Day 347 – 5/5/12 – Addressing Hunger
People Met = 3
Yesterday I foreshadowed some continuing thoughts regarding safety and kindness. In the meantime Cindy and I rented a car to drive up to Connecticut for our daughter Charissa’s graduation. We came back within 24 hours to resume the hike in New Jersey. In reaction to a speech I heard there safety and kindness will have to wait a little more.
Sisters Serena and Charissa the Graduate
Charissa is in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at UConn, with a degree as an “Honors Scholar” in Nutritional Science. The commencement speaker was a lawyer involved in food and nutrition programs in Washington, DC. He built up how important that particular College was, that feeding the world through continued improvements in their area was the key factor for eradicating poverty.
Speeches such as these is why we have no problem with young adults volunteering for worthy projects; they are continually primed in college by “save the world” rhetoric. Make no mistake, volunteerism always will be needed. Because of the presence of large cities, centralized efforts to overcome hunger and other problems always will be needed as well.
However, there is no evidence, none, zippo, nada of large mass societies EVER being able to eliminate all poverty and hunger among citizens (though one could haggle over what makes something large). It’s rather naïve to think that continued centralized, save the world solutions will ever change that. That humorous definition of insanity repeating the same thing while expecting different results comes to mind.
On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that small communities with sufficient autonomy can achieve affluence (the Galbraith kind) for ALL its citizens. Yes, ALL. However, it would be equally naïve to think that we can turn the whole world into functioning small scale societies.
The best approach no doubt lies somewhere in between. There must be a realistic approach to centralized, global “save the world” strategies while allowing for as many decentralized, autonomous small scale societies as possible.
Next post: back to safety and kindness.
