Like Sisyphus, why do I keep pushing that boulder uphill?
SOS #181 -- J. Morris Hicks -- (10-25-22)
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The simple answer is that there are no world leaders anywhere who are publicly talking about the desperate need to reduce the leading driver of climate change. |
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Of course, I am talking about animal agriculture, which just happens to be the only climate driver that is theoretically possible to completely eliminate quickly and at zero cost.
As a bonus, its removal would come with a plethora of immediate benefits for humankind -- like huge $ savings on food -- along with the rapid and sharp reduction of many chronic diseases all over the planet.
The problem is simple. Over 90% of the humans in the developed world grew up eating animal-based foods at every meal. They like those foods, their family traditions are centered around them -- and most simply do not want to give them up.
And, until that changes, like Sisyphus, I am going to keep trying to push that damn boulder up the hill. After all...
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If not now, then when?
If not me, then who?
I am often asked why I do what I do. It's because most people, even world leaders, appear to be simply unaware of the problem. Why is that?
Because only a tiny percentage of the world's leaders, if any, have a true "big picture" background -- one that would enable them to grasp, with alarming clarity, the complete truth on this most crucial of all topics.
This SOS Memo, which turned out to be a bit longer than normal, includes details of my own "big picture" background. It was inspired by a reader in Scotland who recently sent me this note:
Hi Jim, Quick question out of curiosity. Where did you get so much motivation and inspiration as it is, to write so much information each time I read your posting? Honestly, I am amazed to say the least. Regards, Simon
My response to his "quick question" ended up being a bit more voluminous than intended, leading to the SOS Memo that you are now reading. Here's how I responded to his question:
Dear Simon, First of all, thank you very much for making my day with your very thoughtful message.
As for my motivation and inspiration, I have often thought about them both. And each time I do, I realize that I am perhaps one of a tiny few on the planet that has been directly exposed to almost every aspect of our collective dilemma -- AND has envisioned exactly what a possible solution might involve.
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However, it sometimes feels as if my own enlightenment on this crucial topic has actually been a curse.
Simon's question is one that I have asked myself many times over the years as I continue to obsessively focus on doing everything possible to leverage my own unique background, knowledge and skillset for the good of humankind -- AND the future of my grandchildren; indeed, for all of the innocent young people in the world.
I begin today by recalling a concise chronological summary of my life, beginning with my early days in Greenville, Mississippi, pictured here during its heyday in the early sixties.
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If we try for anything less than total elimination, we will most certainly come up short of what is needed. |
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Here's the problem that our leaders are not addressing. Even if we are able to totally eliminate animal agriculture before 2030, there is still no guarantee that we will have acted in time. We may have already rushed past way too many tipping points.
My story that follows reveals how my entire life's experiences have been preparing me for this moment.
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My first memory was when I was three years old, just after my family had moved from our first Greenville house to a small farm just beyond the suburbs.
It was on that little farm where I had my first experience with pigs, dogs, chickens, donkeys, rabbits and horses -- like Buttons pictured here with me astride her in 1953. I was eight years old.
Damn, I loved that horse!
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A Quick Summary of the
Six Relevant Phases of my Life
That encompassed an unlikely career that simply evolved
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It evolved because throughout that career, I kept searching for true "meaning" in my work -- and kept moving on when I found myself in various unfulfilling roles. To be sure, I was more interested in meaningful work than I was in becoming wealthy.
For example. After administering a series of tests and interviews with me (at age 36) when I was being recruited for a division president role -- an industrial psychologist told my future boss that "this man is not motivated by money." One of my bosses at that company shared the entire psychologist report with me (in confidence) a few years later.
Meanwhile, back to Phase One relevant to this topic. It occurred before I finished high school.
Phase One. Knowledge of the Horrors of Factory Farming. On three different farms in Mississippi and Tennessee, I was raised around dairy cows, pigs and laying hens. Also, as a small boy, I once visited a dog-food factory (a slaughterhouse that killed horses) with my grandfather who was a night watchman there. Some things are very hard to forget.
