I am far too entertained when watching my cat do something stupid. Honestly. I just spent about five minutes observing him smack a box of candy with his paw.
In addition, Meg and I bought Across the Universe last weekend and I have not been able to get the Beatles out of my head since. A point was raised, however, when watching this 1960s musical melodrama about the generations. (Yes, both my parents and parents-in-law watched this too with commentary). There is a point, however, in specifically the parallels between the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.
There are certainly a lot of people angry about Bush's War, both home and abroad, much like the unfortunate mistake forty years ago, but we are without the protests, the activism, the marching. I am as guilty of this lethargy as so many others. It is certainly understandable the the nature of the world itself has changed, and for the better is many respects; this is particularly poignant when viewed through the lens of the internet (is that supposed to be capitalized?). There is without a doubt no shortage of web-activism, but I feel that many of us are removed from this. Millions are on MoveOn.org's mailing lists, but do computer-generated form letters from a "Click Here to notify your congressman/senator/governor/President Bush" really have an impact?
Does social change need the classical thousands marching in the streets? I can recall only one major event in March of 2003, right before the beginning of Bush's War*. Personally, I long for that sort of involvement-- a desire to be a part of history. I wonder now where our place is.
We qualify as "Generation Y." I like this term because someone once argued against it by saying that it made us sound "cynical and jaded" which I think astutely describes the wave of Americans born roughly between 1980 and 1993. Gen Y now enters into the beginnings of "real world" (and there is turbulence in our landing), to the beguilement of those who came before us. We are the Americans who came of age in a time of tribulation, of disaster, of change upon us whether we wanted it or not; and as we age, the older ones will step to the side and this will be ours. And our responsibility to solve for the latter end of the 21st century. It has yet to be determined how the Boomer Generation's impact on the world will be measured let alone ours.
Anyone have any thoughts?
* I'm trying to propagate the term "Bush's War" as the name for the current conflict. This is nice and egalitarian. Those who think of this war as good will always remember who led them to this glory, and those who hate it will always remember whose fault it is. Either way, I want history to remember this one as the act of our leaders and not of our nation
Showing posts with label dirty hippies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dirty hippies. Show all posts
06 March, 2008
11 February, 2008
Ranting-- Good for the soul
Good Monday, everyone!
It's an awfully hard thing to manage to find time for independent reading, but if you get the chance, I would recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's a sinclaireqsue journey to the source of the American meal. No sausage-factories per se, but it is an exploration of our society's natural propensity for abundance, and how a nation of poor in the land of plenty eventually got exactly what they wanted-- everything.
If you have spoken tome personally at some point in the last couple of years, the odds are good that you have heard at least one diatribe on the evils of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This chemical, derived from the nutrient-rich portion of a zea mays seed (corn kernel) has found its way into just about everything most Americans eat. It is added as a sweetener, as a replacement for imported sugar by all-American midwest-grown, agricorporate-owned formerly prairie farmland. In our world, there is an eternal web of interconnectedness (i.e., I could go into a rant about the abusive power of the agribusiness lobby, but I think that would distract me from... whatever it is that I'm talking about), but in the United States, HFCS is cheap, plentiful, and artificial.
"So what if it's synthetic, Phil?"
HFCS is just the most well-known example. Looking at the back of most foods, we are familiar with the laboratory-eqsue terms such as "xantham gum," "lecithan", and others. At the heart of this matter, is that most of these are derived from corn. That's just the vegetarian-friendly fare.
Chickens eat corn. Duh. That's what they do. They're chickens. Their job is to eat things they find on the ground (corn, bugs, crap) and eat it. Later, their job is to lay a few eggs and eventually populate the stir-fry I'm planning for tomorrow night. But, we as a people are the red-meat loving, leather-wearing cowboys who like beef, which like anything else is good in moderation. Bovines, however, are ruminants, in that they are evolutionarily geared to eat grass and have a lovely symbiotic team with this undigestible-by-humans plant. But as corn is cheap & plentiful, factory cows (yes, I'll use factory, long ago, they stopped being animals and started being raw material to process) are fed only a slurry of corn/pharmaceutical-derived... something for a few brief, miserable weeks in their accelerated lives from calf-to-steak.
There is much, much more in Pollan's book, but this overdependence on maise worries me deeply. The Aztecs, who were the original cultivators of this tropical grass, literally worshiped corn as the source of all life-- they had no illusions that they were anything other than "corn people" in their own words. Yet it's this monoculture as the basis of our society's food system strikes me as highly unstable. An over-reliance on anything is dangerous; I will admittedly say that I don't know all that much about biology or agriculture, but I have a disturbing feeling that we are setting ourselves up for a Malthusian- like catastrophe in the event of a crop-collapse.
