It is interesting, that for what makes a 'good' person, generally, for the most part, people regard other people as 'good' if they are involved in 'humanitarian' affairs.
This involves, feeding the poor, building homes for the poor -- anything to do with helping the poor in any way shape or form.
It involves being kind to people, it involves working hard for your family. It involves seeking to find cures for cancer and aids, being a doctor or a lawyer -- professions known for their service to others. Granted, it also pays quite well. But this is exactly what people find worthy of higher prices, they want to make sure that they can get the best doctor and the best care that they can.
Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these factors. However, the cultural appropriateness of our times, has imbedded these values so deeply into our psyche that we are not quite emotionally associated with them, as we are ideologically attached to them. So we value them almost on a superficial level, helping humanity in this way, is the 'good' thing to do, I will 'earn' a lot of money, it will look 'good' on a resume, I will impress so many people, people will 'like' me because of this. The list goes on.
If the compassion was real. It wouldn't stop at humans. Because we have this heightened value on being human without a real connection to what compassion actually means, It barricades humanity from really understanding what it means to be of full service to life. Our cultural parameters are currently giving no direction on enlightenment. In fact, it's doing quite the opposite, it seems to be reinforcing habits and behaviors that pull consciousness towards the ego.
With all of the confusing signals, it's no wonder that humanity is actually in sort of semi conscious delusional state. Where value is spoken about human life. We attempt to value human life, but we get confused and
I would like to say, 'human life'. Because everyone 'knows' culturally, that this is what makes you a 'good' person, but in actuality, the feelings are quite dull and disorganized. This is why it's so easy for wars to start, for mothers to kill babies, for abuse in homes and for murder on the streets. You can't associate value to one aspect of life, while ignoring the rest of it, and expect the masses to blindly follow. Life doesn't work like that. You either have love and compassion for all of life, or you don't. Picking and choosing, only creates separation, and that separation starts bleeding into the parameters that were first designed to create that original distinction.. which in our case, is being human.
It's gone quite chaotic actually. On the outside, everything we do, is for the sake of 'humanity'. But in reality, it doesn't exist, everything that ends up being done, is really just being done in this state of confusion. And the person doing the 'good' ends up just being allotted more 'resources' for being 'good'. It creates, definitely a negative feedback loop. People striving for higher and higher achievements for greater and greater personal gains disguised as 'worldly gains'.
This is not meant to throw any one under a bus, what I mean is, if the person is supposedly 'giving to humanity' but creating massive destruction in regards to the environment or parts of humanity that go unseen or subjugating animals... in no way, are these functions, actually 'giving or serving humanity'. In our system, unfortunately we don't have these checks.. and actually the people who make the most money for 'serving humanity' are most often destroying nature and living organisms in the process.
Let's take agriculture. The latest dilemma among top agricultural scientists, is "how to feed the world". This has got to be the most ridiculous scientific pursuit, if I have ever heard of one.
Of course, no one deserves to starve. But currently the debate in the agricultural community is this,
1-- Organic agriculturists claim that organic has the answer -- that it can easily feed the world and do so in a way that would be affordable to small rural poor farmers, it can also provide ecological functions long term, it doesn't degrade the land or the soil or the water supplies. ... etc.
2-- Among conventional agriculturists, they claim that organic agriculture will need 2x as much land to feed the world than conventional farms will to 'feed the world', so they claim that this will destroy more pristine habitat in order to accomplish 'feeding' the world' under an organic system.
Conventional agriculturists say that the 2nd green revolution is coming and it will involve GMOs feeding the world. They will create pesticide tolerant plants and vitamin enhanced grains.
So, the conventional folk are leaving out some major factors.
1- They are not considering that organic agriculture in many parts of the world are making use of degraded, barren plots of land -- that have already been abandoned by conventional farmers -- who farmed for too long unsustainably in one place. Organic does not inherently mean that we need to destroy more forests and pristine habitat. They are also not considering that when comparing yields of multi cropped systems, organic agriculture often fairs ahead of the game. Actually this is the only way to reduce malnutrition. Feeding one town with only one grain-- even if it is enhanced with more vitamin A-- won't be sufficient in meeting their nutritional needs.
