“Food insecurity.” That’s what we’re calling HUNGER now.
Sounds like a psychological disease some pharmaceutical company should invent a pill for, doesn’t it? But could the mothers and fathers who can’t afford milk for their children afford pills to stave off the stomachaches, weakness and brain fog hunger creates? Oh, excuse me—the pain, illnesses and mental debility food insecurity creates in children, old people and adults alike. Probably not.
There are currently 17 million children living in “food insecure households” along with another 33 million adults in the U.S. who can’t afford to reliably put food on the table because of limited money and resources. Limited money and resources in an economy where Cargill, the largest U.S. agricultural corporation, earned $1.17 billion in revenue in 2012—in a nation that produces 2.2 billion bushels of wheat a year and wastes an estimated $165 billion in food products annually as they flow “from farm to fork.”
We don’t lack food in the U.S. and we don’t lack the infrastructure to get food to the people who need it. We lack the empathy required to care, the compassion needed to do something about it and the values that make both empathy and compassion appear as viable human traits worth developing.
And we wonder what’s wrong with our ego-driven society?
A major, if not the major cause of such imbalance is we’ve raised masculine values of fierce striving, competition, aggression and individual success to the realm of Godly status. We’ve placed masculine goals of power and profit at all costs at the head of the TO DO list. Resource acquisition, monopoly, market domination, greed, cut throat dog-eat-dog mentality … it’s all good. It’s what we’re taught to believe in. It’s all we see praised.
Never mind human beings become resources, pollution destroys human health and climate change threatens ecosystems. He who dies with the most toys wins.
“Softer” feminine values of cooperation and compassion, community and concern for others have no place in the “real world.” At least that’s what we’re relentlessly told. But what real world are we talking about? The real world where eight million pounds of guacamole and 14,500 tons of chips are eaten on Super Bowl Sunday while 15 million children starve to death each year?
The real world is the world we choose with every decision we make. And I don’t know about you, but this isn’t the real world I choose at all. Which begs the question: Who is choosing it? Who stands to gain the most?
There are a million blogs out there on the corporate and political good ‘ol boy elite who aren’t about to let the reins of money, power and control slip from their fingers. But forget about them. We have numbers on our side. More to the point is: what can a concerned mother to do? A concerned father? A senior citizen?
I think perhaps the first and biggest thing is to take off the blindfold, be honest about how screwed up the world’s values are and then stand up and do something about it.
It isn’t PC to say it, but men and women are DIFFERENT. We have different ways of thinking and a completely different set of values and goals. For the last three thousand years the left-brain, logical, prowess-oriented masculine mindset has been dominant. And the technology and scientific advances that have come from that focus are magnificent.
But we lack social balance. We lack heart. We utterly lack feminine values and the feminine consciousness that takes others into account—that looks out for the good of all, not just the accumulation of personal power at all costs. Balance is the key. We must recognize, validate and elevate feminine values, qualities and goals to equal status as masculine. We must recognize it’s as important to care for and protect each other and the world as it is to have second houses and more stuff.
And a good place to start caring is food.
A writer friend who lives in senior-assisted housing was telling me how hard hit many of the elderly men and women living in his apartment complex have been with recent Republican-backed cuts in food stamp assistance. “It’s really hard on people,” he said. “But damned if out of nowhere the seniors who have enough food have voluntarily banded together and set up soup kitchens in both buildings to feed people who haven’t got enough.”
He chuckled. “It’s socialism in action.”
“Please stop with the masculine labeling!” I pleaded. “This isn’t politics and frickin’ socialism. It’s compassion in action—the flowing of the milk of human kindness.”
When we have enough of it the world will finally change for the better—one individual, one family, one building, one community at a time.