Rights for Mother Earth

I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of politics. Politicians rarely work for the common good and instead focus on personal gain, and the whole lot of them make me want to admit defeat and start my own sovreign nation on a remote island somewhere tropical. Since that's never going to happen, I make due and do my part by voting and signing petitions and whatnot.

Today I read this article that made me want to hug a politician. Granted, it's not an American politician, but this gives me hope. According to the article, in Bolivia, they are working on passing a bill that will grant Mother Earth the same rights as humans. The belief system of the indigenous people includes a goddess who is similar to the Greek goddess, Gaia, whom we often refer to as Mother Earth. They are granting her the rights to live without being polluted, and the right not to have genetic modifications (meaning no GMOs!), among others.

I know there are going to be a lot of skeptics and naysayers, but I say it's about time the people in charge of our world take a stand for the planet. We only have the one, and it has selflessly given our species everything we could ever possibly need. Still we demand more while giving back nothing and in fact, causing harm. Of course Bolivia will face some challenges, which is always the case when you drastically alter the status quo, but I think they can pull it off. Hopefully they will be a role model for the rest of the world, and we can all work together to undo the harm our species has caused to the planet.

My Favorite Drug

The following post was a response to a question posed in a friend's blog. My friend is Mormon, and she asked about whether her readers (most of whom, presumably, are also Mormon) drink coffee, which is verboten in their religion. She also asked about how "evil" it really is.

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I am not Mormon, and I don't base my actions on the words of profits, though I do recognize that there is often a great deal of wisdom in what they said. Personal wisdom comes, in part, from understanding the reasons behind rules that we are given. Once we know the reason, we can choose for ourselves whether or not the rules are just and should be obeyed.

I am a caffeine addict. At the end of March I'll be one year "sober." I had to quit drinking all caffeine because of the havoc it wreaked on my stomach. I used to drink copious amounts of coffee, tea, and soda. I still crave it at times, and I have even had dreams of drinking Dr. Pepper.

That being said, caffeine simply isn't good for you. From a Chinese Medicine standpoint, caffeine is the equivalent of a credit card (where you're talking about qi/energy instead of money). It creates false energy, borrowing from resources that you don't have, leading to exhaustion. As caffeine use increases, it becomes harder and harder to stop because you have smaller and smaller quantities of your own natural resources to draw from. Ultimately, this will lead to health problems that can range from fatigue to much more serious conditions.

I had several signs that came from divine origin (a story for another day) that indicated quite clearly that I needed to stop drinking caffeine. I chose to ignore the signs, and my health took a nosedive. I didn't follow a directive from my Goddess, and that made me less faithful. That doesn't mean that I stopped having faith and belief. It doesn't mean that I didn't strive to do my Goddess's will in other aspects of my life. It simply means that I wasn't living up to my full potential as a religious person.

In life and in religion, there are big rules and small rules. The big rules tend to be easier to follow - don't kill people, don't steal things, etc. The little rules are easy to bend because the effects and the consequences aren't as noticeable, and it's easier to justify them. Murdering someone is wrong, plain and simple. Drinking coffee... wellll... that's just not as clear. I would go so far as to say that from a moral standpoint, it isn't wrong; it's just a bad idea.

The problem with ignoring small rules - especially when dealing with religion - is that it becomes easier to ignore other, bigger rules. I know that when I don't act on what the Goddess says in one area, a lot of other things tend to slip, and it takes a lot of effort to get back on track.

The other thing that I try to always keep in mind is that if the reasoning behind a rule is sound (which, if it's coming from a deity, it's pretty safe to assume that it will be), then following it will ultimately make your life easier. Yes, it sure is convenient to have a nice, hot, grande soy no-whip white mocha in the morning to wake you up, but in the long run, there will be consequences. If you're lucky, they won't be as serious as mine, but there are, of course, no guarantees. Coffee won't keep me from heaven, but it can make life miserable.

Responsibility

One of my professors mentioned that she had read an article in National Geographic that said there are no more pristine bodies of water left on Earth. I couldn't find the article to confirm, but regardless of whether or not the claim is true, it's a terrifying thought. It may have been an exaggeration, but the fact is that humans are pretty damn good at polluting, and we have the capability to pollute everything, and we are not kind to our planet.

