We all know that the economy is the backbone of our society. It’s not music or art, it’s not science or even technology, important as each of these is to our culture. Everything hinges on economic exchange, that is, a form of energetic exchange. Sometimes it is money and at other times goods, points, rewards or barter. But the Universe itself pivots on an inhale and an exhale, breathing in the oxygen we need which is the plant’s exhalation of waste, and the plants inhale carbon dioxide, which is what we exhale as waste, forming a perfect circle.

But what do we do to engage in economic exchange? What do we do to generate our part of the bargain? I like to imagine that that is related on some deeper level about how we relate to the preciousness, the sacredness of how we hold and perceive life itself. What we see, however, is that so many people suspend their deeper connection to their values, or tell themselves a story so that their actions in the world appear to reflect their values, but they really do not.

When there is this kind of “values suspension” or story-telling as a rationale, all hell can break loose and actually has. Society gets disrupted, and goes from what can be utopia to dystopia. What people are willing to do to each other and to their mother, “Mother of All”, Gaia, Pachamama Herself, all for pieces of paper called money, digits on a spreadsheet, is beyond human comprehension.
This is a symptom of the low ebb of the Human Psyche.

We poison and toxify the bodies and minds of children every single day for the sake of a greater quarterly profit. We do the same as well to everyone else. This practice of societal and cultural self-destruction has been standardized, minimally regulated and the abnormal, normalized.
Ironically, these practices are not just promulgated by corporate titans but are endorsed by our leading federal agencies. Poisoning our food and water supply, our soil, our air have been “sanitized” and given a “clean bill of health” by the FDA, USDA and other acronym agencies that are there to protect the American public, and parallels all other countries in the world. Who in the world owns them? Let’s start with the basics, such as food, water, shelter and medicine.

Food: once it was real!

For most of human history, food used to be grown in healthy soil which yielded nutritious, tasty food, minerals, vitamins and enzymes intact. In the last hundred years, food production has been heavily commercialized, subsidized, industrialized, processed, refined and toxified. It barely resembles real food. That’s why it is called junk food because it is not real—but it is real junk.

Today, most food is heated, chemicalized, microwaved, synthesized and toxified with any number of additives. It is eaten mainly by young, largely uneducated people. It has some kind of engineered flavor, a combination of salt, sugar and fat, in proportions that only an angry or very well-paid biochemist could concoct. It really doesn’t qualify as food at all, not in the true sense of conferring nutritional value. Yet it is passed off as food in the marketplace. It is advertised as food, but it’s not really food. It’s a hybrid of sorts, designed to addict its prey, and heap up the company’s quarterly earnings. It’s actually a form of poison and provides massive calories but only a trace of nutrition. The fast food—a.k.a. the junk food—industry has led our youth to levels of diabetes and obesity that our country has never seen.

As a society, we have been brainwashed into thinking of chips of every variety, cereals of every type and packaged foods of every style as food. But are they? Food has nutrition! These ‘items’ have the most minimal of anything that could be called nutrition. Food is medicine as well, as Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, taught us. What is passed off as food, is not only not medicine, it is toxic to human health. Psychologists are hired by food corporations to study the effect of color, shape and size of a chip, a cookie or a candy bar, to have the greatest allure to a child or teen.

Scientists are hired to mix and match salt, fat and sugar in such a way as to create addiction to the food. Researcher and journalist, Michael Moss has published a book on this very subject. Creating food addiction is a science that grown men and women have taken on as a specialty and vocation: how to addict our children to salt, fat and sugar for profit, again, normalizing the abnormal.

These grown adults are willing to wake up every morning, take the commuter train into their local city, and spend the day at work, which involves destroying the health (and therefore lives) of young children and teenagers (and everyone else) and the future of our country and world for the sake of a dollar. Are these perhaps the same people who have pushed, through every means possible, the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade because human life is so valuable when still a small bunch of cells? Curious! Apparently, these same folks have little problem, once the cells mature and actually become a functioning human being, jeopardizing other people’s precious, sacred life by poisoning them or sending them off to war.

Can you imagine that? This is what adults do just to improve quarterly dividends for utter strangers called shareholders at the cost of the health, growth, personal development and well-being of children and all people across the nation and world.

For the sake of a dollar, those working in the Big Ag, Big Food, Big Chemical, the military industrial complex (and so on) are sacrificing generations of children, including their own. Across their nation, which suggests that nation nor children are any longer held sacred if both can be sacrificed for the almighty dollar.

