And the greatest of these is harmony…
For without harmony, there is no hope and there is no health. For the past few days, I have been the guest of the Healthy You Network; joyfully participating with them at the enormous Tucson Festival of Books—drawing more than 100,000 attendees over the weekend.
As I told my team at the Healthy You Network booth, this was my first time to participate in such a large, mainstream event, where over 90% of the attendees are consumers of the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.). And, despite the skepticism of some, we enjoyed a great many positive connections with others—and will most certainly make a difference in many of their lives.
Our booth was centrally located just under the big blue balloon.
After speaking to hundreds of people who visited our booth over the past few days, the phrase “health, hope and harmony” was ringing in my ears as I walked back to my hotel last night. After the first day, my repeated use of that phrase prompted me to update my recent Ted Turner blog (see below) with the following content.
The Bottom Line. After 200,000 years as a species and some 20,000 years of civilization, both are now in jeopardy. To be sure, many prominent scientists now believe that our civilization will almost certainly collapse before the end of this century—unless we make some radical changes soon. It’s all about promoting health, hope and harmony…
And the greatest of these is harmony, because unless we soon learn to live in harmony with nature, there will be no hope for us or our civilization. And then it won’t really matter how healthy we are as we run out of water & food—and starve to death together. —J. Morris Hicks
Tucson from my hotel room
The latest bad news. This morning, I awoke to this headline in USA Today, Greenland’s ice loss nearly triples in a decade. And this is just one of about ten articles on climate change that I see everyday. From the article:
Sea levels will probably rise more now that the last remaining stable portion of Greenland’s ice sheet — the world’s second-largest — is no longer stable, a study says.
“We’re seeing an acceleration of ice loss,” says study co-author Michael Bevis, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. “Now, there’s more ice leaving than snow arriving.” He says the rapid change in the northeast region “surprised everyone.”
Without a doubt, we’re facing a number of terrifying environmental crises in the years ahead; most prominently, water scarcity, soil erosion, deforestation and species extinction. They’re all happening today and they’re all being exacerbated by what I call the elephant in the room, climate change. Yet our leaders are doing practically doing nothing to avert these horrifying crises that threaten our very existence as a species.
BookFest Breakfast
News of human events prevail. This past weekend, most of the world was focused on two events: the political unrest in the Ukraine and the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
We’re obsessed with stories about relatively trivial human problems affecting a few million people—yet we remain almost oblivious to far greater planetary emergencies—affecting all 7.1 Billion people alive today and ALL that will be born in the years leading up to the collapse of our civilization before the end of this century.
This is the “BIG PICTURE” that I am devoting the rest of my life to painting for all to see. What will it take to solve these planetary emergencies? It starts with the acknowledgement of the leading cause of ALL of them: the harmful, wasteful, cruel and grossly unsustainable typical western diet of meat, dairy, eggs, and/or fish—three meals a day by the world’s most affluent 2 Billion people.
Crystal greets one of our guests.
Over 100,000 of those people were at the Tucson Book Festival and, for every one of them who bought a copy of Healthy Eating, Healthy World in our booth over the weekend, at least one thousand of them bought a pulled pork sandwich (or something equally harmful) at one of the numerous food stands.
Without a doubt, the biggest man on campus (BMOC) this weekend was the 100 foot high inflatable Ronald McDonald, standing guard just outside the student union building.
WIN-WIN-WIN. Thankfully, there are organizations like the Healthy You Network who are doing their best to spread the truth: Simply adopt a whole food, plant-based diet and take charge of your health. At the same time, you’ll also be doing some wonderful things for our fragile environment, our civilization and the future of our species.
Healthy You Network Resource Center
But all of the great work (by them and others) is not going to be enough to avert the global crises we’re facing. We simply must have powerful leaders step up to the plate and tell the entire world the complete TRUTH about the leading cause of our environmental crises and what we must do about them.
And now abideth these three, health hope and harmony—but the greatest of these is harmony. Not only is it the greatest, it is essential for our survival as a species.
