Both cake and conversation are everyday staples of life in the 21st century.
Conversation – oral and written – is the lifeblood of human existence. It is through language that we express thoughts, ideas, opinions and observations and it is language that has laid the foundation for the development and navigation of complex societies.
Cake is a much newer invention and – like most things humans do – cake bears witness to the profound ambiguity of human endeavors. Cake offers a sense of occasion and festivity, of happiness, community, nourishment, culture, and creativity. At the same time, cake and its key ingredients – sugar, flour, butter, and eggs – are inextricably linked with new and old atrocities such as slavery, female domesticity, industrialized agriculture, factory farms, disease, and environmental degradation.
It’s the necessity of conversation and the dilemma of cake that make cake and conversation the perfect duo to grapple with the injustices of our time. In order to address wrongs such as racism, poverty, materialism, nationalism, and environmental destruction we need both. We need rigorous moral and intellectual analysis as the basis of our conversations. And we need cake to remind us of the strange dualism of human life and activity.
As individuals, groups, communities, nonprofits, schools, governments, and businesses we need both cake and conversation to be conscious, outspoken, and activist advocates for justice and love.
Creating social change requires both rigorous reasoning and relentless action. And every now and then, it requires eating a good piece of cake.