I cut into the freshly baked loaf of bread. Steam escapes the chamber that the bread formed. I broke into the chamber, releasing the steam that helped bake the bread. The aroma fills the air; I breathe the smell in. Nothing like fresh bread. Nothing like it. I look down at the slice of bread, and I cannot help to think about everything that went into that slice of bread.

From the start of recorded history bread has been eaten. Bread has transformed from then to now. We have learned many new techniques and ways to make bread, but this is not always healthy. The ingredients may be labelled as "natural", but everything that is natural is not always healthy. "Healthy" sourdough bread is thus coming back into society to fight this culture of unhealthy "dead" bread. Using only flour, water, salt and natural bacteria and wild yeast (found on and in the wheat), they breads of today that are baked this way, is alive. And healthy.

The table in front of me is filled with the bread I baked. I look at the slice I took for me. For centuries people have baked bread. I am part of a chain in the history of baking bread, using what the earth gave us, to make something and then give that something to someone else to eat. This is magical. Or maybe it is just me.

Getting Philosophical

What can we say about this piece of bread on my plate with warm butter dripping down it? For a moment try and get rid of everything you believe is true of this world, look at the bread again, and see if you "see" the same piece of bread? This is really hard to do. Some things are ingrained so deeply, that when you want to consciously see something else, it is not possible. When you put the piece of bread under a microscope, you will get a different picture of the bread. It starts to live, natural bacteria and yeast move around, it is not dead. But this does not say much. This is purely a different view on something, looking through another eye.

Looking back at the piece of bread, I only see what I am used to seeing, what I expected to see. I cannot unsee what I expect and want to see. I cannot deconstruct the image of the bread into smaller pieces. I cannot take apart the pieces that make up the bread. I cannot mentally change my perspective on the bread. I am stuck with the image that my brain wants me to have. This leads to an interesting question: Can you ever see the world in any other way? Kant, and other philosophers, struggled with the fact that they believed that reality was split between what we humans see and what reality actually is. But this asks us to believe that the world can be "seen" without any perspective. We can answer, without any real power, that the world as we see it is simply the world in itself, or the thing-in-itself. There is no other way.

This does not seem true. Our eyes can only see a small spectrum of light. We are living in a world where our eyes can only see so much. Imagine if you could change your brain and eyes to detect other sources of light, like infra-red etc. How different would life have been? This leads to a weird conclusion for this post: I am determined to see what my brain wants me to see, I can only see the piece of bread as an amalgamation, a unification, a combination of flour, water, sourdough and salt. I cannot see the different building blocks, I cannot see anything other than what is in front of me. This is true for the piece of bread, but also for life in general. How many things (like race and gender) are so ingrained in our memory about how the world "should" be, that we lost the ability to see things for what they are? Maybe we should not ask this question, it is not meant to be asked. Staring too long at the truth will blind you.