From salt to jokes without salt

2024-03-17 22:30:00, Opinione Lutfi Dervishi

Lutfi Dervishi

There was a time when salt was the most precious thing on earth. Having salt in the old days was the same as having hydrogen today in Bulqiza. We had salt, but Venice used it for us. We are truly hospitable people. Bread, salt and heart, it means that we have given everything to our friend. Soldiers (asqar) were not paid with a salary, but with an ounce of salt. The wars were fought for salt more than for territory. Empires rose and crumbled like salt in water because of salt.

The Roman Empire had a state monopoly on salt. In 1540 the inhabitants of Perugia attacked the papal state, because the Pope raised the tax on salt.

In the Middle Ages, the most smuggled commodity between Italy and France was salt. Like cocaine today.

Imagine if you told an ancient man that we put salt on the road so that the snow does not turn to ice?! He would probably go to Kalimash and pray for snow to get some salt from the trucks for free.

But after the end of the stone age, which for the sake of truth did not end because the stones ended, came the iron age. Iron was the blockchain of the time. Swords, shields, cooking pots were symbols of power and progress. Countries that owned iron were what countries that have nuclear arsenals are today. No one dared to touch a place with iron.

But surprisingly, another metal, which is neither eaten, nor drunk, nor worn, nor used for sword and shield, took the place of iron - gold. Kings used to have heart attacks just at the sight of gold, pirates were ready to go to the end of the world for gold. So desired was gold that alchemists spent lifetimes producing it under laboratory conditions.

After shiny gold came the turn of black gold, oil. Oil became a fixture. Economies have risen and fallen at its cost. No matter how much the price falls in the stock market, you will always pay dearly at the gas station. But with oil in Shpirag, it is expected that its price will be so cheap that those who bought electric cars will regret it.

But paradoxically, countries that do not have oil are more developed than countries that do. This fact proves that knowledge is more precious than oil. In the information age, the largest economy is built on two numbers: 0 and 1. Data became more valuable than oil.

But the world turns and from salt we come to jokes without salt.

Today, you don't need to have iron, gold or oil, you don't even know. School is an atavism. Today we are in the age of attention. In this world, which has been engulfed by the tsunami of information, the most precious commodity is your eye, or rather the pupil of the eye. Not in the physical sense. The social media gang is on the attack to monopolize your boredom. Today everyone creates and fishes for likes with the persistence of a hungry pirate.

Selfies, which were once considered silly (Shkodranians say to ride yourself in the coffin), have become the most precious currency of our time. Our economy today is not based on either production or service, but at its foundation is the virtual thumb. The influencers are the "generals of antiquity", the "oligarchs of yesterday", the new tycoons, whose power is not based on the army or gold, but on carefully curated photos and videos.

In this day and age, forgetting your phone at home is like being stranded on a desert island, cut off from the world's most vital resource: attention.

From salt to salt-free jokes, the world really does go round. The question is what will have more value tomorrow: will it be something tangible, tasty and colorless like water, or will it be something ethereal like silence?! And we return again to: "Silence is golden"?/ CNA