The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Caries xiii-xxvii

As a digestive organ, said the Father of Teeth, the human mind leaves much to be desired. So great are its limitations, and so small the space of its confinement, that it can process only the most minuscule fraction of its surroundings; and even of that minuscule fraction it can hardly make use because its workings are so inordinately inefficient. Much that is harmful is retained, to block the mind's transmissions and corrode its components with clots of lusts and pollutive obsessions; while much that might be helpful is simply excreted, so that suicide rates among the tedious remain irritatingly low.

Indeed, he continued, such is the digestive inefficiency of the mind that it requires numerous sets of teeth merely to grind down the universe into manageable pabulum. There are eye-teeth to filter out excess light, ear-teeth to distract from any but the crudest noises, nerve-teeth to keep the infinite pains of existence at a purely physical remove. Thanks to these filters, for most of its life the human mind is sheltered from knowledge and prevented from biting off more than it can chew. It is only at the very end, when the teeth become rotten and start to loosen and drop out, that the truth is unavoidably allowed to infiltrate. And then, said the Father of Teeth, when faced at last with the truth in all its darkness and silence and inanity and pain, the mind shrivels, loses its appetite, alternates between constipation and diarrhoea, and finally gives itself up to starvation.