2- These fancy GMOs and other agricultural technologies often don't make it to impoverished areas.. and if they do they wreck havoc on the local economy because farmers are permanently indebted to these huge companies. Blanket solutions that are thought to solve 'world problems' are complete propaganda. Every place is dramatically different, with dramatically different weather systems, cultural norms, soil types.. we need individualized solutions to fit specific places.. not 'world solutions' to fit every place. It's complete arrogance for big agricultural companies to convince people that this is the way to 'feed the world'. They are masking their own greed for wealth, by essentially 'selling' their product to a market--which economically speaking, of course they are going to want to sell it to the 'world', they make billions in revenue every year.
The first green revolution Cargill's revenue increased by 86% in 3 months. This was the phase of synthetic chemicals and pesticides. Their revenue jumped from 553 million to 1030 million.
And did it actually feed the world? Not even close. Actually today, there are more hungry people then we have ever seen in history. Why? Because they are being trickled food.. enough to reproduce yet not enough to live normal lives, and the 'food' that these companies say will feed them.. is white rice.. wheat.... These foods are not nutritionally adequate.
3- They also forgot to mention that creating genes that are more pest resistant.. actually is only short term, the pests become increasingly immune.. and again we are in an arms race with bugs... bugs evolving to cope with the drugs, and we either having to continually splice more pest resistant genes or apply more pesticide. What we DONT know. Is what affects these pesticides have on human bodies in that kind of amount.. especially if pesticides are spliced into all of the vegetable genes? Scientific studies have already been published associating neurological disorders with certain pesticides. Nothing is proven.. but are we willing to take that risk? If the large corporations take over our food supply and start splicing genes.. there is no going back.
If we are serious about 'feeding the world'. We have to eradicate this complete bizarre notion that we can 'feed the world'. It's atrocious wording.
Let us help our brothers and our sisters feed themselves. Let's reinvigorate natural habitats, restore previous forests and wetlands -- these are the most sustainable food supplies we could have ever been given. They don't need outside water, they don't need constant care. We need to restore the land, before the land restores us... to the land because we haven't figured out what ACTUALLY supports humanity. Which is actually... every living and non living being on planet earth.
We have falsely assumed that humanity supports humanity. This is a huge joke. We can only support other humans, if we have healthy ecosystems.
Many conventional agriculturists believe that organic can't feed the world because it is too expensive.
This is something else that obviously hasn't really been considered. Conventional agriculture uses massive amounts of fossil fuels, in order to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into synthetic compounds to use on the farm. Which actually becomes more of a salt.. so it only gives the appearance of big plants.. when actuality, it's mostly water retention. This is why organic produce is often smaller, because the vegetables and the fruits are closer to their natural form with much more condensed nutrition load. This is another reason why they say yield is so much greater for conventional, but in reality they are adding up water weight mostly.
Another thing that was not considered is that organic agriculture is not subsidized-- it's possible that perhaps some large farms could be, but for the most part organic farms are too small to be subsidized and they have too much variation in their produce. Subsidies typically come from a very large supply of one kind of crop -- typically something like rice, soybean or corn.
Huge subsidies are allotted to these grains, and then to industries that create meat.
If we were to raise the cost of meat.. to it's actual cost. A pound of beef would cost something like $27.
That is just conventionally raised!
Perhaps one of the best things we could do, is take away our subsidies on grains, and start subsidizing diverse fruit and vegetable crops. This would raise the price of grain and meat, providing a real incentive for people to lower their consumption of these foods, which actually could be the best thing 'humanity' could do for our current health issues.
Large meat and grain consumption have huge health implications, because many people only eat these foods and totally ignore the importance of a diet mostly based on fruit and vegetables. Heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes.. etc, all are effects of a diet based on too little vegetable and fruit intake.
The more we can learn to care about our surrounding ecosystem functions, the lives of other plants and animal species, and the quality of life as it is... without trying to be improved upon and re-invented... the more we will actually see the what it means to live life with integrity, purpose, compassion and good-will. This curse of anthropocentrism needs to end.. before it ends all of us.
We are only a strand in this huge web of life... somehow we have successfully encouraged and perpetuated the demise of other living organisms.. and soon we will find that we were attached to them all .. all along, as their demise, only drags us along.
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