Monday, March 23, 2009
Earth Hour
This Saturday, March 28th, from 8:30pm until 9:30pm, millions of people around the world will be going for an hour without power to raise awareness of the connection between energy use and Global Warming! To be a part of this global movement, simply turn off all your lights from 8:30pm until 9:30pm on Saturday!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Civil Rights And Peace Movement
November 18, 2008
I am long overdue to begin writing about my experiences in what is quickly becoming the civil rights and peace movement of the 21st century. For me, the journey to my present involvement in activism was founded early in life.
The day that we here in the United States elected Barack Obama to be our first African American president was a day that I had pondered since my youth. I can still remember looking at the faces of our then former presidents and asking my mom why we had not had a black president. She told me that no one had tried to run for president who was black and I told her that they should. Now, over 20 years later, we have him! God bless America!
In the light of our country’s perceived acceptance of diversity, it is a true wonder that, in the very same election which gave us our first African American president, we here in California elected to remove the rights of homosexuals to marry. This is the first time in history that the people have voted to remove rights that had already been granted. This, for me, was the beginning of my journey as a peaceful dissenter, not because I care to ever be married to a man or a woman, but because I saw the civil rights that every American holds dear being disregarded for the sake of religious fervor and over an issue of the mere semantics of using the word “marriage” to describe the civil union between people of the same sex.
I originally became involved in rallies and protests against prop 8 because, one day when I was walking home from school, I saw protesters on the corner near my house and wanted to join them because I believed in their cause. I put my backpack down in my house, got something to eat and went back out to join them, but they had left by that time. Then, I searched on the internet to see if I could get hooked up with individuals who were protesting this prop that way. I went to the next rally and this is also when I became involved in peace rallies, something which I had longed to do since the very beginning of the war but lacked the knowledge of where to go to protest. As I became more involved in both the peace movement and the civil rights movement, I realized the potential magnitude of citizens united peacefully for a cause. I had often theorized about these things, but the reality of it all, in the midst of a multitude of peaceful protesters, was far greater than anything I had ever imagined!
I began to read things about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and I realized that peace is truly more powerful than war and violence. As the wisdom in Proverbs 25:21-22 goes, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” If you return peace to those who give you violence, they are the ones who will bear the hot coals of shame upon their heads. This is what Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus all taught and practiced and it is just as powerful today! I realized that the power behind the civil rights movement of the 60’s was in those multitudes that protested peacefully, not in the few who protested violently.
Another great strength of the movements during the 60’s was the strength of the youth. When it comes down to it, the youth of this country will have to live with the decisions of their elders for a lot longer than their elders will and so we should be the backbone of the movement, just as was the case in the 60’s. When I look around, I do see our youth involved some, but there are so many who are just content to live their lives and hope that other people make the right decisions and that other people fight for their rights. That has to end.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Are we all so concerned with our immediate future that we refuse to stand up for our own rights? Are we only concerned with our own rights? Don’t we realize that if people are allowed to take away one right from one group, whether we agree with that decision or not, that the rescinding of rights might not stop there? Who’s rights are next? Do you have to be a gay person interested in marrying someone to protest the passing of prop 8? Would you have had to have been an African American during the 60’s to protest for African American rights? We are all in this together and as such, we cannot sit back and ignore this. It may be gays today, but tomorrow or next election, it could be any other minority. Minorities need the majority to help and not be silent, not on the basis of beliefs, but on the basis of being fellow human beings who also bleed red!!!
I am long overdue to begin writing about my experiences in what is quickly becoming the civil rights and peace movement of the 21st century. For me, the journey to my present involvement in activism was founded early in life.
The day that we here in the United States elected Barack Obama to be our first African American president was a day that I had pondered since my youth. I can still remember looking at the faces of our then former presidents and asking my mom why we had not had a black president. She told me that no one had tried to run for president who was black and I told her that they should. Now, over 20 years later, we have him! God bless America!
In the light of our country’s perceived acceptance of diversity, it is a true wonder that, in the very same election which gave us our first African American president, we here in California elected to remove the rights of homosexuals to marry. This is the first time in history that the people have voted to remove rights that had already been granted. This, for me, was the beginning of my journey as a peaceful dissenter, not because I care to ever be married to a man or a woman, but because I saw the civil rights that every American holds dear being disregarded for the sake of religious fervor and over an issue of the mere semantics of using the word “marriage” to describe the civil union between people of the same sex.
I originally became involved in rallies and protests against prop 8 because, one day when I was walking home from school, I saw protesters on the corner near my house and wanted to join them because I believed in their cause. I put my backpack down in my house, got something to eat and went back out to join them, but they had left by that time. Then, I searched on the internet to see if I could get hooked up with individuals who were protesting this prop that way. I went to the next rally and this is also when I became involved in peace rallies, something which I had longed to do since the very beginning of the war but lacked the knowledge of where to go to protest. As I became more involved in both the peace movement and the civil rights movement, I realized the potential magnitude of citizens united peacefully for a cause. I had often theorized about these things, but the reality of it all, in the midst of a multitude of peaceful protesters, was far greater than anything I had ever imagined!
