Meltdown

1174: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

We humans, especially those in the affluent West, have never learnt to grow our own food, at least not enough to feed ourselves.  Even gardeners haven’t really learnt how to deal with the harshness of Nature.  We’ve lived on easy street all our lives, dependant on others to feed us.  Most of our food comes from the supermarket.  Most of the wealthier people eat the worst food, living on fast-food and especially food saturated with animal products.  Much of our food has animal content.  We buy it because it’s quick to prepare and tastes good.  It’s the food we grew up on.  We don’t question the ethics of eating food from dumb animals.  We eat it because we can.  We eat animals because we are 'supreme' and have become a take-what-you-want species.  Humans have access to everything that’s useful and we’re clever enough to use it all.

If animals think anything about us at all and if they could speak, they’d probably say “You are the dumb ones. You're undoing yourselves with your violences and barbarities”.

If there were a major global collapse, most humans would be helpless.  We'd react badly at the prospect of any social destabilisation or shortage of food.  Our collective state of mental health couldn't cope with the idea of such a situation.  Any major collapse would trigger our deepest fears, mainly for ME and MY family. Because, wouldn't we look after our own skin and kin first?   No room for empathy.  Certainly no room for empathising with non-humans.  At this level of meltdown or social crisis, if we are already acting irrationally on full stomachs, imagine how we’d behave hungry?  Perhaps at 11.55, we’d realise it was almost too late.

We have lost touch with Nature.  Even you lucky-to-have-a-garden veggie growers.  The implications of this show up at times of meltdown.  Once started, such crisis times tend to last a while with no clear prospect of  ending, thus causing more panic amongst the people and more 'inward-turning'.  In this modern type of crisis times there’s a strange irony.  One thing in particular we'd probably notice is that animals are capable of surviving far more than easily than us.

Before that eleventh hour comes, we can 'prepare' to 'repair'.  We can prepare to do without certain material comforts and start repairing our food habits.

If I were Gaia I‘d be very nervous right now.  Nervous at the prospect of seven billion hungry and deranged humans, gripped with fear, causing ever more damage and catastrophe.  My alarm bells ring (don't yours?) when I heed (nice word that) heed what we face right now.  I ask myself what the main danger spots would be, especially for me, for you, for the planet.

If I still have my wits about me, I should be able to answer that quite easily.  At the head of the queue, most urgent for repair, is that old friend 'violence', in all its applications.  However, wits or no, I might not wish to see that about me;  that there may be some unsavoury social violence links within my own life.  I might choose NOT to use my wits.  I might be too stunned by what’s going wrong (on so many fronts - all at once) that I can’t think straight.  Especially about repair.  I’m so afraid.  I’m immobilised.  I’m shit-scared to future-look.  So much has gone awry and I can’t do anything about any of it, let alone ALL of it!  I’m a victim of my circumstances.  I feel helpless.

To a very great extent, that’s how many people probably feel.  But once you’re Vegan, that fear largely disappears.  It’s likely that once we stop using meat (and all the other many products from animals) we develop enough self-discipline to bypass our worst fears and cravings.  Once we’re no longer paid-up members of the Animal Bashers Union and no longer supporters of the gratuitously violent Animal Industries,

we can see clearly.  THEN we can draw energy from repair.   

Repairers (once they become Vegan) see it clearly enough.  Our human problems stem from the damage we’ve brought about.  There's one gigantic human conscience haunting our lives.  The human either listens or ignores Conscience.  Repairers act and try to do something about it.  Non-repairers do pretty much nothing.  They’ve largely given up.

You may reckon that Vegans are pretty smug.  Got all the answers.  Really?  Yes, in one way.  Smug or not, Vegans hit on one simple and supremely intelligent answer - We don’t DO animals!

We don’t screw them and we feel better for it!  

You could say that we’ve stumbled onto the truth of non-violence.  You could say it in one word - 'empathy'.  Vegans want to communicate that more than anything.  Empathy helps us consider others and consider how we might impact upon them.  Hopefully Vegans have glimpsed one of the important corners of the bigger picture.  If we face human-made danger, it’s because some of us (not all of us) have caused it.  We’ve been found out, looking after our own interests, and not looking after the greater good.

To use a shipping analogy:  The great ship of Society is sailing towards rocks.  It hits a reef and begins to leak.  It needs running repairs to avoid sinking.  The 'little matter' of steering this huge ship away from the rocks is going to be difficult.  Just the steering is difficult.  Hard to port 180 degrees!

The ship is taking on water!  There’s panic!  The atmosphere on-board isn’t good.  Where’s the energy and creativity when you need it?

"PANIC!"  

Our conscience burdened shipmates are all at sea.  They don’t have any idea of how to fix things.  It’s suddenly got out of hand.  It’s all going spectacularly wrong.

We need urgent running repairs or we’ll sink!  But everybody is transfixed by the gashing rocks below and frozen with fear.  The ship is getting heavier.  Disaster is inevitable.  "Rescue ... unlikely" they mumble as they pace the decks.  "Should we jump?"   "Should we GIVE UP?"

With animal cruelty being such a deeply ingrained 'acceptability' in our society, we don’t see the danger-rocks ahead until we hit them, by which time it’s almost too late.  It's almost over.  The rocks - our potential end and our Planet's end.  Feel helpless?  Feel overwhelmed by the scale of it all?  There’s so much in need of repair.  The gash in the side of the hull is very deep.  All we can do is sit down, have a cup of tea and watch Society founder.           

Vegan Principle suggests a way out of this.  An idea for steering away from the rocks.  It’s so simple it almost defies belief.   In the 'ship' analogy, we stuff as many oilcloths as possible into the gash to stem the flow and then steer hard away from the rocks. The ship is saved!

To repair the accumulated damage that humans have caused, whether it’s damage to oneself, to friends, to animals or to the planet, Vegan Principle is the repair kit.  The first aid kit.  It forewarns of dangers and suggests repairs.

As advocates of Veganism, we place our boycott on violence, especially the violence used in obtaining 'farm produce'.  It's a two-for-the-price-of-one solution.  An end to crap food as well as crap behaviour.  Veganism means non-violence that is energy and intelligence combined.  It can enable us to do some amount of worthwhile repair every day.  And surely the physical world we live in and the relationship world we share with our fellow sentients are both in need of much repair. 

Human attitude towards those life forms we have so badly abused in the past is our biggest embarrassment.  It speaks, deep down, of our need for the egalitarian.

I’m drawing a line here, but if Veganism stands for nothing else, it stands for the end of 'separation' and for the growth of 'equality' feelings.  It specifically stands against the nasty idea of 'species-domination'.  The principle opposes the idea of doing things for self benefit alone.  It also speaks to other interrelated problem areas like Third World malnutrition, extravagant lifestyle addictions and the use of animal slavery just to benefit - ME!

Whether it’s our own problems or problems that others need help with in order to effect their own repairs, it comes down to empathy.  Humans are crazy to think they can turn a blind eye.  Crazy if they think they deserve to enjoy a slack code of conduct.  Our sense of responsibility and conscience have been so shamefully neglected, that it’s come down to a bunch of self-righteous Vegans to show how things can be tightened up and to point out the damage we've caused - ALL of us.   No choice really.  Start repair.  Repairs can be fun and they can take place during a storm even as we face 'meltdown'.