Feeding the world - is it possible?
The clock is ticking
Across our world there is a ticking time-bomb. Maybe that bomb is about to explode? We see it perhaps in the horn of Africa. Accelerated climate change which has brought storms to other parts of the world is bringing drought to Somalia. They make their way by the thousands to the camps in Kenya, through windswept, barren and dusty plains dotted with make shift shelters, the refugees hungry, frightened, exhausted. And what can we do about it? Yes we can dig deep in our pockets to give aid, and I ask you quite frankly, will that ultimately solve the situation? Can we really feed the world? And if so, with what?...
Band Aid
I remember when the song "Feed the World" came out by Band Aid thinking how truly wonderful that was. It was a phenomenon that seemed to touch deeply into the hearts of many people. Especially charismatic of course was Bob Geldof - a scraggy punk rocker who touched something deep inside himself, opened his mouth and let his passion rip through the red tape that was preventing aid reaching the starving people of Africa. His magnanimous and compassionate calling helped motivate millions.
That was in 1984. We are now a generation on and I ask, what has changed? What's changed to my mind is a relentless increase in industrial consumerism and agriculture. What's changed is an increase in globalisation, fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. And as a direct result, what's changed is an expansion of the world economy, an expansion of the global population and concurrently, a dwindling of the growing land required to feed that population.
On the surface, it may seem like a truly compassionate and charitable act, to give money and send food aid to the starving millions of Africa. But really what's wrong (to my mind at least) is the very system that plunders the earth, expands the global population and destroys the very land needed to feed us: robbing Peter to pay Paul and then Paul shipping back the crumbs from his over burdened dinner table. That seems pretty nonsensical to me. It's like trying to use a Band-aid to fix a burst artery.
Unfair trade
I remember when I awoke just after the turn of the millenium, my immediate feeling was one of compassion to my fellow man. I began to donate, as much as I could, particularly to the disadvantaged, impoverished and orphaned children around the world. And then a while later, when the magnitude of the insanity in which we live - what we sophisticatedly call "society" - struck home, I realised that what I really needed to dedicate my time, and my life to, was a shift in consciousness.
Can you see the irony in the situation? The starving people of Somalia are making their way into neighbouring Kenya - the very place where some of our supermarket chains have growing corporations to stock the food shelves of the developed world. Supermarkets that then throw 25% of their harvest away simply because their runner beans aren't straight enough for the average western household, the oranges aren't orange enough, or the apples have too many spots on.
Society is using an over-abundance of oil, to plunder the resources of the many to feed but a few. And in so doing, we're ratcheting up global warming, destroying growing lands and by the use of industrial chemicals for intensively farmed crops, we're also destroying the top-soils that we'll need to grow those crops in the future. Would it not be better that we stop shipping food half way around the world and instead find ways of helping people sustain themselves locally? Where crops can truly flourish? Is that not the natural order of life?
A Shift in Consciousness
Initially this seemingly intractable problem had me revolving in circles. My heart went out to the people, my compassion and yearning to help welled up from within my being, but at the same time, shipping money and goods out to places where life was becoming increasingly unsustainable made increasingly less sense. Especially when you consider the only reason I have money in my back pocket and food on my table, is because like many, I have subscribed to the very system that robs the poor to pay us the rich. We've done it by taking the resources through our oil based economy which is destroying the environment for everyone - and especially those we're now sending aid to.
Every time you and I go to the supermarket, every time we fill up at the petrol station, every time we spend money with a globalised company, we are fueling this disharmony, this imbalance, this insanity! To me, what's really needed, the aid that will really help, is a shift in consciousness, not simply a sticking plaster - a band aid - to cover a gaping wound. That's why the approach I have taken has been to reduce the amount I consume to a minimum, to be really carefully about what, where and with whom I spend my money.
