Building Community

How a once nutritious grain was transformed into something unhealthy to eat: the story of refined white rice

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As we dig into history, we discover there is a much deeper answer to “why white rice?” Traders who exported rice demanded that it be shipped as polished white rice–which weighed less and stored longer and hence increased their profits–and further proliferated its consumption. Then, over the decades, the dominant elite culture defined brown rice as “dirty” and fit only for the poor; while white rice was seen as sophisticated and modern.

Excerpts on education

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The development and implementation of K-12 concentration camps is not part of some giant conspiracy. Rather, it is the outcome of the way our educational system was created. Most of the people who originally developed the system believed they were doing the right thing, and they did not try to hide their plans or intentions. It was completely consistent with the perspective, derived from religious organizations, that the domination, cohesion, and vitality of society were inversely related to individualism; permitting free inquiry and action were anathema to control by religious societies and also by corporate society.

Pour Evian on your radishes

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It is also slowly dawning on the Japanese that radioactivity is not something that can be scrubbed away with soapy water. It has a Midas touch. Everything it contacts becomes fiendishly toxic. So every drop of water, concrete, foam, rubber glove, fire hose, or anything else that comes into Fukushima’s arc becomes a lethal assassin.

Happiness movement hits the UK

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A new global movement for happiness was launched Tuesday in the UK. Action for Happiness is supported by more than 4,500 members including the Dalai Lama. Based on the new science of happiness, the movement suggests that the keys to happier living lie in actions such as Giving, Relating and Accepting.

Media coverage has been extensive:
– 20 Happiness Facts
– Don’t worry, every little thing’s gonna be all right
– Switch off, chip in, be happy, say activists
– My advice for the happiness lobby? Start with drugs
– Britons becoming ‘increasingly miserable’, warns happiness group
– Happy evangelists take on the cynics
– It’s time the right looks beyond its prejudices and understands what this agenda is about

Local acts of resistance counter global systems of domination

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A non-profit organization in Oakland, Planting Justice, works to empower youth to resist the corporate-controlled and toxic industrial food system and become young leaders in the burgeoning urban food justice movement…Developing skills in critical thinking, community organizing, public speaking, and ecological entrepreneurship, these youths are changing the way they identify with the food they consume and becoming leaders to other students on their high school campus and in their after school programming.

The economy: Possible scenarios for the future 2

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Given that we’re entering a prolonged period of economic contraction, what comes next? In the big picture, what are some of the possible routes forward? In the last post I critiqued some of the economic thinkers mentioned by the UK’s Rob Hopkins. In this post, I highlight several — including a U.S. source — which Hopkins hasn’t mentioned on his blog.

Holy Food — A sermon based on Gene Logsdon’s book ‘Pope Mary & The Church of Almighty Good Food’

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When I read the passages in the novel describing one of the festivals of The Church of the Almighty Good Food, I imagined a Breughel-like painting, teeming with ordinary folk enjoying one another and sumptuous foods in the midst of a sea of cornstalks. I even imagined a whisper from gently undulating tassels, “Serve it, and they will come.”

A soulful guide to society’s collapse

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Carolyn Baker’s newest book, Navigating the Coming Chaos: A Handbook for Inner Transition offers a rich spectrum of personal (and potentially group) exploration around the issues experienced as we face down the collapse of industrial civilization. But this cannot be hurried. And it cannot be the domain of any one particular spiritual point of view.

Hooray for the Underdog

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In this case, the underdogs are all the people who are distressed about the direction humanity is headed. We are the people craving a sane solution to climate chaos, mourning the culture of materialism, searching for solutions to the ongoing assault on nature, and hoping for an end to poverty. It will take unprecedented commitment, hard work and perseverance for us to overcome greed-based corporate agendas, outdated economic institutions, and our own reservations about saying and doing what is necessary.

Radioactivity in the ocean: Diluted, but far from harmless

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With contaminated water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex continuing to pour into the Pacific, scientists are concerned about how that radioactivity might affect marine life. Although the ocean’s capacity to dilute radiation is huge, signs are that nuclear isotopes are already moving up the local food chain.