I began to read things about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and I realized that peace is truly more powerful than war and violence. As the wisdom in Proverbs 25:21-22 goes, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for so you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” If you return peace to those who give you violence, they are the ones who will bear the hot coals of shame upon their heads. This is what Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus all taught and practiced and it is just as powerful today! I realized that the power behind the civil rights movement of the 60’s was in those multitudes that protested peacefully, not in the few who protested violently.
Another great strength of the movements during the 60’s was the strength of the youth. When it comes down to it, the youth of this country will have to live with the decisions of their elders for a lot longer than their elders will and so we should be the backbone of the movement, just as was the case in the 60’s. When I look around, I do see our youth involved some, but there are so many who are just content to live their lives and hope that other people make the right decisions and that other people fight for their rights. That has to end.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Are we all so concerned with our immediate future that we refuse to stand up for our own rights? Are we only concerned with our own rights? Don’t we realize that if people are allowed to take away one right from one group, whether we agree with that decision or not, that the rescinding of rights might not stop there? Who’s rights are next? Do you have to be a gay person interested in marrying someone to protest the passing of prop 8? Would you have had to have been an African American during the 60’s to protest for African American rights? We are all in this together and as such, we cannot sit back and ignore this. It may be gays today, but tomorrow or next election, it could be any other minority. Minorities need the majority to help and not be silent, not on the basis of beliefs, but on the basis of being fellow human beings who also bleed red!!!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Waves Of Agony
Please excuse this post as it may seem off track from the other things that I have posted, but it is really quite relevant because everyone at some point in their lives experiences depression. Depression is a normal feeling that is felt by both the rich and the poor and thus unites us as human beings. There is nothing like real suffering to unite people who perhaps would otherwise never exchange words. So here is my discussion of depression...
I don’t know why I must feel this way from time to time. Agony crashes down upon me like a fierce wave of evil emotion. I go under before I can take my first breath and those that I count dear see my weakness and push me under faster. As if being under the agony wasn’t bad enough, they push me yet deeper until all the light of the surface fades away and my soul wonders if it will ever escape. The evil currents carry me deeper still as my lungs begin to burn and long for fresh oxygen, but I am so tormented that I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t be. The agony is dark and lonely and suffocating. It is no wonder that it should be lonely, for no one can take the journey into agony with anyone else. Each one must face their own demons and their own darkness alone. Each one understands only their own pain.
Love on the human plane is a lie, told by those who would impose their will upon others, believed by those who have been deceived into thinking that life is some sort of perfect fairy tale where the prince saves the day and they live and love happily ever after. The lie is told everyday, day in and day out. For this lie and many more, I am pained, a black sheep rejected by the flock, left to walk alone in the dark night.
Depression is a familiar and perhaps even welcomed friend. At least she buries me softly in the rivers of despair like a worthless rotting corpse. Her arms surround my brokenness and let me down gently into my own private hell. I bang and scream on her chest and yet she remains with me, my silent companion. Silently, she says more than words could say as I wait in her embrace. I am waiting to be rid of her but life is familiar in her arms. Soon, she will let me go and I will float back up to the top again, to the life that I once lived in the fake plastic world that I have no choice but to call home. Sometimes I wish to go back there and pretend that life is a happy experience, but I know that where I am is more real even though it is crushingly sad. There are no plastic knights in shining armor with more courage than brains. Happily ever after is a sick joke here, as phony as fools’ gold, a tale for fools indeed. Some try to go back to the plastic world by swallowing tonics, but one cannot go back until the time is right. One can only become drunk and numb in the real world, but one cannot turn the channel from sadness to glee.
What is so wrong with heartbreak, tears, sadness, depression, distress? Are they not universal feelings felt by all human beings? Should we be so arrogant as to think that we will only get happy things in our lives without having to bear the sad things? If no one was ever sad, would anyone ever truly be happy? If there was no true sadness, would there even be plastic happiness? And still I groan under the familiar and yet unbearable weight of the pain.
Now, practically, pain, even though it is intangible, is perhaps one of the most felt forces in the world. Who has not felt the heavy burden of pain on their shoulders as if there were a boulder of invisible steel resting there. The strange nature of pain is that, even though it seems heavy for all people, no one feels the weight of pain in exactly the same way. Perhaps something that would be a light burden for some is an impossible load for others. For this reason, no one can judge another’s source of pain. There is no scale with which to weight each source of pain for the experience of pain is purely subjective.
Since pain is such a subjective experience, each person is alone in their own pain, as if they were in some kind of invisible solitary confinement. A group can mourn together, but each one mourns alone. Perhaps the aloneness itself is enough to cause the pain in the first place and the vicious cycle of pain begins and continues this way. It is no wonder, then, that many times it feels as if the pain with last forever since the experience of it causes more pain which causes more pain, ad nauseum.
