What Goes Around Comes Around

1922: Edited by CJ Tointon

Food is a sensory experience. The taste, texture and sense of being full, all contribute to a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction. But if the food is animal-based, there's a spiritual dimension to consider because animals have suffered in its making. If you care for animals, you won't be able to bear the taste of death in these foods. But if you detach the animal from the food, you won't worry about the spiritual side. You'll be able to 'eat, drink and be merry' - unless you have a weight issue. Animal-based foods are notoriously fattening. You might not acknowledge the food's spiritual dimension, but it isn't easy to completely push your mind out of the way. It's impossible to un-know what you already know. So when it comes to a stomach full of meat, your mind must always be full of the murder behind it.

Omnivores must desensitise themselves if they want to indulge in animal eating. Compassion and intelligence have to be thrown out the window. It's neither kind nor clever to connive at the killing of beautiful, innocent beings. We all know that they have feelings and fears, just as humans do. It's not as if we need their carcasses or by-products to survive. It's not as if we're out hunting them or risking our safety in any way. There's no physical danger to us at all. We know they can't fight back. We have them nicely locked up and ready for use. We've made everything easy for ourselves.

When it comes to 'food' animals, we humans have made sure that they've lost the ability to protect themselves. Nature has been tamed and we want it to remain that way. Once the animals are 'behind bars', we mutilate them (without pain killers), confine them to spaces so small they can't move, castrate the males, rape the females (by way of artificial insemination), fatten them and then brutally execute them! And the animals are powerless to stop us. But maybe animals DO have the final revenge. They DO bite back in a subtle and unseen way. The eating of their bodies and secretions presents a creeping damage to our metabolism. We often put on weight and suffer the ill effects of diabetes and heart disease. Animal-based cuisine makes us slow and lethargic and in a subtler way, our affectionate nature is weakened too. We lose empathy for those beings for which we'd otherwise feel great affection. But the bottom line is - we just can't resist eating them! So many of the foods we eat are animal based and we hesitate to deny ourselves the 'enjoyment' of eating them.

Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it must seem like madness (for omnivores) not to take advantage of them. But by choosing to use animals, we bring out the worst in ourselves. The guilt and shame should be enough, but we spend such a lot of money on these products. We get addicted to them, causing chronic health conditions which adds up to a slowing-down of self-development. Whatever chance you may have to make any spiritual advancement, is held back by regularly consuming such ugly products. 

The Animal Industries are only too happy to do your dirty work for you, rearing and killing and presenting the end product - just so long as you don't make a fuss about it. The deal is that we   turn a blind eye to the horror whilst they conceal as much of it from us as they can. Thus, we conspire together to objectify living, sentient beings.

Over the space of one single year, humans execute fifty billion land-based animals, none of whom are guilty of any crime. This wash of cruelty and destruction has forced us to pretend that what happens to animals doesn't actually happen! And then we try to convince ourselves that we are not really cold-blooded killers - but that is exactly what we are. There couldn't be a better example of self-deception, nor a better example of shooting oneself in the foot!