Nursery teas

Most omnivores are still in the nursery, particularly for the nursery teas - cream buns and jam tarts firing nostalgia for nanny-life. In the nursery we might be looking forward to a ‘chicken-tonight’ dinner with chocolate cake afters. We know there’s a never ending supply of treats out there in our Stuffed Western World. We also know that what we stuff into ourselves has very little to do with nutrition or substance. It’s just that we are umbillically connected to the ‘yummy-yummies’. And will be so till the day our mortal-threat kicks in. And then, sadly and most unnecessarily, it will be the eleventh hour.
The truth of my own life comes down to whether the next bit is going to be an agonising deterioration of body and conscience or the best days of my life.
Why should opting for the obviously happier route seem like such a gamble? Why is going vegan still looking like self sacrifice? Maybe it’s just a puff of self-delusion, for aren’t we prevaricating between making one of two choices? Is my life about “my fun” or “my planet”? It’s one quick personal decision. It can happen in the blink of an eyelid.
Maybe, we might say, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe it’s best not to stir the hornets nest. Omnivore-thinking!
But maybe it’s time to drop the baby life. And grow up. On plants. The truth of this isn’t really the problem. The idea of a vegan life itself is not so unpalatable. It’s not the big bogie here. It’s something else – “that which we can hardly mention” … but which “we know its feeling”. “It”, the fear-maker is identity-less. It’s the great big Today Taboo. We know it’s that because it’s got one of those ‘Jahweh-grips’ on us - we dare not speak its name. (Not dissimilar to the homosexuality taboo of old). This one is fostered by the Animal Industry: to “not speak about the food-animals”.
So powerful are the businesses comprising the Animals Industry (they might range from grocers and butchers right through to the abattoirs and farmers) that they rule us with a rod of iron. They know how to attack our weakest point, namely our penchant for re-entering babyhood via addictive chemicals. They supply the chemical, we supply the dollar.
In exchange for the ‘tasties’ and ‘naughties’ the omnivore must tip them the wink. Disassociators refuse their lethal misinformation and their products … and if that means missing out on the nursery teas, well, so be it.