The Death Of Meaning, The Ascendancy Of Illusion

I came across a wrapper for an Amish strawberry rhubarb pie. It made me wonder what made it an Amish pie and not a regular pie. Could it perhaps be the potassium sorbate? The sodium citrate? The red dye number 40? Is it the mono glycerides, or the diglycerides?

It is my contention that there’s nothing Amish about this fruit pie at all. That the word Amish is an unnecessary and meaningless modifier that is used by marketers to make a factory-produced food item appear to be more healthy and natural than it is. There seems to be something deep in the human psyche that longs for authenticity and a closeness to nature and community, but sadly it can be assuaged by pleasant sounding words and images.

The average person, if they should notice something like this at all, would laugh inwardly at the contradiction for a moment — recognizing that everything in this society we’ve created is fake — and then move on. We’ve gotten used to it because we’ve never known anything different. We’ve been lied to our entire lives, so why should one more instance of being deliberately misled make any difference?

Examples of misleading words and images can be found on virtually every wrapper of every food item you buy. Libby’s canned corn provides “Farm Fresh Goodness” and and uses imagery of a farm that I can assure you looks nothing…