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Phase Two. Process Improvement. I studied “process improvement” in my Industrial Engineering curriculum at Auburn and, after graduation, worked eleven years with two process improvement consulting companies during the seventies and eighties. In other words, we solved problems by improving processes. A former boss once told me:
Jim, if you gather and analyze enough data about what is actually happening in the workplace, almost anyone can improve any process.
Phase Three. Corporate Process Improvement. This phase involved leveraging my consulting experience to oversee many process improvement projects while working in numerous corporate executive roles, including division president in two large corporations and the first EVP at Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation. In the corporate arena, I found that most of my peers spent all of their time managing crises -- instead of locating and eliminating the underlying problems.
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Phase Four. Two decades in the “Leadership" Business. Working for the global executive search firm, Egon Zehnder, and later founding Ansley Consulting in 1999 -- I learned that nothing is more important to any enterprise than sound, exceptional leadership with integrity. Relative to what I am striving to do now, this period of my background is proving to be the most important. As of 2022, no world leaders are even talking about the leading driver of climate change, much less trying to eliminate it or even reduce it.
Phase Five. Discovering the Optimal Diet for Humans. By pure chance, I got curious about that topic at age 58 in the final trimester of my business career. My extensive research clearly revealed the awesome power of whole-food, plant-based nutrition to not only prevent or reverse most chronic diseases — but also to potentially eliminate the leading driver of species extinction, soil erosion, world hunger and climate change. We're talking about a win-win-win opportunity that is being totally ignored by every single head of state in the world.
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Phase Six. Promoting a Global Shift to Plant-Based eating. Leveraging all of the above, for the past twenty years, I have authored three books and posted almost 2,000 blogs or SOS Memos with the overarching mission of promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.
One more key point. Just before publishing my first book in 2011, I leveraged my engineering skills to create the 4Leaf model for helping people all over the world understand the magic of eating whole, plant-based foods.
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At the heart of our 4Leaf model is the 4Leaf Survey that has been available for free to the international public since 2013.
By answering twelve multiple-choice questions in less than two minutes -- people all over the world can quickly estimate the percentage of their daily calories that are derived from whole plant-based foods.
Amazing things happen when most humans start substituting whole, plant-based foods for their traditional diet of meat, dairy, eggs, fish and/or lots of processed foods at every meal. This truth can be leveraged to not only improve human health all over the world -- but also, to improve the bottom line of large employers of people. That's where ARCH comes in.
The ARCH by 4Leaf system can be leveraged by large corporations and/or governments to assist thousands of employees in moving toward an optimal diet, and as a result, lowering the enterprise's cost of healthcare by hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Hopefully, all of these FREE 4Leaf tools will be embraced by large organizations to save money on healthcare -- and when they do, they will also be helping to slow climate change.
You see, when people eat what's best for their own health, conveniently, it is also best for promoting the planet's ability to keep us alive.
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My Realization in 2010
I am confident that I am one of a tiny few on the planet who has been given an opportunity to fully understand what we must do about climate change.
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In late 2022, most people in the developed world are aware that climate change is a problem, but almost no one realizes that it is a much bigger problem than the price of gasoline.
Further, almost everyone, including the so-called climate change experts -- ONLY talk about one solution: lowering carbon emissions. Not only have they over-simplified the problem, they have over-simplified the solution.
And things are not getting any better -- and never will get better until we begin urgently addressing the underlying issues of our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world. And changing what we eat is the easiest and quickest change that anyone can possibly make.
Now, as a 77-year old parent and grandparent, I feel that it is a moral imperative that I share my rare perspective as widely as possible. As unpopular as this subject is throughout the world in 2022, I nonetheless feel obligated to give this project my absolute best shot. As referenced earlier, this Malcom X quote:
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Ultimately, I realized that through choice or happenstance -- there is a possibility that no other person on Earth is better equipped when it comes to understanding, and knowing what to do about, the terrifying “big picture” situation in which we all find ourselves in 2022.
With that rare understanding comes responsibility for taking action. So what action must we take to maximize our chances for survival as a species?
