Yesterday I went into a convenience store to buy a cup of coffee.
Usually, I go through my transaction pleasantly aloof, not thinking a thing, going through the same old motions as I interact with the clerk– then I take my coffee and leave. Done and done.
But yesterday when I shopped, I became aware of a different feeling. It was the first time I ever noticed that a convenience store is stocked with some pretty unhealthy stuff. I’m sure some people noticed that a long time ago, but I got a pit in my stomach when I really saw.
To get to the coffee, I walked directly through the candy aisle, then past the wall of red and blue iced drink things, then past the kinda beef jerky, then past the hot dogs on that little spinning carousel thing. Nacho cheese! Grabbed myself a super sugary coffee energy drink, walked back with a new awareness through a nutrition desert, and approached the clerk. Towering behind him like a firing squad was a wall of tobacco products, which, well we know how good those are for you.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
Now, granted, it’s perfectly possible to get a healthy snack for yourself at many gas stations. But there are many compelling different ingredients we could be using in imaginative ways that could promote economy and general well-being.
The truth is, people buy what is valuable. It’s inherent in human nature to value a commodity that is sustainable, tremendously useful, and easily grown. We would hope to see the hemp plant cropping up, ubiquitous throughout the land, in vast green aromatic fields, all over America. All over the world. Hemp economy is undeniably, irrefutably net-positive for America. It causes disturbances in certain economies– no doubt– but the common person is farming their own food again, and growing what Emperor Shen, “the father of Eastern medicine”, called “the plant of many uses.” He described over 100 uses for hemp in his famed pharmacopeia.
The hemp plant, a remarkably nutritious plant that does not produce a “high”, requires a license in order to legally grow it, and good luck getting that license. Meanwhile, for a reasonable price, you can walk into your local convenience store and buy yourself some emphysema, some mouth cancer, some lung cancer, some diabetes, some obesity, or some death. Pick your poison, literally.
Utilizing hemp wherever possible might help us to realize a better world.
