"What do you say, Gordon? Pass the caviar, milk-fed lamb, sea urchin and tuna... with champagne, please!"

Okay, here's where I take a different kind of radical position on something, a position that some of my knee-jerk "conservative" friends, who think I'm a knee-jerk liberal (I'm not) might be surprised at, and that some of my liberal friends might be appalled at.

There's an article on the U.K.'s Daily Mail on-line version about the G8 summit conference, "Summit that's hard to swallow - world leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis", criticizing the participants for the apparent gluttony and hypocrisy.

From the piece:

"Just two days ago, Gordon Brown was urging us all to stop wasting food and combat rising prices and a global shortage of provisions. But yesterday the Prime Minister and other world leaders sat down to an 18-course gastronomic extravaganza at a G8 summit in Japan, which is focusing on the food crisis.
"The dinner, and a six-course lunch, at the summit of leading industrialized nations on the island of Hokkaido, included delicacies such as caviar, milk-fed lamb, sea urchin and tuna, with champagne and wines flown in from Europe and the U.S. But the extravagance of the menus drew disapproval from critics who thought it hypocritical to produce such a lavish meal when world food supplies are under threat."

Here's my problem with the criticism. The world's food crisis, just like the world's energy crisis, health crisis, violent crime crisis, and the general dysfunction and degradation of the planet crisis are not caused by any group or individual indulging themselves in fine food, or any other quality pleasure for that matter. There's something appropriate from the soul's perspective in a group discussing what to do about hunger over a lovely meal. It's not necessarily perverted at all.

Everything we need for everyone on this earth to have all that they desire from their True Self is already here. More than enough for everyone to have more than enough. Greediness and neediness are not opposites - they're two sides of the same coin. Greedy people, just like needy people, believe that there isn't enough. They believe in lack. The difference between them is that the greedy person expresses his belief in lack by being continually and compulsively acquisitive, never satisfied, while the needy person expresses his belief in lack through helpless, passive impoverishment, also never satisfied. To ennoble poverty is just as misguided as ennobling greed ala Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street."

Now, I'm not saying that the politicians and suits at the G8 conference were having an enlightened discussion on how to engender a belief in abundance in all the world's population. By no means. If they were, they would be saying, "You know, I would love for us to find a way for everyone to experience this 'caviar, milk-fed lamb, sea urchin and tuna... with champagne! What do you say, Gordon?"

I'm just repeating something that's been said before, folks, that "Hating war is not the same as loving peace," and similarly, hating poverty is not the same as loving abundance. Those who want to rid the world of hunger and poverty by demonizing those who enjoy abundance are missing the bigger picture about how to go about it. Spread a belief in abundance, not just among the desperately poor, but also among the desperately rich. They're starving in their own way, too.