If hunger was a scarier bogeyman that threatened rich fat people, then we'd use our tax money differently. We've spent almost $960,000,000.00 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Think of how many lives would have been saved if we chose to buy burgers instead of bullets. Anyone else feeling manipulated?
I'd rather spend it on light-rail and bike paths. Keeping hundreds of millions alive who would otherwise die from social and environmental conditions, doesn't help me, or my family, or the world. Darwin would say is hinders it.
ReplyDeleteExcept for massive regional upheavals getting worse and worse as more people go hungry. Droughts getting worse due to climate change are going to make it even more dire. It turns into a very real national and world security issue and we will end up spending billions of dollars dealing with it. Wars will be fought over water. Better to start dealing with it now to keep it from turning into a global catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteBike paths, light rail, climate change, hunger, national security, social upheavals, oil and water shortages, war and terrorism are all interrelated. I say we work more on the causes and less on the effects.
ReplyDeleteWhen the ebbing tide retreats
ReplyDeleteAlong the rocky shoreline
It leaves a trail of tidal pools
In a short-lived galaxy
Each microcosmic planet
A complete society
A simple kind mirror
To reflect upon our own
All the busy little creatures
Chasing out their destinies
Living in their pools
They soon forget about the sea...
Wheels within wheels in a spiral array
A pattern so grand and complex
Time after time we lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see their effects
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
ReplyDeleteThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
I like that. Yeats, eh?
ReplyDelete