Happy New Year!

I've long had a problem with those misguided souls who go on about the world's "overpopulation problem." Mostly, this is a not-so-subtle way of saying that poor people really should stop breeding. Even more misanthropic critics will say, behind closed doors, after a few drinks, that AIDS will sort things out in Africa. Most would cringe at this sentiment, and rightly so, but they would likely not have a solution beyond a mixture of more education and/or liberalization of the Third World. If only we could teach them to become like us!

Unfortunately, the reality on the ground doesn't support this general assumption. In fact, if anything, the reality on the ground exposes the outright flaws both in the assumption and the perspective that came up with it in the first place. First, the assumption that everybody should be like us; and second, the self-perception that our way of life is the prize everybody's eyes should be on.

The fact is, the American dream isn't even a nightmare. No, there's too much that is tangible to it even to sustain that particular metaphor. It is, rather, a bordello fantasy straight out of Ben Franklin's Parisian nightlife. Ah, but here's the thing -- we're convinced that a) the role-play is real, and that the jizz jar bent before us / rancid piece of pulled pork dangling over us really speak in love when they say, "You fuck me better than the rest," and b) that those pox marks on our genitals will heal themselves (and if not, why not, spread the love!). Our national myth of prosperity is a role-play that never stops. We will, we're assured, figure out ways for it to continue -- be it, blindfolds, Viagra, novelty costumes, clowns, ponies and and rubber balls. Oh, and yes, extending the invitation that others can play along!

So, we present the Third World with the Third Way, an illusion of our own illusion, that is, the means to consume as much as we do, if they but embrace democracy and its open markets, and then snicker mightily at the tragedy that the Earth cannot even sustain our own present levels of consumption. To embrace our illusion, and even to openly propogate it, is one thing; but to believe in it is another thing entirely. Such is the damnable offense of religion and marriage and education and liberalism, etc.

So, you're right, Jared Diamond. No, the problem isn't them. The problem isn't the real sex and overpopulation of others -- as patriarchal and problematic as their sex often is. The problem is our wet dream turned real: an erection that never stops at an orgy that never ends. The American way of life, at its finest.

The Lighter Side

I realize I've been a little shrill and alarmist as of late. So, I thought I'd step back from the brink of annihilation. If only for a bit.

Two music-related notes. (1) I recently downloaded D'Angelo's now-rather-old Brown Sugar CD, and I've fallen in love with him all over again. Fortunately, K. doesn't like him AT ALL. All the more for me! For D'Angelo fans, he has a new CD coming out this month, I think. (2) If anybody out there should have a copy of Herbie Nichols' Love, Gloom, Cash, Love, and you're not opposed to making me a copy, I'd be forever grateful. This is a ridiculously hard CD to find in CD shops.

Two links. First, the likely NSFW link -- it's a short piece on one man's sex education in the "Second Life" virtual world. It's not a flawless piece of writing, but if you can't at least giggle at lines like "Within seconds Justyn Jewell was balls deep in Tony's avatar," then you're beyond hope.

Second, it's been while since I've linked to Mark Morford, several years in fact, but last week's column about America's obsession with free shit is spot-on and terrific.

Free plane ticket! Free iPod! Free colonoscopy! Free tank of gas! Free extra set of cheap useless knives when you buy the two other sets of cheap useless knives! Free supersizing of your Coke! Free upgrade to premium membership when you commit to a 10-year contract! Pay no money whatsoever! Seriously! No money at all! All we ask in return: countless, endless chunks of your time, your brain, your intelligence, your health, your soul, your respect for nature, just a little bit of your ability to think and feel and care about the world. Come on now, is that too much to ask?

The Problem With Blame

I was responding to Gabe's comment to the previous post, and realized it might be fitting just to publish it here instead -- if only to keep up my streak of daily posting this week.

*********
Re: I think the bottom line is what James Kunstler and you have been harping on: we cannot continue to live as we have been living... but we are surrounded by fucking idiots.

What's worse, in my opinion, is that I don't think we can so easily look around and blame the "fucking idiots" for this mess. Consumption, be it the kind that rapes the environment or the kind that ignores reality (i.e., via credit & debt), is now fully engrained & inseparable from our contemporary culture. Which to say, it is almost impossible for most people to do live truly alternative lifestyles, let alone imagine something differently.

