Unwrapped: Scaling of actions and things

     I used to love watching a program called “Unwrapped” (the fact that it was hosted by a Marc Summers (no relation that I know of) didn’t hurt). The program (available via some streaming services) took the viewer into the factory to see how some everyday household, or food, item was produced to be able to sell it, and distribute it, nationwide or even globally. (There was also an Unwrapped 2.0 which I never saw.)

     I have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe — it comes from a Mennonite cookbook “More-With-Less Cookbook”. It requires a number of ingredients (surprise!). A cup of this, a teaspoon of that, 2 eggs, and so forth all get blended into the dough before it gets put into the oven. It takes a while to put together and doing it well takes practice. But, anyone can do it in their kitchen with the right tools and ingredients.

     Let’s ramp up “one level”. Now I would be cooking for 200 people at a food kitchen for the homeless. My recipe makes about four dozen. Saying two cookies a person, I would want to make about 400 cookies or about 8 times the recipe. Every cup becomes a half gallon. Two eggs increases to 16, and a teaspoon becomes about 2 2/3 tablespoons. This is a lot of material to work with but the biggest adjustment is with the tools. larger bowls are necessary and it is no longer possible to do all the mixing by hand (my sons still can’t understand why I mix by hand — but I like the tactile feedback of doing it by hand). Larger pans are also needed and a second oven would be very useful.

     The program “Unwrapped” takes this scaling a huge number of an increase. A cookie factory may make 40,000 cookies a day. If they used my recipe (unlikely, but not impossible) each cup would increase to 50 gallons. They would be using 1600 eggs (around 17 gallons), and the teaspoon would increase to 800 teaspoons (about 17 cups or a bit more than 2 gallons). European recipes use weights for much of a recipe and, perhaps, that might make more sense to many of you — but I am used to the US measurement system (though it does make scaling numbers harder).

     At any rate, for 40,000 cookies a day the standard mixing and baking processes are no longer adequate. Huge industrial mixers are needed along with pipelines filled with powders and liquids. Ovens turn into line ovens where a continuous stream of unbaked cookies are deposited on a conveyer belt and pop out of the other end of the very long (perhaps 50 feet or more) oven baked. Decorations require special mass tools. Of course, for this scale, one is also dealing with packaging and distribution — but I’m not going to tackle that here. (I think logistics — making everything occur as it needs to happen — is fascinating, and we all make use of it every day — but that is still not today’s topic).

     So far, we have only worked with the process of expansion. We have not looked at all the ramifications — or consequences — of this ramping up. We have to have herds of dairy cows and daily deliveries. Trucks of sugar are needed to put into the storage bins and pipelines. Acres of fields are needed to grow the spices, wheat, cocoa, and the various other ingredients.

     Say that we shift from cookies to loaves of bread. Recipes vary but 4 cups of flour in a loaf of bread is not unreasonable. The population of the US is presently about 335 million. Let’s just say (for estimates sake) that each person eats the equivalent of 1/4 loaf of bread per day (it may be in the form of pita, or tortillas, or whatever). That becomes 84 million loaves of bread per day. 84 million loaves boosts the number of cups of flour back to that 335 million cup level. That ends up at about 92 million pounds of flour. Each bushel of wheat produces around 50 pounds of flour. There are about 37 bushels of wheat produced per acre (on average). 92 million pounds of flour becomes 1,840,000 bushels which are produced from 49,730 acres of wheat. Almost 50,000 acres of wheat are needed per day to meet US needs for that 1/4 loaf per person.

     In the US, 55.9 million acres (approximately) of land are devoted to wheat farming. In a year, about 18 million (50,000 times 365.25) of those acres translates to 1/4 loaf of bread for each person for each day of the year. We use wheat for other than just bread and we also feed grain (more likely corn but wheat is not impossible) to animals. Some of the statistics I have read indicate that we use about 4/5 of the wheat grown internally and export the remaining 1/5.

     Is your mind overwhelmed by the effects of scaling? Mine certainly is.

     I have used an innocuous, everyday, item to illustrate the effects of scaling. However, scaling applies to everything. With 335 million people in the US and about 8 billion on the planet. Everything we do becomes part of something much, much, larger. 25 pounds of trash per week per household becomes around 2,500,000,000 pounds of trash per week for the US. One vote expands into part of a block of millions of people. One new pair of shoes per person per year gives us 335 million new pairs of shoes per year in the US.

