Part Four - The proxy's 'hide-away' violence

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Edited by CJ.Tointon

Resorting to violence is our greatest weakness.  We use violence for tackling problems or gaining advantage.  If we are so blind to what we are doing or condoning,  then the appearance of the violence we're involved with must become increasingly apparent until we do see how we're engaging in what we most condemn.

         

Milk is a good example.  A most familiar 'food' substance.  As milk (or as a main ingredient in many thousands of food products) it's something we've grown up with from day one.  Mother's milk, or more often cow's milk, is fed to us as infants.  Later in life, when we no longer suck at our mother's breast, we transfer to the cow.  We don't actually suck at the cow's teats.  There's a machine to do that for us!   Again, a proxy removes us from direct involvement and we continue drinking bovine milk for the rest of our lives.  'Cow's milk'  is in every corner shop and supermarket.  It's the one item in almost everybody's fridge, fresh daily.  It may look benign, yet most adults should know by now how it is produced.  The dairy cow can only produce all this milk because we trick her body into mass production.  By inseminating her, we stimulate her mammary glands to produce large quantities of milk in time for the birth of her calf, which is then killed off (or removed) so that we can keep the milk for ourselves.  That's one cynical act of violence!  The cow has been turned into an industrial unit of production.  When she's halfway through her natural life span, her milk production is exhausted and she's taken out and executed.  This nasty piece of truth is something we humans don't want to know about.

         

Indisputably, we are involved with the violation of the cow if we drink milk - and again involved in yet more terrible violence when we eat the body parts of other executed animals.  Yet we don't consider ourselves violent??  That's the paradox.  We say we hate violence, yet we are implicated in it ourselves.  We call for an end to violence, but won't end our own violent ways.  It's all 'violence' and it will continue to eat away at our chances for a peaceful and sustainable future if we don't change.