The dramatic effects of an imperfect harvest can be quite
remarkable. Take 5 people sorting and washing potatoes. Working on an old
potato washer, it was necessary to sort various types of potatoes off of a
conveyor belt as they passed by. Sell-able potatoes, small potatoes, discount
potatoes, and bad potatoes are some of the categories for the sort.
The potatoes pass out of the washer and onto the conveyor belt,
and are moving pretty quickly. 3 of the people in the process are tied up
plucking various types of potato from the conveyor belt, before they reach the
very end where they drop off into fresh bags for storage and eventual sale.
The particular variety of potato we were sorting was in bad shape:
it had various scales on the skins that gave them a brown hue, which was
perfectly safe to eat, but unsightly, and so the sorting process was not
mentally rewarding. One was choosing the least worst-looking potatoes to sell, as an extension of one's contribution to society, or one's personal and social efficacy. Further,
the brownish tint made detecting signs of rot – which were also brown – even
more difficult to detect, putting a strain on the sorting process.
Once one
does spot the signs of rot, the distinguishing indicators are unmistakable:
there is a visceral feeling that one is in the presence of an opened-up
life-field, its chaotic forces able to house forms of life hostile to one’s
own.
Sorting is psychologically taxing. The act of focusing and
categorizing takes an enormous amount of energy as it continues on, using up
lots of glucose for one thing, making one dazed and slightly emotionally frayed
at the end of the day. Combine these effects with the downcast view that one’s
efforts aren’t leading to a satisfying product, and so group coherence
temporarily breaks down, until the work is over, and relieved, everyone comes
together over sighs and beers under the darkening sky.
