Have you ever thought about how many crises the world/America is facing right now? It's mind-boggling. I spent this past weekend watching documentaries, and each one highlighted a completely different but equally serious issue. The predators in our oceans are dying, the food industry is poisoning us with sugar, women in Bangladesh are literally dying to make our clothes, everything in our life is laden with questionable chemicals, and our ocean is warming at alarming rates. Sure, I'd heard about all of these issues before, but I'd shrug it off and think someone else would take care of it.

It's overwhelming to think about all the ways this world is failing humanity.

After watching all these documentaries, I was forced to think about it. Technology has been wonderful for us (the girl thought as she typed on her MacBook Air), and it's made our lives more enjoyable and efficient in so many ways. And yet, the problems we face today didn't exist 50 years ago. Childhood obesity didn't exist, breast cancer diagnoses were less common, the Earth was at a more reasonable temperature, and corporations weren't people. These issues all seem so disparate, and yet how have they all come about in the last few years? Like a doctor who finds the underlying cause behind the symptoms, I wondered what could cause all of these issues at once.

The underlying illness is that companies are based on profit and growth, not on morality.

Companies go out on massive bluefin tuna fishing expeditions so we'll eat them, send their clothes to be cheaply made in India so we'll buy them, keep intelligent giants in bathtubs so we'll be entertained, and they put sugar in our food so we'll come back for more. In a capitalist economy, this makes sense. If morality is a hindrance to the profit, there is no incentive to keep it and it falls by the wayside.

While we think we can go out and buy sugar free food, or clothes made without forced labor, or products made without hazardous chemicals, it is really really hard. If you're paying attention, you know that companies essentially make our choices for us. They're the ones who are in control of what products are put out on the market. And it's pretty scary how effective advertisements are. There have been studies showing that even advertisers themselves are susceptible to the advertising they experience in their everyday lives.

So what do we do? Well, if we're thinking like doctors, we treat the underlying cause rather than the symptoms. We can sign petitions and lobby to make new laws, but in America these days it's virtually impossible to make changes that a company doesn't like.

We need to remember that while companies make our choices for us, we have the buying power that keeps them alive.

So we have to do the hard work and the research about which companies we choose to support and which ones we don't. We have to find the ones that want us, animals, and our ecosystem to be healthy. We need to find the companies that are going to leave the Earth in a better place than they found it. And isn't that what being a company is all about? Providing a service that the community needs?

After the past few decades of negligence and greed, this community is in desperate need of companies that are really out there to help us.