The bite-back

Most people are strongly attached to their sensory instincts rather than their ‘spiritual’ instincts. Eat, drink and be merry … please don’t spoil that … don’t take away my favourite …
There’s maybe some shame when we realise the damage we’re doing, making one of our “choices” - we try to counteract it by “steeling” ourselves. When it comes to the use of animal food, trying to pretend it’s not a bad choice, trying not to think of the horror behind it all and trying to think well of ourselves. That might not be so easy when we have a stomach full of meat and we know we’re involved in nothing less than murder.
What’s the cost here? Perhaps it’s our very sensitivity we’re putting on the line. Compassion, humanity, intelligence, call it what you like, each is compromised by the use of animal foods. Specifically we’re compromised by the enslaving of the animals that produce these foods. The real danger to us is that while they seem docile (and we imprison them to make sure they remain so) the animals do bite back. They inevitably do us damage . . . but we can’t resist eating them.
Because animals represent such rich pickings for humans, it would seem like madness NOT to take advantage of the situation; but by choosing to go this way (using animals) the harm seeps in through our own guilt and eventually it kills us. Our use of animals symbolises the worst in us and that acts to damage us, acting like a dead weight, fatally slowing us down. The guilt or shame, call it what you like, might be heavy in itself, but wait, there’s more. The waste of money, the un-well feeling even a chronic health condition, the embarrassment of being addicted to the stuff – all this keeps us where-we’re-at, immobilised. If we’re not looking into these habits (and the possibility of changing them) then we’re passing our time in indulgence - mindlessly consuming the most ugly things on sale in shops.
The lounge-room lizard becomes the exploiter, willing to take what they can from every available source. The profit-makers love it. They’re willing to do the dirty work for us if we agree to not make a fuss about it – the deal is that we stand by whilst they do terrible things to ‘their animals’. Our complicity with all this is as shame-making as the deeds themselves. It takes a heavy toll on us.