Building Blocks of Society

My jaw dropped when I checked twitter a few minutes ago. Literally dropped. Here’s the lovely emoticon I use for represent what my face looked like:

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Bulging eyes, and lower jaw descending toward the floor. Yes.
This is what made me stare with disbelief at my computer screen:

“Dead rodents in peanut butter plant lead to recall“

I hadn’t really given too much thought what might have lead to the salmonela poisoning, but come to find out it was dead rats and other unmentionables just floored me. (see article if you haven’t already).

This got me to thinking. I had always wondered why we needed things like auto emissions laws, and so forth. You know those laws that guide manufacturers on the limits on how much pollution making stuff they can or cannot build into a car for example.

I’m sure there are laws that guide food making plants such as the one in question that are guidelines on cleanliness, safety and so on. I think those type of things are helpful. But I always wondered…

To my thinking some things are like “no duh” type things. I mean if I was a factory owner and was making food products for other human beings to consume: laws or no laws I’d make sure my factory and subsequent products were fit for well, human consumption.

I remember many years ago when I lived in Los Angeles, this television reporter went undercover at some of the area’s best known and popular restaurants and found some prettty scary stuff. This lead to the inspection board or whatever it is to issue a restaurant “grade system” where establishments had to place a placard with an A, B, C, D or F in a prominent place in the front window.

You have heard of the more widespread expose that lead to many fast food nationwide chains being found with bacteria and other lovely things in their ice machines and so on. Delish. So far I’ve been lucky: I haven’t died from taking a detour through the drive-thru lane.

Not so for the 9 people who ate those tainted peanut butter products, and those hundreds who got severely ill. Eating a snack should not be a gamble with the grim reaper. What made me quite angry and upset was watching the execs of that company “plead the 5th” so to um speak.

They hid behind their laywers and would not say word one on what they had done. Again, I wonder about where the humanity is in all of this. Maybe I’d like to save my butt, but at the very least I’d have prepared a statement apologizing or showing compassion and sympathy to those families who’d lost loved ones. At the very least.

And seriously: where does saving one’s butt factor in when people have DIED.

And now we come to the title of this post and the core of why I just had to put my thoughts and feelings down into words.

The Building Blocks of Society

Like many of us with higher education I’ve had to study History. From the incredibly boring (I thought at the time) but easy course in American history in highschool to my elective courses I took in college (much more fun!) I’ve always had a fascination for what has come before. And also how we as a people created our societies and came to be who we are today.

At one point I wanted to be an archaeologist and dig around and find those interesting puzzle pieces. (heck I still do!) I have always been fascinated by the flip side of things as well: how societies fall apart.

Some say that you can tell that a society is decaying when the simple yet important building blocks start to crumble and topple. Building blocks like human decency and taking responsibility for one’s actions. Things like ignoring or bypassing the rules set up to keep things going and keep us safe.

No, I don’t personally think this peanut butter poisoning fiasco spells doom for our society, but it just might be a signpost along that long and winding road. Signposts that actually are many and varied if you want to take a peek at what’s going on all over this tiny globe of ours.

I have Hope. I have a sense of love for the human race in general. I have to have hope that we won’t wreck ourselves before we check ourselves and end up in another Dark Ages. History tells us it has happened, and could happen again.

What gives me hope is that the positives outweigh the negatives right now. I look at our children, who are indeed our future. They seem extremely bright and knowlegable and have an innate sense of what is right for this world. They are our future leaders and that’s what gives me hope.

Our current leader, President Obama understands this quite well. Even before he was running for any sort of office, he has always had a connection with the younger generation. It showed up loud and clear during his campaign and even know during his first days in office.

I’m sorry to say that many of our other current leaders – worldwide and local – are not on the same page. I’m sorry to see people choosing to hush up and and not even extend words of human kindness and empathy.

Are our building blocks eroding? Have we forgotton what is right and true? Has our pursuit of individual happiness come at the cost of our society as a whole?

I think on these things and I wonder…