I remember all too well leaving my matrimonial home when my marriage broke up. I remember taking several black plastic bags of unwanted 'junk' to the local tip. I remember as I dumped the last bag, a plastic plant pot from a DIY chain fell out on the ground in front of me. £1.99, made from oil, the price of several meals. From that day I resolved to consume less. I don't claim to be perfect and I observe that practically my every step within the matrix (while it still exists) is a compromise that potentially damages the earth by consuming resources. But now I do so consciously. My consciousness has shifted and I tune into my soul, on everything that I do, and especially, what I consume.
A collapse in order to reform
Yes to me what's needed is a shift in consciousness. More and more people need to wake up and realise just what's going on. Right now, governments in Europe and America are still using oil based money to prop up economies that want to collapse. When will they get it? When will WE get it? Using oil to artificially drive global trade to create unsustainable life-styles simply is not working. As the corinthian columns of Greece topple because of excessive consumer spending, is that not a prophecy to us all? Is it not right that we let these artificial bubbles burst?
Prior to the industrial revolution the global population was a mere 900 million. They were people who lived in local communities, grew their food locally and got whatever energy they needed (which wasn't much) from local sources. It took several million years for the human population to reach that naturally evolving sustainable number. Now, after the oil exploitation boom, the global population is nearing 7 billion and by the middle of this century, if it continues at its current expansionary rate, it will be 9 billion. In less than a century, the global population will have expanded ten fold!
Sit and contemplate that for a moment. Surely that's not aligned with the natural order of life? Surely that cannot be sustainable? My emotions would like me to think it is sustainable and that we can truly 'feed the world'. But my heart - which always speaks the truth to me, no matter how unpalatable - tells me we cannot. My heart tells me we've created an artificial bubble which is now beginning to burst. And although I know it will cause me great pain within, what I see is that the global system needs to collapse and reform. Human numbers NEED to reduce, we NEED to find balanced and sustainable harmony with the earth once again. And here's the thing, whether we choose it or not, that realignment is going to happen. In my view on reality, there is simply no way to avoid it. And neither am I afraid to be affected myself by this realignment. In the years ahead, in my heart I know it will touch every single one of us.
Full circle
And so it brings me - us - back full circle to where I began this article, to those brave souls marching into Kenya right now. My heart goes out to you, my compassion, my love...
- "I will cry with you tonight,
and I will feel your pain as if it were my own.
But my compassion is all I can give you right now.
I did not consciously choose the conditions in which I live,
and I live on this earth just like you, on the edge of life.
I've come to accept that as a human being, there is no certainty.
I do not know if I will live to see tomorrow.
I have worked to find inner peace with that, my peace with God.
In so doing, I am fortunate. I have realised an eternal soul.
I reach out to you in the hope and the yearning
that you too will find your eternal nature.
I reach out with an open mind, one that continually questions reality,
I reach out with an open heart, that won't let lies fester in the darkness,
one that is absolutely vulnerable to the inconvenient truth.
I reach out to you with the love and compassion of a brother
offering an open hand to help point the way into the light.
In these times of great change these are my gifts...
the only ones of true value that I can reach out to you with."
So I have no band aid to quick fix this 'problem'. I have my soul to connect with your soul, to align with the truth, and to have the absolute trust in benevolence, that this disharmony that mankind is enduring right now, will unwind itself, that all sentient life will find acceptance as that rebalancing happens and that we'll realise the only eternity is beyond this physicality.
Let us look for that now. In this moment and always.
Chris
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Collapsing consumerism
Thank you for putting into words such a powerful message Chris! This is such an important time of realisation that modernism has gone more than a step too far.
Visions of the 'illusionary bubble' of consumerism becoming stretched to its limit and consequently bursting have often visited me. It deeply saddens me that the world is in the state that it is.
If consumerism were to collapse today, I would welcome it with open arms.
Trinity
x
On the brink
What a powerful article Chris. Thank you.
It seems to me peak oil is upon us, and its not long now before an unavoidable change to the accepted status quo finally catches up with us.
A welcome time for everything and everybody to realign.
Lesley x
Taking responsibility
I really resonate with quote here. It is easier to point the finger, yet who is really responsible?
"It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours."
Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990
And it might be easy to think that observation of the destruction of the planet was a recent thing but the messages have been there for a long time.