A dollar?

Does this psychopathology begin in the womb? I haven’t found it in the DSM-5 or the Physicians Desk Reference, and the reason is that this subtler form of homicide is considered normal. This is why I am always pointing out the danger we face as a world of “normalizing the abnormal”, making pathology “okay”, but it is not, and is destroying the veritable fabric that holds our society together.

It’s like drinking a bit of poison every day. You may not notice it but over the years, it will have a cumulative, rather unpleasant effect.

Food destruction starts with soil destruction

Crops have been toxified by Big Ag and the soil has been depleted of minerals since 1933, according to the USDA. Rather than becoming a healthier nation with the advent of new technologies, new understandings of natural soil enrichment, deeper understanding of biology, physiology, ecology, regenerative farming and the exquisite relationship between them and of mind and body systems thinking, we are sicker as a nation, with childhood and adolescent illnesses abounding.

Historically, all food was organic because until about 100 years ago, there weren’t chemical poisons used as pesticides. It was just “food”, real vegetables. At this point in time, however, produce is most often genetically modified as a norm, which means toxic, so a new movement started called “organic farming” was compelled to grow as reaction to what became “the new (toxified) normal”.

As said, before Big Ag, all farming was “organic” without the label. One didn’t need the word. But since Big Ag, which should be renamed “Big Poison”, a distinction needed to be made regarding soil and plant quality, that is, pesticide-rich or pesticide-free. As if that weren’t bad enough, insecticide and chemical-rich or chemical-free. Big Ag started to encroach on the definition of the words “organic” and “natural” themselves and their legal definition, in effect, co-opting and diluting both so that even their meaning became ”genetically altered”. Not technically, but practically. There is little these Titans touch that doesn’t become toxified.

The consequences of this “normalization of the abnormal” around the world have been dire.

Re-gaining ground: Bharat Mitra & Organic India: saving farmers by making food real again

I recently had the honor and pleasure of interviewing the founder and CEO of Organic India, Bharat Mitra. He was also a speaker at A Better World’s 2024 Earth Day Celebration. Bharat found “farmer suicide circles” in different parts of India. These were traditional farmers for generations who were co-opted by corporatized, commercial agriculture companies. They were essentially coerced, or at minimum, propagandized to use corporate farming techniques, which included the use of pesticides and to abandon traditional methods passed on from father to son for generations.

The farmers, even if initially optimistic, found that these poisons destroyed their seed, their soil and seriously adversely affected the quality of their crops, ultimately destroying their livelihood. This occurred to such an extent that they were no longer able to feed their families or to sell their produce. As a result, and in protest, the farmers formed circles, put the pesticide poison into cups and drank it down until they died. This is apparently the state of man’s moral evolution by the 21st century. Shall we mince words and be politic or say it as it is? Let’s go for the latter to save time and to hopefully decrease deaths: this is unadulterated mass murder in slow motion. One doesn’t need machine guns if they engage in chemical warfare such as this.

But because these actions are conducted under the guise of “big business” originating in the U.S. or the EU by an elitist class that has control of elected officials who openly or covertly condone their practices due to their campaign coffers getting filled, it’s not called out for what it is but is simply referred to as ‘business-as-usual’. It has the appearance of “superior western know-how” helping the poor so the optics appear good, only to find that they are optics only, but in reality, a lot of harm is done to people and planet.

The optics afforded by suits and ties can throw even a good detective off-track. But don’t be fooled! The notion of the pathology of affluence is making itself known again right here quite clearly. The pathology of money-and-power aggregation “at any and every expense” is showing its ugly head yet again. It has so tragically, become the norm to which we have become benumbed. The pathology of affluence is underscored by its subset illness of greed, this ever-gnawing feeling of never having enough. In Buddhist Psychology, this phenomenon is referred to as “The Hungry Ghost” syndrome, a feeling of always being hungry for more to compensate for a deeper feeling of emptiness within which I have referred to numerous times in prior writings and articles over the years. Beneath the overt expression of greed, I suggest, lies a fear of loss and a feeling of distrust and insecurity.

There is a deep, usually subconscious feeling of “not being enough, or feeling worthy”. The remedy for compensating these uncomfortable feelings and quelling them is acquisition, seeking control of more power. Therefore, money is seen as gaining control of what is perceived to be an out-of-control, chaotic world. Chaotic on some levels the world of man surely appears to be, though there are myriad adaptations to it, some healthy and some, well, pathetic.

