Are you living your life? The life you’re living right now is it really yours; or is it the life that has been put on you. In everyday life we have unseen powers putting pressure on us to live a certain way. Almost everything we do is influenced by society. Everything from the clothes we wear, to the food we eat. So when you go to the mall and you tell your self that your going to pick out the clothes that you like or buy this brand of food because you know its healthy, how much of that is really coming from your own thought out opinions. The fact is most people don’t live a life that they truly want to live. And because of that there life can be labeled as meaningless. A meaningful life is a life that you choose to live through understanding of what’s going on and not a life where you do as you are expected to do.
The average persons life is so planned out that they don’t even have an idea of what they eat. When you go to the supermarket and pick up a package of stakes, you don’t really know how those stakes got there. You just do what you’ve been taught to do; go to the frozen meat section, pick up the biggest piece you can afford, and leave. There is no questioning and no need to know where those stakes came from. If somebody knew the inhumane treatment of cows, such as the live castration and cramped living conditions of the cow, then maybe they wouldn’t pick up that stake. Before all the corperations taking of the food market people knew where their food came from. People could see the cow when it was alive and everyone knew how it was killed and cut up. These days you don’t see the cow till its already cut up in the package.The thing that makes eating the stake meaningless isn’t the fact that they are eating it, it’s the fact that the average person doesn’t know how it got there.
A major part in people lives are holidays. Even the smalls ones such as mlk and may day people find important. On Martin luther king day everyone loves to talk about the great change and listen to that one speech. But by doing this you are helping to keep his message dead. If you ask anyone to name lines from any other speech by martin luther king they will probably draw a blank. If you ask someone if they think MLK would be happy with the way things are today, after alittle thought they will probably say no. By giving Martin Luther King his own day people have stopped hearing his message. People can live their lifes in a racist society because on that one day a year they can listen to a speech and be proud of the change that has happen. People no longer look deeply in Martin Luther King because they feel they don’t need to, they have heard his I have a dream speech and that’s all they ever hear so they figure that all there is. People look more deeply into Malcolm X. They read his book and I know of cases where he has changed their lives. They reason they have looked so deeply at him is because he has no holiday. People don’t think they have and understanding of what he stood for there for they look and what they see usually changes them. If MLK didn’t have a holiday some people would probably look more deeply at him, they would read more then that one speech and have a better understand of who he is. The practice of MLK day is not meaningful because on that day people only talk about the parts of MLK they have been told to talk about. There is no full understanding of who he is.
If you go to west London to Portobello road there is a bridge. Under the bridge ever Saturday there is a market. One stand inpeticular sells Che Guevara clothing. This of course is a message in its self. When you analyze this you see that it is saying the way to live a meaningful life is to buy and wear clothing that have revolutionary figures on it. One morning the people of this street woke up to see the bridge painted by an unknown person. Across the bridge there were six pictures of che. In each picture he has cool sunglasses on and other apparel, but in each picture while the image of the sunglasses stays strong the image of che seems to melt away. Till in the end you see a melted face with that is impossible to recognize, with really cool sunglasses on. This makes the clear statement that people no long wear che because they agree with what he believed in, but because you get to have the revolutionist persona. And that has gotten to the point where people no longer even know what he stood for. In other words Commodity your descent. The artist of the images is known as Bansky, and what he did was meaningful. He had a full understanding of the world he lived in. He understood that people just wear the Che Guevara with out evening knowing that much about him. Through the understanding of the world around him he was able to live a more meaningful life.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
702 words
“you are what you eat”. We have all heard the saying but we have never really thought about it. The truth is what we eat says a lot about who we are. You meet someone and you have a first impression; how does the impression change when you find out they are a vegeterian or even a vegan. If you don’t eat pork your religouse, if you eat six meals a day you are a seriouse athlete. A lot can be said about a person by what they eat. So what does is say about a culture who buys questionable meet in plastic packages with no idea of where it came from. Food is one of the mose important things in our lives, yet we are clueless about it. We don’t know what to consider healthy, we don’t know where it came from, and were rarely even cook it ourselves. The luxury of having options has caused us to lose understanding of the importance of food.
