Watch What You Eat

Here's a pretty solid idea: eat well. Seems easy doesn't it? Well, you'd be quite mistaken when you realize just how messed up the food industry has become in the United States, and the world for that matter.

I just watched the film Food Inc., which is a documentary about the industrialization of food in the United States. Though parts of it were grotesque and truly horrifying to watch, I'm glad that I experienced the film and am now more aware of the types of things I'm putting into my body.

The movie starts out claiming that the concept of food has changed more in the last 50 years than it has in the last 10,000. What I find alarming about that statement is that I'm not at all familiar with the process in which I get the food I eat (when you think about it, a caveman had a lot more authority over what sorts of things he put into his body than you or I do today).

But that certainly doesn't have to be the reality. We all have a choice.

However, there are a lot of entities in our world that are against full disclosure, which is absolutely disgusting and horrible. Essentially, it all comes down to dollars and cents. Food giants have grown to such enormous sizes that they have amassed incredible power; power in the form of money (perhaps the root of all evil). Four companies control 80% of the meat industry.

This means that even when we go into our supermarkets, it is very hard to know what came from where and what things contain. For instance, food distributors won't disclose whether or not an item has any sort of genetically engineered food in it. Bills have been brought to various state legislatures in order to release the information to the public, but with little success (California governor Schwarzenegger even vetoed such a bill).

But why does it even matter? Why is this movie even being made? What's the difference if I were to buy my own produce locally or from one of these mega-corporations?

As it turns out, a lot of the mechanisms that these corporations use in order to process food as quickly and efficiently as possible are hurting our world terribly. And what does that mean?

It's hurting the world in terms of pollution. Mega-corporations use millions of gallons of fuel in order to produce the food you eventually buy. Not only that, because these corporations are so dependent on gas and oil, when the price of one of these commodities go up that effects how much you have to pay for the item. Who needs that sort of instability?

Furthermore, the way we are eating is starting to hurt our ecosystem (the interaction between living organisms on the planet). These corporations have started to overproduce cattle, and have begun feeding them corn as opposed to letting them feed on grass. They give them corn because it is a far cheaper alternative. However, the corn can have an adverse effects on the cows. If this happens, a cow can develop a bacteria like e-coli. Then, due to the processing techniques used in handling livestock, it can spread through the entire factory contaminating all the meat. There are several instances in which there have had to be recalls of beef products (usually enough to feed millions of people).

Additionally, the stranglehold that these large corporations have on the growers is immense. Take for instance this situation. A chicken grower is forced into buying new equipment by the large poultry corporation, or else they will no longer extend their contract. The grower feels pressured to do so, or else they won't be able to put food on their own table. So they give into the corporation's demands and purchase the new equipment (probably from a company the poultry executives are on the board of). The startling fact you can derive from this is: growers have an average debt of $500,000 and typically earn $18,000 a year. That is messed up.

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and the movie showed that angle too. What we can learn from this movie is that we truly have a choice. As a consumer, it is the corporation who works for you, not the other way round, and the movie put your power very poetically, "you have the opportunity to vote three times a day."

Referring to the amount of meals we have in a regular day, we have a choice with each one to determine where we are getting our food. And don't think that this is just some sort of pipe-dream, ridiculous, fantastical notion that the director of the movie wanted to leave me with. There is solid evidence that change happens.

Recently, Wal-Mart, the biggest store in all the world, switched from milk with human growth hormone to milk without human growth hormone. Why did they do this according to the head of dairy procurement at Wal-Mart? Because the customer asked for it. He was very insistent on that message. If the customer asks for something, Wal-Mart will deliver on it.

But now you may be wondering, why would I want to support another large corporation like Wal-Mart? The difference being that Wal-Mart is not in the production of food, but rather in the business of finding supplies of stuff consumers want. If Organic and healthy, local food starts finding its way into Wal-Mart, it is still that organic, healthy, local food, it just becomes that much more accessible to the general public.

I'd highly recommend going to see the movie if any of this resonated in you. Or perhaps, go to a farmer's market the next time you want to go shopping. The end of the movie is filled with really great ideas of taking the lessons learned in the film and using them in your life. I'm going to try.

And The Beat Goes On

The world is change. Today is not yesterday, and tomorrow is greatly unknown. There are few certainties in life, but one of them (aside from death and taxes) is the concept of uncertainty. Consider a world that was 100 years ago. Then think about it 50 years ago. It will likely stun you just how different the world was 5 years ago. But each day, the world predictably spins on its axis giving way to day and night. In these short bursts of light that shines onto our planet, the human species is very busy. Hard at work making minor changes that over a period of time amount to significant differences.

If you've ever heard of the futurist, Ray Kurzweil, you may be familiar with his theory called the law of accelerating returns. Essentially, he postulates that we're living in exponential times. What does that mean? Well, if you've ever seen an exponential graph before, you will recognize that during the beginning phases of the graph it is mostly a flat line that doesn't increase all that much. But with each subsequent step the graph takes, its quantity begins to increase incredibly rapidly. After a while, the graph almost begins to move vertically.

What does this theory suggest about our world? Kurzweil is expressing our species as a function of this mathematical principle.

Consider human existence. To focus our thinking, I'll start about 200,000 years ago, which Wikipedia sites as the emergence of modern humans. 200,000 years ago man lived in caves, had limited ability to communicate, and struggled to feed and clothe himself. This sustained for approximately 198,000 of those 200,000 years. Within the last 2000 years man has made significant strides.

We have begun to organize, utilize language to communicate, express ideas in writing, institute education, take part in agriculture and industry, construct structures like castles, bridges, houses, develop transportation, and even travel the wide expanse of space. These are remarkable changes that have all happened in a relatively short time when one considers the extent of the human species.

Kurzweil is suggesting that we are currently living in a time where those enormous increases in quantity that occur on an exponential curve, are occuring all around us every day.

This is complex notion to wrap one's mind around. The reason being is that a human's function individually on a daily basis, which is defined by the phases of light and dark that the sun shines on our planet as it rotates on its axis. However, due to the fact that there is a large number of humans on the planet these days (exponentially more so than thousands of years ago), and we have improved our ability to communicate and organize, the small actions that we perform daily combine to make enormous strides that were not possible hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I want to apply this notion to the music industry. And I don't want to just apply the notion of exponential progress, but rather, the change that accompanies it.

In order to understand music more fully, I decided to consult a text called Human by Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the University of California-Santa Barbara's SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, as well as its Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Chapter 6 of the book addresses why humans have art (music being a form of art). Cultures all over the world display various type of art, whether it is through song, dance, storytelling, or painting. This supports an evolutionary theory of art being a part of natural selection. The fittest individuals were likely to be able to find food, shelter, and clothing, and have enough extra time to be creative.

Music has also been viewed as a social bonding system that assisted in synchronizing mood amd prepared various groups to act in unison, which helped with building coalitions. Music also has the ability to enhance our thinking abilities. Glenn Schellenberg, at the University of Toronto, found that music lessons in children were associated with small but long-lasting increases in IQ.

This makes sense because learning music requires "focused attention, abstract and relational thinking, and what is known as executive control in the brain" (242).

Above all, however, music is pleasurable for humans, and this is apparently a unique quality that our species possesses.

So, what does all of this suggest about the music industry? I think that the music industry is going to change. It is going through one currently. It used to be that major record labels were the only way to "make it" in the music business. However, the information age has changed the playing field.

Music will always be around, because we enjoy it. Yet, the vehichle through which music will be disseminated to the world will likely evolve as all things on the planet have. We ought to be open to these new avenues as they present themselves, because they can only be beneficial. Nothing ever moves backward, only forward in a new direction.