For example. One of the things observed about the decrease in gas consumption in California is that it is mostly because of California's wealth. I.e., in a very real sense, they simply can afford to conserve, either by living in urban areas, or buying cars w/ better fuel consumption, etc. For the vast majority of Americans, however, this is almost impossible. They have, for example, accumulated so much shit in their houses that to move to a smaller, urban area would mean they'd have to leave as trash a lot of the things they've picked up along the way -- enormous couches, a tv p/room, rugs fit more for the Tajj Mahal than Maple Avenue, dust-covered treadmills, pool tables, etc.

(And this is to say nothing at all of the neglected urban cores themselves, where we are asking people to move in order to consume less. They have become inhospitable places, due to a generation of poor maintenance, decayed family and doomed communities. Which is to say, it takes more to bring people to an urban area than opening a couple of bars. What's worse, the problems of urban living are mostly correctable for those who can afford it. The moment an urban area is "cleaned up," look around, and you'll likely find it has been "cleaned" of those who are blamed for making it dirty -- the poor, the homeless, the drug addicts. They are blamed for their irresponsible maintenance of their neighborhoods and the the poor stewardship of their exorbitant "government handouts," despite the fact far and away more government money (tax breaks, etc.) were extended toward the suburbanization of American cities than was extended to its core. Ah, but where there is suburban crime & decay, the blame is on video games and violent tv, not irresponsibility.)

There is also, and perhaps more fundamentally, the simple fact that most people shop at Wal-Fart or Shitkea because their budget forces them to do so. We know that we should buy a more expensive toaster or coffee table, or whatever, knowing full well the cheaper good will break down, forcing us to spend more on a litany of replacements every few years than we would on a one-time investment in something of quality craftsmanship, something that lasts. And yet, (a) most of us don't have the money on hand to make that one-time investment, so to buy the nice table means to put it in on the credit card, and thus to pay even more for it because of interest; and (b) if everybody stopped buying the cheap replacement-goods, this country's economy would shrivel & dry up faster than Betty White's vagina. When taken together, it is a powerful one-two punch that keeps us stalled, our imagination racing for an alternative we cannot conceive.

I write all this, hell, I think all this, I know that it comes off as defeatist. But I don't think so. Seeing our world as itself calling for -- groaning out for (as Saint Paul puts it) -- a fundamental change, not a "makeover" fit for ABC and that spikey-haired twat with the megaphone -- is the stuff of religion. The fact that those who consumed by this call, those who groan so often that they are finally ignored, are not always explicitly religious, and that most of those who are explicitly religious do not do so, is an indictment fit for another post.

Under $3

Yesterday I noticed that for the first time since I've been living west of the Rocky Mountains (only since May, for those of you not keeping score at home), gas dipped below $3 p/gallon. In fact, this is the cheapest gas has been out here since March. And, of course, everybody is thrilled. Especially the analysts, who you very easily beaming with the good news, "Don't worry, people. The worst is over. Our refineries are working at full strength, without problems. The price of gas is no longer related to the price of oil. And besides, even the the price of oil is tumbling after its quick ascent to $78 p/barrel week."

I hate to be so damn depressing, and I know I have been, but don't believe it. Or, if you do believe it, don't sell that Hybrid in your driveway for a new Expedition. A few things to keep in mind: (a) investors stopped their profit-taking, and thus stopping the price plummet, the very moment ConocoPhillips shut down two refineries on the East Coast (it should be recalled, US refineries are held together with spit and paper, and there is no major investment to create any new ones); (b) the price of oil skyrocketed last week even though there was no major disruption like a hurriance in the Gulf or flare-up in the Middle East; (c) the infrastructure of the oil industry, not to mention our levels of consumption, are such that it will not take much of a disruption to diminish the glut of gasoline that is causing gas to be cheaper than oil; (d) those people our newspapers quote as experts in forecasting the future cost of oil & gas have, for the most part, consistently & grossly underestimated their price; and lastly (and most importantly), (e) the price of gas has everything to do with a temporary supply glut -- with maybe a very little related to a slight uptick in conservation (esp. in California) -- NOT because we are producing more oil than we are consuming -- because, quite simply, we're not.

Solutions

The inevitable question that is raised when anybody talks about things like climate change and alternatives to the amorality of capitalism and over-consumption, as I was doing here last week, is Okay, so what do we do about it? Sometimes, this question is asked in all honesty. Yes, I agree. What do we do now? Most of the time, though, it is considered the ultimate rejoinder: All you can do is articulate the problem. I've heard no solutions. There is nothing we can do. So, what to do when there is nothing to be done but continue to do what we have always done, but perhaps a bit more humanely?

