Uisce Beatha - Water of Life

Since we are all experiencing the new phase of our work-life balance, and the lack of hallway chit-chat - I pondered about sharing the state of the mind.

My colleagues near my office, generally experience my mindful monologues with rapt attention (so I think) … but likely suffer through, waiting for it to end, while others quietly slip on their noise cancelling Boses, I thought I should extend this courtesy to now a broader audience.

Notwithstanding the perpetuation of the gloom, I decided to share the state of the mind … so here we go … on Famine, War and Plague - the 3 things that homo sapiens to modern humans dealt with.

Famine got eradicated through inventions in agriculture over the past 100 years. If famine is caused now, it is mainly due to political reasons. Generally at $0.99 a day one can get bananas and eggs that gives the necessary calories.

War - this seems to have been solved as well - as everybody dies in the next war… so no one starts it

Plague - we have not solved this one … Humans historically perished due to plague before Louis Pasteur.

As homo sapiens interacted with other types of human species (Neanderthal)  - they got wiped out. When modern humans explored into new territories, viruses made people disappear … such as the Mayan and Aztec civilizations gradually vanished. As humans set foot on the islands such as Australia, that never saw a human before, many of the animals from the ecosystem disappeared (and vice versa).

Overtime, humans realized that germs make them sick … and tried to find solutions, much before Louis Pasteur discovered germs caused diseases. And thus the early humans created many solutions to fight the germs

Back in the day, 13,000 years ago, the wise people of that time from China and Sumer (Persia), with their wisdom discovered that they get less sick with fermented wheat, barley and other fruits and grains. Thus came beer - means 'to drink' in Latin (Sumers had a symbol for beer… they had better (user experience design) UX engineers!). It turns out the these wise people also created a story that the god of wisdom, drank the beer and spurted out the laws of civilization - the first reference to how humans have this extraordinary skill to make up stuff by drinking beer…. Anthropologists call this 'cognitive evolution' .. which some professions like product management still preserve this skill -;)

Subsequently, Gaelic folks, in what is now Scotland, found the 'uisce beatha' - the water of life – just the naming itself suggests the importance of this drink (whiskey)… Great product marketing

Humans have long known how to kill germs in a spirited way … with that in spirit, I propose we drink to Louis Pasteur and those before him for 'tuer des germes' - meaning killing of germs.

By the way, in the spirit of inclusion, the first inventor brewers were women! (Alewife was the term used by English … there is a subway station in Boston area on the redline)

Enjoy!

Comments

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