Our Dependence & Our Dependents
If you are paying attention to the news, you will eventually come across people warning about a major world-wide calamity on the horizon. These dooms-dayers are advising that we stock up on gold, learn to grow our own vegetables, buy a goat, get a few chickens, and ready our weapons. They claim that dark days are upon us. And I say, tell that to the billions of moms around the world raising their children as if the world will be a better place in the future.
But the warnings are justified. Every mom – however naive, under-educated and overly-hopeful — needs to pay close attention to them. Resources for our children would be severely compromised if what they say is true. It is widely known now that our financial system is corrupted. Americans have grown wary of agencies that were entrusted to provide it proper oversight. Currencies are backed only by ”trendy” commodities and manipulated by aggressive governments and corporations seeking to control resources. All the while, our Moms are working day and night to keep the wheels of life churning. Many at this moment are cooking a meal, working at an office, cleaning clothes, building a business, reading a blog. But not enough are paying attention to the fragile systems on which they highly depend, systems that are making the much of our lives in America very safe and very comfortable.
Financial policies, political favors, pure capitalism and not-so pure subsidies have entangled our most basic needs within complicated food, water and transportation networks. We now rely on fresh food to be shipped into America from as far away as Chile and New Zealand. Even our most basic staples such as rice and chicken arrive from great distances. And we are okay with it. A little ‘too okay’ with it. My generation believes that quick trip to Safeway means we have everything that we need within reach. And we do so long as our transportation system continues to work. In fact, food would be more difficult to obtain than ever if this system fails.
As we toil away, many of us are oblivious to the interconnectedness of our resources and how our roles play into these systems. Should it all unravel, who will be left to tend gardens few of us learned how to grow? How would we kill a chicken and chop our wood while our men left us to fight each other with their shiny new guns? Who will be expected to rebuild and repopulate our world? As mothers, powerless to influence politics and economics, we have been forced to depend on poorly designed systems only to be consistently punished for that dependency.
In a Dark Age scenario, I wonder what moms would have to live for? What would they consider worth fighting for? The money that vanished completely? The country that fell apart? If a person’s courage and passion for life is not within reach before a society’s fall, then I believe it simply is not there. We would get old and die waiting for all of our confirmed cowards to turn into hopeful heroes. In spite of warnings that we are in ”The End Of Times”, I do not see an end to the world, so much as I see the possibility of a new beginning. I see a new breed of hero walking our streets everyday. Many are dressed like mothers. Mothers are on the front line of every society. These systems exist to control resources and provide an economic structure. Mothers are billions strong and need these resources the most. Right now, thanks to the women before us mothers have more financial, intellectual and political influence than ever. I believe we need to build on that.
Others may recommend buying gold and that you start polishing your guns, but I suggest you visit your local farmers market. Consider possibilities where your home could be made less dependent on non-local resources by reading up on solar, geothermal and wind energy. Start your own garden or farm if you can. I cling to the hope that we can shape our world by defending the life we create, the same way we protect our children from running into the streets or preventing the various other hazards that could befall them. We can cultivate new ideas. Our diversity requires that we build smarter systems to address the variables that exist in nature. The time to do this is now.
Heather writes about Motherhood and Other Offensive Situations at Ultimate Outcasts.
