we have an enormous buffer in rich countries between ourselves and hunger.
I also talked briefly about this in my third blog post regarding zero hunger. It's hard to picture how much good a "rich" country such as the United States could do in order to help the cause of world hunger. Much privilege comes with that.
That became, as it were, a way of confronting large businesses in the business of wasting food, and exposing, most importantly, to the public, that when we’re talking about food being thrown away, we’re not talking about rotten stuff, we’re not talking about stuff that’s beyond the pale.
This is such an interesting topic that I think needs a lot more attention brought onto. Jobs especially fast food places throw away so much food at the end of the day that could really be used for good. It makes so much more sense for that food to be donated to a local food bank.
One morning, when I was feeding my pigs, I noticed a particularly tasty-looking sun-dried tomato loaf that used to crop up from time to time.
When I went to read the text, I accidentally scrolled down and this was the first sentence I read. It sounded funny how casually feeding the pigs came up. I'm intrigued to know what the text is actually about once I actually read it from the beginning. That's all for now.
Even a flood tide of economic growth is not going to get us there, if it just raises the mega-yachts and the super-wealthy and leaves the rest behind.
This is exactly what I had talked about in my earlier annotations. The great divide between the wealthy and poor and it's dangers. If all money was made in fair ways that did not harm the employees and only benefitted the employer, then that divide would be far less prominent.
There are costs to the environment, costs from new health problems like obesity.
It's crazy to try and comprehend how much our economy depends on the ruining of our environment. All of the trees that get chopped down to build large, poisonous, and polluting factories. Those factories, although help the economies of many to flourish, cause so much damage to the environment they're in and the people that work in them. Not only are their conditions unsafe for workers to work in, workers also don't get paid fair wages. So in sum, billionaires benefit off the backs of the environment, and their under-paid employees.
First of all, does everyone have the basic needs of survival: food, water, shelter, safety?
I fully agree that this must be one of the first steps of getting the world to where it needs to be. Considering how wealthy the rich is and how poor the unfortunate is, there should be enough that those two extremes should cancel out. No one, no matter how smart and deserving, should have billions and billions of dollars while there are people dying from the lack of the bare minimum. This is an issue that has a far deeper, deep-rooted ethical problem that cannot be fixed without time and patience.
knowing we’ll fail on occasion, to restore compassion to the center of our lives
It's important to accept failure, especially if one is looking to improve. By picking up on your own patterns, acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses, you learn much about yourself. You can then use that information for your benefit as to what you should or should not do, and how to approach certain situations.
We in this class acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately to some degree.
As humans, admitting to be imperfect requires a great deal of endeavor. Meaning that it takes a lot out of someone to admit, or at least acknowledge, that they have not been doing things the way they should be.
to dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and put another there,
At what point does one reflect and decide to stop putting others above themselves and focus on themselves instead?