Yesterday I watching Reuters news and a segment came on talking about bees and how if we don’t genetically modify the species they will be gone and with it, our entire food supply. What a ridiculous idea right? The ultimatium that if we don’t follow technological progress through a capitalist paradigm, let alone scientism, we’re doomed to die. What’s to stop them from tagging their GM bees as copyrighted? What’s to stop them from completely enclosing the food supply from seed to pollination? Do we really think this is the only way forward or are they making it the only way? Is it really easier to stamp a copyright on a modified bee genome than it is to subsidize changes in the agricultural sector? Unfortunately the answer is probably yes. But is moral? ethical? Is this what we as human beings have decided should be our collective fate? Why are we letting corporations decide our future? I honesty wish I had the answers, but I don’t. What I do know is this, Jeremy Rifkin once said,

‘Two futures beckon us. We can choose to engineer the life of the planet, creating a second nature in our own image, or we can choose to participate with the rest of the living kingdom. Two futures, two choices. An engineering approach to the age of biotechnology or an ecological approach. The battle between [them] is a battle of values…Our choice, in the final analysis, depends on what we value most in life.’

I don’t know about you, but my future isn’t all concrete and patents. My future is green and lush, and the humm of bees can still be heard across the hillsides.