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Since when has it come to be that quality of life is directly proportional to how well we let ourselves indulge?
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Worse yet, how has it come to be that the quality of our children’s childhood is determined by how willing parents are to indulge their kids? I am not talking about Game Boy, X box, or having a cell phone…honestly I wish I were. I am talking about food. In the current model, a good parent feeds their kids vegetables, fruits, and healthy foods Monday through Friday, but come the weekend, a party or special event allows them to let their hair down and have a little fun. Fun which meana drinking an occasional Pepsi, eating an occasional fast food burger, or having a little candy at a friends house. In other words, indulgence.
I have to ask: Who said we get to be indulged?
Why in the world aren’t real foods considered an indulgence? I get told all the time I am depriving my children of a childhood by not eating at restaurants, by bringing whatever foods they might eat to a friends house, by not stopping for the occasional ice cream while on vacation. These comments have gone so far as to insinuate I am harming them, and isolating them by these actions.
Harming my kids by cooking fresh food for every meal, harming them by teaching them the truth about our food supply and the commercial interests which control it? By allowing them to know the truth…conventional farming is inciting genocide across the planet, not just for bees and birds, but all wildlife and for humans too.
- How major corporations force their products on farmers
- How the FDA lies to support the myth that these foods are safe
- How real foods are maligned as being dangerous while aspartame, MSG and artificial everything is not only promoted but funded for consumption by kids especially.
For this, I am ridiculed.
How incredulous is it to be harangued for nourishing, protecting, and educating your children? Furthermore, why is it that we so strongly associate the ability to indulge with quality of life? As if having a Dominos pizza or Mountain Dew were rites of passage on the way to manhood.
My kids are allergic to glysophate, allergic to 2,4 D, and in my mind, they are allergic to genocide.
Shouldn’t we all be? It is easier to pretend the issue is about health, that way a little indulgence is just a little side road on the general path of health…something which can be easily overcome by overall good habits. But this has never been about health.
Think about it, the major food manufacturers spend billions per year marketing their nearly addictive products to the public. McDonald’s alone, a company who should have had no reason to spend 988 million dollars in 2013 to continue to market the idea their foods are not only good for you but make for a happy, economically sound and beautiful life. Everyone knows their burgers are hardly even from cow, their fries have strange inedible ingredients, and the McRib is composed of yoga mat material….and no one cares. Their presence in poor communities is no accident, nor is the effect they have when introduced into new countries — rising rates of diabetes, and heart disease just for starters. Their products are slow, insidious genocide and they are only one company.
Life would be more comfortable if I played along with the normal whole foods shopping suburban mom stereotype. In fact, it would be so much easier on me too. But I know every action I take is my voice for the consequences. Much like I can’t agree to a little domestic violence, I also can’t agree to partake in a little genocide.
Perhaps I should follow the main stream, take a middle ground position.
Be opposed to some but not all vaccines, some but not all antibiotics, and some but not all conventional foods. I know this would make so many people much more comfortable about their own choices. Maybe I should still entertain the illusion for my children that if they just think what the schools tell them to, prepare to go to college — no matter how exorbitant the current costs — accept they will be in debt for much of their lives and set their mind on getting hired into a good job. A job with benefits, vacation, and solid pay. Never mind what the company does to provide all those things. Maybe this would ease the tension and make those around me more comfortable.
Better yet, I could go all in, encourage a bit of bullying, a little bit of drinking, a small about of fraternity debauchery and chalk it all up to having a youth well spent. After all, this is by media standards a pretty “normal” childhood. I have it commonly suggested I should save the truth for when my kids ask for it, and allow them to know what their peers know now, as to not keep them too distant from the modern reality.
Funny thing is, my kids ask for the truth every day, and I tell them everything I know every chance I get. Consequently, they can already point out the way movies but white pure backgrounds behind the savior and dark or red behind the villain. They can explain why not to use a microwave, why you shouldn’t eat fast food, they can identify wild plants and tell you what remedies to use for particular conditions. My kids can also tell you about the murderous, genocidal, evil man named Columbus, who we still celebrate for his “discovery” of America. They can describe the teachings of the people who were here before his invasion, and they can tell you that in this history there is nothing to celebrate.
I guess, when it comes down to it, if “normal” means I have to accept genocide, and I have to teach my kids to be complacent about intentional murder, planetary destruction and rape, then I don’t want to give them a “normal” childhood. Nor do I want to allow them to exist under the illusion that a little of any of these activities is Ok on vacation, or for a celebration, or to fit in.
Maybe they will turn their backs on all this when they grow older, maybe they will eat fast food, work at a bank, and drive a BMW. At least I will know I tried to do my best, I showed them the absolute truth as I knew it, and I focused on the only values which I believe matter:
- Live with compassion and constant awareness of your actions
- Take responsibility for what you do, say and buy
- Understand that we are here for one purpose…
…to live a life of kindness, filled with good deeds and focused on protecting the weak so all may have the chance to live long, healthy lives.
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