This morning I woke up and my friend had posted about being "gutted" at seeing the front page of the New York Times. I had to look - and she picked the right adjective. It's horrifying.
Terrorists control most of Somalia right now. They are an Islamic insurgent group and have decided that they are taking a stand against the indoctrination of Western ideas into their Islamic society. That includes refusing aid of any kind if it comes in the package of anything other than Islam. It includes refusing immunizations for incredibly preventable diseases for their children. It includes refusing food from groups like Unicef. It includes the execution of foreign aid workers. They are hemming their people in, refusing outside access of any kind, and starving their own people to death. There are over 500,000 children who are dying of starvation while other people die to bring them food that they're not getting, because it's coming from white hands. The UN is launching investigations into organizations bringing aid because so much of it is being skimmed by known terrorists. It's illegal to aid terrorists, obviously. So if 20% of the food goes to dying children then we stop that 20% because it means 80% is aiding terrorists. To say the situation is complicated is a mass understatement. What on earth do we do? How can we help? It literally looks hopeless.
I'm going to draw a pretty controversial parallel here, just because it's something I can't stop thinking about. You should know I want to be wrong. I want these two things to be separate. It would make me feel so much better about myself and I'd like that. But I don't know that I'm wrong.
Last week while waiting for the ferry, we took Bella to the little park at the terminal. There were two kids, I'm going to guess aged nine and six. They were both so obese that they couldn't play. The little girl ran exactly the way Bella does. Like a speed walk, because Bella hasn't figured out the slight jumping motion that is intrinsic to actual running - this little girl physically couldn't do it. She was trying to ride the carousel, but the moment her dad went to push it, the amount of weight and lack of muscle tone literally didn't allow her to stay on. The motion of the carousel turning forced her off, as though her dad was pushing it sixty miles an hour. He tried again and again, and she flew to the ground over and over and you could tell it wasn't connecting with him. "Hang on!" he'd yell as she hit the ground. I couldn't look.The word 'abuse' popped into my head and I couldn't think of a good reason to make it leave. Maybe it was genetics. Maybe. The six large take-out containers of deep fried food that the mother was holding indicates otherwise, but I guess there's always that possibility. You don't see those kids over in Somalia though. The ones that are genetically predisposed to be huge. They don't exist there, why do they here? I don't know - I'm asking in earnest.
I'm asking how those two things can exist simultaneously. I'm asking how one is better than the other. One is seemingly about religion, one is about....what? How can we literally eat ourselves to death on one half of the world, while they starve on another? Because we can afford it? That's hardly an answer but it's the only one I can think of. Not only can we afford it, we think it's actually a basic human right to eat what we want, when we want, and not have to pay the consequences. Am I being unfair? Childhood obesity is killing our children. Starvation is killing theirs. They're refusing aid. We're refusing to eat something other than McDonald's. Both governments bear huge responsibility. It should NOT be cheaper to get a cheeseburger that is so far from actual food that it doesn't rot, than it is to get some chicken and vegetables that haven't been fed or sprayed with chemicals. How is what we're doing different? We make it impossible for poor people to eat healthily. Those poor people get a myriad of diseases that come from eating nothing that isn't chemical and fat at its core and they die from those diseases. While costing the government untold amounts of money in health care.
It's something I've been thinking about a long time: this question of entitlement. It's a basic human right to eat. It isn't a basic human right to eat something different every night of the week, regardless of when it's in season. Because lets face it, if we stopped demanding the exact same food all year round in our grocery store, it would be less likely that those vegetables would need to be artificially produced. It would mean that local farms could actually make money. It would even mean that the food you ate every day would taste better. Our economy would improve. Organic would stop meaning expensive. Eventually it would. I've been trying lately to eat organically, and do you know what I've discovered? You can eat it for about the same amount as you can eat crap, but you can't eat exactly what you want all the time. You might not eat meat with every meal, or even every day. Why do I balk at that, even now?
I'm the "king of sinners", as the saying goes. I was mad at Stupidstore for not having cilantro just yesterday. I have asparagus in my oven as I type this and I don't know who grew it and I know it was sprayed with chemical. I actually don't even know what asparagus looks like growing naturally. I don't know when any of my vegetables are in season, and I eat crap. I've fed it to my daughter for no other reason than that it was convenient at the time. I'm going to crack a diet Pepsi in just a few minutes because I like it and it's not even my first one today. And to a certain extent that's okay. It's okay to go out to eat and to enjoy what you put in your mouth. But I wonder about all this. I don't have answers that bear any intelligence at all. I want some country to storm the borders of Somalia with tanks, killing terrorists left and right dragging food and medicine behind them. I doubt that's a real answer.
I just can't stop wondering if we're as far removed from the terrorists in Somalia as we'd like to think we are. They're killing their people, we're killing ours - we're even using the same weapon. Don't get me wrong. Even typing it makes me want to rebel against my own words. Except that I don't see how those words are wrong. I'm wrong. I'm entitled and I'm guilty and I'm wrong. And though I don't need to feel guilty about being born on this side of the equation, I can't not think about the other. I can't turn my tear streaked face away from the photos because they're too hard to see, as my brain thinks of what it would be like to watch Bella die in my arm, so so slowly. But I should also think what it would do to my heart to see her get so huge that her body shuts down because it can't cope with what I'm feeding her.
