We have made great strides since our earliest days of bathing in rivers and wearing fig leaves, haven’t we?  I bet our road to advancement was met with skepticism at every step along the way.  There always seem to be crackpots and paranoid petes who are convinced that technology is evil.  I am a big fan of science and technology, having always thought every new discovery and invention is a natural part of our evolution as we become stronger and continue to realize our capabilities and potential.  Sometimes though, I wonder…

Are we too smart for our own good?  Will it be the spawn of all our “brilliance” that leads to our demise?  Will we ever reach enlightenment or is it our quest for perfection that attacks our health?

The day came that living in caves was not good enough for us.  We eventually began building dwellings.  As time went on and we got smarter, we searched for superior building materials.  One of those materials was called asbestos which became a valuable material in building things like schools because of its insulative properties and resistance to fire.  Good for us that we found such a protective material to wrap around our children during their years/days/hours of learning.

I can only vaguely recall my school being renovated, as a kid, due to the discovered dangers of asbestos.  I KNOW I never heard the term mesothelioma back then.  That’s a more recent buzz word, right?  Mesothelioma is a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.  If we had never initiated the use of asbestos in construction, this type of cancer would have never existed.  We are smart and we were able to pinpoint this type of cancer to asbestos.  But what about other cancers and health defects?  Isn’t it likely that they were manufactured along with other “improvements” and “technology?”

Our farming is another good example.  There was a time when everything was grown in a pure and organic way.  First to feed ourselves, then to sell at market.  Then along came greed.  We wanted to find ways to grow bigger crops and make more money.  Animal farming is an even more offensive example.  We began by slaughtering an animal to put food on the table.  Then I guess there was trading and sale of livestock.  When greed came along we wanted to find a way to harvest bigger animals, more milk, and more meat.  Living off the vegetation and hunting earth’s natural livestock was no longer good enough.  We were smart and we knew we could make it better.

Doing our best and striving for success, financial and otherwise, is no crime.  But at what point would level minded intelligent people decided it’s a good idea to spike our food supply with chemicals to produce more lucrative crops?

The issue here is not the role that animals play on this planet.  Whether or not you believe it’s okay to eat your four legged neighbors of the world, the question is … is it okay to chemically alter them and produce mutants as a means to make more money?  There are FAR MORE religious people than me in this world, the majority of whom are meat eaters.  And I wonder… as you’re bellying up to the table for that thick delicious steak, are you really okay with the tampering of God’s creatures as a way just to make more money?

Have you seen our kids lately?  My daughter is still struggling with vegetarianism.  She gets poked at often    for being an activist one day and eating McDonald’s cheeseburgers the next.  She’s only 9 though, and learning about sacrifice and commitment.  At least SHE CARES.  I am happy she realizes and reminds me  the wrongness of a food supply so overwhelmed in chemicals that kids are growing bigger, and developing quicker, as the hormones pass from their food into their own bodies.  I am proud she is bothered by the unnecessary harvesting and torture of animals for any reason.

I wonder if there was a guy in the first part of the twentieth century who was laughed out of town for voicing his opinion against using asbestos as a building material.  Or if anyone ever protested the use of antibiotics and hormones on livestock, but was quickly hushed and ridiculed.

If I had my life to live over again, I would do it differently.  I would live modestly and simply.  I would raise my own chickens and grow my own veggies.  We sometimes mock people whose culture or desires for such simplicity go against the modern grain.  We think we are “smarter” than them.  But I can’t help but wonder if they already have it all figured out.

I think the real answer is “balance”.  A world with magnificent discoveries such as electricity to bring light to our evenings and make the world accessible to us, but without the atrocities resulting from mutating nature and being driven by greed.

That would be my perfect world.  What’s yours?