This word has been defined so many ways. I often hear people define it by their identity or who they appear to be within society. "I do this job, wear this brand, have this boyfriend who does this, watch this television show... that's my life."
Let's take a breath and state what "life" really is. Maybe this will make it easier... what is not life? The most obvious answer is death. And what is death? Take a person who breathes, thinks, moves. This person is alive, or they exhibit life. Now consider that body not doing any of those things, or anything at all. That is death.
So, a simple definition of "life" is that it is consciousness. That's it. There's nothing else to it.
This blog is called World Redress. To many it appears to be a blog about raw and vegan food. I primarily choose to approach the issue of eating because this is where we are generally the least conscious. "You gotta eat" has been sandblasted into our thinking, and it stops there, without much consideration about what we're eating or the means of production. As a result, much of what people eat destroys their bodies and the environment and ultimately leads to cruel and painful death. This is death for the person who eats unconsciously, but also for animals, and for people who live on the lands that we either pollute or neglect.
Eating better does not have to be something for elitists, either in intellect or economic status. It can be just as simple as life is, if you clear your head of advertising. Food does not come from a box. Food comes from the earth. The stuff that comes from a box is the product of a system based on profit for government-subsidized farms, pharmaceutical companies (as in, those who "enrich" or "fortify"), confectionery labratories (labs that manufacture flavors), advertisers, distributors, trucking companies for transport, etc. This list is not all-inclusive - there are others who profit that I don't know about and I don't want to know about.
So eating better is as simple as supplying your cupboards and refrigerators with different and better food. Instead of marinating a Perdue chicken at night and baking it the next day, you could be using that same set of time to put water in a bowl of nuts for soaking and blend and strain into nutmilk the next day. Actually, making nutmilk takes less time than almost any cooking endeavor.
The other issue is that a vegetarian is not better than an omnivore. Really, we're all equal, it's just that one is part of the solution to a crisis of which we're all aware and one is adding to the crisis. Meat production is terrible for the environment, terrible for our bodies, and a waste of resources including water, land, feed, etc. And if there is an energy crisis, why should we turn on a stove or oven when we can eat raw food?
Profit is ruling our society, the two big industries are pharmaceutical and agriculture (or food). If it is profitable for the pharmaceutical companies to manufacture and sell drugs, why would they want to cure anyone? That's an obvious example, but for a less obvious example... why would bottled water companies want there clean water to be in abundance? Much of what we deserve as guests on this beautiful planet is polluted or destroyed to increase profits for private individuals.
We can all live together as a synergistic unit. Imagine if all of our kitchen waste was compost. Imagine that even our poop is so rich with plant food and nutrients that it can just go right back to the earth. Or our urine so pure from the clean water we drink that we could piss in a river and not worry about polluting it. How far can you take your own ideas for sustainability and how to use technology?
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