Creaturely

800: 

Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land. I ask the question - “Could a society of herbivores ever exist?” Your answer, “Ya gotta be dreaming”. But perhaps the dream has to become reality since the present reality is a nightmare.

A friend sent me “Peace”, from Old MacDonald’s (Factory) Farm today:

PEACE

Isn’t man an amazing Animal? he kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, beavers, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed.

Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills many people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases.

Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.

It’s enough to put you off isn’t it. There’s no excuse for doing nothing. But what?

‘Going vegan’ is still an unusual thing to do, but I doubt it will always be that way because the idea will eventually be irresistible, solving so many of the world’s problems at one stroke. No-use-of-animals will lead to better human health, repair of unsustainable farming practices, repair of planet, a more equable system of feeding people, etc. Who could possibly disagree that we’d be better people if we closed down the abattoirs?

Even though abolition looks difficult, if we handle it right we can emphasise the positive aspects; we can take our cue from the Theatre which performs outrageous dramas but can have the power to change the culture. What we say might be somewhat confronting but it can be made interesting enough to hold people’s attention.

Lights dim, the audience is seated and they’re ready to see something new. Disbelief is suspended. New ideas are introduced. And who knows, we might even make them laugh when the joke is on them. In this way, they come to see what we have to say, and on some level accept it, even though at first it seems quite preposterous.

We speak about non-violence and how great changes can come about by one small shift of attitude, about violence being NOT necessary and killing or keeping animals also not necessary.

But realising this might be a slow process, which is why perhaps we need to present our ideas in the form of Theatre. Our radical ideas must be drip-fed into the general consciousness. It’s a little like the slow power of attrition, when water makes small indentations in hard rock, eventually gouging out valleys to clear a path for the water to flow down to the sea.

My friend sent me another piece, by that wonderful cartoonist and poet Leunig:

I want to be sub-human

And be a lesser man

Humans are too much for me

Too much to understand

They’re too much for each other

And too much for the earth

They’re too much for themselves as well

Much more than what they’re worth.

They want too much, they do too much;

Too much, too much for me

I want to be less human now

And be more creaturely.

Slowly, we have to wear down opposition to non-violence, first with plant-based diets (which end animal exploitation), then with the idea of consistency and then by ending the habit of turning a blind eye. And then becoming more ‘creaturely’.