     There is a saying that is attributed to a First Nation that one should always “tread lightly upon the earth”. This is maintaining an awareness of what we do and how it scales if everyone does it. (There is another saying that says we should “look at the effects to the seventh generation” — saying that our decisions affect the future and we should keep that in mind.) We may say, “oh my part of this is so small it doesn’t make a difference”. But, with scaling, it does.

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Normal: Each person has their own definition

     It isn’t unusual for someone to say “that’s normal” or “that’s not normal”. But what do they really mean by that? What is this standard of normal to which they are comparing to whatever it is that they are noticing? “Normal” is what is normal to the person doing the perception. If I see something that would be something that is normal to me, then I might say “that looks normal”. It is possible that, if I know the other person well enough to know their regular habits, I might still say “that looks normal” even though it might not be normal for me. In whatever manner, the word “normal” will not have a single definition.

     Each person has their own “rituals”. This doesn’t necessarily mean religious behaviors (though it might). For example, I get up in the morning, use the restroom, inspect (and usually have to clean) the kitchen, get caught up with mail and social media, get hot tea and breakfast for my wife, and then do my morning language lessons (currently Spanish). And on it goes. But that schedule may seem extraordinary, strange, or peculiar to someone else.

     Our personal definition is based from our own histories. If I grew up as an orphan, I would have a different baseline from someone growing up in a “nuclear” family. Each would consider their own life to be normal — and the other person’s life something about which one might read in a book. If I was home-schooled, I would avoid certain experiences that someone attending a public, or “private”, school would expect to be as a part of their day. The other people of the household would have their own routines which interact with everyone else’s. And this combination will become unique for each person.

     Much of the time, these activities done by all the people interacting together are innocuous. But not necessarily. Alas, a child who grows up in a household in which they, or other members of the household, are abused in some manner will also consider that behavior to be “normal”. Unless corrected in their perceptions, they will grow up to consider the behavior as “something that everyone does and may have happen to them”. So, it is completely natural if they perpetuate the behavior with the people in their later-formed household. They would not consider it to be “abuse” — they would consider it to be “normal”.

     People are also influenced by their environment. On an island of Hawai’i, a school child may find it normal to go swimming, or surfing, on their way to, or from, school. That would certainly not occur to an Inuit who might be walking home across the snow and packed ice. Of course, since I grew up in a different environment from either of these children, I don’t really know what they would do or what they would each consider to be normal.

     Within the US, income class will make a huge difference between what is considered normal for a person. It will make a difference elsewhere in the world also but it may be cross-referenced with another social system such as caste or level of nobility. The behaviors, and expectations, within that group will seem “normal” to those who live within it — and the behaviors of those outside of that group will either be elevated or denigrated depending on perspective about those outside of the group.

     Although “rags to riches” stories do exist, it causes internal strain, and strains within relationships, when a person moves from one segment of society to another — even if they have “risen” in level. And it is very difficult for a person in one societal segment to truly represent, or understand, other segments because they live within different normalities and have very little insight into that of other segments.

     While it somewhat depends upon physical and cultural environment, people will do different activities. These activities will be different based on their histories, what resources are available, and their interests. Surfing, ice fishing, going to a mall — normal to the person doing it and, perhaps, quite exotic to someone else. A normal activity to one person may seem exotic to another.

     A child growing up in a war zone is in constant flux. There is little they can rely upon. Their house may be gone the next day — or a parent or sibling. There is no security possible. A child goes to school one day and is a refugee the next. This high aspect of instability must affect the perspective, and behavior, of the child. But it would still be normal to them. In older days of medicine — and still in too many segments of the world society — a large percentage of children died before they were a couple of years old. It was sad for all, but expected and “normal”.

     In my household a number of years ago, we adopted (or she adopted us) a cat from an animal shelter. We did not see her much for the first three weeks after we brought her to our house as she immediately ran for the back of our refrigerator as soon as we released her from the carrier. She did eat, and drink, as such resources would disappear overnight — but she had a huge readjustment to her own personal “normal”. I am sad to say that, after ten years with us, some of her baseline characteristics were still present.

     “All the world is a stage and we are only players”. A rich, well-nourished, male child in a stable city with easily accessible parents will absorb a very different normal from that of a poor, malnourished, female child surviving in a war zone.

     It is a cliché to say “walk a mile in another’s moccasins — yet it is still true that everyone has their own individual “normal”. We may have judgements on the other normals but they may have arguments, of equal weight from their points of view. of “incorrectness” of your own behavior.

     As long as the thoughts, behaviors, and actions do not impinge upon another’s ability to follow their own normal, it is best to just recognize that each person is unique and what is normal for them is what they expect to do.

     “Normality” only exists as a unique attribute that applies to each of us.

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