|
              
|

REGISTER
FOR FREE UPDATES

WELCOME
THE IDEA EMPORIUM
FULL MENU
explorations on ...
ANIMAL RIGHTS,
AN INNER VOICE,
GAMBLING IMPULSE,
STUPID OPINIONS,
RELIGIOUS RAGE,
GOOD THINKING,
and more ...
animals and ethics -
animal sacrifice
vs animal love
New!
Paranormal Proof
Warnings of Danger
Sept 2009
Feed the Bears?!
bears starving
Sept 2009
What's Narcissism?
and what's wrong with it?
Sept 2009
Fatal Flaw in
Economics of Growth
Aug 2009 MORE ALL
Hard Lessons About
Islamic History
August 2009
Deceptive Advertising
and Islam
July 2009
Conservative America
bad thinking
June 2009
The Ultimate Reality
are all religions equal?
Mar 2009
The Brain Game
Manifesto
good thinking,
great thrills
Mar 2009
Collective Guilt &
Political Correctness
past horrors,
current baggage
Feb 2009 MORE ALL
MORE ...
plus
Lots of Thinking!
A Celebration
of Thinking
Mar 2009
Western Tolerance,
Islamic Intolerance
Muslim outrage, Western
blindness - seen through
my curious eyes
Jan 2008 INTRO
MORE ...
or
MORE DETAIL
Imagination -
Hope and Horror
not just make believe
Dec 2008 MORE ALL
Open Secret on
Surviving Recession
Nov 2008 ALL
Bush, McCain,
Palin -
Armed &
Dangerous
Oct 2008 MORE ALL
Paranormal
or Para-nutty?
proof of life after death
or wishful thinking
Sept 2008 MORE ALL
Political Correctness
and Fundamentalism
Jan 2008 MORE ALL
Autism, Vaccines -
and Parents
May 2007 MORE ALL
Gambling -
Great? Gruesome?
May 2007 MORE ALL
How To Think -
Tip Number One:
Ask This One Question
Apr 2007 MORE ALL
Walls in the Mind,
They Cripple and Bind
inner walls,
invisible from within,
frustrating for outsiders
Jan 2007 MORE ALL
Don't Keep it Simple -
Keep it Alive
mental challenge -
the thrill of a lifetime
Dec 2006 MORE ALL
Animals and Ethics
a childhood NO to a god
Dec 2006 MORE ALL
Whose Dog Is It?
pets, ownership, slavery
Dec 2006 MORE ALL
The Rottweiler Pope,
The Danish Cartoon
and Muslim Moderates
the pope's remarks -
help or hindrance?
Sept 2006 MORE ALL
Mirror, Mirror,
Who is that Horror?
on the rage of the
righteous when coming
across mirrors
Sept 2006 MORE ALL
A Dangerous
Temptation -
Counter-Prejudice
the lure of hating back
Sept 2006 MORE ALL
Bush the "Righteous"
illusions, delusions, lies
Sept 2006 MORE ALL
The Pope Speaks
outraged Muslims protest,
kill nun, demand apology
Sept 2006 MORE ALL
Give Peace a Chance
by giving empathy
a chance
An Open Letter to
All People, and
for now, especially
all Muslims -
Feb/Aug 2006 MORE
The Rage
of the"Righteous"
on Muslim outrage
at a Danish cartoon
Feb/July 2006 MORE
This
Is Not Me
but it's a tempting
disguise due to the
"righteous"
MORE
Stupid
Opinions
stupid opinion #1
all opinions are equal
Aug 06 MORE ALL
logical fallacy
opinion #2
you are where
you are supposed to be
Aug 06 MORE ALL
Collective Sense of Guilt
Crazy Not Thinking
past horrors,
current baggage
Feb 09 ALL
Breaking
the Spell
of Irrational Opinions
rule #1 - don't start by
calling it a stupid opinion
Aug 06 MORE ALL
stupid opinion #3
everything happens
for a reason
stupid opinion #4
everyone always did
the best they could
stupid
opinion #5
we shouldn't
be judgmental
stupid
opinion #6
all religions are
basically the same
stupid
opinion #7
all cultures are equal

 
Opt-in for Updates
NEWSLETTER
MoreIdea Emporium?
why? what?
plus exploration of the
definition of "idea"
em-po-ri-um
exploration of
the word
emporium
innerwear that dares
innerwear for those
who dare -
The Idea Emporium
About
7 motivations
Elsa, Brain Trainer
contact
top
of page
- more -
possibly
coming soon
|
              
