Kim’s Dream Orlan Ravanera
Buying is Like Casting a Vote
The Barangay Election is fast approaching. If you are voting for a wrong leader whose vision of the future is only for the next election, then you are voting to put your barangay in disarray. But voting is not just done during elections or in choosing who should lead us. In fact, you cast your vote every time you buy as you choose from different economic alternatives, i.e., local versus foreign, organic versus inorganic, the essentials versus junks.
Buying between local or foreign products, the latter has been winning in all fronts as Filipino consumers are overwhelmingly choosing foreign products. Truth is, when you buy products from other countries, you are supporting the labor force and the economies of those countries where the products are coming from. This is the reason why our country has been consigned as “dumping ground” of finished products and as a cheap source of the raw materials following an extractive economy. That is the reason why there are some 3,000 Filipino workers jumping in droves every day like jumping from a “sinking ship,” leaving their love ones behind just to find jobs in other countries.
Yes, we are consuming what we are not producing. That speaks well of a captive mind, an offshoot of the bombardment of advertisements by corporate globalization. We have good nutritious dairy products from our Dairy Cooperatives, for example, yet many are still opting to buy milk coming from China even tainted with melamine. Let us be mindful of the fact that a country that is consuming what it is not producing will always be penalized by slow growth.
Buying between organic and inorganic, the latter wins, hands down. Consumers do not know that these inorganic products come from the massive practice of Conventional Agriculture which is tied-up to the heavy usage of chemicals. This dominant agriculture paradigm promoted by the Department of Agriculture has robbed farming communities of farming that is controlled by corporate globalization. That is the reason why everyone profits from farming, i.e., the seed and fertilizer dealers, the compradors, the usurers and the middlemen but not those who are doing the back-breaking job of farming, exposed the excruciating heat of the sun and the outpourings of rains – the poor farmers.
Buying organic means that we don’t have to import massively chemicals that have already done so much harm to the integrity of the eco-systems and deaths due to cancer. Buying organic means lowering production cost by way of our farmers trusting in the innate processes of nature and saving beneficial insects which are now nowhere to be found. It also means saving our water-tables from being polluted through the massive use of toxic, non-biodegradable chemicals.
Buying between the essentials or non-essentials or junks, again the latter is now the order of the day. Consumers cannot escape the massive advertisements of corporate globalization which are giving high adherence to the neo-liberal capitalist system. Buy this, buy that, to be happy. Creating so much want base on the money-must-grow principle, perpetuating a rotten economic system that use money to make more money but not to enhance the well-being of the people. The unbridled materialism and consumerism has characterized society’s way of life, even sacrificing Mother Earth that as if nature is inexhaustible. Let us remember what Mahatma Gandhi had said several decades ago, “reduce your want and provide for your own needs.”
This time, let us vote well. BUY LOCAL. BUY ORGANIC. BUY WHAT ARE ESSENTIALS! And in doing so, you support the Filipino labor force, the Philippine economy and the livelihood of the poor. Let us debunk the dominant market-oriented economy being advanced through corporate globalization that is now collapsing. But as its last hurrah, like a giant-off balance, it has to run so as not to fall. In doing so, the “giant” steps on communities and the eco-systems, leaving so much destruction on its path that Impoverished the people and making ecological disasters the new normal. Let us now be awakened and in the spirit of oneness, to fight for what is right, what is true and what is just. Let us liberate our people from unbridled materialism and consumerism, whose mindset has been captured by the Ego (devil), buried in the whims and capriciousness of the mundane. We are not just form (body); we are embodied spirit made in the image and likeness of the Unseen Formless Being called God. We are Consciousness/Awareness, can you not feel that? Development of our spiritual qualities is of utmost importance as such is the reason for being of our existence. It is biblically stated, ‘DENY THYSELF”, thus, debunk the mundane, go to the sublime and be in that transcendental dimension where the Universal Intelligence governs. In the mundane, it is the ego (Satan) that is in control. Look at the urban centers which are actually the ugliest scenario on earth. Behold Nature, it is the reflection of the Creator, so amazing but billions of species of flora and fauna are now extinct, sacrificed to the altar of greed and profit by the Homo Sapiens, the most flawed of all of God’s creation. Immerse yourself in the beauty of nature, then, feel the abundance, in line with biblical lines “to feel the abundance of life.” When Christ said that, that means the abundance of nature, not that of malls or supermarkets, as there were no malls or super-markets then. Indeed, be one with nature and then feel the stillness and the vast spaciousness and know who truly you are.
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