So what is the solution to this convection of pain? In all honesty, for every soul that has been beset by pain, a most tempting option is suicide. Yet suicide enters the soul into the unknown of the afterlife and no one can prove where that road leads. Who is to say that there isn’t more pain, perhaps the infinite pain of Hell awaiting there? Suicide, although tempting on the surface is, therefore, a most dangerous option.
Some try to solve their cycle of pain by pretending that it does not exist: a fake it until you make it strategy. However, it is almost psychotic to think that one can become something simply by pretending to be something. I could perhaps sit here for hours and pretend to become my computer and I would breach the line of sanity if I actually professed to be a computer, wouldn’t I? The same, I believe, holds true in pretending to be happy. It is a lie at best. Lies will certainly only lead to more pain.
King Solomon said that the more wisdom one has, the more suffering they will experience and this is a true statement. Most of us strive for wisdom, but no one can say that they are any happier for having found even a small portion of it, for wisdom includes the knowledge of all the evil both in the world and in oneself. So should one flee from wisdom into stupidity and folly? No. The stupid may appear to be happy, but only inasmuch as anything living in a plastic reality could be happy and we are faced with the same situation as those who would pretend that they are happy. This happiness is based on ignorance which is a mere step up from deception.
Shall we sit then and wait for the pain to end? Surely most pain ends eventually. So we wait until we have exhausted all of our patience and then we revert back to the previous solutions that solve nothing. What, then, shall be done about pain?
I suggest that we embrace it, love it, cherish it, learn from it and become better people for it. Pain, sadness, depression: these are not malfunctions of the human brain! These are tools with which to mold the human spirit into something better. What? I don’t know, but I know it will be better. We will know how to lead others down the dark road that we have traveled even though we cannot ever go with them emotionally. We will return from the depths of pain as victorious warriors against the horrors of reality for isn’t that what a hero is? A hero fights against the cold, harsh realities of death, depravity and destruction. A hero does not back down and run away from the danger of it all, but rushes in so that others may be benefited. A hero lives for the struggle and emerges victorious. Pain is no different than a raging fire. Both are dangerous and difficult, but one can come out of them victorious, having helped others along the way. So, really, a hero is one who, despite the pain and difficulties, can stick it out and live to see another day, emerging victoriously from the fiery backdraft of pain carrying all that they have saved from the inferno. So the hero emerges from their own hell on earth with new wisdom and with the maturity to handle the suffering that comes with such wisdom.
Therefore, at the turning point of pain when a decision must be made to either carry on or give up, let us face the pain boldly and go into the fire, knowing that what will emerge on the other side will be a new person, strengthened by the fire. Let us go forward and not give up so that we can save others too. Let us not fear, knowing that just as there is pain as a result of wisdom, so there is wisdom that can be gained from each thing that we suffer. Let us never give up!
I don’t know why I must feel this way from time to time. Agony crashes down upon me like a fierce wave of evil emotion. I go under before I can take my first breath and those that I count dear see my weakness and push me under faster. As if being under the agony wasn’t bad enough, they push me yet deeper until all the light of the surface fades away and my soul wonders if it will ever escape. The evil currents carry me deeper still as my lungs begin to burn and long for fresh oxygen, but I am so tormented that I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t be. The agony is dark and lonely and suffocating. It is no wonder that it should be lonely, for no one can take the journey into agony with anyone else. Each one must face their own demons and their own darkness alone. Each one understands only their own pain.
Love on the human plane is a lie, told by those who would impose their will upon others, believed by those who have been deceived into thinking that life is some sort of perfect fairy tale where the prince saves the day and they live and love happily ever after. The lie is told everyday, day in and day out. For this lie and many more, I am pained, a black sheep rejected by the flock, left to walk alone in the dark night.
Depression is a familiar and perhaps even welcomed friend. At least she buries me softly in the rivers of despair like a worthless rotting corpse. Her arms surround my brokenness and let me down gently into my own private hell. I bang and scream on her chest and yet she remains with me, my silent companion. Silently, she says more than words could say as I wait in her embrace. I am waiting to be rid of her but life is familiar in her arms. Soon, she will let me go and I will float back up to the top again, to the life that I once lived in the fake plastic world that I have no choice but to call home. Sometimes I wish to go back there and pretend that life is a happy experience, but I know that where I am is more real even though it is crushingly sad. There are no plastic knights in shining armor with more courage than brains. Happily ever after is a sick joke here, as phony as fools’ gold, a tale for fools indeed. Some try to go back to the plastic world by swallowing tonics, but one cannot go back until the time is right. One can only become drunk and numb in the real world, but one cannot turn the channel from sadness to glee.