Agreed, there is no solution in the sense that we now have a how-to list of ways to save the world. More important than the absence of any how-to, though, is the absence of will. If you talk about this stuff w/ most people, they get exasperated because you've not laid out the reasons and ways we can survive. What they want are ways we can all survive and still lead basically the same life we've been leading. That this is fundamentally opposed to the very critique of consumption never seems to dawn on them. (Example: people who talk about the electric car imagine a very happy world of zero emissions and high mileage, and a new world of economic growth and industrial expansion freed of over-consumpton. The problem with this is the amount of energy/consumption (& cost) needed to [a] completely redesign and rebuild the electrical grid, and [b] to create & maintain the new industrial market responsible for the production & distribution of millions of batteries, is so high, and so immediately necessary, that [at minimum] it will alter the playing field of who can afford to consume what is now even an average amount of resources.) If mathematics and geology are correct -- who can assume these things anymore? -- what is necessary is a fundamental change that not only changes the present, but in effect changes the past decisions that set us on this present path. Nobody wants to hear this, of course. It is the inconceivable.

What is not inconceivable, however, is that there is a solution to our problem. In fact, I think the end result of our consumptive ways is its own the solution. Our path has a terminus. There will be more famine. There almost certainly will be eco-catastrophes. There will be more disease. Lots of people, mostly poor, will die. The middle-class will become incredibly disenfranchised when the protective bubble of credit we've settled in is no longer sustainable, and incredibly dangerous when the reality we kept at bay seaps back into everyday life. The very same rich & famous we gawk at now may actually become the targets for aggression and resentment. And, where do the formerly coddled and now newly disenfranchised go for their succor but either identitarian movements that mistrust strangers and/or the awaiting rhetoric of demagogic religion & politics. All this seems unavoidable to me, and in a certain sense it does "solve" many of our problems -- in an absolutely dire way.

What's more. We are, I believe, beyond the point of stopping this. The most viable response now is to begin preparing ourselves for what comes after. People need to start learning NOW how to live in alternative, less-consumptive ways -- using their hands, learning agriculture, learning how to get by w/out driving, etc. I'm not so naive as to think or imagine a future anytime soon where people worldwide do these things and change our current situation, and reverse the course our history of bad decisions has set us on. But I can imagine our world being changed in such a way that we and our habits are forced to change. Making preparations now is imperative ... not to delay the future, though in some measure it might a little, but to prepare ourselves for its arrival.

The Politics of the Exponential Function

The ignorance of simple math may very well kill us.

This is the premise of a lecture given by Dr. Albert Bartlett, a retired Professor of Physics from the Univ. of Colorado in Boulder (text, as well as streaming video and audio, can be found here -- highly recommended). The problem, he argues, is a complete ignorance and/or blindness to what exponential growth really means:

Legend has it that the game of chess was invented by a mathematician who worked for a king. The king was very pleased. He said, “I want to reward you.” The mathematician said “My needs are modest. Please take my new chess board and on the first square, place one grain of wheat. On the next square, double the one to make two. On the next square, double the two to make four. Just keep doubling till you've doubled for every square, that will be an adequate payment.” We can guess the king thought, “This foolish man. I was ready to give him a real reward; all he asked for was just a few grains of wheat.”

But let's see what is involved in this. We know there are eight grains on the fourth square. I can get this number, eight, by multiplying three twos together. It's 2x2x2, it's one 2 less than the number of the square. Now that continues in each case. So on the last square, I’d find the number of grains by multiplying 63 twos together.

Now let’s look at the way the totals build up. When we add one grain on the first square, the total on the board is one. We add two grains, that makes a total of three. We put on four grains, now the total is seven. Seven is a grain less than eight, it's a grain less than three twos multiplied together. Fifteen is a grain less than four twos multiplied together. That continues in each case, so when we’re done, the total number of grains will be one grain less than the number I get multiplying 64 twos together. My question is, how much wheat is that?

You know, would that be a nice pile here in the room? Would it fill the building? Would it cover the county to a depth of two meters? How much wheat are we talking about?

The answer is, it's roughly 400 times the 1990 worldwide harvest of wheat. That could be more wheat than humans have harvested in the entire history of the earth. You say, “How did you get such a big number?” and the answer is, it was simple. We just started with one grain, but we let the number grow steadily till it had doubled a mere 63 times.

