Let me start by saying that no one hates political ads and campaign crap more than me, so this post is really going to have very little to do with the election and politics. Second point of business, I know I said the next time I posted it would be about Guatemala (I'm really sorry it's taking me FOREVER to get on that already), but it's going to have to be pushed one more time simply due to timing of current events. With that, on to my thoughts on the election...
I vote me for President (ha - no way!). But seriously, our candidates are (and always have been) focusing solely on current needs of the country; you know, how to fix our problems. I get that that sounds ridiculously stupid; of course they're going to focus on fixing our problems. That is the job they are vying for, after all. But I'd love to see someone running for President who is looking at the real root of our nation's problems and talking about how they may address those issues in addition to the immediate and current issues. Granted, if someone did that they would probably sink their own ship.
If you ask me, which I know no one did, I think all of our problems are due to three things: overconsumption, over-indulgence and self-satisfaction. Thinking about it now, I suppose overconsumption and over-indulgence could both be attributed to the desire to feed the need for self-satisfaction. I mean, let's take food for example. We have a food supply that can hardly be sustained as it is. We have an unimaginable number of food products that are in no way natural or needed (think Cheez Whiz and Pop-Tarts). To produce these products we've had to add numerous unnatural ingredients to make the foods more shelf-stable. To produce the amounts of foods "needed" for the people's over-indulgent way of life, we've needed to modify certain ingredients so the foods can be cheaper to produce (think high fructose corn syrup). To produce food at the rate needed, we've had to find ways to make more food faster (think growth hormones and antibiotics pumped into our livestock). All of this just to meet the "needs" of our nation's population. But, if we got back to eating for survival and not for satisfaction and over-indulgence, we could hugely reduce our food production and ideally get back to a more natural food supply. This in turn, could partly solve the obesity epidemic, reduce health care costs, and reduce our environmental footprint.
A couple of other issues of overconsumption: consuming the environment to continue to grow our society (causing global warming, ice melt, rising sea levels, and various forms of destruction caused by these changes in environmental balance) and consuming things we can't afford (dealing with the various downfalls of excessive debt is part of the reason for our current economic state).
I also think over-population is a problem. It contributes to the consumption of the environment, the thought that our food supply needs to increase further, and possibly even part of the reason for lack of jobs. Consider the fact that science and technology has helped people to live longer, healthier lives. This likely means that people are holding jobs for longer, not to mention that the baby boomer generation is still holding many jobs that could be available in a few years (I'm sure whoever is president during the period where those jobs become available will take credit for fixing the job situation rather than recognizing that it may be largely due to the natural ebb and flow of life). Anyway, if we could all take personal responsibility for the national population I think it could have a large impact on our nation's future as well.
Anyways, these are just some of the thoughts I was having today. They are in no way researched or proven statements, and I am not even especially well versed in some of the topics I mentioned. Someone who is very well educated on the environment could tell me my statements are in no way justified or accurate. In fact, they may be straight up wrong, but they are just some things I was thinking about today and that I believe could be important items to address (or at least discuss) as a nation to get to the root of what causes our problems. How to go about that though, I've got no clue. Hopefully a presidential candidate in the future will!
Happy voting!!