What is so wrong with heartbreak, tears, sadness, depression, distress? Are they not universal feelings felt by all human beings? Should we be so arrogant as to think that we will only get happy things in our lives without having to bear the sad things? If no one was ever sad, would anyone ever truly be happy? If there was no true sadness, would there even be plastic happiness? And still I groan under the familiar and yet unbearable weight of the pain.
Now, practically, pain, even though it is intangible, is perhaps one of the most felt forces in the world. Who has not felt the heavy burden of pain on their shoulders as if there were a boulder of invisible steel resting there. The strange nature of pain is that, even though it seems heavy for all people, no one feels the weight of pain in exactly the same way. Perhaps something that would be a light burden for some is an impossible load for others. For this reason, no one can judge another’s source of pain. There is no scale with which to weight each source of pain for the experience of pain is purely subjective.
Since pain is such a subjective experience, each person is alone in their own pain, as if they were in some kind of invisible solitary confinement. A group can mourn together, but each one mourns alone. Perhaps the aloneness itself is enough to cause the pain in the first place and the vicious cycle of pain begins and continues this way. It is no wonder, then, that many times it feels as if the pain with last forever since the experience of it causes more pain which causes more pain, ad nauseum.
So what is the solution to this convection of pain? In all honesty, for every soul that has been beset by pain, a most tempting option is suicide. Yet suicide enters the soul into the unknown of the afterlife and no one can prove where that road leads. Who is to say that there isn’t more pain, perhaps the infinite pain of Hell awaiting there? Suicide, although tempting on the surface is, therefore, a most dangerous option.
Some try to solve their cycle of pain by pretending that it does not exist: a fake it until you make it strategy. However, it is almost psychotic to think that one can become something simply by pretending to be something. I could perhaps sit here for hours and pretend to become my computer and I would breach the line of sanity if I actually professed to be a computer, wouldn’t I? The same, I believe, holds true in pretending to be happy. It is a lie at best. Lies will certainly only lead to more pain.
King Solomon said that the more wisdom one has, the more suffering they will experience and this is a true statement. Most of us strive for wisdom, but no one can say that they are any happier for having found even a small portion of it, for wisdom includes the knowledge of all the evil both in the world and in oneself. So should one flee from wisdom into stupidity and folly? No. The stupid may appear to be happy, but only inasmuch as anything living in a plastic reality could be happy and we are faced with the same situation as those who would pretend that they are happy. This happiness is based on ignorance which is a mere step up from deception.
Shall we sit then and wait for the pain to end? Surely most pain ends eventually. So we wait until we have exhausted all of our patience and then we revert back to the previous solutions that solve nothing. What, then, shall be done about pain?
I suggest that we embrace it, love it, cherish it, learn from it and become better people for it. Pain, sadness, depression: these are not malfunctions of the human brain! These are tools with which to mold the human spirit into something better. What? I don’t know, but I know it will be better. We will know how to lead others down the dark road that we have traveled even though we cannot ever go with them emotionally. We will return from the depths of pain as victorious warriors against the horrors of reality for isn’t that what a hero is? A hero fights against the cold, harsh realities of death, depravity and destruction. A hero does not back down and run away from the danger of it all, but rushes in so that others may be benefited. A hero lives for the struggle and emerges victorious. Pain is no different than a raging fire. Both are dangerous and difficult, but one can come out of them victorious, having helped others along the way. So, really, a hero is one who, despite the pain and difficulties, can stick it out and live to see another day, emerging victoriously from the fiery backdraft of pain carrying all that they have saved from the inferno. So the hero emerges from their own hell on earth with new wisdom and with the maturity to handle the suffering that comes with such wisdom.
Therefore, at the turning point of pain when a decision must be made to either carry on or give up, let us face the pain boldly and go into the fire, knowing that what will emerge on the other side will be a new person, strengthened by the fire. Let us go forward and not give up so that we can save others too. Let us not fear, knowing that just as there is pain as a result of wisdom, so there is wisdom that can be gained from each thing that we suffer. Let us never give up!
Monday, May 12, 2008
A Paper On World Hunger
The Cost of Western Greed
D is a single mother of 2 intelligent children who are both college students. She works 7 days a week in the front of her house changing oil in people’s cars for very little money. Her children have to come and go with great caution in their neighborhood because it is the second most dangerous one in all of their country. D has some friends in the US who invited her for an all-expenses-paid visit, but the United States government refused to give her a visa to visit. The reason was plainly stated to her. She was too poor. Why is it that so much of the world is so very poor? It is the fault of the rich and greedy west! One third of the world is starving to death while people are growing more and more obese in the US. The west has an abundance while people like D are barely getting by. There are many costs of the greed of the west.
