The fact that most of the world has decent access to food. And the fact that here in the first world (I’m in Canada), just about everyone has access to some kind of food.
I know it isn’t perfect and there are still a small percentage of people that may have difficulty with access to proper food, plentiful food or enough food … but everyone everywhere here has something to eat.
I’m Indigenous and when I was growing up in the 80s, mom and dad had enough for us to eat but we weren’t starving or anything.
However, my parents were born in the 40s and they said they had to live through famines as children … in modern Canada! They remembered a severe famine that swept through northern Ontario in the 50s where every hunter and trapper just couldn’t find enough wild food anywhere to feed people. It was a normal cycle that happens in our part of the world that takes place at least once a decade - most times it is just small decline in animal populations but other times, everything just disappears for one reason or another (disease, migration, weather, temperature, animal movements, etc)
In my grandparents time … starvation was a normal part of life to the point where lots of our old legends are filled with stories of cannibalism and murder because people were starving to death.
It all just means that in our modern era over the past hundred years … food has become plentiful for the majority of the world and that starvation has become less prevalent than it ever was in human history.
In our modern world of interconnected finances, services, governments and systems … it is all hinging on a very delicate balance … because as Will Durant put it …
“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day”
Our easy access to food for everyone is only possible if we maintain a functioning world order of cooperation.
The fact that most of the world has decent access to food. And the fact that here in the first world (I’m in Canada), just about everyone has access to some kind of food.
I know it isn’t perfect and there are still a small percentage of people that may have difficulty with access to proper food, plentiful food or enough food … but everyone everywhere here has something to eat.
I’m Indigenous and when I was growing up in the 80s, mom and dad had enough for us to eat but we weren’t starving or anything.
However, my parents were born in the 40s and they said they had to live through famines as children … in modern Canada! They remembered a severe famine that swept through northern Ontario in the 50s where every hunter and trapper just couldn’t find enough wild food anywhere to feed people. It was a normal cycle that happens in our part of the world that takes place at least once a decade - most times it is just small decline in animal populations but other times, everything just disappears for one reason or another (disease, migration, weather, temperature, animal movements, etc)
In my grandparents time … starvation was a normal part of life to the point where lots of our old legends are filled with stories of cannibalism and murder because people were starving to death.
It all just means that in our modern era over the past hundred years … food has become plentiful for the majority of the world and that starvation has become less prevalent than it ever was in human history.
In our modern world of interconnected finances, services, governments and systems … it is all hinging on a very delicate balance … because as Will Durant put it …
“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day”
Our easy access to food for everyone is only possible if we maintain a functioning world order of cooperation.