Now there's something else that’s very important: the growth in any doubling time is greater than the total of all the preceding growth. For example, when I put eight grains on the 4th square, the eight is larger than the total of seven that were already there. I put 32 grains on the 6th square. The 32 is larger than the total of 31 that were already there. Every time the growing quantity doubles, it takes more than all you’d used in all the proceeding growth.

Bartlett then uses the logic of exponential arithmetic to lay out what is wrong with with seemingly innocuous notion that we must always be growing in order to be productive. His analysis of the problem is about as good as you're going to find. Introductory, funny, engaging, and downright chilling when he applies this soberly to our consumptive appetite for energy. In short, his mathematical gaze is to the point: not only is our energy consumption unsustainable (we all know that, right?), but the tipping point is actually right upon us, almost certainly within twenty years. The behooves us to ask, he warns: what will your world look like after the demise of cheap energy?

His only major misstep, in my opinion, is his overriding focus on overpopulation. I don't know. Maybe I'm going to ridiculed for this, but I think this is a potentially very dangerous red herring. Certainly as it is traditionally argued -- and even as Bartlett does here. There is, of course, the mathematical and geographical problem of overpopulation, which will surely lead to a catastrophe. A finite area, such as a city, a state, a nation, or a globe, cannot sustain unending growth. I do not argue that. What Bartlett does, however, and what I find most people do who talk about overpopulation (esp. in the global sense), be they conservative or liberal, is speak fully in the abstract about the problem w/ no real vision of a true solution. What is the typical solution? Namely, education -- be it the conservative vision of abstinence, or the liberal vision of unbridled birth control (or, if they're more "radical," reversing patriarchal hierarchies). Maybe tax cuts for people who stop having kids after one or two. Few, of course, will argue for a mandated systemization of abortion. Even fewer will apply a dark vision that genocide, war, and famine will do our job for us, so perhaps we should leave places like Africa to their own devices.

The problem with this perspective, near as I can tell, is that it assumes a certain equality that simply isn't there. It assumes that we are all individually complicit in such a global problem as overpopulation, in equal measure. Of course, that this perspective results in the Third World getting the stink eye is quite natural, as their populations are exploding far beyond that of the First World, and as such they're clearly not doing their part in this worldwide effort to be smart with Mother Earth. This, though, seems a little convenient.

What is so pernicious about this logic is that the very problem damned by the First World, we who search for the solution overpopulation frantically, is, in fact, caused by the steady march of First World growth. The very thing that now defines the First World! In spite of his absolutely vital critique of this growth, even Bartlett ignores the fact that this philosophy of growth is engrained in the very functioning of the First World. I.e., growth is built into the system in such a way that reality no longer matters -- otherwise, would the fact that advanced western economies are built on debt and credit, the buying and selling of debt unbacked by tangible resources, make sense? There is, I would argue, absolutely no means of reforming capitalism with a little humanitarianism here, and and some compassion there. Our incremental progress that late-capitalism was to bring, at this point, is running perilously close to the end of the cheap and ample resources that brought the First World to its present heights in the first place.

The deficiency of Bartlett's math is that it, near as I can tell, cannot show the socio-economic reality that where there is constant growth, there is also an inevitable decline, in the form of those who do not own the land that produces the goods that churn the wheel of progress. These, rather, are given a different criteria by which to judge their success, versus that of the rest of the world -- their standard of living is judged by comparing it to those who are just as poor or poorer, in such a way that we can justify paying them what amounts to scraps in terms of a First World criteria, because 'it's more than they'd normally get, so they really should be happy.'

And then we have the First World solution to the overpopulation of the very places that it effectively renders, and arguably keeps, poor. (Okay, yes, I realize that China is getting richer; as is India. And while one could argue that this is not likely filtering down to the lowest levels of either society, I would argue that the effects of this growth is built on an ecological and energy-depleting timebomb that extends to the budding middle class of these countries a new kind of poverty, namely, a uniquely modern myopic vision of reality that threatens the very livelihoods that have moved them beyond the slums, and inevitably their lives even to the budding middle-class of these countries. So goes the metaphorical cocktease taking place in emergent economies: the extraordinarily hot virgin (capital) with an inexplicable and incurable venereal disease.) This, despite the fact that where there is poverty, there is typically a population increase -- be it in Africa, or be it in Everwhere Ghetto, USA; as poverty decreases, so does the birth rate -- be it in western Europe or Everywhere Suburb, USA. Where there is poverty, education falls, women's rights decrease, and contraception is less available. We know that social conditions have a tremendous impact on population growth, and yet it is officially a non-starter when one questions the relationship of late-capitalism (which, I say again, is fundamentally indistinguishable from the inexcusably ignorant -- willfully ignorant -- object of Bartlett's dead-on critique). Instead, we mistake the symptom for the disease.

