We don’t need to be such oafs

437:

What is it when people behave badly, that lets them NOT think ill of themselves? Why aren’t we fearful or even superstitious about what we do? Perhaps we’re born with a conscience but it’s voice is silenced by us as we grow up. Perhaps we’re victims of a slow, almost imperceptible process that moulds normality into the shape of how things have always been done - I’m okay because I’m doing no worse than others.
Is it arrogance that makes us feel special and privileged, as if we humans are the ultimate saviour of the planet – and is being collectively ‘messianic’ not so very different from being barbaric?
Are humans meant to be the dominant species? Are we the ones who have a role to play in taking primitive life forms and making them into more sophisticated beings? It’s as if humans have swallowed a sci-fi fantasy of this dominator-creator role, to conveniently let us remain the way we are. We’ve tried to mould the landscape to our design, dominate Nature by extracting food and energy from it, and we’ve always done it with a heavy, brutal hand.
We’re dazzled by some of the really wonderful things humans have achieved but we’ve conveniently forgotten the price we paid for our achievements, by collectively damaging the very beauty we sought to improve. On the level of personal ambition we’ve been driven by the ‘me-first’ principle, saying “I must succeed. I have about seventy or eighty years of life in which to do it and if I fail I will be unhappy”.
This sense of hurry leads us to shortcut what should never have been shortcut. We’ve betrayed the greater good and neglected long-term purpose.
The Vegan Animal Rights movement has embarked on a long struggle which could end overnight but it’s likely that the time isn’t yet ripe for mass change. So all we can do for now is to lay foundations for another generations’ sake which is probably the main reason why people don’t seem to be embracing vegan principles - perhaps we aren’t yet ready to be part of a collective drive, to bring the consciousness of humans to a point where we cooperate to transform our species. That process is a conscious changing towards altruistically motivating ourselves.
Once our chief interest is in the moulding of a new type of human, with different motivations, we’ll no longer be brutes but more like angels, guardians, protector spirits, healers and repairers. We’ll be more contemplative, less concerned with surviving, procreating and slowly evolving and more interested in the need for transformation.
If all this sounds rather grandiose it may be because in so many ways we are still crude versions of a much more sophisticated and intelligent being to come.