First, our greed for oil to make our gasoline is ridiculous and even though gas prices are soaring here in California to over $4, people still insist on buying large SUV’s that guzzle obscene amounts of gasoline. You may only think that this affects the fool who buys such a large vehicle, but it actually affects the world. As the demand for oil goes up due to the larger vehicles that people are buying, the price for oil also goes up because they know that people need to buy it and that they can get away with making the prices higher. When the price goes higher, so does the price of everything else because most things have to be shipped to where they are sold and this takes gasoline. The most critical thing is the price of food. This may just be an annoyance to those of us who can afford to buy at least enough food to sustain ourselves, but it pushes the price of food beyond the reach of other people who just flat out don’t make enough money to buy it. Those people have several choices to get food and I will name two here. They can do the democratic thing and protest the high prices, but they may starve to death in the process. They can steal food, but they risk the penalty in their country for theft, which could be quite severe depending on the laws of the country. So while we drive around in our large vehicles with air-conditioning and complain about gas costing us so much, someone in Africa is starving to death in the 100+ heat because they can’t afford food.
So what can we do? This is really a global problem, so no one can do it all by themselves but there are some things that we can all do. We could take public transportation in some situations where it actually goes where we need to go and when we need to go, which I know is quite a stretch here in California since the public transportation is so crummy. We could invest in smaller vehicles. Personally, I drive a one-cylinder motorcycle which gets around 60 miles per gallon. Hybrids are also an option, but for God’s sake, buy a hybrid that is a car, not an SUV since that would not be conserving much gasoline at all. Having a smaller vehicle will cut down the demand for oil, which means that the companies will have to compete again for the best price since people will be able to travel to cheaper gas stations to get gas since they won’t have to get it as much. If this doesn’t work, at least there will be extra money in your pocket that you can use to help the poor and starving people of the world.
Another reason that the price of food is so high in poor countries is that the west imports all the food that is produced in those countries. “36 of 40 of the hungriest countries in the world sell food to us instead of us sending food to them.” (Lecture 4/9/2008) Look around. We are a very obese country. Not only is obesity terrible for our health and perhaps lethal over time due to illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes, but it is quickly lethal for people in other countries because they are starving to death while we eat up all their food. Another part of the problem is the demand for meat here. “It takes 12.5 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef protein so food is taken from the people who need it.” (Lecture 4/9/2008) Instead of feeding the poor, we feed our cows and pigs so that we can eat them later! We choose pigs over people and cows over children.
There are several things that we can do to lessen this problem as well. One of them would be to eat less meat or stop eating meat altogether. If the demand for meat decreases, maybe the fields where the animals are currently will start to be used for growing more food for people around the world. Another added benefit of not eating meat would be that it would keep animals from being abused and meat from being tainted due to the high demand for it. Too much meat is not healthy for you either, especially when the meat is cheap such as what is found in our hamburgers here. Cutting some of it out of our diets would not only be a start to helping the starving people in the world, but it would be healthier for us as well.
Another thing we could do, even if we refuse to eat less, is to at least not order more than we can eat. Here in the US, a decent meal can many times be found in the trash cans of others. When a pizza is not picked up from the pizza delivery place, it is often thrown out right in the box. If the fast food place makes your order wrong and you return it, they throw it right into the trash! Some grocery stores throw out dented cans of food. Providing that these cans are not dented along the seal of the metal, the contents is perfectly good but people don’t want to buy it because it is dented so they will throw it out. There may not be much we can do about that besides perhaps waiting for the pizza trash to come out for the night, but restaurants are not the only ones who throw out food. What do we do with that extra bit of food that we can’t eat? Some of us may bring the extra home and put it in the refrigerator, but many times, the food is just thrown away. Now maybe you wouldn’t eat after someone else that you didn’t know, but I will tell you one thing from personal experience, if you are hungry enough, you will wolf it right down. So what we could do to minimize the amount of food that is wasted is to make sure that we have accurately communicated our order and to order only the food that we are actually going to eat.
The last option I will give to help people in the world who are starving is to donate food to them. You could invite one of the homeless people that you see out to eat with you. You could probably both use the company and the food. You could sponsor one of those children from the commercials. You could visit a poor country and feed the people there yourself. You could also help them get a farm started or find them some other way for them to provide for themselves. Not only would that be a life-saver for those people, but it would be a good experience for you as well. Now say you are like me and you really don’t have any money at all, but you want to help. I found a webpage where you can click on a little icon and the sponsors of that page will donate to the poor and starving throughout the world. The webpage is here: http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1 All it takes is a click and someone is 1 cup of food richer. You can click once a day. Another thing you can do is protest against the treatment of the people in other countries and the exploitation of the natural resources of their country. You may not think that you, as one person, can do much, but if you do nothing, you are a part of the problem. It may take an army of “one-persons” to change things, but if all of those people refuse to act because they are only one person, then people will keep on starving to death day after day.