That Bartlett shrinks away from this, to something so abstract as warning us about overpopulation, when the the real problem itself is staring him, us, you & me, square in the face, is telling. It is telling of the disconnect between what we actually know and what we believe to be true.

Is Your Life Good?

As I've detailed elsewhere, I'm currently thinking about the relationship of home, labor, and nature -- namely, the degree to which we might resist their being only commodities of trade. Our communities and bodies, expendable for the sake of productivity; the environment in which these communities and bodies live, breath, love, hate, resist, and dissent, reduced to the limits of our perception and expectation, an object to protect or rape, sometimes both at once, but never to acknowledge with the dignity fitting of an active subject in its own right

I am under no illusion that I'm blazing a new trail of insight and research. I'm comforted by this. I've tilted alone at too many windmills in the past, and am comforted that Im not alone this time. I am, for example, very happy there are people like Bill McKibben out there writing books like Deep Economy and articles like this one in Mother Jones.

If we're so rich, how come we're so damn miserable?

In some sense, you could say that the years since World War II in America have been a loosely controlled experiment designed to answer this very question. The environmentalist Alan Durning found that in 1991 the average American family owned twice as many cars as it did in 1950, drove 2.5 times as far, used 21 times as much plastic, and traveled 25 times farther by air. Gross national product per capita tripled during that period. Our houses are bigger than ever and stuffed to the rafters with belongings (which is why the storage-locker industry has doubled in size in the past decade). We have all sorts of other new delights and powers—we can send email from our cars, watch 200 channels, consume food from every corner of the world. Some people have taken much more than their share, but on average, all of us in the West are living lives materially more abundant than most people a generation ago.

What's odd is, none of it appears to have made us happier. Throughout the postwar years, even as the gnp curve has steadily climbed, the "life satisfaction" index has stayed exactly the same. Since 1972, the National Opinion Research Center has surveyed Americans on the question: "Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" (This must be a somewhat unsettling interview.) The "very happy" number peaked at 38 percent in the 1974 poll, amid oil shock and economic malaise; it now hovers right around 33 percent.

And it's not that we're simply recalibrating our sense of what happiness means—we are actively experiencing life as grimmer. In the winter of 2006 the National Opinion Research Center published data about "negative life events" comparing 1991 and 2004, two data points bracketing an economic boom. "The anticipation would have been that problems would have been down," the study's author said. Instead it showed a rise in problems—for instance, the percentage who reported breaking up with a steady partner almost doubled. As one reporter summarized the findings, "There's more misery in people's lives today."

[. . .]

If happiness was our goal, then the unbelievable amount of effort and resources expended in its pursuit since 1950 has been largely a waste. One study of life satisfaction and mental health by Emory University professor Corey Keyes found just 17 percent of Americans "flourishing," in mental health terms, and 26 percent either "languishing" or out-and-out depressed.

McKibben goes on to detail the research that has concluded that the breaking point of money buying happiness in any given culture is an income of $10,000 per capita.

"As poor countries like India, Mexico, the Philippines, Brazil, and South Korea have experienced economic growth, there is some evidence that their average happiness has risen," the economist Layard reports. Past $10,000 (per capita, mind you—that is, the average for each man, woman, and child), there's a complete scattering: When the Irish were making two-thirds as much as Americans they were reporting higher levels of satisfaction, as were the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch. Mexicans score higher than the Japanese; the French are about as satisfied with their lives as the Venezuelans. In fact, once basic needs are met, the "satisfaction" data scrambles in mindlnding ways. A sampling of Forbes magazine's "richest Americans" have identical happiness scores with Pennsylvania Amish, and are only a whisker above Swedes taken as a whole, not to mention the Masai. The "life satisfaction" of pavement dwellers—homeless people—in Calcutta is among the lowest recorded, but it almost doubles when they move into a slum, at which point they are basically as satisfied with their lives as a sample of college students drawn from 47 nations. And so on.