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We all know: don't feel the bears. If you go camping in bear country, make sure your food is safe from the bears, get a bear resistant container, hang it up high in a tree.
But what about if the bear is starving?
We're supposed to keep food away from bears so they don't get in the habit of doing the lazy thing: raiding our food supply.
****
But we have raided theirs, and raided theirs some more - until now, we're not dealing with just hungry bears. Black bears and brown bears are starving to death.
We're supposed to keep them away from our picnic baskets - but it's not their picnic baskets we've taken away with ever more fishing and toxins and who knows what else. It's a major food source - food they need to get through the winter hibernation, to survive the harsh spring. These hungry bears are not only losing their fat, they're so hungry that their muscles are being eaten away. Next comes organ failure. Then death.
****
We feed millions of starving people world wide - though we need to do even more. A friend, Diane, is heading to Somalia - dangerous territory - with Doctors Without Borders. She does accounting, to make sure the money is stretched as far as it can go.
I applaud her. She knows it's dangerous - but for her, working for Doctors Without Borders makes her life worthwhile. It's way more important to her than Western comforts, so easily available to her.
I am so grateful for people like her.
****
I also believe we should do the much easier thing of feeding hungry bears, starving bears. No picnic baskets. That's dangerous for humans. But surely we can figure out how to put enough food out for them, far from humans - masses of food to fatten them up.
I don't have much information about bears. But there are those who do. I am sure someone is setting up something - but I searched the web about hungry bears and, while I found a lot on their plight, couldn't easily find a place to head to for people who want to help.
****
My thought: we've long hunted animals.
But humans - millions upon millions of us - also have the dream of earth as a garden, as a safe place for all, with plenty for all.
That dream has usually been a religious dream. In the Jewish and Christiantraditions, we're supposed to have started out in a garden, which we got kicked out of because we didn't obey, and God is supposed to come at some point and, once again, make the world a garden, a place of safety and plenty.
But there's a popular saying: the lord helps those who help themselves.
****
It's my thought - my very deep belief - that one of the most important human tasks - perhaps the greatest human challenge - is to make real that dream of earth as a garden where lambs and lions lie down together.
(Here's where I first articulated that dream of a true home world - in the script for a light-hearted show about a group of women raising money for children and animals without homes.)
Actually my dream doesn't go that far as lambs and lions frolicking together. But I do wonder about technology that can produce unsentient food for lions, technology that can limit the reproduction of animals that are culled by the large carnivore. These are enormous tasks, challenges - which we would need to be able to meet to create a paradise, earth as a garden.
I believe we are up to it, if we decide to do this.
And this is the first time since the earth became a planet that it's possible - with technology, so dangerous and so powerful - and with us, so potentially dangerous and also with so much potential for love, caring, empathy, and intelligence.
****
Martin Luther King Jr had the dream of equality between the races.
I share his dream - and have my further dream. Earth as a garden, a true home world - a dream that can be reached if enough of us undertake and achieved that incredibly daunting task.
****
The nightmare is that we destroy earth, with perhaps a few starving humans remaining, but back in Stone Age conditions, barely surviving in dens deep in the earth.
****
The dream. I have a dream. Earth as a garden.
Everything we do to bring peace, to lessen the violence we do to each other and to animals takes us a tiny step toward that dream.
****
Right now, my dream calls for food for hungry bears, starving bears.
Something that should be easy for us to achieve.
signed,
Elsa
September 11, 2009
copyright © Elsa Schieder 2009, 2011 - all rights reserved

Click here for
more, not on hungry bears
but on what a true home world would be like.
Click here for
more on animals and ethics.
Click
here to go to from starving bears to
all the ideas explored at
The Idea Emporium,
from animal rights, to Islam,
to gambling, to the ultimate reality.
****
FOR ANIMAL LOVERS WHO WANT TO
TRAVEL WITH PETS,
MY PARTNER AND I HAVE
PET FRIENDLY VACATION RENTALS
URGENT. Hungry Bears, Starving Bears.
Bear Information: Bear Salmon Disappearing.
Bears Have No Food.
Time to organize to feed the bears?.
URGENT. Hungry Bears, Starving Bears.
Bear Information: Bear Salmon Disappearing.
Bears Have No Food.
Time to organize to feed the bears?.
The Idea Emporium on
Hungry Bears, Starving Bears
We make such a mess of things, over and over.
We're so smart, so powerful - and thankfully, many of us have empathy.
But far too many of us can't see - as the saying goes - past the nose
on the end of our faces, or past a quick profit, or a quick hunt.
It didn't matter so much when we had less power - but we are ever more massively powerful.
And so now, one tiny little problem: hungry bears, starving bears, bears with no feed, as the salmon that fattened them up has almost disappeared two years in a row.
Big news: hungry bears eat to guards in Russia.
Horrible.
Starvation is also horrible - human starvation, animal starvation.
My question of the day:
time to feed the bears?
then, how? and who?
Elsa
Sept 11, 2009
copyright © Elsa Schieder 2009, 2011 - all rights reserved


For More Stimulating
GOOD THINKING,
CLICK HERE.
FREE Updates.
Plus INSTANT ACCESS to
2 ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS
for GOOD THINGING

Why register?
Click here for
3 more good reasons.
top of page
|
|