Finally, what is more important than just talking about the world hunger problem is doing something to solve the problem. You may read this essay and think, “Yes. That is so sad that people are starving to death and we are certainly responsible”, but if you do nothing to help solve the problem, then you might as well burn the pages that contain these words because they have not served their purpose. Action, not words, is the only thing that will solve the world hunger problem. Remember, non-action is actually an action.
D is a single mother of 2 intelligent children who are both college students. She works 7 days a week in the front of her house changing oil in people’s cars for very little money. Her children have to come and go with great caution in their neighborhood because it is the second most dangerous one in all of their country. D has some friends in the US who invited her for an all-expenses-paid visit, but the United States government refused to give her a visa to visit. The reason was plainly stated to her. She was too poor. Why is it that so much of the world is so very poor? It is the fault of the rich and greedy west! One third of the world is starving to death while people are growing more and more obese in the US. The west has an abundance while people like D are barely getting by. There are many costs of the greed of the west.
First, our greed for oil to make our gasoline is ridiculous and even though gas prices are soaring here in California to over $4, people still insist on buying large SUV’s that guzzle obscene amounts of gasoline. You may only think that this affects the fool who buys such a large vehicle, but it actually affects the world. As the demand for oil goes up due to the larger vehicles that people are buying, the price for oil also goes up because they know that people need to buy it and that they can get away with making the prices higher. When the price goes higher, so does the price of everything else because most things have to be shipped to where they are sold and this takes gasoline. The most critical thing is the price of food. This may just be an annoyance to those of us who can afford to buy at least enough food to sustain ourselves, but it pushes the price of food beyond the reach of other people who just flat out don’t make enough money to buy it. Those people have several choices to get food and I will name two here. They can do the democratic thing and protest the high prices, but they may starve to death in the process. They can steal food, but they risk the penalty in their country for theft, which could be quite severe depending on the laws of the country. So while we drive around in our large vehicles with air-conditioning and complain about gas costing us so much, someone in Africa is starving to death in the 100+ heat because they can’t afford food.
So what can we do? This is really a global problem, so no one can do it all by themselves but there are some things that we can all do. We could take public transportation in some situations where it actually goes where we need to go and when we need to go, which I know is quite a stretch here in California since the public transportation is so crummy. We could invest in smaller vehicles. Personally, I drive a one-cylinder motorcycle which gets around 60 miles per gallon. Hybrids are also an option, but for God’s sake, buy a hybrid that is a car, not an SUV since that would not be conserving much gasoline at all. Having a smaller vehicle will cut down the demand for oil, which means that the companies will have to compete again for the best price since people will be able to travel to cheaper gas stations to get gas since they won’t have to get it as much. If this doesn’t work, at least there will be extra money in your pocket that you can use to help the poor and starving people of the world.
Another reason that the price of food is so high in poor countries is that the west imports all the food that is produced in those countries. “36 of 40 of the hungriest countries in the world sell food to us instead of us sending food to them.” (Lecture 4/9/2008) Look around. We are a very obese country. Not only is obesity terrible for our health and perhaps lethal over time due to illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes, but it is quickly lethal for people in other countries because they are starving to death while we eat up all their food. Another part of the problem is the demand for meat here. “It takes 12.5 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef protein so food is taken from the people who need it.” (Lecture 4/9/2008) Instead of feeding the poor, we feed our cows and pigs so that we can eat them later! We choose pigs over people and cows over children.
There are several things that we can do to lessen this problem as well. One of them would be to eat less meat or stop eating meat altogether. If the demand for meat decreases, maybe the fields where the animals are currently will start to be used for growing more food for people around the world. Another added benefit of not eating meat would be that it would keep animals from being abused and meat from being tainted due to the high demand for it. Too much meat is not healthy for you either, especially when the meat is cheap such as what is found in our hamburgers here. Cutting some of it out of our diets would not only be a start to helping the starving people in the world, but it would be healthier for us as well.
Another thing we could do, even if we refuse to eat less, is to at least not order more than we can eat. Here in the US, a decent meal can many times be found in the trash cans of others. When a pizza is not picked up from the pizza delivery place, it is often thrown out right in the box. If the fast food place makes your order wrong and you return it, they throw it right into the trash! Some grocery stores throw out dented cans of food. Providing that these cans are not dented along the seal of the metal, the contents is perfectly good but people don’t want to buy it because it is dented so they will throw it out. There may not be much we can do about that besides perhaps waiting for the pizza trash to come out for the night, but restaurants are not the only ones who throw out food. What do we do with that extra bit of food that we can’t eat? Some of us may bring the extra home and put it in the refrigerator, but many times, the food is just thrown away. Now maybe you wouldn’t eat after someone else that you didn’t know, but I will tell you one thing from personal experience, if you are hungry enough, you will wolf it right down. So what we could do to minimize the amount of food that is wasted is to make sure that we have accurately communicated our order and to order only the food that we are actually going to eat.
