A TED Talk--of Hope--From Malawi

This Morning the first thing I saw when I turned on my computer was this talk by a young man from Malawi. Those, not all--but some--disenfrancised by the Europeans' spread across the globe in the form of the East India Tea company, the Spanish and Portuguese desire to acquire the wealth of the new worlds discovered to the west, the peoples in once-prosperous lands thrown off of their traditional lands for the sake of European monoculture, whether it be mahogany, or sugar, or rubber, are starting to claim back the land, a little at a time and to grow the food to support themselves instead of rummaging through the garbage heaps of the rich and building hovels out of discarded packing materials, drinking contaminated water that has been filtered through sewage.

Twenty-seven years ago, a friend with the exact same birthday as mine, wrote a book called A Diet For a Small Planet, the premise of which was that the earth so bountiful that no one need go hungry. Seven years ago, along with her daughter, she wrote another, called Hope's Edge. She and her daughter traveled all over the world finding the pockets of determined poor, building gardens in vacant lots, in waste fields, saying: Even now, as bad as things are we still have a chance. How many times have we been given this chance and not taken it? Another Down the Rabbit Hole question. Will we make it this time or is the Earth getting ready to shake us off, once more, like a dog shaking off fleas? Are we about to get busted back to caveman again?

A TED Talk--of Hope--From Malawi