On Popcorn

Have you ever taken the time to fully appreciate a single kernel of popped corn? The popped corn kernel is, I believe, a significant step in man's innate desire to express and simultaneously control chaos. It is Freud’s Eros and Thanatos, expressed in a perfect Hegelian synthesis. In so many ways, it is the culmination of a litany of mankind’s goals. And yet, it is usually eaten in a dark theatre, suffocated, stilted, and emasculated by the greasiness of the ultimate misnomer, a “topping,” butter, which might more aptly be called a “bottoming.”

Each piece of popcorn is an explosion, an ultimate act of expression and rebellion. And yet, each of these is stopped at its apex, and frozen forever in time, like a lion shot mid-pounce, then stuffed and placed behind a glass display in a museum. Each piece is like a miniature supernova, or a miniaturized miniature Big Bang, stopped in the process, en route to greatness. The potential within a kernel is limitless; in fact, the potential energy within one kernel is equal to that of a nuclear bomb (Alas, most of that energy would be lost in any sort of conversion). But man has taken that potential, and stifled it, capturing it at its most effusive and ebullient moment.

In a way, one must sympathize for the kernel. In that one ecstatic moment of emancipation, the detonation is halted and plugged up, never to become what it could have become.

Each time we pick up another piece of popcorn, a feeling of anthropocentricism should pass through us, as man has once again trumped nature. I’m sure the designer of the Hoover Dam felt a similar pride when he walked past his concrete behemoth.

It is also for this reason that the unpopped kernels at the bottom of the bag are such a disappointment. Forget that they are nearly inedible, without incurring a hefty dental bill as a result of their mastication. No, it is their unrealized potential that is so devastating. They are like a brilliant artist who is too afraid to take a shot at greatness, and instead elects for the comfort of a desk job. Is the artist and corn safe in its metaphorical and literal kernel, never to be noticed, only to be ignored and discarded? Of course. But they will also never achieve the brilliance so easily within their grasp.

Orville Redenbacher, that Harriet Tubman of corn, once said, “Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn't pop. I'll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them.” An excessive amount of energy, you might say. But the disappointment of unrealized potential, especially in something as exhilarating as popcorn, has no monetary equivalent. Then again, the man also experimented with over 10,000 types of hybrids to produce his Gourmet Popping Corn.

This statistic makes one wonder what the other 9,999 kernels produced. Some were obviously too restrained, and produced a spark where a firework was sought. But were some also too bold, too expressive for our puritanical society to handle? Did Redenbacher create popcorn the size of a tennis ball, but fearing Icarusian consequences, abandon this quest and reverse course?

Popcorn, no doubt, is dangerous to any sort of institution that derives its power from control. One can only imagine the kind of anarchy that would erupt if every citizen possessed the ability to turn a kernel of corn into a volleyball-sized starchy explosion. Redenbacher’s commercials started appearing on TV in the early 1970s. The proximity of this event to the Summer of Love, Woodstock, and the general counterculture movement cannot be overlooked. While popcorn hit puberty during the Great Depression, it seems it finally came of age during the hippie revolution. Just as young people were liberating themselves, through freedom of expression in music, literature, clothing etc., the corn kernel was doing the exact same thing with its suppressed starchy interior.

There really is no succinct, “and therefore” to wrap this up. If Tom Robbins can introduce a novel with a similar tome to beets, maybe this isn’t a bad beginning to my own thoughts on religion, politics, art and life. Stay tuned, kids.

On Atlas Shrugging and Financial Bailing Out

More than any other book I have ever read, Atlas Shrugged has had the most profound impact on my thoughts concerning religion, politics, economics, and mankind in general. After reading Atlas Shrugged, there is simply no way one can ever look at the world the same way again. One sees Rand’s Objectivism in every political sound bite, in every business deal, and in the underlying motivations of almost every interaction.

Driving home this evening, I listened to some of the sound bites from the Senate debate on the Financial Bailout Plan. All of the polticians were pandering to the average idiot, deriding unfettered greed, and the evil institution that is Wall Street. However, one quote stuck out from all of the rest. In his speech supporting the bill, John McCain said, “If we fail to act, the gears of our economy will grind to a halt.” This is, of course, an innocuous quote at first glance.

But then all of the pieces of the puzzle started to fall in place…

The basic theme of Atlas Shrugged is that John Galt, the enigmatic main character, is fed up with the current economic/political system, since it has become too bogged down in socialism. As a result, the desire to turn a profit has become a sin, and innovation consistently goes unrewarded. As Rand describes this dilemma, “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.” In Atlas Shrugged, rather than perpetuating the current system by continuing to be productive, Galt declares that he will “stop the motor of the world.”

“Big deal,” you may say. A book written in 1957 contains a vague idea similar to a vague quote uttered by a politician 49 years later. I’m sure this is not an unprecedented, earth-shattering event. But wait, it gets far more uncanny:

Who, hypothetically, laid the groundwork for the current economic crisis? It is easy to blame the current Administration; and indeed, they are probably not blameless. But still, administrations come and go, and don’t always have the power to make economic changes impactful enough to effect change during their own tenure. Rather, huge crises require years of “planning,” and are the culmination of long-term policy. And who has been steering the titan that is the Federal Reserve for the past 20 years (1987 – 2006, to be more specific)? Alan Greenspan.

Greenspan was not just any economist, who would describe himself as something as simple as “conservative” or “liberal.” Rather, Greenspan was an out-and-out Objectivist, and was one of Ayn Rand’s closest confidants. He was part of the inner circle that got to read Atlas Shrugged as it was being written, and wrote articles for many Objectivist newsletters. He even contributed essays to Rand’s book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

During his tenure, many Objectivists criticized Greenspan for not being Objectivist enough, and abandoning the Objectivist ideals of which he claimed to be such a strong proponent. But what if Greenspan was doing just the opposite? Instead of simply pushing individual policies that reflected the ideals of Objectivism, what if Greenspan was doing something much much bigger? What if Greenspan was slowly moving all of his dominoes into place, getting ready to topple the system with one fell swoop? Once the first domino is tipped, years of planning fall into place.

Now, I completely realize how ludicrous this might sound at first glance. However, Greenspan was not a man of shortsighted views, nor a casual Objectivist. He ushered the US economy though many difficult periods, including the 1987 stock market crash, and stewarded the economy through the “dot-com bubble.” Why then, only a year after he left office, would the economy suddenly start to go into a tailspin? It could be argued that the new Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was unable to steer the ship that Greenspan had captained so adroitly. However, the causes of the current financial crisis have roots that go back much further than Bernanke’s brief tenure. The crisis is not due to one or two bad decisions, but rather a series of policies put in place over an extended period of time.

There was only one man who has had his hands in the national economy during the past 4 Presidential Administrations. This man also happens to have been privy to the development of a book/philosophy that espouses the dismantling of the global economy as the necessary conclusion to a corrupt political/economic system. Now, I suppose it could all be a huge coincidence, but the new and unbelievable is often initially dismissed as just that.

On the other hand, perhaps Greenspan just saw the world as it is, and instead of pandering to the whims and needs of those desperately seeking approval (and re-election), he chose to live up to the highest ideals he knows. As Rand says in her own summation of Objectivism, “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

[The author fully acknowledges the glibness of the current version of this post, and is working on collecting actual “facts” and “figures” to support his views.]