I have been waiting a couple of weeks for this day, the day I write my first post to be released on Steemit. It has finally arrived. I am listening to Metallica's Black album, trying to choose the words for this post to fit just right. It feels refreshing to write something after a drought in my writing. But first, who am I? I am currently busy with my philosophy degree. The plan is that I do my PhD in the next three to five years. I grew up in South Africa, and I am still here, trying to figure out the meaning of life.
Fermentation and philosophy? I can see a couple of people who will ask what the two widely different stuff have to do with each other. I started brewing beer in 2013 and started baking sourdough bread in 2016. The process of fermentation for me is that you take some starting ingredients, those ingredients undergo a change (i.e. fermentation due to yeast and bacteria), and the finishing product will be vastly different from the starting ingredients. One thus transforms the ingredients in such a way that the starting product does not resemble the finishing product.
Philosophy is in a way the same. After you read for example Albert Camus's "The Stranger" you are not the same person anymore. You change the way you look at life, you start to see things in such a way that it cannot be the same as before you read the book or philosophy. As Camus said in "The Myth of Sisyphus": "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" when he rolls the boulder up the mountain, one cannot unsee the smile on his face. One is condemned to see Sisyphus happy.
I hope the similarities between philosophy and the process of fermentation is clear. The starting position is not the same as the finishing position. What you have at the start is not the same as at the end, due to some external influence (i.e. yeast or philosophy) a change will occur.
And that is basically me. Philosophy and fermentation saved my life from the "conformation" to normality. So what will this blog be about? Why should you care to stay and read my following posts? I will try and do some things with this blog, especially the following: firstly, I will try and write philosophical articles, tackling problems we do in university, and thus to clarify some topics that no everyone would understand in the jargon that philosophers sometimes use; secondly, I will try and write about problems and topics that arise in a (Southern) African perspective, and thus give a first hand account of this place I call home; thirdly, I will just write and share my experiences will you the reader, in other words, I will give you my thoughts as a baker, beer brewer and (to be) philosopher. I hope that this will "wet your appetite", and that you will stay with me and read some of my whacky (philosophical) ideas and thoughts. Thank you if you read this, thank you if you are willing to read my future posts, and thank you to everyone who makes this platform possible for people like use to share our ideas. Untill next time!