An Inconvenient Truth: Food, Inc.

Today in health class I was faced with the inconvenient truth of the practices of our agrarian society. The movie, Food, Inc. is a documentary that takes viewers behind the scenes of today's food manufacturers and their treatment of animals as well as poor production methods. As I watched merely the first 45 minutes of the film, I was horrified, disgusted, and deeply saddened all at once.

Food, Inc. took me back to the ideals of Ishmael and humanity in the rest of the world. The Fall marked the beginning of man's grasp on the earth; the ability to bend the environment to suit our own needs. We tilled the land to feed a growing population that would only keep growing, rationalizing our actions as sustaining the population. We as humans gave ourselves permission to tamper with lifeforms and form them to support our populations with the help of science, technology, and the might of the human race. And what are we left with? Now we genetically modify chickens and cows and plants to be bigger, better, and less susceptible to disease and we mass produce them. Animals aren't born. They're manufactured to our needs. They're manufactured to make money. This is what has become of the hunter-gatherer societies of the Stone Age. Well done.

Another angle to this situation is that our new agrarian practices make us richer. Food is made cheaply and efficiently and is engineered to give utmost satisfaction. The fast food industry is now booming and more and more people have grown to rely on it. Also, science has helped us make our food safer and more nutrient rich so that we may receive vital vitamins and minerals.

Although it is difficult to accept our current food situation, it is important to realize that the progression of our society has led to increases in population, and we must feed this population cheaply. However, I don't have to accept the horrors of this situation, but I can accept that maybe green and organic initiatives will continue to grow and hopefully our newly developed food technologies will be used for the better.

Connection: Heart of Darkness and the East India Company

During our Heart of Darkness discussion on Thursday, we talked about the relationship between government and economics with the main question being: "To what extent should government be involved in businesses?" I connected this idea to the English East India Company and their involvement in the colonization of other countries.

The East India Company (EIC) established especially close relations with India after the 1757 Battle of Plassey when troops defended the weak Mughal empire from rebellious warlords. This resulted in a peace treaty making the commander of the EIC troops the official tax collector for Bengal. From 1757-1858, the EIC progressed to become the de facto government of India, illustrating the mesh of government and business.

This is along the lines of Heart of Darkness as Europeans scramble to exploit African commodities and African society suffers European enroachment and brutal power. This is visible as Africans are enslaved to work in mines and businessmen from European nations travel to Africa seeking ivory.

This connection sheds light on the relationship between government and business because at one point, business organizations or companies became the government and ruling body of these nations. It shows their political weakness but also the changing times and the modernist/post-modernist development of Heart of Darkness. The connection further illustrates the post-modernist worldview that globalization leads to more complicated representations of society and the way people live and relate to one another, for example.