"How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?
Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader's Digest, November 1939
"God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west... keeping the world in chains. If our nation took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts."
Mahatma GandhiAnd we have know since the dawn of mankind that what effects one affects the whole....
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
Chief Seattle, 1855
If we can raise our own consciousness, remember that we are all connected, we send out a powerful message of change.
Sustainable transition
I love the quotes Trinity - thanks for sharing.
I felt to pick on one in particular - the ironic point in the first quote that it is all of us that are driving the fuel tankers of society. I remember the global outrage at BP because of the Gulf Oil spill when 25 million gallons of oil were leaked into the ocean. Yet during the same time, around 250 billion were consumed by us all within society!
But let me absolutely clear about the Openhand position on all of this, we are NOT saying we should stop consumption of ALL oil based products and energy immediately. We're NOT saying that we must cease ALL purchasing within the 'matrix' right now. If we all did that, it would likely bring chaos and anarchy to the world - to us, that would serve no one.
What we're advocating here at Openhand is a TRANSITION from one to the other - from an oil based global economy to local based, sustainable communities powered by renewable energies - where we live in a compassionate, low impact way. We believe that the benevolent guiding presence of the universe is steering a path of Right Action from one system to the other and is inviting awakening people on board that transitioning train.
We observe that when people start making those changes - when we tune into and follow our soul - then our steps are miraculously supported as we weave a way through the fragmentation of society. Those steps require compromise. Since most - if not all - of the world's resources are 'owned' by society, and since most of the commodities we need to survive have been produced in this wasteful way, we are still going to need to exchange and interact with the matrix as it fragments.
And as more and more of us do that, the transition to local sustainable living is going to accelerate. It only takes a relatively small reduction in consumer spending with globalised industries to cause the collapse of these monolithic corporations - we've seen that in the various economic recessions of the past. So we don't have to cease ALL spending in the oil-based global economy - we need only reduce it.
By how much? you might ask. Well there's only one place that question can be answered - your own soul. This is the point we're continually making here at Openhand and helping people work with. If a growing number of us tune into our souls and follow our higher self choices moment by moment, then we'll find we align with a co-creative flow which at the higher level, we've all subscribed to. Not only do our steps become supported by a sustainable evolution, but we become channels for that new evolving energy to infuse into the world.
So this is the transition we're advocating here at Openhand - and we observe already its successful, benevolent impact in the world.
Chris
Stirred to the depth of my being
by the article and the comments.
I was ‘angry’ and depressed when I was a teenager and when reading the article I felt this anger rising again, together with sadness, compassion and a feeling of responsibility about all this. This is not some focused personal anger, mixed with blame. It is some RRRRRAAAAH! about all that has happened and all that is happening now. RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
And I feel how tears are filling my chest and throat.
For how long more? Haven’t we all had enough??!!! Haven’t we swallowed enough yet???!!! Enough of keeping ourselves in this crazy ‘pink and sparkling with neon lights’ cage sucking it all into? A ‘black hole’ humanity! Enough! Enough!!!!
I keep asking for over 10 years: how can it be that I and more people see this horrible picture, and others don’t? And I am talking now about the ‘elite’ of our society, they don’t see it, they deny, rationalize and keep ‘sucking’. And I was too, I didn’t see way out, didn’t know what to do even that I did feel it is all wrong. I was furious and desperate until I realized that I can change nothing, but myself and turned my attention inwards, started digging inside, when I was 19.
I also feel resonating with the inefficiency of external help. While feeling compassion, I never felt like donating or any of what I feel to be ‘cosmetic’ treatments. Somehow I had a feeling that the problem is much deeper, and it won’t help to try to conceal it with ‘nice’ deeds. Another thing that was also bothering me was how do I know it will actually help and won’t make things worse on the big scale?