More of “whatever” is a defense and buffer against these uncomfortable feelings. The problem is that the actions that proceed from these feelings are literally destroying our and other species as well as our entire ecosystem, with animals and creatures going extinct by the hour. There is another level of consciousness on which an innate order can be recognized while ordinary perception gives the impression of a reigning chaos.

Solutions arising from suffering

Bharat was horrified by what he saw and set out, step-by-step, to educate the farmers about organic farming, biodynamic farming (based on the brilliant work of Rudolf Steiner), and this, step-by-step, he turned their lives around.

They were able to grow real food with nutrition, feed their families and have enough to sell at the market. In short, Bharat helped to build a middle class of farmers throughout India. As a social entrepreneur from the heart, Bharat’s story is that of a successful hero’s journey, exemplifying the memes of “do good, do well” and “people and planet before profit”.

He managed to educate the upper echelon of one of the largest companies in India and the world, who has since bought Organic India for not just its monetary bottom line, but for its values-based, social impact footprint.

Water, water everywhere, but not a healthy drop to drink

Water is life itself. It is held as sacred all over the world. It is revered by all indigenous cultures, by the Taoists, fishermen the world over, swimmers, surfers, sailors and by all life that lives in it.

We ourselves are some 80% composed of water, so holding water as sacred is simultaneously holding ourselves as such too. Yet, it is used and abused by the mega-corporations (aka “Glob-Corp.”), Big Ag and Big Food yet again. It is just the lubricant for the massive corporate-run, economic machine. It is fluoridated and chlorinated, that is, chemicalized throughout our society. In our homes, it is forced through angular, and too often, lead pipes.

Nature doesn’t have sharp right angles except in rock but water flows in circular or curvilinear patterns. Yet we subject this living substance to “pipe confinement”, forcing it to interact with our plastics, medications, micro-organisms of all stripes and water-deadening angular pipes. This flow is wholly unnatural, stripping the life force out of the water. All of this is degrading the substance of both our own Earth and bodies.

The pathology of affluence and convenience at any cost rears its ugly head yet again. Are there other ways to move water into our homes and places of work? There are water engineers and others who have been experimenting with this for years, one being Dan Winter who has experimented with free-flow forms, emulating Nature as a good bio-mimetic process would do.

There are stories about bacteria in water that can be dangerous to other life-forms and should be neutralized. There are natural ways that Mother Nature provides to filter water so that chlorination isn’t necessary. One is through sand. Another is through carbon. Ozonation is another way that is user-friendly which also doesn’t add chemicals to the water or to the body. Chlorine has been highly correlated to the onset of colon cancer.

Ozone cleans water and follows the way of Nature. A thunderstorm yields increased ozone in the air naturally and cleans it. The air contains vaporized water. But now, water is bottled, or rather, squeezed into plastic containers. The plastic degrades, goes into the water and then into our bodies. As a result, our bodies and the bodies of fish have become repositories of vast amounts of micro-particles of plastic.

They have even been found in pregnant women’s placentas. Large companies make deals with states and municipalities so that they can take the public’s water our water for free, bottle it and sell it back to us in a toxic, harmful condition.

You don’t really believe this, do you? Commonsense would tell you that it couldn’t possibly be true. Those with little giving so much to those who are so wealthy like Nestle? Water as the new oil? No way! Stranger than fiction!

Well, it’s true and has been going on for decades. Welcome to the 20th and 21st centuries in the incomparable USA, no longer “the land of the free” but the land of the rich mega-corporations which control most everything. The meaning of the word freedom, along with “natural” and “organic”, is on the chopping block.

These corporations are trying to control it all, unless, that is, we the people stop them and foil these “best-laid plans” which are scary and with our help, most likely doomed to die a miserable but welcomed death. Water is a limited resource. The hydrologic cycle sustains the same amount of water no matter what state it is in, liquid, vapor or ice. 98% of Earth’s water is saltwater, and only 2% is fresh, though much of that is going to feed industrial crops or commercial animal farms that use a frightening amount of it.

As above, water is said to be “the new oil”. Yes, wars have already been fought over water. They will likely continue and they will become more frequent and pervasive over time. This is largely due to the abuse of water and its excessive use by industry, another expression of disrespect for people and planet by the mega-corporate class dominating and controlling what Mother Nature made for allsentient life.

