{"id":1495,"date":"2023-09-25T10:44:12","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2023-09-25T10:44:12","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:44:12","slug":"do-we-americans-reap-what-we-sow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/?p=1495","title":{"rendered":"Do We Americans Reap What We Sow?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Mike Soika<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of reaping what we sow is often considered at the individual level and usually in the same vein as Karma: the actions we take come back to us in good ways and bad.  I find it interesting to look at this concept of reap what we sow at a societal level.  Does a society like the United States \u2013 collectively \u2013 reap what it sows?  Perhaps.   Here are a few examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In America, we sow guns \u2013 by the hundreds of thousands throughout the land.  Best estimates are that Americans own somewhere between 350 Million \u2013 480 Million guns<\/a>; in a country of 340 Million people.  And what do we reap from all these weapons? We \u201clead\u201d our peer countries in the number of mass shootings, gun-related homicides; gun-related suicides and most recently, firearms becoming the leading cause of death among children<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also sow carbon dioxide.  The US represents nearly 4.25% of the world\u2019s population, but yet we emit 13.5% of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; eclipsed only by China according to the organization, Our World in Data<\/a>.  The \u201charvest\u201d from this overabundance of carbon dioxide is a growing number of climate disasters such as excessive heat waves, drought, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.  NOAA charts US climate disasters<\/a> based on the total cost of the damage wrought by each incident.  According to NOAA, 2022 marked the eighth consecutive year with 10 or more billion-dollar disaster events impacting the United States.  In the past, the US experienced about 8 such events per year, but within the span of 2018 \u2013 2022, we averaged nearly 18 events per year \u2013 more than double the historical number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also sow plastic; tons and tons of plastic.  The production of plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, has increased at exponential levels.   Half of all plastic \u2013 ever produced \u2013 was made within the past 15 years<\/a>.  Consider this, in 1950 we produced a mere two million tons of plastic.  By 2015, we were producing nearly 450 million tons of plastic per year, and if unabated that number will double by 2050.  And the biggest producer of plastic waste in the world<\/a>?  The United States. What do we get from sowing all this plastic?  Some studies estimate that there are between 15 \u2013 51 trillion<\/a> pieces of plastic floating in the world\u2019s oceans.  In fact, the plastic garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean is large enough to encompass the combined midwestern states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Illinois, Indiana and half of Ohio.  This sea-borne plastic begins to break down chemically from the interaction of sun, waves and seas into tiny \u201cmicroplastic\u201d particles<\/a>, which have been found in every part of the world from the peaks of Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench \u2013 the deepest trough in the ocean. Microplastic particles breakdown into exceedingly smaller particles and seep into drinking water systems and into peoples\u2019 lungs through the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, we the people of the United States are sowing some pretty nasty seeds and reaping untold carnage on ourselves and others.  But, what are we to do?  Well, the simplistic answer is to stop sowing bad seed.  Of course, that\u2019s not so easy.  Countless numbers of individuals and organizations have been working for decades to stop the spread of guns and plastic waste, and to limit the production of carbon dioxide \u2013 with little significant success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, all of these bad seeds stem from the same problem: people are trying \u2013 unsuccessfully \u2013 to fill a gaping hole in their heart. We look around and see a breakdown in community so we become fearful of others; fearful that life as we know it will be taken away; fearful that there won\u2019t be enough resources to go around and thus greed and hording begins to take hold.  Many of these issues seem so large and intractable that a sense of powerlessness sets in and we begin to resign ourselves to a future of dwindling possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the issue isn\u2019t to stop sowing bad seed, as much as it is to redouble our efforts to sow more good seeds.  We Quakers like to say that there is \u201cthat of God\u201d in every person.  Put another way, we can say that the seed of the Divine is present within everyone, and what is needed is to shine the light of God deep enough, wide enough, and strong enough to bring that seed forth from each individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As advised by L.R. Knost <\/a> \u201cLove intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The light of God is within you.  Let that light shine so others may blossom and illuminate the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe the issue isn’t to stop sowing bad seed…but to sow more good seeds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sept-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1524,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions\/1524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}