I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a dyed-in-the-woo l possibilist! By this, I mean with an eco-mind, we see that everything's connected and change is the only constant.
Frances Moore LappRead
The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.
Interpretation
Hunger arises from the lack of access to resources rather than a shortage of food itself.
Frances Moore Lapp's quote highlights that true hunger is not merely about the absence of food, but rather the systemic barriers that prevent the poor from obtaining the necessary resources to nourish themselves. It emphasizes the need to address issues of power and access in order to alleviate hunger, suggesting that solutions must target the root causes of poverty and inequality.
In practice
In a discussion about global poverty during a charity event.
I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I am a dyed-in-the-woo l possibilist! By this, I mean with an eco-mind, we see that everything's connected and change is the only constant.
Hope is not wishful thinking. It's not a temperament we're born with. It is a stance toward life that we can choose...not not. The real question for me, though, is whether m hope is effective, whether it produces or is just where I hide to ease my own pain.
We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted.
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.
Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.
Was it for this the wild geese spread The gray wing upon every tide; For this that all that blood was shed, For this. Edward Fitzgerald died, And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, All that delirium of the brave? Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.
I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.
From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law.
And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.
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