 
Message-ID: 
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1993 15:48:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Jon C. Slenk" 
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu,
    Bulletin Board Administration
    
Subject: DfaSP
Fred: is Not

all typos are mine, of course...

Some stuff from:
Diet for a Small Planet
Frances Moore Lappe
10th Anniversary Edition
1982 Ballantine Books

Beyond the Food Battle

My diet was changing. My feelings about myself were changing. At the same
time, I was learning about "world food problems." Soon I was reading
everything I could find on food and hunger. Somthing told me that because
food is so basic to all of us, if we could just grasp the causes of hunger
we would clear a path to understanding the complexities of politiecs and
economics that overwhelm and paralyze so many.

...

There I learned to "follow my nose" - a reasearch technique that has
served me well for the last twelve years. For me, this meant not having a
grand scheme, not konwing exactly where I was going. Instead, I responded
to the information I was learning, letting it lead me to the enxxt
question.

Overall, I wanted to find out for myself just how close we were to the
earth's limits. I wanted to find out for myself the causes of hunger. I
watned to find out what were the important qustion to ask.

Then, in late 1969, in my library-basement hideaway, I came across certain
facts about U.S. agriculture that changed my life. They changed how I was
formulating the important questions.

First, I learned that in the United States over half of the harvested
acreage goes to feed livestock and only a tiny fraction of it gets retuned
to us in meat on our plate. I learned that most Americans consume about
twice the protein their bodies can use. Finally, I learned tha tby
combinign plant foods once can create a protein of equal "quality" to
animal protein.

When I put this all together, I felt like the little boy in the fairy tale
who cries out, "the emperor has no clothes!" I could barely believe what I
was learning, because it flew so totally in the face of the conventional
wisdon. More important, I saw tha tthe questions being asked by the
experts to whom I had turned for guidance were the *wrong questions*.

...

Suddenly I understood that questions about the roots of needless hunger
had to focus not on the simple physical limits of the earth, but on the
economic and political forces that determine what is planted and who eats.
I began to realize that the experts' single-minded focus on greater
production as the solution to world hunger was wrongheaded. You could have
more food and still more hunger.

This realization, besides being the motice for what became DfaSP, was my
first step in demystifying the experts - those credential-laden officials
and academics who have the answers *for* us. I thought that if I could
write up the facts about how land and grain are wasted through a fixation
on meat production, and could demonstrate that there are delicious
alternatives, I could get people to question the economic ground rules
that create such irrational patterns of resource use.

...

Rubbing Elbows with the "Experts"

...

This was the second stage in the growing realization which has since
formed the basis of my work. I slowly realized that those who have been
schooled ito direct the powerful institutions which control our economic
system are forced to accept and to work within the system that creates
needless hunger. Beneficiaries of these institutions, they have been made
incapable of seeing outside their boundaries. Rather than preparing them
to find solutions, their training has inhibited them from asking questions
that could lead to solutions. Those supposed authorities who gathered in
Rome in 1974 were still promoting the belief that greater production would
solve the problem of hunger, but I had come to see that you could have
trememdous production - indeed, I lived in the country with the greatest
food abundance in history - and yet still have hunger and malnutrition.

...

In other words, the only way that power will come to be more
democratically shared is if you and I take more of it ourselves. IF this
is true, then the challenge to each of us becomes clear: we must make
ourselves capable of shouldering that responsibility.

...

Unlearning our rigid categories means learning to think of every society
as in a *process of change* rather than static. (A friend of mine once
observed: "What's wrong with Americans is that we want progress without
change.") Americans do sense the dramatic changes taking place all around
us, and many feel overwhelmed and paralyzed. To break out of our fears. we
at the Institute believe, we must first make sense out of these change s-
we must understand their roots and their consequences. This is the first
step toward moving our society in constructive change. So the Institute
has launched a major new investigaion It is not taking me to Maputo,
Mozambique, or Davao City, the Philippines. Rather, I am asking: What is
the meaning of the critical changes taking place in our food and
agricutlural system here in the United States?

...

Power and Responsibility: Changing Ourselves

The first struggle for me and for so many of my friends has been to
reconcile our vision of the future with the compromises we must make evey
day just to survive in our society. If we attempt to be totally
"consistent," eschewing all links between ourselves and the exploitative
aspects of our culture, we drive ourselves - and those close to us - nuts!
I still remember my annoyance as a friend, sitting with me in a restaurant
in the late 1960s, scornfully picked the tiny bits of ham our of her
omelet.

...

All this implies takin gourselves seriously, which for years I found
difficult. In part, taking ourselves seriously means taking responsibility
for how our individual life choices either sustain or challenge the
antidemocratic nature of our society.

What do we eat?

...

Where do we shop?

...

In school, how do we study?

...

How do we try to learn about the world?

...

Where do we work?

...

How do we choose our friends?

...

The less victimized we are by forces outside us, the freer we become. For
freedom is not the capacity to do whatever we please; freedom is the
capacity to make intelligent choices. This implies knowledge of the
consequences of our actions. And that is what this book is all about -
gaining the knowledge we need to make choices based upon awareness of the
consequences of those choices.

Overcoming Hopelessness: Taking Risks

According to a 1980 Gallup Poll, Americans are more "hope-less" than the
people of any other country polled except Britain and India. Fully 56
percent of Americans queried believed the coming year would be worse than
the past year. These findings come as no surprise. Hopelessness is a
growing American malady. Increasingly, Americans feel alienated from
"their" government - witness the lowest voter turnout since 1948 in the
Reagan-Carter contest. Americans increasingly perceive that their
government operates in the interests of a privileged minority.

...

If, then, belief that "the world" can change depends on changing
oursleves, how do we start?

I believe there is only one way - we must take risks. There is no change
without risk. To change, we must push ourselves to do what we thought we
were incapable of doing.

What do we risk?

We risk being controversial.

...

We risk being lonely.

...

We risk being wrong.

...

But How Do We Learn to Take Risks?

Few of us change alone. As I have already suggested, we must choose
friends and colleagues who will push us to what we thought we could not
do.

...

Second, we must learn to associate risk with joy as well as pain.

...

We can discover that our personal and social liberation lies not in
freedom from responsibility but in our growing capacity to take on greater
responsibility. The organizations and publications [listed in Appendix]
... can help - as tools through which we can transform ourselves from
victims of change to makers of change. We can choose to seize these tools
- not just on behalf of the hundreds of millions who are hungry, but for
our own liberation as well.

----------------------------------------------------
Jon Slenk          Carnegie Mellon    EVERYTHING is
angst+@cmu.edu     Pittsburgh PA      Disclaimed

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