Thursday, May 21, 2009

Exasperated at the Entire Nation

The thing that most bothers me about his country is how high our laziness quotient is. We're too lazy to exercise, so we're the ninth fattest nation in the world (74.1% of those over age 15 are overweight) and moving right up. We're too lazy to eat right, so every 34 seconds, somebody dies of heart disease and every 20 seconds, somebody has a heart attack (see statistics). We eat food loaded with pesticides because it's cheap and wonder why disease is so rampant. We mechanize our lives and neglect nature (pretending she is inefficient) and then wonder why we are all so emotionally messed up. We're too lazy to care what our government is doing and so they pass laws that infringe on our rights. And then we're too lazy to do anything. We're too lazy to care about our planet, so we pollute our land with landfills, chop down our forests, build factories that release all kinds of air pollutions, pour our wastes into water sources...and the list goes on.

Some people try to live in such a way that there will still be natural beauty and wilderness left in our country fifty years from now. And that is great. Keep up the good work, but this is a rant (in case you hadn't already noticed lol) and so that's all I'm going to say about you.

I'm going to end with a quote:
Your land is a spiritual responsibility: Whoever you are, whatever your faith, the land you live on is a spiritual responsibility. With privilege comes responsibility!

We all have to become political activists, fighting the sources of pollution wherever we find them! If we don't fight it will keep on happening...the moral person takes responsibility for his or her entire life, and afterlife, and the lives of those given to us as a responsibility--and the tomorrow of this great gift of a planet! This is one of those times in history when everybody has to stand up and be counted. You're either for planetary death by poison or you're or a responsible, protective stewardship that will recover and maintain healthy soil, air, and water. There's no in between. At the rate we're going, the next 10, 20, or, at the most, 50 years, will decisively tip the balance one way or the other...there can never be a letting up of this vigilence, this policing and regulation of government and industry's tendency to pollute.

There is change, good change, coming...When we're awakened and aroused to the point at which people do what's needed without legislation to force them, that's the best of all possible systems...It can happen. It has to. Industry and government have to be willing, or forced, to..avoid irreparable environmental damage.

--"The Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Carla Emery, pages 13-14 (9th edition)

2 comments:

The Three Little Bears said...

I just read a book that I loved. It's called "The Worst Hard Time" and it's about the Dust Bowl during the depression. But more than that, it's about how a actions by a collective group of people caused this. I learned that how we treat the land is SO important. I am getting ready to pick up another book called "Dirt" which is similiar and talks about the value of dirt and how it can predict the fall of a nation before it happens.

The Three Little Bears said...

The full title of that second book is "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations."