The Devastation of Globalization

When I think about a family in India whose son no longer is able to be at home because he has to go work at call centers to pay for food and expenses that are no longer sustainable via the family farming due to globalized destruction of land, that seems to hurt me the most. For some reason the destruction of India’s culture is the most painful consequence of globalization for my heart. Perhaps because it’s the birthplace of the Buddha and I can imagine him turning in his grave. Or, even more poignantly the working canvas of one of the world’s greatest resisters, Gandhi. Or is it because the Mother of Calcutta graced the grounds there saving the poor and the hungry, the lepers and the indigent. But more than all that, it seems to be the last remnants of a once beautiful civilization and culture laced with love born out of the seeds of humility, based on close nit family structures, and is now being torn apart by mass corporate take-overs. Demolishing the lands, or making it impossible to survive off the same work that the families survived on for years and so the family is forced to break up in order to pay the grocery bills. Sons go off to work at corporations and then most unfortunately get drawn into the hypnotism of blindly chasing after material good embedded in the subconscious of all television viewers, beaming satellites into unsuspecting houses. MTV promoting skin whitening cream.

Can’t we leave well enough alone? Is it not enough that 4 out of 6 million acres of precious Rain Forest have been demolished? What will we do then? What will we breathe when there are no more trees? What about our grandchildren? Let us ask the poor farmers what their desires are before we force American corporate philosophies and culture upon them. Ask the farmers how they feel about their farms being torched. Just like in South Central Farm, the tears. As if their own hearts were being uprooted from their chests.

Greed of the corporations, globalization will demolish nature and the people who so preciously live off it. So how do we stop it? Traveling, protesting, raising awareness, singing, standing up to the destruction…