Buying From Corporations Is Not Good For Your Health
It occurred to me yesterday that if you were looking for a healthy diet to follow, it would be hard to find one better than the Don’t Buy Your Food From Corporations Diet. Just taking that one step would eliminate all of the GMOs you consume and most of the preservatives and processed sugar. Find access to food from sources other than corporations and you’re likely going to be eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables rather than stuff treated to still look fresh after making a weeks-long journey from thousands of miles away. Find locally made or grown items and you’re most likely to find a short ingredient list.
Then it occurred to me that if you were looking to make purchasing decisions that would be less harmful to the environment, avoiding buying from corporations would also be a good way to go. Buy local, buy small, or don’t buy at all. There are plastic straws being shipped to Wisconsin from China. If you can’t find a straw to purchase locally, do you really need to have one that has crossed the Pacific Ocean? Really?
I expanded this line of thinking and soon came to realize just how often the advice to avoid buying from corporations is useful. You want honest reporting from unbiased sources? Avoid corporate news sources. Turn on your television and see just how intellectually and morally bankrupt corporate news is.
You want to experience nourishing and thought-provoking drama? Avoid corporate sources. Read the classics or find an indie novel or indie movie. Want to find intelligent and emotionally rich music? Corporations are not going to provide it.
Corporations do not provide quality when it comes to the most basic of human needs. Yes, they can provide really cool toys and tons of conveniences, but when you’re talking about the health of the body, the mind, or the soul, corporations are better at giving you a cheap substitute than the real deal.
What corporations are really good at is providing bulk items cheaply for a large, homogeneous group. If you’re looking to feed a bunch of factory-farmed cows at a cost that will maximize your return on investment, it’s hard to beat the deal a corporation can provide.
And that, when it comes down to it, is what we are to corporations: cattle to be fed on the cheap in order to maximize return on investment. I suppose if you view your fellow human beings as animals to be profited from, it’s not a bad system. But if you view yourself as someone with a degree of individuality who is worthy of a certain amount of respect, corporations are not going to be able to meet your requirements.