I think that most of us, at least in this class setting, would agree that most of what we've read about in these chapters constitutes a set of exceptionally unacceptable practices.
I can't imagine that any of my contemporaries would argue that this way of being (particularly here, with relevance to food, but also just in general) is good or ideal or healthy. In fact, most of what comes up in the peoples' defense for the manifestation of the corporate model of profit-driven food distribution is that we have wandered way to far down this path to reconsider now. It's like we're stuck.
But for me, this case study of the food industry is an embodiment of the ugly capitalism we've cultivate that strikes some primal resonance in our hearts. Housing markets, global commodity trade, and industry based on weapons and war are somehow new creations of ours, but food has always been there. We have always had to eat, and the intimacy we feel with it is as basic as our inclination to breathe.
And that is likely why this strikes us as so disturbing.
Yet so few would outwardly declare that this is completely unacceptable. We have actually come to believe in the delusional system that prompts this industry dynamic.
Our 'institutions of higher education' train bright minds to analyze and write a manual for the techniques for making a profit off of children. The universities push rigorous curriculum in sciences to make brilliantly capable chemists to synthesize fake food flavors because the real things won't wake the suits enough money.
Really smart people once sat down for months of collaboration and came up with the chicken McNugget in the end. Smart kids graduate high school and, with heavy fanfare from their communities and rampant praise of their success, go to study business to become the MBAs who've so successfully make food processors into the lavishly wealthy industry that it is today.
These are the things that we are trained to do. One would assume that graduates of one of the supposedly best educational cultures in the world would leave its institutions with wisdom, inclinations towards peace and humility, a passionate desire to improve the quality of their community and an idolatrous reverence for money and the manufactured crap that it can buy at WalMart and the Apple Store.
But, as we see by the nauseating calamity that we've induced with regard to our own nutrition, this has not been what we've trained people for. Our institutions teach us that capitalism is the only way. The best motivation for people to improve is cut-throat competition. Profit has replaced virtue and business has replaced community.
The rich are rich because the deserve to be. They worked harder than anyone else to get that way, and there's no point in going back to question all the throats the slit to do it.
So for the advertiser who wrote this creed on how to convince people that McDonalds was just a loyal friend in the interest of taking as much of their money as possible, our reaction should not be one of "it's unfortunate that this is how things have to be, to bad nature couldn't be ideal." In stead, we should treat him more like we treat drug addicts and homeless people, saying, "your behavior is unacceptable and ugly, blatantly unhealthy for the community, and destructive to our collective and communal well-being." Then, we should lock him in a 100 square foot concrete cell with steel bars on one side and forget about him for a decade or so.
I can't imagine that any of my contemporaries would argue that this way of being (particularly here, with relevance to food, but also just in general) is good or ideal or healthy. In fact, most of what comes up in the peoples' defense for the manifestation of the corporate model of profit-driven food distribution is that we have wandered way to far down this path to reconsider now. It's like we're stuck.
But for me, this case study of the food industry is an embodiment of the ugly capitalism we've cultivate that strikes some primal resonance in our hearts. Housing markets, global commodity trade, and industry based on weapons and war are somehow new creations of ours, but food has always been there. We have always had to eat, and the intimacy we feel with it is as basic as our inclination to breathe.
And that is likely why this strikes us as so disturbing.
Yet so few would outwardly declare that this is completely unacceptable. We have actually come to believe in the delusional system that prompts this industry dynamic.
Our 'institutions of higher education' train bright minds to analyze and write a manual for the techniques for making a profit off of children. The universities push rigorous curriculum in sciences to make brilliantly capable chemists to synthesize fake food flavors because the real things won't wake the suits enough money.
Really smart people once sat down for months of collaboration and came up with the chicken McNugget in the end. Smart kids graduate high school and, with heavy fanfare from their communities and rampant praise of their success, go to study business to become the MBAs who've so successfully make food processors into the lavishly wealthy industry that it is today.
These are the things that we are trained to do. One would assume that graduates of one of the supposedly best educational cultures in the world would leave its institutions with wisdom, inclinations towards peace and humility, a passionate desire to improve the quality of their community and an idolatrous reverence for money and the manufactured crap that it can buy at WalMart and the Apple Store.
But, as we see by the nauseating calamity that we've induced with regard to our own nutrition, this has not been what we've trained people for. Our institutions teach us that capitalism is the only way. The best motivation for people to improve is cut-throat competition. Profit has replaced virtue and business has replaced community.
The rich are rich because the deserve to be. They worked harder than anyone else to get that way, and there's no point in going back to question all the throats the slit to do it.
So for the advertiser who wrote this creed on how to convince people that McDonalds was just a loyal friend in the interest of taking as much of their money as possible, our reaction should not be one of "it's unfortunate that this is how things have to be, to bad nature couldn't be ideal." In stead, we should treat him more like we treat drug addicts and homeless people, saying, "your behavior is unacceptable and ugly, blatantly unhealthy for the community, and destructive to our collective and communal well-being." Then, we should lock him in a 100 square foot concrete cell with steel bars on one side and forget about him for a decade or so.
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