Why are there no corporations in Ordinary?

Did you watch Annie Leonard's vid, The Story of Stuff? If you did, you understand why there are no corporations in the land of Ordinary.

Because the people of Ordinary and her world support themselves and each other fully on the land ...

Because they use only what they need and never more than the land can provide ...

Because each individual is encouraged to find and develop her/his unique talents and abilities and to share those with society ...

Because every individual contributes to the day-to-day upkeep of common buildings and spaces and to growing and gathering food ...

And because the people are indeed their brother's and sister's keepers ...

There is no place for greedy corporations in the land of Ordinary.

Oh, I know what you're thinking. Humankind has yet to evolve to live peacefully without coveting power, things and above-all currency. Yes? No. Remember the Ladakh! In my lifetime, before westerners so corrupted the Ladakhi society, her people lived just so. We humans can do it again.

On Sunday in Should you pay a little more for hormone-free milk?, I showed you a chapter from the three-hour documentary, The Corporation. Think of Leonard's vid as the outline and The Corporation as the full story.

For a motivating shot, watch the movie trailer right now.



I hope it will impel you to take time to watch the entire film. When you realize how deeply the multinational corporations manipulate us, despite our best efforts to resist, you may feel anger as I did, perhaps rage, but also an overwhelming sadness. As the film so poignantly shows again and again, the CEOs themselves do not want to live in the over-crowded, polluted, unhealthy world they are creating in their pursuit of short-term, rapid-gain profits.

On the other hand, there's the Wall Street guy who could think of only one thing on 9-11: "What is this doing to the price of gold?" He saw the tragedy and disaster of 9-11 as an opportunity to make money--a lot of money. Indeed, if news reports were correct, Osama Bin Laden himself planned to make a killing on Wall Street when United Airlines stock plummeted following the strikes.

Watch the film free in 23 segments on YouTube or purchase it from the www.thecorporation.com or rent it on NetFlix iTunes.

I give gratitude for author Joel Bakan, who wrote the book of the same name, filmakers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott and all the people who shared their vision, talent, time, skill and energy in bringing these messages to us. They show us where we went wrong, at least in part. We can change. On the way to building Ordinary, we've much to do.

Should you pay a little more for hormone-free milk?

In Ordinary, villagers eat dairy products from cows, goats, chickens and other poultry, which they carefully raise and tend. Villagers use skills passed through thousands of years of animal husbandry to assure a safe milk, egg and meat supply.

When it comes to protecting the food supply in our world, though, corporate expediency and profits may cloud executive vision a hair. Should we be concerned? Take a look at this segment of the film The Corporation and decide for yourself.



Producers Jane Akre and Steve Wilson thought Americans should know the truth about the hormones, called rBST, that dairy farmers feed cows to increase milk production. They say they had evidence that the hormone manufacturers suppressed, but Fox News wouldn't let them tell their story. Once again, corporate expediency and profit, this time in the form of mega advertising dollars, appear to have temporarily blinded executives.

Short take: The hormones cause terrible suffering in dairy cows, including udder and teat infections that secrete bacteria-filled pus. Milking machines can't tell the difference between clean milk and pus-infected milk. Sure, our milk is pasteurized, but bacteria levels following pasteurization are higher in milk from hormone-fed cows. We drink that milk. Our children drink it. While Europe and much of the western world has banned the use of hormones in beef and dairy cattle for years, our own US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves their use.

Are Americans at risk? Harvard researcher Ganmaa Davaasambuu thinks chances are good that we are. The Sprecher Institute for Comparative Cancer Research at Cornell University, on the other hand, says little or no evidence has been found to support the hypothesis. Of course, that's partly because almost no one has studied the issue. What we don't know can't hurt us. Can it?

Whatever science decides, our household will continue to pay a little more for hormone-free milk. We consider the extra pennies it takes to protect dairy animals from unwarranted suffering a worthy tithe. Who knows? We just might save ourselves a nasty bout with cancer in our later years.

What do you think?