MAMMON VERSUS CIVIL SOCIETY
By Dr. Michael W. Fox*
The two world views that reflect the conflict of values between the rights and interests of civil society and of the corporate imperialists are as irreconcilable as they are ancient. It is the conflict between domination, expropriation and exploitation, versus cooperation, participation, and conservation. This is no better illustrated today than by the imposition of genetically engineered (g.e.) seeds and crops on states and countries where civil society opposition is overruled by government collaboration with the rising global biotechnocracy.
This technocracy, following the dictum of Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State who said “If you want to control the people, control the food,” now seeks control through the patent monopoly of seed, conveniently ignoring the genetic contamination of conventional and organic crops by its g.e. plants. The health, safety, and nutritional value of g.e. crops and foods was presumed, but never proven. The control motivation is for world-market penetration and domination in the service of mammon**---profits and power. Social and other external costs and risks are of no consequence, the entire transnational business enterprise being amoral, ‘science-based’, and devoid of any bioethical evaluation. It is insulated by aligned governments and organizations and agencies like the World Trade Organization, and FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius, from public accountability and responsibility for harms done including its significant contribution to climate change with its primary production of feed for livestock and poultry, and now for biofuels.
Their seeds are primarily for commodity crops not grown to feed people directly and locally, making a few very rich, while more go hungry as more still, along with their pets, become sick consuming manufactured, highly processed convenience, junk, and fast-foods that are served widely in public schools.
What the mother eats during pregnancy creates an imprint on the developing child, so called nutritional epigenetics, that can mean chronic health problems are passed on from generation to generation. Now there are food riots around the world as prices rise because of climate change- related crop failures, and basic food crops and arable land being used to produce ecologically damaging biofuels.
Other less visible seeds are sown by the hands of the antidisestablishmentarians that blossom in the educational system especially, leading to public ignorance, indifference, consumerism, false trust and hope, as well as obedience and conformity. But learned helplessness, frustration, and the emptiness of modern existence devoid of values other than material, are taking their toll on mental health, leading to depression, violence and a host of socio-emotional disorders aggravated by spiritual poverty as much as by economic poverty. Diet plays a significant role in the genesis of these disorders. The old opiates of alcohol and religion, and the new opiates of illegal drugs and widely prescribed psychotropic drugs given even to kindergarten children, do little to ameliorate such cultural dis-ease.
The looming specters of world hunger and the emerging health care crisis in industrialized, developed nations, are being exacerbated rather than alleviated by this agribusiness sector of the food, drug and military-industrial complex. The declining health and increasing public health costs in developed countries correlate with low incomes and socio-economic stress, the more educated and affluent sectors having fewer stress and diet-related health problems that are becoming epidemic in lower social strata. This social gradient of disease for the underprivileged means elevated blood cortisol levels, impaired immune systems with lowered resistance to infections, diabetes, obesity, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks, chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis and cancer, and premature ageing. These and other diseases of modern civilization are anthropogenic; man made in the service of mammon+. The rich ride the unstoppable juggernaut they call ‘progress’ that will only be derailed when civil society gains control, first in the realm of food and nutrition, the cornerstones of health for generations to come.
We will never stop this juggernaut until civil society is unified by visionary leaders who have no vested interest in preserving the status quo where the common good is sacrificed for the corporate good. The possibility of a sustainable economy and a more viable future has been put in grave jeopardy by the corrupted values and short-term profit motives ( i.e. greed) of the power elite.
The ignoble heroics of colonialism and empire building for God, King, and Country, one of the insanities of the past three centuries, has evolved into the insanity of transnational corporate imperialism. Under the neo-liberal banner of ‘free’ rather than fair trade, and in the wake of missionary zeal, military might, and political and market manipulation and control, the cancerous monoculture of mammon has spread globally. This consumption-driven juggernaut leaves in its wake decimated communities and cultures and devastated environments devoid of wildlife and natural resources, from fresh water and good topsoil to clean air and healthy forests and other natural ecosystems upon which our health and basic economy depend.
The quickening of climate change, ecocide, plant and animal species and community extinctions, and the loss of law and order, ethics and compassion, call for a full examination of what we are living for and how we all might live less consumptively and harmfully.
Surely the value of our lives is ultimately in how much is given rather than taken. Where there is compassion, conscience, and concern there is kinship, justice, and hope. Where there is none of these, there is no civilization, only the anarchism of materialism, consumerism and egotism; and inhumanity and insanity. As human history informs, there will always be war and poverty, famine and pestilence when ego comes before eco; self before other.
Every civilization that broke this covenant of compassionate stewardship with the natural world either became extinct or endured into the present as dysfunctional, strife-torn cultures and nation states. Ours in the West is no different, as we bear witness to the tragic consequences of egotism, chauvinism, and anthropocentrism that are outmoded modes of being. We must choose to either evolve as a human, and therefore humane, species, or perish under our collective inhumanity toward animals, nature and our own species.
We are losing all sense and evidence of our humanity at an alarming rate. But belief and circumstance need not dictate our fate if we adhere to the cardinal virtues of honesty, humility, and respect for all life. To believe and act otherwise is the nemesis of humanity. To show compassion toward the perpetrators of violence as well as to the victims calls for the tempering of moral outrage, condemnation, and retaliation, empathy being the compass for ethical direction.
The manifest reality of this living universe is as terrifying as it is awe inspiring in its beauty, intelligent design, and creative organization. Yet before we have even begun to understand the nature of reality---the laws of Nature, of quantum fields and of genetic processes---in order to learn the art of living and the science of health, we plunder and desecrate. We live in a time and culture where non-living entities like corporations, but not living entities like trees and oceans, have legal standing. The more that we distance ourselves from, and destroy the last of the wild, the less the natural world can serve as a referential for the human spirit and for our ethical and empathic sensibilities, without which we are no longer human.
The choice between egocentrism or eco-centrism as modes of being and consciousness has been made---welcome to the modern age! But in reality we have no choice if we are to evolve and become givers rather than takers, more fully human, humane, because being altruistic is enlightened self-interest. When we take care of the Earth the Earth will take care of us. Earth First!
From this holistic view, the first order of business is to educate the populace to support government subsidized, organic food producers as one of the cornerstones of public health and environmental restoration. Home economics needs to be
* See Bringing Life to Ethics; Global Bioethics for a Humane Society by Dr. Michael W. Fox (published by State University of New York press, Albany, NY) for more documentation.
*material riches regarded as an object of worship and greedy pursuit.