Controlling the Narrative is Controlling the Masses

My original idea for this post was about global food distribution--something that blogger Noel Jones did an excellent job of explaining earlier on this site. Noel mentioned that we produce enough food to feed the planet, but we currently don’t have the means to distribute the food to the people who need it. I absolutely agree with everything Noel has to say about the topic and strongly recommend reading the post here.

 One method that is being developed to combat the global food insecurity crisis are genetically modified organisms, more commonly referred to as GMOs. The phrase is at the forefront of a long contested battle between science and public opinion.What many people don’t understand is that the goal of genetic modification is to create abundant amounts of vitamin-packed food that take less chemicals to produce and can even last longer on the shelves of supermarkets.

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— jesse Williams. (@iJesseWilliams) January 22, 2017

In a perfect world, scientific evidence would reign supreme over the noise of public opinion. Most opposition aimed at GMOs and other technological advancements in society is the result of misinformation and fear. People absolutely have the right to be suspicious of new discoveries. In fact, I encourage people not to take every single article they read on a topic as fact. There are many people who push agendas designed to capitalize on the polarization of consumer opinions, simply because there is money in playing both sides of the field.

 I’m talking about monopolization of the agricultural industry by companies who produce and market both ‘conventional’ and ‘non-GMO’ food products.We have seen this across many aspects of industry, surprisingly with items as common as eyeglasses and as important as EpiPens. In my utopia, it will be illegal for privately owned corporations to mask their ownership over all aspects of production of a good or service as the illusion of choice. The fact that this is allowed in our country today shows that the greediness of few outweighs the needs of the majority. I picture a utopian society as the complete opposite of this. Understanding the ideologies behind these corporate giants is key to combating them. As part of my push towards utopia I will advocate for mandatory courses in marketing and mass media production. It’s important to understand the tactics that are used in advertising, as well as why they are effective if we are going to move past them towards an enlightened society.

 

Another step that I would take is to outlaw all fear mongering, sensationalized, inaccurate, and ‘click-bait’ forms of media. I strongly feel that the field of journalism should focus on integrity and truth. Given the amount of satire news sources that exist globally, I’d say that many other people are fed up with the current state of news and media in America. The messages being portrayed to us are currently a controlled narrative by people who profit from the scared and under-informed. In addition to this, I would aim to turn privately owned news outlets and journals in to publicly owned and operated thought collectives. The technological advancements of the past decade give those with access to the Internet a platform from which to share a positive, widespread message. My favorite example of this is an online magazine created by a sixteen year old girl.

In the words of Alice Walker, "the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."  Give people the agency to make choices about the products they buy, the discoveries they feel are important to their communities, and the information they want to share, and they will prosper.

Food For Thought

If I could change one thing to make our world a better place, I would make sure that every person on this earth has enough food to live a healthy life. 

I know this is a somewhat cliche choice, but as I was considering all the things in the world that I wanted to fix, nothing seemed quite as pressing as this. The knowledge that so many people in this world are starving every day is a fact that I have never been able to wrap my head around. Even as a child it always nagged at me. With such a large supply of food in the world, why are there so many people without it? 

Food is a necessity for life; without it we die. Most of us that live a comfortable life with a constant supply of food often take that for granted, and we are often quite wasteful as well. I am guilty of this as well, I will not pretend otherwise. The greatest food waste, however, comes from restaurants and grocery stores. I witnessed this firsthand when I started my first job at a restaurant.  Every night when we closed, we would dump any cooked food that had not been sold into the garbage. And every night it killed me to throw out so much food. Often it was enough to feed a whole family, if not more. If I had the choice I would have taken it to the nearest homeless shelter, but it was against company policy to do this.

My solution to this is to make it mandatory that all restaurants and grocery stores be required to package and donate all extra food to the nearest homeless shelter. To help enforce this, any business that is found disposing of the food should be fined. If we implement this rule across the world, it could greatly reduce the number of people going hungry in many communities. This solution will only work for the communities with a large number of businesses, since the food will perish quickly and can only be transported to nearby areas. 

So, on a global scale, we must work on transporting food to locations that cannot grow the food for themselves. With the technology we have today, we should be able to easily transport produce all over the world. Additionally, we can help create new methods that improve farming in areas that are capable of it, and maybe even make it possible to farm on land that was once not capable of it. 

While these solutions may not be enough to completely rid the world of hunger, I do believe that this would be a very good place to start. If everyone gave just a little bit of time or money, we could greatly reduce the number of deaths due to hunger. As human beings we should all do our best to make our world a better place to live in for everyone.