The last option I will give to help people in the world who are starving is to donate food to them. You could invite one of the homeless people that you see out to eat with you. You could probably both use the company and the food. You could sponsor one of those children from the commercials. You could visit a poor country and feed the people there yourself. You could also help them get a farm started or find them some other way for them to provide for themselves. Not only would that be a life-saver for those people, but it would be a good experience for you as well. Now say you are like me and you really don’t have any money at all, but you want to help. I found a webpage where you can click on a little icon and the sponsors of that page will donate to the poor and starving throughout the world. The webpage is here: http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1 All it takes is a click and someone is 1 cup of food richer. You can click once a day. Another thing you can do is protest against the treatment of the people in other countries and the exploitation of the natural resources of their country. You may not think that you, as one person, can do much, but if you do nothing, you are a part of the problem. It may take an army of “one-persons” to change things, but if all of those people refuse to act because they are only one person, then people will keep on starving to death day after day.
Finally, what is more important than just talking about the world hunger problem is doing something to solve the problem. You may read this essay and think, “Yes. That is so sad that people are starving to death and we are certainly responsible”, but if you do nothing to help solve the problem, then you might as well burn the pages that contain these words because they have not served their purpose. Action, not words, is the only thing that will solve the world hunger problem. Remember, non-action is actually an action.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
A World Hunger Wake-Up Call!!!
We have, not just the right, but a duty to correct our country and our world whenever it is going in the wrong direction.
The United States, and many rich nations of the world with her, is going in the wrong direction and the majority of the people of these countries don't know it. As it should be obvious to those of us to spend any amount of time on the internet, the world is becoming a lot smaller due to the fact that we can all communicate. Every country is the world is dependent and connected with the rest of the world. Now it is possible to talk to people from countries very far from our own through the internet. We can find out about the cultures of the world and they can find out about us and what do they find?
The countries in the north hemisphere generally make about 30 times the money of what the people in the southern hemisphere make. As a loyal capitalist, you may say that the poor have earned their poverty by not working as hard as the rich and that they should not be rewarded by handouts because of their laziness. However, most people in South America work at their jobs for the time that they are teenagers to the time that they die, never getting ahead and, in some cases, actually falling behind financially. A large portion of the population of the world is actually starving to death!!! Why? Because multinational corporations own the natural resources of the poorer countries and, even though at least the government in these countries should be rich from their resources, the profits from these natural resources actually goes to the multinational corporations and to the people who invest in their stock here in the US and in some other rich countries. Is this fair to the people of these countries who are starving to death? Is this moral or even humane?
There are probably more rights to this and rights to that here in the US than there are rights in most of the world and yet we so freely take away the rights of the peoples of other poorer countries. Would we not frown upon a rich man going and taking the few dollars that a poor man has, thereby causing him to starve to death? So why then, do we stand by and allow our country to be a part of the raping of the natural resources of the world? Certainly the people of the United States and of other rich countries are generous and kind people. We are not bad people. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the majority of the people in the countries that are robbing the poor do not know about what their country is doing or do not understand the ramifications of what's going on.
Most people know that there are starving children in Africa. That is what our parents tell us when we try to waste the food that we didn't like as children and that is what we see so many times in the commercials that say that we can support and hungry child and so on. What the people don't know is that our country has contributed to the starvation and suffering of those poor children that we see on TV. More than 1/3 of the world has a calorie intake that is less than what is recommended. In other words, they are starving. Some may say that there is not enough food for everyone, but this is not the case either. See, the richer people are buying up all the food and getting fat on it. We demand beef and chicken and other meats when it takes 12.5 pounds of grain protein to produce one pound of beef protein. Our registered cats and dogs in the US alone consume more food than ALL of the people in South America COMBINED!!! The grain that we use in beer in the US alone could feed 80 million people on a regular basis!!! 15% of the fertilizer of the world is used in the US for the beautification of our yards alone!!! In other words, we use 15% of the fertilizer that could be used to help grow food in other countries on our lawn!!!
Now you may say, but wait, we are a rich country, but we give a lot of foreign aid. We give 0.017% of what we make as a nation to foreign aid while Saudi Arabia gives 10% of what they make. What is more, we only give aid to countries that are our friends. We basically pay for favors that they can give us. We give to rich countries, not the poor ones. We give to Israel, Spain, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Are these strictly poor countries? What about Africa, India, Haiti and South America just to name a few countries and regions that could really use some foreign aid?
Others may say that we may use some of the natural resources of other countries, but argue that we produce a lot of food and export it. The reverse is actually true. We are actually the 3rd leading importer of food in the world. 2/3 of our imports of food come from the poorest countries in the world. We import over 40% of the international trade in beef. We import 1/3 of the world's trade in fish and seafood. We use up a large portion of the natural resources of the entire world!
While we are an extremely rich country, we fail to use our resources well. It is no secret that the US has a large amount of the latest weapons, as do most of the richer countries in the world. There is actually enough explosive material in the world for each individual person on earth could own the equivalent of 30 tons of TNT and yet there are people who are starving to death...
