I don’t know whether I’m just getting bitchy in my older years, or it could be I’m suffering from cabin fever due to the incessant shoulder-height drifts of snow that keep piling up in our yard, hampering me from getting out and about.
Or perhaps it is because I’m watching too much TV.
My TV watching is minimal, usually just the 6pm news and a couple of once-a-week human interest programs featuring life pretty much as it is someplace somewhere.
But lately I have been bugged to no end by the continual advertising of fundraising projects aimed at sponsoring high-priced research programs. They seem to be searching for a cure for anything and everything, this or that, whichever, whatever, and however, but predominately one form of cancer or another.
And here lie my questions. Why are we looking for cures when we should be looking for the reason or cause? Would not prevention be a far less costly expenditure than cure? Would our world population not be healthier and happier if prevention was given equal attention? Has anyone questioned the fact that perhaps the cure could well be the killer? Would it not be nice to have some empty rooms in our hospitals? Would it not be nice to hear the chatter of slower-paced nurses echoing in empty halls? Am I wrong in thinking this?
Would I be wrong in pointing my finger at our genetically-modified food sources? Would I be wrong pointing a finger at the multi-national drug companies? Would I be wrong in thinking that too many of our doctors are unwillingly being programmed to be little more than pill pushers?
Would I be wrong in suggesting that commercial factory farming, pushed by genetically-modified seed growers, are feeding our meat sources hyped-up fodder? Are genetically-modified, pesticide-tolerant seed sources not passed on to us through the food we eat? Would I be wrong in assuming that the general public assumes that good health can be mastered by consuming a handful of manufactured vitamin pills?
Would I be wrong in assuming that greed infiltration has infested our across-the-board population to such an extent that we can no longer afford the things we demand? Have we become so obsessed with the “bigger is better” and the “almighty dollar,” no longer caring for whom it hurts? Is city against city and nation against nation not pitted in the battle of economics?
Can inflation be explained in any other way than putting an impossible unaffordable burden passed on to our children, our grandchildren and their children’s children? Should our young not be able to shoulder the burden of looking after the elderly instead of, as it appears to be, expecting large handouts? Should they not be able to curb their ever-rising demands sufficiently to such so do?
Somewhere, someplace, somehow, I feel that humanity came to a fork in the road and without sufficient thought, fore or aft’, has taken the wrong turn.
Perhaps it is time that we wake up to reality and get back to the basics. What do you think?
Take care, ’cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105