Hard Core Potato

While perusing the internet the other day, I came across this video.

On the one hand, the video is awesome because it essentially animates the images I see in my head every time I cook. Well, minus the epic send-off. Cooking should be joyous. There's no need to have such a sacrificial death. I like to pretend that the food I'm making is happy to be at my service, and that they're excited to be cooked. They even compliment me on my non-existent cooking skills. And instead of being afraid to be thrown in the pot or pan, they thank me for helping them to reach their full potential.

On the other hand, however, it made me think about blind faith and total institutions, and the dangers that can result from such devotion. I feel like there are many circumstances in life where we willingly harm ourselves for the use of others; where our destruction leads to another's creation. This is an extreme depiction of what the consequences can be: peeling off the skin and jumping into a pot of hot liquid. Even more disturbing is the attitude of honor and pride the potato seems to exhibit by his sacrificial leap. Erving Goffman described such processes on his piece about total institutions. In such places our sense of self (raw potato) is destroyed (peeled away) so that we can become (be cooked) what the institution (chef) deems to be the proper behavior (the meal). I'm aware that I am severely bastardizing and simplifying Goffman's theory here, but it is still what I thought about as I watched the video. Well, that, and about how if this potato were real he may be more hard core than Chuck Norris.

Today's Wit: Land mines cost an arm and a leg.