Good water still continues to bubble up

On the positive side, because it’s never that everything has spiraled downward though way too much has, there are an increasing number of companies and people who take care of water. They are Water-Keepers who preserve, cleanse, bless, detoxify, filter, re-balance and restructure water. This is a trend that continues to expand in many different regions and spaces across the world, re-sacralizing this most mysterious and life-giving element, bringing phyto-plankon, coral reefs and fish back to life.

Shelter

In this case, building materials for homes and apartment buildings, office buildings and any other structure, are made of particle board, drywall and other building materials and even these are chemicalized and off-gas toxins which often cause respiratory problems and other illnesses. From the chemical industry, we are not safe in our own homes, unless we build them with natural materials. The building industry is infamous for cutting corners to save “a buck”. Particle boards easily get infected with mold, termites or other infestations. The air quality at home is toxified and compromises people’s immune systems. Allergic reactions, asthma and other respiratory conditions tend to increase under these conditions, especially among children.

Why are chemicals used in building materials? To save money of course! To provide materials “on the cheap”, to increase profitability at any expense. Everything has become chemicalized and toxified, stemming from the manufacturer’s minds. The pathology of greed is rampant. These greedy creatures give making money a bad name, as so many have no sense of balance and proportion. How did money become God, that preserving human life, including the company owner’s own families, are being sacrificed on the altar of the Almighty Dollar?

Nature abhors a vacuum and nature abhors extremes

We all know that Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill it. Accordingly, I say that Nature also abhors extremes and allows them only temporarily while She re-balances Herself.

Extreme wealth and extreme poverty can exist for only so long before the tensions between poles, between extremes snaps. By the laws of physics, it must and will; whether it is tomorrow, next month or year, it will happen. Better that those wealthiest among us become proactive and save themselves and others a great amount of suffering. There are many creative ways to bring about greater harmony and balance. Some of the wealthiest see this and invest in balancing out the extremes.

People & planet before profit is the clarion call

What we clearly see is that our captains of industry, by and large, are captured by the hypnotic state of “will to more”. They are willing to poison us and their own by calling rank material food. They are willing to toxify our own water, bottle it in plastic then sell it back to us. Little that we live in, drink or eat is clean or real if purchased from the corporate giants in these industries.

We buy and invest in impossible burgers which are Impossible, both as a food and as a company. But to change this, when there is a moral shift, an evolution, interestingly, it isn’t that difficult. When you feel what is the right thing to do, change becomes so much easier.

In this case, money is no longer exalted as God, removed from the pedestal, no longer a false idol, and treating others—and Mother Earth—respectfully and with love becomes a greatly gratifying reality. This becomes a great payment in itself and forms what we call a multiple bottom-line.

This heads off catastrophe and allows Nature to restore Herself easily instead of resorting to extremes.

Change the corporate charter to say people & planet before profit

Everything is subject to the grandiose idea of “more money for my shareholders and me” no matter what, which is how most corporate charters read. I proposed a serious and specific modification to this in the mid-1990’s in a dialogue with my dear friends Carol Beck and Hugh Colmer, when I first became aware of this ridiculous and dangerous premise to the corporate charter.

Corporate charters legally bind management to increase profit over anything else quarter to quarter. That is the only mandate. B-corporations and non-profits aren’t subject to the same pathological purview. Until that charter is changed, by law (by contract), we are bound to this sick and losing battle.

Treatment solutions to the pathology

The good news is that, with reasonable, rationally-minded people, it’s not that hard to modify. Once an addict is freed from his addiction, the real world opens up. Same thing when the addiction to Money as God is broken, and balance between the many elements of life, the value of life itself, opens up again. Life itself flourishes with abundance.

It should also be understood that this is not a treatise against making money or a market economy. Not at all. Making money in our world has enormous potential. There is a pleasure and a joy that can be gleaned from it when it is a result of working toward the fulfillment of a purpose and a vision. It is very much however, about re-proportioning, re-balancing what is so seriously out of balance and thus so destructive. Thus we see the pathology of affluence and how it has ruined many generations and that children raised with wealth can skew their perception of reality.

We have also seen that when the addiction, the hypnotic state, is broken and the sanctity of life is renewed, greater clarity emerges and we can collectively stop the pollution.

As the Indigenous Wisdom from all over the planet has been urging their younger brothers for so long, to live in Nature and with each other in harmony and balance and indeed it can be.