Think about this for a while. While you have been reading this post, people have probably died of starvation while you and I sit around in our houses full of the latest advances of science and technology. Can we, in good faith as fellow human beings, sit by and let people die of starvation without so much as protesting this travesty of justice? Think long and hard about this because, in end, we are all human beings on this planet called earth no matter where we live or what we believe and we should unite together for the betterment of humanity. United we stand, divided we fall.
Stay tuned for some possible solutions to this global problem and others. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I can only pray that this information has touched you like it touched me.
- All facts and figures from my Non-Western World class from my teacher, Jamal Nassar.
The United States, and many rich nations of the world with her, is going in the wrong direction and the majority of the people of these countries don't know it. As it should be obvious to those of us to spend any amount of time on the internet, the world is becoming a lot smaller due to the fact that we can all communicate. Every country is the world is dependent and connected with the rest of the world. Now it is possible to talk to people from countries very far from our own through the internet. We can find out about the cultures of the world and they can find out about us and what do they find?
The countries in the north hemisphere generally make about 30 times the money of what the people in the southern hemisphere make. As a loyal capitalist, you may say that the poor have earned their poverty by not working as hard as the rich and that they should not be rewarded by handouts because of their laziness. However, most people in South America work at their jobs for the time that they are teenagers to the time that they die, never getting ahead and, in some cases, actually falling behind financially. A large portion of the population of the world is actually starving to death!!! Why? Because multinational corporations own the natural resources of the poorer countries and, even though at least the government in these countries should be rich from their resources, the profits from these natural resources actually goes to the multinational corporations and to the people who invest in their stock here in the US and in some other rich countries. Is this fair to the people of these countries who are starving to death? Is this moral or even humane?
There are probably more rights to this and rights to that here in the US than there are rights in most of the world and yet we so freely take away the rights of the peoples of other poorer countries. Would we not frown upon a rich man going and taking the few dollars that a poor man has, thereby causing him to starve to death? So why then, do we stand by and allow our country to be a part of the raping of the natural resources of the world? Certainly the people of the United States and of other rich countries are generous and kind people. We are not bad people. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the majority of the people in the countries that are robbing the poor do not know about what their country is doing or do not understand the ramifications of what's going on.
Most people know that there are starving children in Africa. That is what our parents tell us when we try to waste the food that we didn't like as children and that is what we see so many times in the commercials that say that we can support and hungry child and so on. What the people don't know is that our country has contributed to the starvation and suffering of those poor children that we see on TV. More than 1/3 of the world has a calorie intake that is less than what is recommended. In other words, they are starving. Some may say that there is not enough food for everyone, but this is not the case either. See, the richer people are buying up all the food and getting fat on it. We demand beef and chicken and other meats when it takes 12.5 pounds of grain protein to produce one pound of beef protein. Our registered cats and dogs in the US alone consume more food than ALL of the people in South America COMBINED!!! The grain that we use in beer in the US alone could feed 80 million people on a regular basis!!! 15% of the fertilizer of the world is used in the US for the beautification of our yards alone!!! In other words, we use 15% of the fertilizer that could be used to help grow food in other countries on our lawn!!!
Now you may say, but wait, we are a rich country, but we give a lot of foreign aid. We give 0.017% of what we make as a nation to foreign aid while Saudi Arabia gives 10% of what they make. What is more, we only give aid to countries that are our friends. We basically pay for favors that they can give us. We give to rich countries, not the poor ones. We give to Israel, Spain, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Are these strictly poor countries? What about Africa, India, Haiti and South America just to name a few countries and regions that could really use some foreign aid?
Others may say that we may use some of the natural resources of other countries, but argue that we produce a lot of food and export it. The reverse is actually true. We are actually the 3rd leading importer of food in the world. 2/3 of our imports of food come from the poorest countries in the world. We import over 40% of the international trade in beef. We import 1/3 of the world's trade in fish and seafood. We use up a large portion of the natural resources of the entire world!
While we are an extremely rich country, we fail to use our resources well. It is no secret that the US has a large amount of the latest weapons, as do most of the richer countries in the world. There is actually enough explosive material in the world for each individual person on earth could own the equivalent of 30 tons of TNT and yet there are people who are starving to death...
Think about this for a while. While you have been reading this post, people have probably died of starvation while you and I sit around in our houses full of the latest advances of science and technology. Can we, in good faith as fellow human beings, sit by and let people die of starvation without so much as protesting this travesty of justice? Think long and hard about this because, in end, we are all human beings on this planet called earth no matter where we live or what we believe and we should unite together for the betterment of humanity. United we stand, divided we fall.
Stay tuned for some possible solutions to this global problem and others. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I can only pray that this information has touched you like it touched me.
- All facts and figures from my Non-Western World class from my teacher, Jamal Nassar.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)