Slave to the Grind

     Time these days sure has a way of going fast. It seems like a person never has enough of it. The clock has a way of working against you. I think the problem is the clock itself. As it ticks away every second of our lives, it only reminds us of how shackled we are to it. We confine our lives around the little tick tock like a warden holding our chains.
     We are the only animal anal retentive about time. We set our daily schedule by it. We set our clocks to wake up to its tireless ringing - hurry, hurry, hurry. We rush out the door so we can be on time for work. We work our day in a timely manner in our fast paced environment. When work lets out, we go to our vehicles to rush home again to spend time with the family. More sooner than later it's time again for bed and the whole thing repeats itself, day in, day out.
     We are so busy trying to make a living that time is sucking the life right out of us. Those people living paycheck to paycheck know how it is, how hard it is to get a head in this time-raping environment. A person sacrifices their time at a job for a monetary value per hour. As hours rake up so does the stress and fatigue. Repetition seeps into the soul, and if you are not making much money per hour, you feel robbed. More people are being robbed these days.
     Now Nature looks at us and laughs, asks, "where are you going in such a hurry?"  And you yell huffing and puffing, "to work!"  Nature laughs again and sees two squirrels harvesting acorns for the winter. "What these two do are meaningful to themselves and their families. They provide for their families with what nature provides. They work at a goal to gather the food for what they need. There is no oversquirrel, no Boss to hoard all the profits - just to benefit a few. Acorns aplenty."
     The man frowns and says, " I have to work because if I don't I will lose my job and my family will starve."  Nature asks, "How do you starve when there is plenty of food?"
     Man says, "Without money I can't buy food!"
     "Food already there, why buy?" Nature asked.
     "And if I don't pay my rent I will get kicked out and me and my family will become homeless!" The man says.
     "Shelter and warmth I have provided for free. Food and water are free. Why do you continue to pay for something you already have?" Nature asked.
     The man sighs, "Because that is the way we do things as Humans."
     Nature rebuffs, " You do this because you are weak and do not organize. You are being bullied by fat cats who make the laws of which you serve. You are a slave to their whims and it is their desire to see you and your families suffer. This system only benefits the powerful, of which power you give them freely. They hoard all the resources and trickle down crumbs that fall from their cake. You work for them because you are too weak or blind to see what's really happening, and are not willing to change. You are a slave to Master and until you can master yourselves, you are doomed to stay in your chains. Food there, water there, shelter and warmth here. Again, I ask you, why do you work for your Master?"

Nature and Food

     I want to help the world open their eyes to what stands before them. This thing they call Home, their civilization, this man-made habitat and concrete jungle, forms a division between the natural and unnatural world. It sets up Humanity as an exclusion from Ultimate Reality - Nature. We have this same detachment  with our food supply. The concept of prepackaged  food growing from the vine seems absurd but there are many who simply take for granted how easy it is to obtain food these days. Taking anything for granted is dangerous. Many people are ignorant to where their food comes from, and rely on other people and their logistics to move the food to market. Hardship is just a famine away. Tomorrow's hurricane just may be a truth to a harsh reality. A simple break in logistics and shipment of food ceases due to oil and gasoline shortage and production, most of us who live in a modern urban environment will be subject to lack of food resource realities. And those people with closed minds and closed eyes are in for a wake up call - this is our future. When you are dealing with a throw away culture such as ours and living in a world where your resources are not infinite and are rapidly being reduced and wasted, it does not take a degree in rocket science to see that there is a problem with modern humanity's mathematics. This is just one of many problems with our current system of economics. More to come concerning the many issues I have on our free market.

     How can we save ourselves? As a species we are so destructive that just our rampant pollution and out of control deforestation causes extinction among many creatures. We are careless with our technology and ignore the consequences of our actions. We've taken a planet with forests, wetlands, game, fish and fowl and depleted their numbers to suit our purpose of civilization. We've drained wetlands for malls and subdivisions in celebration of suburbia. We've enslaved the wild rivers and brought them to heel in service to humanity. We've over fished the oceans and our remaining lakes and streams, not to mention the pollution seeping into these waters poisoning them before our very eyes. The environment is taking a beating trying to survive the onslaught of our progressive endeavors. Our progress is just starting. Here in the US we have had environmental degradation since the Machine of the Industrial Revolution. In China and other developing countries, this cycle is just getting revved up. Mankind's downward spiral as a species seems pretty straight forward. Treating the environment like a trash bin is not very good ethics, much less sustainability. You do not encourage life by trashing habitat and polluting food and water. Yet this is what this modern culture does. Somewhere, sometime these mistakes are going to come back to haunt us. The diversity of our planet depends on how much we as a species are willing to change our destructive ways for the sake of a healthy tomorrow. Nature is not a product to be sold for profit. Nature is life; without her , we die. This artificial economy is not an earth-friendly system. It's a disease of which money truly is the root of all evil and greed. Once money and greed enter your heart the evil of economics is unchained.