This morning I ate a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. I changed from Cheerios which was for last week. As I opened up this new box, I noticed the words. Prime Ingredient Whole Grain. Now being an American, you know and I know that there is something supposedly healthy about 'whole grain'. In fact, 'whole grain goodness' is some marketing phrase I'm sure you are familiar with. Whole grain what?
Today's gripe is that we're all hung up on adjectives. So long as it's the 'Top 10', then we'll pay attention. We don't care if it's the top ten worst one-hit wonders of the 70s or the top ten blunders of the Trump White House. So long as it's the top ten, or the Best or the Coolest or the Guinness World's oldest bodybuilder.
What happened to the value of nouns, and where did all the proper nouns go? I know we don't teach kids in public school how to diagram sentences any longer, but you'd think at least a majority of us would... I can accept that we're all about extremes and the extremes are interesting, but it's always easy to look at the extremes of whatever. Sometimes the solidity of a mediocre fundamental good is worth more of our attention.
This is, I think, the Kant in me talking. I don't know for sure, and I'm not sure I want to. There's no easier way to jump meta than to guess what a famous philosopher said about it. Hmm, is it the easiest?
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