Seek the Truth

Opponents of New Urbanism and the idea of walkable communities, opponents of alternate forms of transportation (to the automobile) and proponents of unchecked, unregulated "growth" in the world today will argue that the market demands the snake oils they peddle.

The current model of urban growth moves forward like a conquering army, gobbling up arable land, scattering out our resources and destroying our civic institutions.

And they say that we, labeled as "consumers", want the crapheap they offer us.

But the reality is that as the world has moved toward a global economy over the past few decades, and as more and more companies meld into bigger and bigger conglomerate monsters they offer us fewer and fewer choices, with the sole redeeming factor being that the goods we have access to are cheap.

We can wish for, and even outright demand, better quality goods from the corporations that control the world, but they laugh at us, sometimes openly and then shove some more steaming fresh garbage at us and happily swipe our credit cards when we reluctantly accept what we've been given.

We don't want the garbage we've been offered. This is evident across our culture. Our movies and TV shows are full of nostalgic renderings of a world we wish we still had access to. We idolize the quaint small towns that are a severely endangered species. We crave places that are worth caring about, but they just don't seem to exist any more.

Escape is impossible. We are trapped in our cars, our mortgages, our jobs and our towns. We can't leave one car or home or job or town and move on to a better one because they are all the same, wherever we go, they are all the same.

Corporations permeate our government. FDA and EPA officials flip flop between government appointments and private industry on a whim, the same thing occurs frequently in finance and federal economic agencies. Corporations control, with iron fists, our food supply, our health care, our income, our transportation choices and where we live.

You may not think you are a slave to the mega-corporations, but investigate it, look into it a little deeper. Check out Monsanto. Don't take my word for it. Do some research of your own.

Some startling movie/documentaries to watch are: Capitalism: A Love Story, Collapse (with Michael Ruppert), A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, The Future of Food. Also check out books like James Howard Kunstler's The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere and The Long Emergency and Twilight in the Desert by the late Matthew Simmons. Other books that reveal more pieces of the puzzle are Affluenza by De Graaf and others, The Cyclist's Manifesto by Robert Hurst and Silent Spring by Rachel Carlson.

I'm beginning to see that there is a lot more about the world that I need to know, but every new piece I learn makes me feel more overwhelmed. It makes you feel so small to see the enormity of the corruption and greed in the world.

I am compelled to keep digging up more pieces of the truth.