When the boat is sinking and the water begins to burst through, it won’t help to seal one spot, the pressure is not on this particular spot, it is on the WHOLE BOAT and it will burst again. So we might find ourselves with thousand hands covering the holes and trying to hold the boat on the surface, but hey, IT IS SINKING!!! And the water is already up to our throats. Hello!!! Wake up!!! We are drowning. I tried to gently find out what is the position about it all among people around me. “What are you talking about?” they say, “all is good”. THIS is what they say, in some other words, like civilization…, evolution…, human intelligence…, techMology and all that. Nobody is home. Others say “yes, we see, but can do nothing”.
For some time, really short period, I was hoping that people will wake up and see, and we all will begin to climb out, and I had a flash of optimism. It was hard for me to understand that one can’t see all this and just keep living as if nothing happens for too long, but I was naïve. It took me some time to understand, to get that this is MY path, MY experience and MY responsibility. There are no THEY in this. I can only do what I can do and it landed on me that it will not go the easy way.
I can see now that the majority will do nothing. I can see everything crashing and also, like Trinity, I am waiting for this, feel excited. I do have this feeling sometimes “what will happen with me? with people I care about? ”. I realize that when this happens, no one will be left ‘untouched’. But the ‘deeper’ I go, the less I care and the more I trust. There is a feeling on some level that I am ready even to die for all this to end (maybe it won’t be necessary
). Even though I do have some ‘hope’ to see peaceful and harmonious time here on Earth, but if I die then be it.
And another bitter realization was that most of people don’t care about death, suffering, pain, horror, this is another reason why they don’t do anything, neither for themselves nor as an act of compassion. They KNOW that what they do is killing themselves and damaging the environment, it is all over TV, news, it became impossible to keep it backroom, and?... So they ‘seal’ some leaking undeniable spot’, as long as they can keep their lifestyle, make themselves feel better, rather than really make a difference. And people are not even aware of it, they are really ‘innocent’ in their ‘good intentions’ to help, I believe.
And they know that most of the stuff they eat damages them and keep eating it. They know how meat is getting on their table, but they don’t care. I saw two weeks ago how they eat it, they are not even aware that it was a living creature, animal, who felt something, they grab it as if it is something granted. They know that exhaust gases pollute the air they breathe and that it is ‘unhealthy’ to them and environment, but they keep buying more cars, at least 2 per family. It is written “smoking kills” and they keep smoking.
This is absurd. But makes one think about how life is appreciated for them, it is sold for a pack of cigarettes.
They just don’t care. (Is it because we all have a deep knowing we are really immortal in our essence that we do things that we know destroy us?)
I can really see the picture with people are dying and all the horror of ‘human’ behavior in extreme circumstances, as if it is already happening. I can’t say I am ready to deal with these, but I know that once you’re in it, you live it and find your way through it.
So now there IS impatience. There IS feeling of growing excitation, when will it go boom??!!
And I know that doing ‘my thing’ is already making this system unstable. And I totally agree about feeling out what and how to do. Mind-led actions are not what I find will ‘save the world’. It is not about feeling ok with myself. No matter what I do, I can’t do okay as long as I am in the matrix, using what they supply, fitting myself into it in this way or the other.
I remember this line I have heard some years ago: "the truth is not something that is set in the mind, it is felt in the heart". Truth is a feeling, not knowing. It took me long to really understand what it means. And now anyway not much left in these times, when nothing is certain, but feel.
So what can I do when I see things like this going on, but feeling empathy, sadness, and getting 'fuel' and inspiration from it to keep going and do what I can?
Couragous spirit
Yulia you ask...
"So what can I do when I see things like this going on, but feeling empathy, sadness, and getting 'fuel' and inspiration from it to keep going and do what I can?"
Yes powerful question indeed. It feels like you offer great advice too. And might I add, it helps to go deep into the situation, feel empathy yes, and also where there might be the hint of attachment. We must find a balanced way of being in order that we can bring light into every situation.
Yes, we can actually take inspiration from the situation. We can work with it to find a more authentic way of being. In so doing we honour everyone who is suffering right now. And their journey has served its purpose - not just for them, but for us. They have helped us find out who we are. Maybe not consciously at this level, but they did it nevertheless. In so doing, what we cultivate is a courageous spirit.