One of the basic principles of Chinese Medicine is the concept that humans are holistic. Nothing in our bodies exists in isolation, so when you treat a patient, you search for the cause of the problem rather than just treating the symptoms. This concept is well known to most people who seek alternative forms of medicine. What is less well known (at least I was quite pleasantly surprised when I learned) is that Chinese Medicine also views the body as not being separate from the environment. The simplest way to think about it is to look at how seasons affect our health. No one can deny that the flu is more prevalent in winter and allergies are more prevalent when plants are pollinating. If you delve deeper, it becomes obvious that poor air quality will lead to a wider prevalence of lung problems, and radiation leads to more instances of cancer. Five Element acupuncture takes things a step further and takes the taoist view that all living things are interconnected and, fundamentally, we are all One. My aforementioned professor pointed out that as the earth gets less and less clean, our bodies seem to reflect that. The example she used was food allergies. More and more people are showing signs of having severe food allergies that didn't make much of a dent in the population before. I remember when they could serve peanuts on airplanes without fear that someone allergic would keel over and die because they looked at a nut. Almost a quarter of my close friends now are "glutards" - people with some degree of sensitivity to gluten, a protein found in many common grains, but I had never even heard of the issue until a few years ago. What if the increase in allergies and sensitivities are reflections of the planet on our bodies? Of course, there are other factors, such as a growing awareness and acceptance in the scientific community of food allergies, but I can't dismiss the notion that the more we damage our environment, the more we damage ourselves. We're not just leaving a legacy of environmental degradation for future generations to take care of, we're actively hurting ourselves and the ones we love with our species-wide ennui. Of course, given that we constantly fill our bodies with food that directly harms us (I'm looking at you, McDonald's), I can't say that I expect this revelation to make any dent in the world.

...which brings me to another point. The problems facing us today are overwhelming - pollution, climate change, natural disasters, war, famine, drugs, gang violence, heart disease, equal rights, oil spills, national debt, reality television, and the list goes on. When I start to think too much about it, I get downright depressed. I'm not exactly in a position of power and influence, and I can't affect change in a meaningful way, and yes, I'll admit that sometimes I think I just shouldn't bother trying. It's so much easier to shut my eyes and pretend that they're not my problems. Don't I have enough to worry about paying bills and studying for my 8 classes? Unfortunately, I can't bury my head in the sand and expect that someone else will solve everything.

I recently attended a Unitarian Universalist service in which the minister talked about responsibility. He said that most people think of responsibility in relation to power. If you have the power to do something about a problem, it is your responsibility to do so. Unfortunately, that definition lets a lot of people off the hook. I don't have the power to fix climate change, so I don't need to do anything about it. The minister offered a new definition that boiled down to - if there is a problem, even if you don't have the power to fix it, you need to do what you can, knowing that your actions alone won't necessarily change things. If enough people follow that definition of responsibility, over time, things will improve. If no one follows it, then we're all royally fucked.

So I pick my battles and do little things here and there that won't change the world overnight. Most notably, I'm eating local and sustainable food, and I hope to bring positive change to people one at a time when I start practicing acupuncture. Every time I do something that I know is the right thing to do, it gives me motivation to do another thing. I know that I will never be perfect, and my actions are a drop in the bucket. It may take time, but with enough drops, we can eventually fill the bucket.

Eating with Integrity

I'm taking a class in Five Element acupuncture (5E), which deals more with addressing PSE (psychological, spiritual, emotional) concerns than physiological problems. It is strongly stressed that as a practitioner of 5E that you live with integrity. The concept of integrity in this context is always striving to take the right action. Every time you make a decision, there is one decision that is better. Becoming aware of that and acting on it is something that I am working very hard on manifesting in my life. The problem, of course, is that that the right action usually isn't the easy action. For instance, it's much easier for me to buy lunch in the cafeteria at school than it is to pack something from home that I know is made of local, sustainable products. Granted, my school's cafeteria is 100% vegetarian with lots of vegan options, but I've seen all sorts of produce in the food that isn't in season in WA. In this case, the right action is pretty clear. It's just going to require planning.

Meal planning has never been my strong suit. In fact, my eating habits have pretty much always been based on whims. Eating local, sustainable food isn't the cheapest option (though it's cheaper than buying lunch!), so I need to make sure I get the most out of every dollar. I suppose I'm going to have to start thinking this through. Before I go to the Ballard Market on Sunday, I will have a plan. I need to prove to myself that I can afford to eat organic on a very tight budget. Time to look up recipes and figure this out.