Cultures before us had a deeper understanding of their food. Native American tribes of north America had what was called the tree sisters. The tree sisters were corn, squash and beans. These were the most important part of the native Americans food group. The Native Americans needed to farm to survive. If there was a bad season they did not eat. What they realize what by growing these three plants together they were able to grow a lot more. The beans were a climbing plant, they needed the corn to climb. Squash was a plant that grew on the ground. This prevented weeds from being grown around the corn. Since the native Americans needed these plants to survive they needed to find the best ways to plant them. Today most people probably don’t even know what squash looks like. Why should they? They can just go to the store and get it cooked and canned. We no longer know the importance of beans and corn. To use they are just different cans on a shelf, not a means of survival. We no longer know how to support our selves; we must look for expert’s opinion.
When we have so many options we sometimes don’t know what to do. We get lost in all the big words. Because of this we think we need the experts advise. We have a set group of people set on a pedestal. These people know about food, while we are clueless and unhealthy, these smilling faces on the side of the magazine can correct us. All of the options we have confused us. It use to be you ate what was available so not much thought was needed. These day you have so much available you don’t know what to eat. Even sugar has gotten complicated. We no longer no what to eat, so we must now turn to strangers. By letting someone else control the most important thing in our life we have become abit more lost.
In Our Dailey Bread. The film crew takes footage of the European food instrusty. What you see is food being mass produced. Multiple cows are being milked at once. Animals are kept in as small space as possible, and farming is done mostly by machines. All of this is done to maximize profits. Farming is no longer done to keep your family alive, it is done to make as much money as possible. In some cases humans hands don’t touch the food until the packaging. We no longer have a connection to our food. By having an excese of food we lose the meaningfulness of that steak dinner. When you grow pick and cook your own food your connections is strong. You feel good knowing that your survival was continued by your work. By going to the store and picking out your favorite name brand there is no conncetion. There is no feeling of accomplishment as your home grown food is cooked, just the feeling of plastic. Our lives are in the hands of the major corporations. If they stopped making food or the trucks never delievered or the store never opened, we would starve. We are in the hands of our creations.
Cultures before us had a deeper understanding of their food. Native American tribes of north America had what was called the tree sisters. The tree sisters were corn, squash and beans. These were the most important part of the native Americans food group. The Native Americans needed to farm to survive. If there was a bad season they did not eat. What they realize what by growing these three plants together they were able to grow a lot more. The beans were a climbing plant, they needed the corn to climb. Squash was a plant that grew on the ground. This prevented weeds from being grown around the corn. Since the native Americans needed these plants to survive they needed to find the best ways to plant them. Today most people probably don’t even know what squash looks like. Why should they? They can just go to the store and get it cooked and canned. We no longer know the importance of beans and corn. To use they are just different cans on a shelf, not a means of survival. We no longer know how to support our selves; we must look for expert’s opinion.
When we have so many options we sometimes don’t know what to do. We get lost in all the big words. Because of this we think we need the experts advise. We have a set group of people set on a pedestal. These people know about food, while we are clueless and unhealthy, these smilling faces on the side of the magazine can correct us. All of the options we have confused us. It use to be you ate what was available so not much thought was needed. These day you have so much available you don’t know what to eat. Even sugar has gotten complicated. We no longer no what to eat, so we must now turn to strangers. By letting someone else control the most important thing in our life we have become abit more lost.
In Our Dailey Bread. The film crew takes footage of the European food instrusty. What you see is food being mass produced. Multiple cows are being milked at once. Animals are kept in as small space as possible, and farming is done mostly by machines. All of this is done to maximize profits. Farming is no longer done to keep your family alive, it is done to make as much money as possible. In some cases humans hands don’t touch the food until the packaging. We no longer have a connection to our food. By having an excese of food we lose the meaningfulness of that steak dinner. When you grow pick and cook your own food your connections is strong. You feel good knowing that your survival was continued by your work. By going to the store and picking out your favorite name brand there is no conncetion. There is no feeling of accomplishment as your home grown food is cooked, just the feeling of plastic. Our lives are in the hands of the major corporations. If they stopped making food or the trucks never delievered or the store never opened, we would starve. We are in the hands of our creations.
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