People are\nfocusing on containing this virus and reducing death and suffering (at least\nsome are, see my last blog). This is all well and good and should be done.\nHowever, this \u201cdown time\u201d was\/is also a time to rethink how almost everything\nis done. Yes, I mean everything. What could I be talking about (have I lost my\nmind?)? Let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First off, the most likely reason why this virus came about in the first place and spread to the human species so easily is because we have acted so irresponsibly regarding our production of food. Someone ate an infected bat or snake (which ate the bat). In 2020, humans shouldn\u2019t be eating such food (nor other \u201cmore civilized\u201d forms of food, more on this soon). Scientists had been predicting this for years (see ref 1<\/a> and ref 2<\/a>) and yet almost nothing was done. In fact, we keep increasing our risk for additional pandemics because of how we raise food (see ref 3<\/a> and ref 4<\/a>). But have you heard anything about changing the way we raise food during the past couple months? There are ecologically-grounded ways to raise food that would greatly reduce our risk of future pandemics, so we need to integrate them immediately. Unfortunately, nearly all institutions of \u201chigher\u201d learning promote the same, large scale, monoculturally-driven, dangerous methods of agriculture\u2014ones destined to promote more infectious diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, we\nneed to overhaul nearly all mainstream media forms. Why? Well, a short list of\ndemonstrable reasons includes: (1) they have failed to address the above\nissue\/link regarding agriculture and disease; (2) they have held very, very few\nleaders accountable for lies and extreme blunders (if not, criminal acts); (3)\nthey continue to rely almost entirely on the profits derived from advertising\n(one of the reasons why they are incapable of holding anyone associated with\nextreme wealth and power accountable for anything); and, (4) they focus almost\nno attention on what we, as an empowered citizenry working collectively, can do\nto stem the tide of wrongdoings or accelerate the positive changes that are\npossible and necessary. Rather, we are told daily that we must wait for a\nvaccine and for the weather to improve\u2026and of course, wash our hands and wear\nour masks. Time to change, no? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, we\nneed to remove money from the process of determining who our elected\nrepresentatives are. This has long been known and yet those that are elected,\nthey themselves products of a corrupted system that increasing relies on more\nand more $$, do little to nothing to correct it. (In fact, the Supreme Court\u2019s\nCitizens United decision in 2010 which gave corporations unlimited ability to\nfund political campaigns\u2014a 5-4 decision mind you\u2014suggests how money has\ncontaminated nearly all levels of Federal government.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fourth, we\nneed to reconsider what money is and how it functions in our society. The\ncurrent crisis and, specifically, the ability for the federal government to\nsend out trillions of dollars of money to companies and citizens, should send a\nmessage to all of us. Money is just \u201cpaper\u201d or an \u201celectronic\u201d form of power.\nIt is only as meaningful as the powerful in a society make it to be. Consider a\ndiamond? What if you had a five-pound diamond in your possession. What would it\nbe worth? Practically nothing, unless you could convince someone that it was\nworth something (to look at, wear, or use as a paper weight)? This is actually\nthe same for money. Consider taking old Argentine bills (before its economic\ncollapse) or even current Japanese yen to your local grocery store. The\nmerchants there would laugh at you, even if you had a LOT of coinage. There are\nways to conduct our economy that are outside the currently dominant monetary\nsystem (I will blog about this next). We need to really look at this carefully\nand do it soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is\nmore, a lot more (future blog? readers\u2019 comments?) to be done. But these four\nthings are among the four key ones. What do you think needs to be done? What\nare you willing to do to get these things done?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally,\nwhy now? This is another blog in itself, but suffice it to say that people are\nprobably most aware that the systems protecting us and providing for us are\nbroken at so many levels. They, hopefully, are more inclined to consider new\nideas and maybe even try something different now. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" People are focusing on containing this virus and reducing death and suffering (at least some are, see my last blog). This is all well and good and should be done. However, this \u201cdown time\u201d was\/is also a time to rethink how almost everything is done. Yes, I mean everything. What could I be talking about … Continue reading “A lot more needs to be done! This might be our chance.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenges","category-health","category-solutions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7BrNb-4s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}