738:
For a confirmed atheist, the very mention of God or
‘god’ might seem weird, but this title phrase might mean something else. In the
context of the place of food-animals in human society (and every other
mutation which rots Society) I think it means that love is the Big Power of the
Universe and doesn’t operate when there’s violence about. The power of it is
energised by love and is diminished by the opposite. The whole vegan-philosophy-thing
is about clarifying the nature of love as an energy which drives all creation
and maintains life. And so it follows that humans can bring the power of it
into consciousness or pervert it or ignore it or be oblivious of it. If we are
conscious of consciousness, then applying love to what we do is our choice.
Because ‘love’, as an energy, is such an
abstract concept it’s difficult to grasp, unless we embody it in the form of a powerful
supernatural being. The reason I mention it here is that this powerful energy
(love) shouldn’t be messed with. It can be as dangerous as it is useful. I like
to think of it as a mischievous teacher who brings consequences to us
appropriate to the way we use or abuse love.
If we want to ‘do’ love perhaps it’s best
to remember that it isn’t meant to be an unstable element. It isn’t partial. To
get the most from love, I think we need to perceive it as stable, and use it as
such - it’s either unconditionally applied and applicable to all things we
encounter at the level we apply it, or it mutates into an unstable look-alike.
Like fire, it’s a good servant but a bad master. If we choose to respect ‘love’
we can join things up with it, to make things more comprehensible; the chain is
strong enough to hold us together for our whole life. But if we drop a link, as
we do when we hurt animals or damage a river or go to war, then we can’t expect
it to have the same benign power. It can lead us into the flames of dire
consequence.
On this subject of animal rights, it seems
absurd that we could still go on hurting and killing (and these days
demonically torturing animals) when for the past seventy odd years we’ve known
well enough that our survival isn’t dependant on animals. If we ignore the fact
that we no longer need to kill them or milk them or wear them in order to
survive, then the power of love won’t work for us. In fact it will work against
our best interests, just as any mutated or unstable element will, especially
when we’re using our sophisticated intellect to try to get the best of both
worlds.
I’m
sure there are communities around the world who must kill animals to survive,
since there is nothing else available for them to eat or wear, and I’m sure
there are communities to whom it has never occurred that humans can survive
without using animals. But our Western communities are otherwise informed. And
for those who are educated enough to know better, there is a deceit and a dangerous
hypocrisy in condoning the abuse of animals by continuing to buy abattoir
products. Even those who eschew meat but still drink milk and eat eggs and
otherwise use the products of animals, they must know the double standards they’re
playing with. If love is the great power driving everything, then surely we
show scant regard for love when we use products that come to us via the ugly
dairy farming of cows or the slaughtering of spent hens or the shearing of
sheep or in the general enslavement of animals.
Animals,
whether wild or domesticated, have committed no crime and deserve no punishment.
To ‘waste’ (murder) them is both a waste of energy and a waste of love. For
love to work it must be comprehensively applied, not expected to work properly
when its very antithesis is engaged, to serve the short term convenience of the
human.
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