Day 18 – Your beliefs.
I’ve already written about my views on religion, so I guess this is going to be about my secular beliefs.
I believe that human greed is the issue that we should be addressing. Forget war, global warming, drought, famine, terrorism, or any other threat to human life; the one we really need to take in hand, that needs to be controlled, reigned in, overcome, defeated if you like; the one thing that is more damaging and destructive than any other earth-bound threat is human greed. Even the catastrophic acts of nature which have ravaged the planet and are genuinely inhumane disasters, that we have no control over are still influenced by human greed. The recovery of survivors, the much needed assistance to rebuild communities and restore services, the aid required afterwards, whether it be food, shelter or medical, are all detrimentally affected by human greed.
Wars are fought over issues of human greed. Natural reserves, injustices real or perceived and intolerance of one form or another are at the core decision to go to war, intolerance of any sort have issues that are centred around human greed (they’re taking our jobs, they get better state support, they’re stealing our women, their depravity will devalue our culture and/or the value of our homes, their criminality will have an impact on our families and our possessions, etc.). Crime, drugs, prostitution and human trafficking all generate profit at the cost of human suffering to satisfy human greed.
Profit and consumerism is legal human greed; why do you need to buy that electrical item for £1,000.00? In a few weeks time it will be on sale for £800.00, in a years time it will be sold for £500.00, in two years time £200.00, in five years time it will cost you money to have it disposed of, all to satisfy human greed.
Human Kindness
We live in a crazy world where we produce more than enough food for everyone on the planet to eat but people are still starving.
We throw away vital valuable resources because there is more profit to be made from extracting new ones and creating new products to sell than there is from recycling and reusing the old.
We have the means to create safe drinking water from almost any water source, but that technology is not shared or it is but for a price that many who need it can not afford.
We have the ability to produce drugs and medicines that can assist every person on the planet to live a healthier, happier life, but they are only available for the wealthy few.
We have empty houses and buildings boarded up while people sleep on the streets.
We have land owners who have more land than they are able to maintain whilst others do not have enough land to grow enough plants just to sustain themselves.
We produce clothes, food and products in countries where the working population can be manipulated for a cheaper cost so that we can sell them to other countries whose population don’t really need but desire them, for even greater profits, whilst those who make them will never have the opportunity to earn enough to live beyond mere survival.
Companies and organisations rape the land of trees, minerals, metals, earth, stone and clay for profit when the planet genuinely belongs to us all.
Species are wiped out and eco-systems destroyed so that we can produce enough choice cuts of meat for the richest people to eat whilst simultaneously squeezing the carcasses to ensure that profit can be made from feeding the very worst cuts of meat to the poorest people.
When you think about it, there is something wrong with it all.
Who said that person A could own that plot land B?
Who did they buy it from?
What gave them the rights to sell it?
Why does the land belong to them?
Who do you go to if you have a land dispute? I don’t mean when your neighbours Leylandii grows too high or their new fence is positioned a foot too far into your garden (by accident of course), I mean when two countries dispute their boundaries?
What about continents, they are constantly jostling for each others space on the planet’s surface, who do I speak to about sea levels rising, erosion of the coastline or the volcanic lava flow that has enveloped my home.
The entire concept of ownership of land and raw resources is warped and is at the very core of the problem of human greed. Think about it, if that is fundamentally wrong, it would mean that, so is every other purchase or ownership transaction.
I don’t have a solution, I can’t even make recommendations in regards to which things we should try to change first to resolve this, all I know is that the planet would be a much better place to live if we did not have so much human greed.
Inevitably with the population growing as fast as it is, it is going to become a very big problem in the very near future unless we start making changes, maybe just thinking about it could be the first step towards that change.
I know I am.
Extra X-Wide P 