People are suffering, ecosystems are being poisoned and disrupted, species are going extinct at what seems to be an accelerating rate, and this is good business. It is becoming more and more blaringly obvious that the dominant, consumer, white, western culture is causing massive damage to peoples, communities, cultures, living nature, and the planet itself. This consumer culture is like an engine that runs on anything and everything burning down everything in its path and leaving a trail of waste. There is literally a trail of waste being ever expanded in the many ocean garbage patches we are coming to find. The North Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated by some scientists to occupy an area at least the size of Texas. However, such estimates are difficult to verify because this platic-laden soup consists mostly of small rice-grain- to pencil-eraser-sized particles of plastic suspended slightly underwater, and thus it is difficult to see and measure. Since it was discovered, other huge garbage patches have been discovered in other oceans. Miller, Tyler G. Spoolman, Scott E. Living in the Environment. One of my previous writings was asking the question to what end? I truely believe ultimate power and greed is the only aspiration of the consumer society. So many are left destitute and ruined, while so few live livestyles so lavish that entire countries could not afford them. Those that bear the brunt of the consequence are first peoples of color, and second the poor. It has been the same way for hundreds of years beginning with advocation of this treatment to be changed through the years to now be denial of the existance of such treatment as the prescribed way to deal with it. In this instance, we do not have a case of Schrodingers cat. We can not say that if we do not look that there is no racism, those that are suffering have not agreed to look away with us. It is real and evident the world over that people of color suffer inequal amounts of negative effects of pollution, food scarcity, violence, insecurity, disease, and the list goes on. The way of the westernized culture is to assimilate and destroy. All that can be is assimilated until it is not what it was, what ever is left is destroyed. The racial superiority aspect most definately played a large part of the creation of the current consumer, world market society. Members of expanding commercial societies rationalized as a natural evolutionary process the elimination of other societies they considered to be either culturally or racially inferior. They thought such a natural selection process was so inevitable that nothing could prevent it. For example, in 1915 Paul Popenoe told the scientists assembled in Washington, D.C., for the Nineteeth Internation Congress of Americanists that the mass destruction of Native Americans following European invasion was a process of racial purification of weak stocks. The Indian was killed off by natural selection. Popenoe declared. the native succumbed to the process of evolution, and no conceivable kindness from their conquerors could have prevented this elimination. Certainly, disease was a major factore in New World depopulation, but it was accompanied by conquest and colonization, which were political processes for which individual decision makers were responsible. Treating ethnocide and genocide as the operation of an immutable scientific law is to mask their underlying political causes. Bodley, John H. Victims of Progress At this time third world countries are bearing a lot of the weight from the fallout of this way of life. In a self feeding spiral owners of corporations feel they own rights to land that is not being exploited to its full capacity regardless of indigenous cultures already living and using the land and resources. The corporation will move in and waste away all the nature, trying to extract all of the resources an area has to give. Left with no resources to be found or land on which to enjoy them, the tribal or colored people are then left to try to fit into a culture and economy that they never wanted to be a part of. The corporation that has ruined what was previously a working self sustaining culture and has no loyalty or obligation to the peoples at all. After taking all of the resources an area has to offer the corporations convert the left over populations to market societies and begin to assimilate them. Those lucky enough to get jobs face extremely low wages with extremely hard, hazardous work conditions that may cause future health and environmental issues. Those without jobs, they starve. Corporations do not offer all jobs to the people who are living in the areas they disrupt, only a few, the rest are left to suffer the consequeces of good business. What is it that makes western culture and corporate entities believe they have the right to push their way of life onto the rest of the world at ever increasing speed? The leaders of the culture and of corporations are uncannily shinning white. These so called leaders see those of color as inferior and seek to use them as such. When a population becomes inconvienient or unprofitable, they are left in the wake and offered a pittance or nothing at all in return. Western culture has always viewed people of color or of different culutres as backwards, underdeveloped, savage, inferior... Even with in our own country numbers of black children with lead poisoning are two to three times higher than thos of white children. Those who are not white had come up from a history of recent racial segregation and since this time the status quo has been upheld, if not blatantly, covertly. This has those of color at great disadvantage over their white counter parts when opportunites are conerned. There is still a legacy in America of racism and once corporations have crossed over the border, racism is used as a tool to achieve profits anyway possibe. There must be some end to this ethnocentric racist consuming lifestyle. Not all humans want to live this way, I do not want to live this way, I do not find it pleasureable. Other options, other economies, and alternitive cutures need to be allowed and left alone, I have faith in the ability of the people in all aspects to conquer their oppressors, I am not sure how drastic the measures will have to be is all. In the end I think it is obvious who is benefiting and who is suffering. When the greatest suffering is occuring still corporations and governments of developed nations do not act as though these people are humans. These people are again and again left to starve while perfectly good food is thrown out on a daily basis. Assistance is denied or given under coersion locking nations into unrealistic debts that only matter in economies and cultures they know or care nothing about. A moral society would not allow its members, and especially not its leaders to conduct themselves in such a manner. We unfortunatly are not living in a moral society, we are living in a racist ethnocentric consumer society that I believe the majority of humans does not appriciate. I feel horible living in a time like this to be perfectly honest. I want to make change and that is what I hope to do with my life, as well as encourage others to dedicate themselves to change as well. One great thing that came up durring the video The Story of Stuff was that if we do not have things and we do not buy things then we are not valuable to this consumer society. This is something to be considered, previously hearing ideas of voting with your dollar this makes me thing of voting by not using your dollar at all. Bring the engine to a grinding halt, I invite you to the challenge.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 05:31:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015