Not only must we revert to eating the natural diet for our species, we must develop and implement massive systemic change to virtually reinvent every aspect of our civilization. And we don’t have much time to get that done.
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Since becoming fully aware of the situation in which we find ourselves, I have written three books and posted almost two thousand blogs and/or SOS Memos. Listed below are the three books, published in 2011, 2015 and 2020 respectively. |
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These three books were all driven by curiosity and discovery. Two of them are now FREE. |
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It is a trilogy that was not planned. It just happened. Now, I am happy to say that I recently began offering digital versions of the last two books for free to the international public.
The first two books below are available on Amazon in both paperback and e-book versions. The third book, OUTCRY, is only available as an e-book -- for environmental reasons.
Two of the books, in revised formats, are available by simply clicking the links below. Please share them with all of your friends, families and colleagues.
I sincerely believe that the more people who read these books, the better are our chances for survival as a species. And, that is why we're donating (free of charge) two of these books to everyone.
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Published in 2011, the cover of this book features a sincere endorsement by Dr. Dean Ornish along with the most beautiful image of what plant-based eating is all about.
The cover also references the foreword that was written by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and his son, Nelson.
I would also be giving this book away if I could, but that would not be fair to my publisher, BenBella Books.
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Published in 2015, I teamed up with a family physician in upstate New York, Dr. Kerry Graff, to write this "pocket guide" to promoting your health AND preserving the biosphere's ability to keep us alive.
Just click the link below to access this book. About a two-hour read, this is perhaps the only book in the world that addresses both human and environmental health.
Using the Power of Food to Heal Ourselves and Our Planet
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Published in April of 2020 as an e-book only on Amazon. It is still available there for $7.
We believe this book to be the only book ever published that features a summary of the "outcries" from the natural world, consensus conclusions of nine “big picture scientists" about our dilemma — AND an envisioned sustainable civilization of the future (using today’s technology).
We recently started referring to this book with a different, more descriptive title. Click below to access FREE links to all fifteen chapters, appendix, etc.
Urgent Alarms from our Planet
and What We Can Do About Them
As for this week's bottom line, I am going to use the same one that I used last week:
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The Bottom Line
If humanity is to survive as a species, it is imperative that we begin urgently eliminating animal agriculture throughout the world.
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In order to help make that happen, I am simply trying to do all that I can to move that process along. In addition to offering free books on this topic, I am posting a new SOS Memo each Tuesday -- with each of them being a 10-minute read about the overall uncertainty regarding our sustainability as a species.
The one-act play (ten minute video from last week) is provided again below for free. In it, our creator, after a 50,000-year absence, is visiting us again. In it, she describes what we must do in order to prevent our extinction.
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What she asks us to do will not be enjoyable at first for many people, but after two or three years, every human on the planet will be so grateful that our creator was willing to give us a second chance.
And the children of the world will be the primary beneficiaries. The more people who watch this short play, the better our chances for survival on the only planet in the universe capable of keeping us alive.
Just Do It! For the Children of the world...
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Please share today's timely SOS with everyone.
Finally, please contact me about arranging a FREE "live" Zoom talk for your group. They will get a lot more out of my talk if they have read our two FREE books in advance of my talk.
Sincerely, J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
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PS: As always, at the end of these SOS Memos, we provide tons of FREE data & "big picture" reference materials, beginning with my recent one-hour presentation in Honolulu. Just click on Diamond Head to watch this video. |
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PS: Scroll on down for more "big picture" information that is mainly in the form of powerful videos, most of which are free.
For a concise summary of "big picture" information about our situation, take a look at the landing page of my primary website that I recently updated. Just click hpjmh.com
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What about the "preservation" of civilization? |
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To clarify, we're not trying to preserve civilization as we know it. Because what we have now is extremely wasteful, harmful and grossly unsustainable. It's an incredibly reckless way of living that is now threatening our very existence as a species.
We're talking about replacing it with an entirely new, ultra-green civilization of the future -- and we do our best to paint a picture of that envisioned way of sustainable living in OUTCRY. For what one Ohio State professor emeritus of history had to say about that book on Amazon, click here.
