Thursday, July 28, 2011

Queering the pitch

215

The real friction between non-vegans and vegans is that what they relish we avoid. They still enjoy animal foods and wearing animal clothing and we avoid it like the plague. We can speak-out about animal treatment but they can’t, even if they wanted to.
Our main difference concerns sentience - most people probably don’t even know what the word means or that it has any great significance, whereas if you’re sensitive to the plight of domesticated animals you’d know the word very well. To us, the mistreatment of an innocent, sentient creature is obscene. Human nature, animal availability and centuries of tradition have brought animals into slavery ... and omnivores don’t think this is bad. And even if they did they mustn’t, otherwise they couldn’t be omnivores any longer.
Omnivores sit in the ‘quiet corner’. The only satisfaction for them is to take full advantage of what’s on offer ... and I’d see that as being pretty much subservient to The System. It may give people lots of present-time enjoyment but it usually means a lot of chronic stomach and digestive problems. If you still eat animal produce you’re sure to be wrecking your body, as if by slow poisoning. And what a waste! To disqualify your body from working properly plus denying yourself the chance to be an agent of peace in the world. It seems sad, to hold back on both counts because of a food attachment or wanting to have your feet bound in leather.
To a greater or lesser degree most people have got blood on our hands and plenty of poison in their bodies, and maybe bruised souls too - simply by ingesting animals’ body-parts on a daily basis. By consuming the concentrated toxins from these foods plus the adrenaline surge at the point of an animal’s execution, our immune system doesn’t stand a chance. Vegans say “keep off the stuff and keep your health (and conscience)”.
I suppose it’s safe to say that by being vegan, I’d automatically be avoiding many of the crap foods and treats on the market ... and so it means I’m no longer living under a tastebud dictatorship. Personally I worry about the ethics of those who aren’t avoiding crap food, but it’s not only food but shoes and zoos and thousands of other goods and services provided by our animal slaves. By using animals we lose our best chance for a truly meaningful spiritual development ... we’re in very real danger of dying unfulfilled and with a stomach ache too.

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