WHAT'S A LEMMING?
I'm not referring to the real-life animal. For many of you folks out there who have never been into video games, a lemming is an androgenous game creature, of which there seems to be no limit. They march in a line, mindlessly following a lead lemming along a hazard-filled path which the game player is supposed to change in a timely fashion to lose as few lemmings as possible until they reach their goal.
I played this game mindlessly back in the early 90's. It was fun, but each level became increasingly difficult and frustrating. If you didn't get rid of the hazards, cleared the right paths, and save the required number of lemmings, you had to start all over. And you know what? Those lemmings did the same things over and over, never once showing any emotion; a steady hand could make them do whatever it desired, as long as it was fast enough to remove or place obstacles on the playing area. Those lemmings were really dumb!!!
Sometimes I feel like Americans act like lemmings. It's so much easier to listen to the loudest voice, follow the handsomest face, to just let someone else take the lead - and it doesn't seem to matter what area of life we are talking about.
Take healthy living, for instance. Everyone wants to eat healthy, exercise, and stay young. However, no one wants to take the responsibility that's absolutely required to accomplish these goals. Hence, the rise of those who tout their "magic potions" that offer the desired results rake in millions, even billions, of dollars every year - money that goes only to line the pockets of corporate investors who probably would never touch the stuff they hawk. They are the 'game players' who use their marketing tactics to guide American 'lemmings' to an early demise, but only after they have emptied their wallets. Of course, they lead just enough lemmings to safety to reproduce and ensure residual income from the next generation(s).
A simple thing like water is making upwards of $14 billion dollars (wholesale!) around the world. That was a 1995 stat, so you can only imagine where it stands today. This was even after a high-class brand was recalled because Benzene was found in their product! (Benzene is a colorless, volatile liquid hydrocarbon, C6H6, present in coal tar and petroleum, used in chemical synthesis. Its use as a solvent has been reduced because of its carcinogenic properties.)
How did this happen?
Americans had to wake up to the fact that their water supplies were being contaminated at every turn by industrial, medical, and factory-farming sources (just to name a few). Carcinogenic chemicals, medical bio-hazardous garbage, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and much more made their way into our ground waters and drinking resources, as well as our oceans. Adults and children became terminally ill from drinking and swimming in these clean-looking waters.
One of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Erin Brochovich", was the one where she met with corporate attorneys from a water-contaminating corporation. The attorneys were smug and self-assured that their client could not be held responsible for the many terminal illnesses in their area. That is until one of them reached for a glass of water and Erin said, "Oh yeah. We had that water brought in [from the area] just for you." The attorney slowly withdrew her hand from the glass she was getting ready to drink out of and they beat a hasty retreat. (I just LOVE that "gotcha"!)
Allow me to present a simplistic scenario here. Rather than spending $14 billion dollars a year on providing a solution that has been proven over and over to be no better than your regular tap water, why don't we contribute that money for making polluters clean up their act? Then, couldn't we use the money to clean up our water and put in water treatment plants that use ozone and ultra-violet light to ensure purity? In addition to providing us good, clean, healthy drinking water from our own taps, just imagine the gargantuan amounts of plastic we'd be keeping out of our landfills!
Such a simple thing. But like lemmings, we just keep marching right along, letting 'others' lead us down the paths they choose for us while they rob us of our hard-earned living. We opt for the path easiest to follow without even looking for ourselves to see if there's a better way.
I'll let you read about another product we've been told is 'healthy' for us, but actually has been revealed to be nothing more than "non-carbonated soda" and "sugar water" with manufactured chemical 'vitamins'. Just hit the link below.
Lemmings? Yes, but only because we don't want to take responsibility for ourselves; only because we blindly trust those we should be holding accountable to tell us the truth; only because we think the powers that be really care about those they sell their wares to.
Is that REALLY reasonable?
Here's the link...
I'm not referring to the real-life animal. For many of you folks out there who have never been into video games, a lemming is an androgenous game creature, of which there seems to be no limit. They march in a line, mindlessly following a lead lemming along a hazard-filled path which the game player is supposed to change in a timely fashion to lose as few lemmings as possible until they reach their goal.
I played this game mindlessly back in the early 90's. It was fun, but each level became increasingly difficult and frustrating. If you didn't get rid of the hazards, cleared the right paths, and save the required number of lemmings, you had to start all over. And you know what? Those lemmings did the same things over and over, never once showing any emotion; a steady hand could make them do whatever it desired, as long as it was fast enough to remove or place obstacles on the playing area. Those lemmings were really dumb!!!
Sometimes I feel like Americans act like lemmings. It's so much easier to listen to the loudest voice, follow the handsomest face, to just let someone else take the lead - and it doesn't seem to matter what area of life we are talking about.
Take healthy living, for instance. Everyone wants to eat healthy, exercise, and stay young. However, no one wants to take the responsibility that's absolutely required to accomplish these goals. Hence, the rise of those who tout their "magic potions" that offer the desired results rake in millions, even billions, of dollars every year - money that goes only to line the pockets of corporate investors who probably would never touch the stuff they hawk. They are the 'game players' who use their marketing tactics to guide American 'lemmings' to an early demise, but only after they have emptied their wallets. Of course, they lead just enough lemmings to safety to reproduce and ensure residual income from the next generation(s).
A simple thing like water is making upwards of $14 billion dollars (wholesale!) around the world. That was a 1995 stat, so you can only imagine where it stands today. This was even after a high-class brand was recalled because Benzene was found in their product! (Benzene is a colorless, volatile liquid hydrocarbon, C6H6, present in coal tar and petroleum, used in chemical synthesis. Its use as a solvent has been reduced because of its carcinogenic properties.)
How did this happen?
Americans had to wake up to the fact that their water supplies were being contaminated at every turn by industrial, medical, and factory-farming sources (just to name a few). Carcinogenic chemicals, medical bio-hazardous garbage, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and much more made their way into our ground waters and drinking resources, as well as our oceans. Adults and children became terminally ill from drinking and swimming in these clean-looking waters.
One of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Erin Brochovich", was the one where she met with corporate attorneys from a water-contaminating corporation. The attorneys were smug and self-assured that their client could not be held responsible for the many terminal illnesses in their area. That is until one of them reached for a glass of water and Erin said, "Oh yeah. We had that water brought in [from the area] just for you." The attorney slowly withdrew her hand from the glass she was getting ready to drink out of and they beat a hasty retreat. (I just LOVE that "gotcha"!)
Allow me to present a simplistic scenario here. Rather than spending $14 billion dollars a year on providing a solution that has been proven over and over to be no better than your regular tap water, why don't we contribute that money for making polluters clean up their act? Then, couldn't we use the money to clean up our water and put in water treatment plants that use ozone and ultra-violet light to ensure purity? In addition to providing us good, clean, healthy drinking water from our own taps, just imagine the gargantuan amounts of plastic we'd be keeping out of our landfills!
Such a simple thing. But like lemmings, we just keep marching right along, letting 'others' lead us down the paths they choose for us while they rob us of our hard-earned living. We opt for the path easiest to follow without even looking for ourselves to see if there's a better way.
I'll let you read about another product we've been told is 'healthy' for us, but actually has been revealed to be nothing more than "non-carbonated soda" and "sugar water" with manufactured chemical 'vitamins'. Just hit the link below.
Lemmings? Yes, but only because we don't want to take responsibility for ourselves; only because we blindly trust those we should be holding accountable to tell us the truth; only because we think the powers that be really care about those they sell their wares to.
Is that REALLY reasonable?
Here's the link...
No comments:
Post a Comment