What do drag queens and sustainable farming have in common?

State fruit - Tomato (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chickens (Photo credit: Allie's.Dad)

So
yesterday morning I was watching watching the film Fresh which really gets to the heart of sustainable vs unsustainable farming. Then late into the night I was youtube-ing my favorite drag queens, Pandora Boxx and Sharon Needles. I thought about what the farmer on Fresh said about how farming works best when the chickens are expressing their chicken-ness and tomatoes express their tomato-ness...

The key to any species flourishing is an environment which allows each individual to fully express whatever it was made to be. If you stuff a building full of chickens, cut off their beaks, and feed them a bunch of antibiotics and hormones, you get unhealthy meat and eggs. If you let chickens run around the yard and hunt and peck at safe food, you get healthy food. If you spray tomatoes with a ton of herbicides and pesticides and pick them way before they are ripe so you ship them to some far away chain store, you get bland, less healthy tomatoes. 

So, what makes a human flourish?

English: Pandora Boxx performing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Humans beings tend to hide from criticism and intolerance, but put them in an environment of acceptance, even praise, and they flourish. I don't always connect with comedy, and I'm not the biggest fan of horror. So why do I love watching Pandora Boxx and Sharon Needles? Because they are so passionate in their self expression. If anything was ever made to be played with, it's gender. There's just no reason to get uptight about gender expression or sexual orientation. When you simply allow a human being to be whoever they are, it's a beautiful thing.

Before you can truly get along with the rest of the species on Earth (and be ready to meet the rest of the universe), you need to "play nice" with other human beings. I'm already seeing some great evidence that you can. I challenge you this week to get out of your comfort zone and just strike up a conversation with someone you wouldn't normally talk to.

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