This is the sort of thing that makes me begin to consider some of the back-to-the-land movements in the '70s with some sort of quasi-utopian fantasy of a self-sustaining community up in the Green Mountains. I am often concerned about the state of the world. Or, specifically, how long we can keep going at the pace which we are. Often, I have faith that some sort of balancing forces will ultimately keep things in check, but it is likely that a proper solution would be a worldwide motion toward a sustainable planet. We certainly have enough to support everyone, but there needs to be a concerted leadership, a greater sense of unity. Goodness knows that the knowhow and funding and technology and will is out there, but so rarely do these things come together for a truly great cause. But hasn't things like this been the bane of humanity since the dawn of civilization? Are there real solutions? Or should we all just withdraw into our Ron Paul-wannabe enclaves and simply not interact with our neighbors?
To be lazy, we need a deus ex machina.
To be hopeful, we need tomorrow
Good Monday, everyone!
It's an awfully hard thing to manage to find time for independent reading, but if you get the chance, I would recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's a sinclaireqsue journey to the source of the American meal. No sausage-factories per se, but it is an exploration of our society's natural propensity for abundance, and how a nation of poor in the land of plenty eventually got exactly what they wanted-- everything.
If you have spoken tome personally at some point in the last couple of years, the odds are good that you have heard at least one diatribe on the evils of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This chemical, derived from the nutrient-rich portion of a zea mays seed (corn kernel) has found its way into just about everything most Americans eat. It is added as a sweetener, as a replacement for imported sugar by all-American midwest-grown, agricorporate-owned formerly prairie farmland. In our world, there is an eternal web of interconnectedness (i.e., I could go into a rant about the abusive power of the agribusiness lobby, but I think that would distract me from... whatever it is that I'm talking about), but in the United States, HFCS is cheap, plentiful, and artificial.
"So what if it's synthetic, Phil?"
HFCS is just the most well-known example. Looking at the back of most foods, we are familiar with the laboratory-eqsue terms such as "xantham gum," "lecithan", and others. At the heart of this matter, is that most of these are derived from corn. That's just the vegetarian-friendly fare.
Chickens eat corn. Duh. That's what they do. They're chickens. Their job is to eat things they find on the ground (corn, bugs, crap) and eat it. Later, their job is to lay a few eggs and eventually populate the stir-fry I'm planning for tomorrow night. But, we as a people are the red-meat loving, leather-wearing cowboys who like beef, which like anything else is good in moderation. Bovines, however, are ruminants, in that they are evolutionarily geared to eat grass and have a lovely symbiotic team with this undigestible-by-humans plant. But as corn is cheap & plentiful, factory cows (yes, I'll use factory, long ago, they stopped being animals and started being raw material to process) are fed only a slurry of corn/pharmaceutical-derived... something for a few brief, miserable weeks in their accelerated lives from calf-to-steak.
There is much, much more in Pollan's book, but this overdependence on maise worries me deeply. The Aztecs, who were the original cultivators of this tropical grass, literally worshiped corn as the source of all life-- they had no illusions that they were anything other than "corn people" in their own words. Yet it's this monoculture as the basis of our society's food system strikes me as highly unstable. An over-reliance on anything is dangerous; I will admittedly say that I don't know all that much about biology or agriculture, but I have a disturbing feeling that we are setting ourselves up for a Malthusian- like catastrophe in the event of a crop-collapse.
This is the sort of thing that makes me begin to consider some of the back-to-the-land movements in the '70s with some sort of quasi-utopian fantasy of a self-sustaining community up in the Green Mountains. I am often concerned about the state of the world. Or, specifically, how long we can keep going at the pace which we are. Often, I have faith that some sort of balancing forces will ultimately keep things in check, but it is likely that a proper solution would be a worldwide motion toward a sustainable planet. We certainly have enough to support everyone, but there needs to be a concerted leadership, a greater sense of unity. Goodness knows that the knowhow and funding and technology and will is out there, but so rarely do these things come together for a truly great cause. But hasn't things like this been the bane of humanity since the dawn of civilization? Are there real solutions? Or should we all just withdraw into our Ron Paul-wannabe enclaves and simply not interact with our neighbors?
To be lazy, we need a deus ex machina.
To be hopeful, we need tomorrow
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