It is sometimes said that the soul is the essence of a person. In some circles, the idea of an essence or a soul is being shelved as we discover more and more of us attributable to chemistry and biology. If you are interested in this area, you might enjoy this TED talk by Anil Seth, a neuroscientist:
https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality
I read that one of the milestones in modern medicine was the distillation of aspirin from willow bark. Various sources that I have looked at say the willow bark was a home remedy and folk medicine for years, maybe centuries, before someone had the idea and the necessary equipment and knowledge to extract the right compound to purify and intensify the essence and its effect.
I think that moving from beer brewing to wine distilling to brandy, whiskey and other powerful spirits was probably a move toward what was perceived as essence. If I can find what makes me feel good in beer and wine, maybe I can concentrate it into a more powerful potion that makes me feel even better. This distilling and concentration, this increasing the density or power may seem like progress and a good thing. It often is. However, as we evaluate our lives and actions, we come to appreciate that more concentration of one ingredient or effect often modifies some other part of the creation and gives a final result that is not what we want. The costs of a distillation and more powerful effect may not be apparent until some time has passed.
It is often easy for a marketer or an inventor to rightly claim to have produced a more powerful product and more power can sound like an improvement.
I am enjoying listening to "Funny in Farsi" but I can see that some of the most moving parts of the text would be lost to me if I were to listening to the audiobook at twice the speed or to just a summary. I savored the sentence "But my French was at the level of "Is Jacques at the pool with Anne?". That sentence, spoken as the author/narrator said it, nicely expressed the type of understanding and sophistication of a person with limited experience with a foreign language.The essence of the story would not have included that sentence. I try to be cautious about distillations and concentrations.
