The dream of two nights ago had an obvious source in earlier waking hours. All the same, it was a strange thing to dream that oats as we know them no longer exist. The staple of Scottish and Equine diets alike was no longer available in markets the world over. The country of Scotland was in a greater uproar than it was in the year 1745. Could this have been the work of a porridge-hating super-villain? Or maybe there was a plot afoot to horde the common grain, drive up its price, and make billions?
The day before the emaciated nightmare ran its course on hooves of flame, our Proto had been reading about the truth and lies concerning genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Homo sapiens sapiens never cease to amaze. The lengths to which they will go to make a mockery of their name-sake --wisdom-- is staggering. Once again, as with the missionaries preaching their notion of "god" and "right" to the indigenous peoples of North America and reeking havoc on these cultures, the privileged priests of science are playing god with the building blocks of life. They don't know what will happen, only what they want to see happen. Giant corporations like Monsanto are changing the genetic make-up of our food by inserting DNA from one species into another to which the first is unrelated. They say that this is just selective breeding, but this does not happen in nature. It is dangerous manipulation. They can breed a crop that, due to their imposed and carefully selected mutations, will die out after one growing season. Farmers who would otherwise be able to harvest from their crop the seed required for the next season, are now beholden to the corporation in a new form of planned obsolescence. These modified crops do not provide more yield than natural ones, but they are invasive and threaten to spread their mutated genes. When this happens, a natural or organic crop-growing farmer faces the threat of legal action for growing the GMO crop without having first purchased it, or "stealing" it. Another one bites the dust, and the corporation scoops up the land for more industrial GMO farming.
There is no solid science supporting the benefits of GMO crops. Scientific method -- hypotheses and complicated procedures -- are at work, but there remains a huge burden of proof. That burden lies on the corporation doing the research and creating the GMO crops in the first place, and may be the spur that drives the nag onward. However, they plant this burden in our soils, and in our minds with half-truths, fear-mongering, and bullying. They reap profit. In the end, that is their main interest. But there can be no profit on a dead planet. Utopia is "not-place": no-where. Trying to achieve utopia gets you just that. An old Jewish fellow once said, or so it is written, "for ye have the poor with ye always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good". It is misguided to believe that manipulating them for your own cause and personal gain is doing them "good". Taking something apart just to see how it works is only wise if that thing can once again be put back together as it was. The GMO experiment is foolhardy in the extreme. Perhaps a better name for humans these days is homo sapiens peurilis (feel free to correct my terrible Latin). The beautiful thing is, we always have much to learn, and, for now at least, there is still porridge in the morning.
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