And remember always that a soul is not an identity - it is not a being. A soul is simply an expression of the one being - the one that never dies.
Chris
Good points
How do you do this? Putting so much into such short comment?
Yes, there is a difference between empathy and actually 'enjoying' whatever is happening, like in a movie. Media, for example, is FEEDING from things like this. And I can see many people while shaking their heads and as if look compassionate, but they really enjoy the drama, enjoy the sadness, enjoy the action, enjoy the excitation in the air when something is happening and enjoy themselves being compassionate and 'good'. So it is a really important point, to feel the line when I am attached and begin to 'enjoy' (even if in some masochistic way) the drama and when I empathize.
And anything that happens can serve us and others, if we take it inside, own it and see what it shows us about ourselves.
And this one really spiked me, about the soul... Another confusion dissipation...
Thank you!
HOME
This is an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING INCREDIBLE DOCUMENTARY that is exactly what Chris and Trinity are expressing here... Its called... HOME...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1
After you watch this you will have a whole new through understanding of the worlds plight... it is also one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen... Our planet is beyond any comprehension I thought I had...
I just have to share...
with love
-Bill
population and consumerism
As a child of about 9 years old I read a book entitled Healthy and Happy. It was all about making sensible choices like using your pocket money to buy an orange or a peach and not sweets. I had already felt all this and so the book inspired me incredibly as I suddenly realized there were other people who thought the same as I did!!
Many years later and I still get some comfort from articles such as yours Chris when I realize that there are other people who think the same as I do. Many years ago I had already sussed that the biggest problem the world faces is the sheer volume of people on this planet. At that time it was unfashionable - even blasphemous - to talk in this way as talk was and continues to be about saving the starving millions. So we are caught in a dilemma. How would I feel if it were me and my family starving? How would we react - after all, the strongest instinct of all in humanity is survival. I am one of the blessed. I look back over my life and am so thankful for the time and place I was born - for all the good things I have had and experienced. And yet the struggle for a Western lifestyle - to become one of the 'haves' is what will ultimately destroy man unless he can rise above it. A difficult concept to get over to the starving millions and all those who struggle in third world countries to better themselves.
My own mother passed many years in the gulags of Soviet Russia. As you can imagine the tales were horrific and I asked her once how she managed to go on from day to day. She was very quite for a moment and then she said "It is the thought in your head that this can not go on forever - that one day something will change." Difficult to deny that hope to so many who are still living at a basic need for survival.
So we all compromise. My own lifestyle has changed dramatically. It took divorce, ill health, family trauma and a move to a foreign country to do this.
Sadly I am now too far away to do the Openhand workshops on an easy or regular basis although hope to make the trip soon.
Love and peace to all of you in your work there at Openhand.
What really serves us?
Thanks for sharing your story Ania - yes indeed it is a conundrum - finding peace with not being able to help everyone.
It also causes me to reflect on my own parents who've lived a long and 'successful' life in the matrix as self employed business people.
My mum suffered through cancer last year and had a long treatment of chemo therapy - the result (almost certainly) of many years of stressful living trying to succeed. My Dad has just had heart surgery to replace a valve and clear blocked arteries (again the product of an unhealthy lifestyle) which he's not come through very well.
People all over the world are aspiring to a way of life which is ultimately destroying them. So I don't see a situation of 'better' and 'worse' off. The situation is just different and it's up to us - what ever circumstances we find ourselves in - to make the best of it and find out who we truly are. What REALLY serves us?
Chris
reply
I agree that there is no 'better' or 'worse' off - the situation being just different. It often takes trauma of some description to effect the change of perception within. Looking back I see my ill health and divorce as positive things in my life - they helped me to effect change and see things in a different light. The trick is to see it at the time and realize what is serving you best.
I entertained some friends of friends here in France last year who, I got the distinct impression, were rather sorry for me for what I 'didn't have' and were trying to console me that 'it would get better etc.' Whereas I don't see it that way at all - I have an abundance of all that is good and serves me. We just saw it differently.