a pressing need for a $25000 chocolate desert? But the applications do not end with desert, there are $4000 pizzas, 24 karat marmalades, wines and other alcohols, and cigars so you can also send your money up in smoke. Now look around again and tell yourself how many of them could do with a few, or a lot less desert.