For your convenience, here are links to a few related articles on this crucial topic.
- Source USA Today article. Greenland’s ice loss nearly triples in a decade
- My blog of 2-26-14. “Living in Harmony with Nature” by Ted Turner. Perhaps the world’s last chance to save us all from the horrors of global warming.
- My blog of 2-4-14. Food Choices. The primary cause of global warming? Dedicated to the memory of the great climate specialist Dr. Robert Goodland, the first to recommend a pragmatic solution to the worst of all environmental problems.
- 1-25-14. NOTHING is more important than SUSTAINABILITY! By comparison, all else shrinks to insignificance.
The following five books and one DVD can be purchased on Amazon for a grand total of less than $60—and will enable you to understand the overwhelming challenges we face—along with the single most-powerful solution of all.
Six-Pack from Hicks—for health, hope & harmony on planet Earth
- Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (our book)
- A life changer for millions, including James Cameron. Forks Over Knives DVD
- An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell; the primary book that influenced Bill Clinton to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet.
- What have we done to our planet? Full Planet, Empty Plates by Lester Brown
- A horrifying wake-up call for leaders. TEN BILLION by Dr. Stephen Emmott
- Food choices are the primary cause of our environmental problems, yet our world leaders, scientists & experts are Comfortably Unaware, by Richard Oppenlander.
Why should we be eating mostly plants? The “big picture” in 4 minutes.
Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Survey. It takes 2 or 3 minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com
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J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now
For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, visit our 4Leaf page and also enjoy some great recipes from Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.
Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.
—J. Morris Hicks, board member since 2012; click banner for more info:
J. Morris Hicks, engineer. writer. big picture guy. 
Always great to hear about your work, Jim… I’m sure you created a spark in many of those you spoke with, just like you have for many leaders and your regular readers. Always appreciate the bits of perspective, insight and inspiration. Let’s face it, the odds are against us as a species, with corporations holding the upper hand and our collective greed, ignorance and countless distractions holding the status quo. To your point, and as I’ve heard some very wise people say, we first must acknowledge that we as a species may indeed likely die out. It is this acceptance that may then begin to allow the inner and outer transformations necessary to create real change, rather than simply despair. We need to develop a deep, caring relationship with the earth, which we all know may never collectively develop in time. It is so sad to think of all these beautiful species around the world going extinct and suffering brutally on their way out… including us. Climate destruction does seem inevitable… for example, who really thinks that we’ll see the WWII scale energy infrastructure changes that are needed along the lines of Brown’s “Plan B 4.0”? It would be absolutely wonderful, but I don’t really see it despite the clear and manifold connecting of the dots which Brown does in that important book. Still, living a life may be all about meaning, and you’ve found yours in this good quest, which again, is inspiring. We all need to carry on and live the most kind, compassionate, reflective and engaged lives we can, working towards the betterment and health of all species… hopefully helping and influencing others in a positive way along the path. That may be the best we can do.
Jim,
Now that you have been pursuing your mission for several years . . . do you see any change?
I chuckled at your statement that for every book you sold, 1000 pulled pork sandwiches were sold. Which should make us all realize that saving mankind from self- extinction has been, thus far a dismal failure.
It seems man can’t live in harmony with nature; he is too stupid to understand or accept the dire consequences of the SAD and so the journey to oblivion marches forward slowly at first but accelerating as McDonalds sells the next billion hamburgers.
You keep thinking that some big time leader is going to speak out, that my friend is a pipe dream. What in this world isn’t corrupt: politicians, CEO’s, world leaders, the drug industry, the medical industry, the food industry, the military complex, etc.
Lofty idealism and the coming of the new Messiah to save the world: I don’t think even “Jesus” has the power to save the world. Religion and their leaders, what have they done for mankind, when they themselves eat the flesh of murdered animals.
Jim, the hell with it . . let man become extinct . . . and then the animals can live in harmony with the earth, as it was and as it should be.
Sal Liggieri
sligg1@gmail.com