Survival and addiction

What makes most people hostile to animal rights argument may not be down to their innate violent streak or blood lust, or greed or cold nature or lack of concern for animals. It probably comes from a ‘flight or fight’ instinct which is based on a combination of believing animal foods are necessary along with the need for us to maintain our dominant position over animals. Along with this is a need to maintain the smooth supply of animal foods to our shops. It’s a self preservation instinct which we reinforce every day at mealtimes. It confirms our normality with every meal we eat and helps to balance the guilt we feel about animals being enslaved. Over our adult years, familiar foods which are animal foods come to be seen as natural. Farming (and killing) practices are hardly noticed. And likewise, we fail to notice those deteriorations in our own bodies brought about by the continual use of animal products. We don’t see how our eating habits cloud our instinct for good nutrition. Instead of maturing our taste for healthy foods we continue to enjoy our ‘nursery teas’ and rich dinners and snack treats. Eventually, usually too late, we realise something valuable in ourselves has been spoiled - the vitality and sharpness we once had is gone. And we even get used to that. We call it ‘the ageing process’. Out of this come other disasters - we lose confidence in ourselves physically, we are ashamed of ourselves spiritually, we lose sight of the honourable part of ourselves. Because of our attachment to animal food we allow our hearts to harden and however we try explaining it away, we always have to come back to our addiction to thousands of familiar eatables which we’ve grown accustomed to over our lifetime.