I had a recent conversation with a friend at a dinner about hunger in the world. When I mentioned that the Western world was very much responsible for children, let’s say in Africa, dying daily of starvation, my friend opened her eyes really big and replied “what does this have to do with me and what I eat, here in the US?” After all, since we aren’t being told the truth, let alone the whole truth or even part of it. So how could people connect the dots? If people knew just the waste of resources (some non-renewable) it takes to raise animals for food, they would be shocked and make drastic changes in their lifestyle. Very soon, we, as a specie, will have to decide if we feed animals or we feed humans. Both are not possible. +7 billion humans, 50 billion animals raised and killed for food every year on one small planet. You do the math!
Hunger isn’t caused by a lack of food, but by the inadequacies of our current food system that is only standing because of a huge reliance on pharmaceuticals, chemicals and machinery. If any of these spokes were to break (and there are signs that it is already happening), the whole thing would crumble down. Hunger is maintained by improper distribution of existing commodities produced. The grain that is not fed to farm animals (20%), is stocked in huge grain silos for rainy days.
I fundamentally believe in the goodness of people, because in the end, darkness is only absence of light, so it doesn’t exist as such on its own. We have been giving it credence way too long! Aren’t we tired of it by now?
I believe that when people find out the truth about anything, something inside happens, call it a change of heart, a quantum leap, which leads to a new understanding and experience of our position in the world or universe and a new behavior is adopted as a result. We are about to go through one of these!
Eventhough we survived 2012, 2020 has managed to disrupt the world’s economies, our lives in ways we wouldn’t have thought was possible. And maybe all we are asked to do (while the old structures are collapsing under the weight of greed and corruption) is to return to kindness, first to self, to others around us, to mother nature and to all of humanity as a whole. There is no us and them! Only us all! The circle of life includes all of creation. No exception!
Maybe, what we are about to go through is not the end as we know it, but mostly the end of a way of living, competing, exploiting, stealing, killing for one bottom line at the cost of everything else. We all know that it isn’t right. We haven’t yet understood that what we do onto others will be done onto ourselves. Call it divine law in action (every religious and spiritual traditions mention it) and since we are living in an accelerated world, instant karma is happening.