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As for making our stand on the only planet in the universe capable of keeping us alive, this "Big Picture" section below will provide you with handy reference materials on this most crucial of all topics. |
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"Big Picture" Data and Video Section
Beginning with the timeline of research
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Five World-Changing Films
That People Everywhere Must See
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Film #1 in 2014
In 2014, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn produced their first documentary film Cowspiracy. Executive producer is Leonardo DiCaprio, it runs 90 minutes and has been on Netflix since 2015. In 2020, I met Kip and Keegan in Sedona where I was honored to be able to speak at the same conference with them and other great leaders in this movement like Dr. Sailesh Rao and Dr. Michael Greger.
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Film #3 in 2021
In 2021, Kip Anderson teamed up with British filmmaker Ali Tabrizi, to produce Seaspiracy, an 89-minute film that vividly and alarmingly reveals what is at stake when it comes to the crucial importance of our oceans to our future as a species. Most people have no idea regarding the environmental horrors of commercial fishing -- a disgusting industry that kills dolphins by the thousands and tosses them back into the ocean. It runs 90 minutes on Netflix. Click here to view the trailer.
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Film #4 in 2021
As our situation becomes more desperate, the documentary films become more terrifying. As alluded to earlier, we are literally Eating Our Way to Extinction, a process that is vividly covered in this 2021 film (81 minutes). Narrated and produced by Kate Winslet, you can watch this great film on Amazon Prime or on YouTube for $3.99. The great ocean scientist and former head of NOAA, Dr. Sylvia Earle lends powerful credibility to such a crucial topic.
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Film #5 in 2022
This new film (89 minutes) features a young activist who travels around his country, New Zealand in an effort to find out the truth about the horrors of the dairy industry in his native land.
The film uncovers alarming information about the environmental and health impacts of the industry -- leading up to the discovery that we are on the edge of the biggest global disruption of food and agriculture in history. This new film is now available for free at waterbear.com
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Grasping the "Big Picture"
These 2 films will help in understanding
our unprecedented dilemma.
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This 83-minute documentary is all about the findings that were documented in Dr. Stephen Emmott's 2013 book. TEN BILLION.
He brilliantly describes the grossly unsustainable way of living that has brought us to the emergency situation in which we find ourselves. Since I met him in London in 2013, he has become much more serious about the need to abolish the practice of eating meat, dairy, eggs and/or fish at almost every meal.
Just click on the hourglass image. Dr. Emmott delivers a very compelling message from the stage of a theater in London. This 2013 film is still relevant and will certainly help more people grasp that all-important "big picture."
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Finally, this half-hour video was published in November of 2021. It was produced by Michael Dowd, a non-scientific researcher like me who does a very fine job of explaining the many facets of the obstacles standing between us and our survival as a species.
As do practically all researchers, Dowd focuses entirely on the problem; not the solution. I prefer to focus on both.
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What else can you do?
Probably a lot more than you think
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Start with the new documentary (Film #4) mentioned earlier -- Eating our way to Extinction for $6 on Netflix. Watch it often with your friends and family.
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Share this SOS Memo widely: Certainties, Uncertainties & Priorities by J. Morris Hicks.
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Get an e-copy of OUTCRY. Visit Outcry page on Amazon and get a much bigger understanding of the situation in which all humans find ourselves.
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Inform all the young people in your world that you are deadly serious about this topic. Urge them to read these SOS Memos and our latest book, OUTCRY.
- Completely stop eating meat, dairy, eggs and fish today and tell everyone why you are taking such a "radical" step. You're doing it for the innocent children of the world.
- As noted above, do yourself a favor and make sure that your plant-based meals of the future consist of whole plants -- the kinds of foods that prevent or reverse most chronic diseases AND enable your body to effortlessly seek its optimal weight.
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I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested this book that there would be a more robust conversation around the world regarding our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world.
To my knowledge, OUTCRY remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable, super-desirable, future way of living for humans -- along with ideas for how we might get there as quickly as possible.
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The links below to earlier SOS Memos will help you understand how these ideas unfolded since 2018. |
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Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth |
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