At the risk of ruining it, I’m going to deconstruct this excellent joke and use it as a lens through which to look at the state of life, the universe, and everything. Taleb of course, is being his usual obnoxious self, performing Levantine identity in a way that has perhaps single-handedly turned me off ever being a Levantophile, over the decades he’s been doing it. That’s just Taleb being Taleb, and he’s old and beyond reform. Sadly, most people the world over perform their cultural identities this way. Though rarely with such relentless thin-skinnedness, and to such a global audience. Sosna’s reply also performs identity, Slavic in this case, but in exactly the opposite way — self-deprecating (the stupidity of joyless drinking), emphasizing a universally resonant sentiment (life is pain) via a globally familiar motif (the potato). The vodka-vs-wine subtext is only gestured at, not centered. This is a reply that makes me want to be a Slavophile. Of course, given that both the Levant and the Slavic world are being torn apart by really ugly wars right now makes being either a Levantophile or a Slavophile something of an armchair aspiration at the moment. In the grim darkness of the unevenly distributed future, there is only potato.
"life is pain, only potato."
