{"id":79172,"date":"2016-09-19T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=79172"},"modified":"2016-09-10T07:59:46","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T06:59:46","slug":"how-much-better-can-you-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/how-much-better-can-you-eat\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Better Can You Eat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

9 Sep 2016 – <\/em>It is, perhaps, the most powerful moment in the very powerful Polanski film Chinatown<\/em><\/a>, when detective Jack Gittes, played superbly by Jack Nicholson in the role of a lifetime, confronts the corrupt tycoon Noah Cross, played superbly by John Huston. The detective asks the multi-millionaire who has been manipulating Los Angeles water rights for personal profit: \u201cHow much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can\u2019t already afford?\u201d Cross replies: \u201cThe future, Mr. Gittes!\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, the elderly Cross\u2019s answer is dishonest, not surprisingly. As a man in his seventies or eighties, he doesn\u2019t have much personal future left that would require so many more millions, and if it\u2019s the future of his granddaughter\/daughter he\u2019s concerned about, well . . . the less said the better.<\/p>\n

The superrich are worried about the present,<\/em> not the future, and in fact they are so obsessed with it and nothing but that by the looks of things they wouldn\u2019t mind mortgaging the fate of the planet to their short-lived whims: between global warming and nuclear armament, corporate depredations upon the environment and skyrocketing arms sales, a chasm between the 1 and the 99 percent that will require a miracle to bridge, there won\u2019t be much of a future for anybody. However, selling oil and arms, like privatising and selling water, is a good racket to be in if you\u2019re working for the immediacy of present-tense personal profit.<\/p>\n

But I honestly didn\u2019t set out to write a gloomy article. Even when I read the recent Oxfam report<\/a>, which revealed that the top 62 richest people on earth possess the wealth owned by the poorest half\u2014yes, fifty percent!\u2014of the world\u2019s population, I didn\u2019t feel gloomy or irascible or even all that angry. But I wondered, like Jake Gittes in Chinatown,<\/em> what in fact these 62 people (who are, you can be assured, actively planning to amass even MORE wealth) want that they don\u2019t already have\u2014better restaurants, jewellery, toys, cars, girls, guys, planes, widescreen monitors, professional sports franchises? And if they have them\u2014and they already have, don\u2019t they?\u2014how much better can or will they live?<\/p>\n

I once knew a very wealthy individual who told me that he had to leave one of the premier New York investment firms to form his own company because \u2018you can\u2019t earn any real money there\u2019: his salary of several million yearly was obviously not \u2018real\u2019, or at least not real enough, I guess. And, fortunate and hard-working person that he was, the company he created allowed him an intake of many times that. I never got to ask him the Gittes question, but it was certainly on my mind as he recounted his personal woes to me.<\/p>\n

At some point there is a kind of \u2018endpoint,\u2019 isn\u2019t there? When certain levels of wealth are achieved, levels that allow one to live without fear of poverty or hunger, that allow one to live safely, how much more is there to satisfy? Admittedly, in our era of cancer-capitalism\u2014a far more accurate phrase to define the overarching economic model of the global world\u2014there are far too many who cannot achieve those basic goals, goals that should be the birthright of us all, and out of which should evolve the rights to clean air and water, universal healthcare and universal education.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s get back to the Noah Crosses of the world: what do they really want? If it weren\u2019t for the destruction and mayhem and destitution their drives create for so many others, I think I would take pity on them\u2014really and truly. Because, in a way, they\u2019re running for their lives. They\u2019re stocking and stacking and hoarding as much as they can, they\u2019re forever sharpening the elbows to get even further ahead in line. But for what?<\/p>\n

To a reasonably enlightened person the riches of the world are in the marvels of nature and the kindliness of one\u2019s fellow humans, in the slender line of coastal sand that rings the sea, or in the trees that whistle high above us, in the selfless touch of a lover, in the magnificent beauty of poem or canvas, in the ethereal ecstasies of music. All the perfumes of Arabia cannot blot out the stench of overwrought wealth that has been built on the backs and bones of the poor.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to say to them, any of them, one of the 62 or even the many millions that make up the one percent\u2014which is still a helluva lot of human horseflesh, so to speak, on an earth with a population of 7 billion\u2014wake up, you can\u2019t fit it into your coffin, you can\u2019t buy a spot in heaven, you\u2019re not gonna rise from the dead without dying first anyway! Why not use the billions you\u2019ve amassed to establish a system that, in the words of Oscar Wilde, \u201cwould relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s called \u201csocialism\u201d. Yes, Oscar said it. And so did Bernie, for crying out loud, in America of all places!<\/p>\n

And socialism is itself only a fancy economic term for sharing You\u2019d eat a whole lot better, wouldn\u2019t you, knowing that everybody else could eat well too?<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born poet, novelist and physician who now resides in New Zealand. He may be contacted at <\/em>emanuelegarcia@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 intrepidreport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I read the Oxfam report, which revealed that the top 62 richest people on earth possess the wealth owned by the poorest half\u2014yes, fifty percent!\u2014of the world\u2019s population, I wondered what in fact these 62 people want that they don\u2019t already have? And if they have them, how much better can or will they live?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}