So here I sit. Trying to find a conclusion that proves that we are better than they are. I don't have one.
Terrorists control most of Somalia right now. They are an Islamic insurgent group and have decided that they are taking a stand against the indoctrination of Western ideas into their Islamic society. That includes refusing aid of any kind if it comes in the package of anything other than Islam. It includes refusing immunizations for incredibly preventable diseases for their children. It includes refusing food from groups like Unicef. It includes the execution of foreign aid workers. They are hemming their people in, refusing outside access of any kind, and starving their own people to death. There are over 500,000 children who are dying of starvation while other people die to bring them food that they're not getting, because it's coming from white hands. The UN is launching investigations into organizations bringing aid because so much of it is being skimmed by known terrorists. It's illegal to aid terrorists, obviously. So if 20% of the food goes to dying children then we stop that 20% because it means 80% is aiding terrorists. To say the situation is complicated is a mass understatement. What on earth do we do? How can we help? It literally looks hopeless.
I'm going to draw a pretty controversial parallel here, just because it's something I can't stop thinking about. You should know I want to be wrong. I want these two things to be separate. It would make me feel so much better about myself and I'd like that. But I don't know that I'm wrong.
Last week while waiting for the ferry, we took Bella to the little park at the terminal. There were two kids, I'm going to guess aged nine and six. They were both so obese that they couldn't play. The little girl ran exactly the way Bella does. Like a speed walk, because Bella hasn't figured out the slight jumping motion that is intrinsic to actual running - this little girl physically couldn't do it. She was trying to ride the carousel, but the moment her dad went to push it, the amount of weight and lack of muscle tone literally didn't allow her to stay on. The motion of the carousel turning forced her off, as though her dad was pushing it sixty miles an hour. He tried again and again, and she flew to the ground over and over and you could tell it wasn't connecting with him. "Hang on!" he'd yell as she hit the ground. I couldn't look.The word 'abuse' popped into my head and I couldn't think of a good reason to make it leave. Maybe it was genetics. Maybe. The six large take-out containers of deep fried food that the mother was holding indicates otherwise, but I guess there's always that possibility. You don't see those kids over in Somalia though. The ones that are genetically predisposed to be huge. They don't exist there, why do they here? I don't know - I'm asking in earnest.
I'm asking how those two things can exist simultaneously. I'm asking how one is better than the other. One is seemingly about religion, one is about....what? How can we literally eat ourselves to death on one half of the world, while they starve on another? Because we can afford it? That's hardly an answer but it's the only one I can think of. Not only can we afford it, we think it's actually a basic human right to eat what we want, when we want, and not have to pay the consequences. Am I being unfair? Childhood obesity is killing our children. Starvation is killing theirs. They're refusing aid. We're refusing to eat something other than McDonald's. Both governments bear huge responsibility. It should NOT be cheaper to get a cheeseburger that is so far from actual food that it doesn't rot, than it is to get some chicken and vegetables that haven't been fed or sprayed with chemicals. How is what we're doing different? We make it impossible for poor people to eat healthily. Those poor people get a myriad of diseases that come from eating nothing that isn't chemical and fat at its core and they die from those diseases. While costing the government untold amounts of money in health care.
It's something I've been thinking about a long time: this question of entitlement. It's a basic human right to eat. It isn't a basic human right to eat something different every night of the week, regardless of when it's in season. Because lets face it, if we stopped demanding the exact same food all year round in our grocery store, it would be less likely that those vegetables would need to be artificially produced. It would mean that local farms could actually make money. It would even mean that the food you ate every day would taste better. Our economy would improve. Organic would stop meaning expensive. Eventually it would. I've been trying lately to eat organically, and do you know what I've discovered? You can eat it for about the same amount as you can eat crap, but you can't eat exactly what you want all the time. You might not eat meat with every meal, or even every day. Why do I balk at that, even now?
I'm the "king of sinners", as the saying goes. I was mad at Stupidstore for not having cilantro just yesterday. I have asparagus in my oven as I type this and I don't know who grew it and I know it was sprayed with chemical. I actually don't even know what asparagus looks like growing naturally. I don't know when any of my vegetables are in season, and I eat crap. I've fed it to my daughter for no other reason than that it was convenient at the time. I'm going to crack a diet Pepsi in just a few minutes because I like it and it's not even my first one today. And to a certain extent that's okay. It's okay to go out to eat and to enjoy what you put in your mouth. But I wonder about all this. I don't have answers that bear any intelligence at all. I want some country to storm the borders of Somalia with tanks, killing terrorists left and right dragging food and medicine behind them. I doubt that's a real answer.
I just can't stop wondering if we're as far removed from the terrorists in Somalia as we'd like to think we are. They're killing their people, we're killing ours - we're even using the same weapon. Don't get me wrong. Even typing it makes me want to rebel against my own words. Except that I don't see how those words are wrong. I'm wrong. I'm entitled and I'm guilty and I'm wrong. And though I don't need to feel guilty about being born on this side of the equation, I can't not think about the other. I can't turn my tear streaked face away from the photos because they're too hard to see, as my brain thinks of what it would be like to watch Bella die in my arm, so so slowly. But I should also think what it would do to my heart to see her get so huge that her body shuts down because it can't cope with what I'm feeding her.
So here I sit. Trying to find a conclusion that proves that we are better than they are. I don't have one.
