Did you know there’s other stuff going on outside of tech? I don’t care about what’s hot right now in the world of shit hitting the fan because people get tired of news just as quickly as they get excited. If the news is trending on Twitter or covering the front page of CNN, rest assured that the same news will be just as annoying to the modern world within 2-4 weeks. Some news like Swine Flu, Tiger Woods and Sarah Palin’s wardrobe are distant past. Whatever happened to the people of Haiti? Are they doing okay? Who gives a shit, Apple has a screwed up antenna problem with their new iPhone. Let’s say “fuck it” to every other problem and focus on that. This isn’t just in the tech world, this is headline news on every major media site.
It’s not something I get worked up about anymore beyond a couple of sarcastic tweets about Osama Bin Laden and if we even want to catch him anymore. My sarcasm bleeds through when I tweet, “hell, it was just a few thousand people in New York City that died at the hands of the Taliban. Guess we don’t care about revenge or seeing justice served.” These kind of stories do affect us but it’s like sitting at a cafe and witnessing a couple who are so terribly in love that they’re basically making babies right there in front of you are the same couple that keep you awake at night in apartment 5B with their screaming arguments. Life is always seeking balance and our fanatical talk about Tiger Woods’ affairs becomes an utter disgust of the topic after only a few weeks because we were so excited about it before.
I don’t get wrapped up in such topics. It’s not that I don’t care it’s just that I fully understand that the hot story will be old news as soon as I get time to actually read into it and research it. My time spent becoming truly informed of that news bit is just enough time for it to be old news at the water cooler Instead, I try to find news that isn’t popular; news that no one thinks about but the news I read affects us all in such drastic ways that I think we’re ignorant for ignoring.
As always, I like to say that I’m only writing this to share a bit of perspective on how I learn, study and grow. I try to share these bits with a tone that doesn’t come off as condescending, elitist or entitled. I just try to share and it makes you feel that way, please comment below in why you think I’m wrong and maybe I’ll learn something. That’s what all of this is about. If we don’t learn anything, why are we here?
Two articles I read this morning completely threw me off as items I never knew about and one drastically shaped the way I’ll live from here on. I’ll start with that one.
Please read: “At a Slaughterhouse,
Some Things Never Die”
What I found most intriguing about this was how humans are being treated. I’ve done research into where my food comes from. You’ll rarely see me eating pork or products that were chopped up 2,000 miles away and processed with stuff that I can’t even pronounce and this article does an okay job and bringing up what goes into our food.
A side note that touches on food preparation and sources that I wanted to share with you how I decide what to eat. It’s very similar in how I decide who to spend my time with. Food gives us energy. It’s a crucial part of our existence on this Earth and is the core of what makes up who we are at least in the physical sense. Every aspect of that food’s time here becomes a part of you upon eating it. If the chicken was injected with growth hormones, if the pig was fed the dead carcases of other pigs and if the cow was confined to a tight space with no room as flies and maggots ate away at its underbelly, you are eating that. If the chickens get kicked and the fish get gutted from underpaid workers who hate their job, that’s ingested as well. The disgruntled truck driver, the underpaid butcher and the Ki / Energy that’s embodied in every hand that touches your food is absorbed into your body along with proteins and carbohydrates to make up your energy levels. Your energy is affected by everything you eat. It’s part of the reason I have a problem eating in restaurants now.
If the chef had a bad day, my food is affected by that. I try to buy meats from butchers that only buy locally from farms that aren’t over-crowded and full of underpaid workers. I try to trace back where it came from and I thank my butcher for his time and then I go home and I personally prepare that food. At the market where I buy my veggies, I have made friends with the women who work there. They greet me and suggest tomatoes that are fresher and a new batch of beets that just arrived. I go home, pour some wine and invite friends over and cook for them. I make it a social experience and my heart is warmed as they take their first bite and smile. This is my food experience in 2010. It’s free of fast food, free of processed foods and free of that unknown that comes from store bought meats and mcdonalds fast food. This way of living isn’t for everyone but I can say that your life will be much richer and full of joy when you experience food like this. I believe that the emotional state and treatment of my food and the people handling it affects my life each day. If I could farm, I would but I have to buy it second hand and that’s okay for now. If you live in the country, find a CSA and join it. Your body will thank you.
Moving on. This story isn’t about food at all, at least not directly. It’s about the fact that humans, people like you and me are treated like crap. It hurts me to all ends to read this piece of the race relations of underpaid employees working hellacious hours at a dead end job where their lives are in danger each day and I remember sitting at the dinner table as a young boy on Thanksgiving as a baked ham sat on our table feeling the warmth and joy of all of us sitting together where the majority of our ham comes from this factory in the Carolinas where workers live and breathe such terrible conditions.
In a way, I’ll make a stretched comment to say this is modern slavery and shame on me for ever being ungrateful for what I have. The true crime is to ignore stories like this and continue purchasing meats that come from places like this.
- We need to tell Washington to push imigration reform, crack down on the treatment of people who enter America looking for opportunity and are treated inhumanely with low pay and make business practices like this completely illegal.
- We need to demand our grocers and restaurants not carry food from factories that treat people like this. Make sure the food we eat doesn’t come from someone who dreams of the American dream but has only 2 fingers and is treated like cattle more than the cattle coming in on trucks each day.
- We have to become more enlightened to what the hell is going on!
To my last point, it made me feel completely terrible and so out of touch to even talk about Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna problems. How insensitive, how idiotic and how closed minded of me to spend countless hours reading and talking about Apple’s antenna problems when shit like this is happening in the world. You should be ashamed too and if not, then you have your own problems.
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The second article I read this morning is written by a man who’s traveled the world looking at how oil is affecting us and our Earth in so many ways. Scenes from the Violent Twilight of Oil. This ride is slightly less emotional to me but is a huge global problem. I didn’t feel the emotion that I did with the previous post.
I won’t talk too much about it beyond simply saying that the US only cares when we have a spill that affects us. There are wars in Africa, sensitive economies in Venezuela and men who live like kings in Texas earning nearly a billion dollars at one job where they just decide where we drill next.
The same can be said for the diamond industry. Yet, after many people have written about blood diamonds, women still wear them without ever asking if it’s conflict free or not. We still drive oil hungry cars and use plastic everywhere we can.
Two more articles about oil’s effects I read this week.
You have to go out there and discover content or be even more daring and discover it for yourself. I’m ashamed at how committed I am to tech. It’s time to broaden my horizons and serve the universe using the gifts I was given. Not just retaining knowledge but using it to make everything great for all of us. Let’s do this together and it starts with learning.