Think about this the next time you're working overtime in order to pay for that new IPhone you stood in line for an hour to get so somebody, anybody, would notice you with it; or those badass Diesel jeans you saw somebody wearing, and that made them look so happy and alive, so attractive of life.

Who is manning the suicide hotline for an entire culture with a pistol in its mouth?

The Perils of Parking

Lately, I've become increasingly interested in urban planning -- another missed opportunity for me, it seems -- so maybe none of this is as interesting to you as it is me. But, surely you've been stuck in downtown traffic and have fumed, 'Where the hell are all these people going!?! MOVE!!' If so, check out this astonishingly interesting Op-Ed in today's New York Times about the relationship between traffic congestion in cities and the search for a cheap curbside parking space. (As for me, I'm always content to take the first parking spot I find -- no matter if it results in a half-mile walk. It's not that I'm a responsible person, it's just that I'm not the model of patience.)

[A] surprising amount of traffic isn’t caused by people who are on their way somewhere. Rather, it is caused by those who have already arrived. Streets are clogged, in part, by drivers searching for a place to park.

[. . .]

When my students and I studied cruising for parking in a 15-block business district in Los Angeles, we found the average cruising time was 3.3 minutes, and the average cruising distance half a mile (about 2.5 times around the block). This may not sound like much, but with 470 parking meters in the district, and a turnover rate for curb parking of 17 cars per space per day, 8,000 cars park at the curb each weekday. Even a small amount of cruising time for each car adds up to a lot of traffic.

Over the course of a year, the search for curb parking in this 15-block district created about 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel — equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the moon. And here’s another inconvenient truth about underpriced curb parking: cruising those 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If all this happens in one small business district, imagine the cumulative effect of all cruising in the United States.

The writer's solution may seem unpalatable to some: increase the cost of curbside parking. But, all in all, I think his thinking is spot-on. We've accommodated the all-consuming culture of the car for far too long. This is but a token gesture in the right direction.

Eating Well

My desire to eat well is not altogether different from my desire to be religious. I do think there is a value to both, but I do not typically have the will to truly accomplish either. The flesh, as it were, is weak. I'd like to be able to differentiate the two. That is, I'd like to fashion a religious piety that makes my weakness a strength, and thus provides me with some kind of redemption. As it is, though, I am increasingly having a hard time fathoming such a redemption without a commitment to eating well.

What does it mean to eat well? For most of us, it is just a matter of eating healthy -- of balancing the bad stuff we put in our body with good stuff; or, even better, putting in our body more good stuff than bad stuff. In this sense, "healthy" presupposes either a state of equilibrium or an appropriate ratio (of good stuff to bad) to be the ideal, the result of which being that one lives a longer and/or more (mentally & physically) productive life. In my mind, this is only one part of eating well. Or, perhaps we frame it more positively: this is the general structure of eating well. When we get more specific, though, we find that eating well, eating healthy, cannot simply be about me & mine eating well/eating healthy. Rather, in order to keep eating well, to make it a habit that allows & animates life, eating well must be extended beyond me -- to others, to every other. This is precisely because of the interconnectedness of human existence: as much as we might like to think our health & well-being is ours alone, it is in a give-and-take relationship with & through the activities of others -- and thus, their health & well-being, as well. (Not to mention the fact that the truest measure of life, that which happens after it is over, after we've died, and thus even the truest measure of the "afterlife," is what we leave behind, the results of our [the plural] eating well.) Eating well, then, is more than counting calories & carbs; it is more than avoiding nuts if you're allergic to them. It is more than making sure you get enough iron & protein. It is, in short, more than insuring you & yours have all the vitamins necessary to live long & vital lives. It is, rather, having the will to insure that others have the capacity to do (& thus to will) this as well.

If this is true, eating well is perhaps the most revolutionary, radical action possible. The most unthinkable, even, what for the ever-present first-world dominance over food cultivation & distribution. In the name of profitability, we are sold (and gladly purchase) cheaper, typically less healthy, goods, which all too often not only inject us with the poisons that kill us, the consumers, but also kill the laborers who are paid to grow & produce it, by forcing them to abandon their natural sources & markets of subsistence.

I really want to eat well, as much as I want to believe in miracles, in beginnings that never stop & that thus change the social fabric & our conception of what is possible and what is not. I really do, and yet I still do not. Where, then, to begin?