The big problems

886: 

Our priorities concern our main interests; if we’re overweight we’ll want to thin down, if we’re claustrophobic we’ll try to avoid incarceration. My own claustrophobia drives me to want to liberate animals. If you love trees you rescue forests, if you love kids you don’t let them starve. Me, it’s animals. My priorities concern this interest of mine. I want to try to do something about it.

Whatever problems we prioritise, they seem to be double-pronged, with their apparent unsolve-ability alongside the slimmest of chances of finding a solution. These biggish problems are the main challenges of adult life. We cut our teeth on ‘intractable’ problems. By not straight-away-discovering solutions, we at least throw light on the deeper issues. And for this we have to pay a price, we have to bear the consequences of looking more deeply at things. If, for example, I hate seeing chickens in cages, I have to face the consequences; of not eating eggs; of protesting cages. Giving this subject any attention, throwing light of any of these issues, and the answers are all too clear. There’s a plethora of answers. But that doesn’t make the practical application of the principle (behind each answer) easy, since this particular principle doesn’t come cheap.

If I’m opposed to war I don’t join the army. But if that’s too passive, I might want to make a strong statement, about war. I might want to advocate non-violence, as a principle, to end the need for armies and war. As noble as that might be, to any who don’t like being soldiers, there’s another side to my wanting non-violence. I don’t want the pain. I don’t want to have to go through the pain of a problem to see my own shortcomings. We none of us want any more pain, and that might be the main reason we prefer to stay with one-dimensional thinking. Today’s main suggestion is that we move to more independent thoughts, which inevitably lead towards solutions. And isn’t it the genius of the human - the ability to gather evidence and solve problems? But to the next category of human genius - the discovery of selflessness. To see far ahead, beyond one’s own lifetime, to see ‘the bigger picture’. To be aiming towards something like this, well, I suspect most vegans can aim more easily than the omnivores can.

We don’t see the ‘bigger’ picture until we’ve shifted from the predominantly-personal-interest position to being predominantly interested in the ‘greater good’.

Because humans have always been so determined to focus on personal problems, for ourselves, for our family, our country, our species, we’ve never really progressed far enough past that point. All the ‘bigger problems’ are being piled into a corner, and being left for another day.

Probably, it’s better if we at least contemplated ‘the big ones’, to get us over the hump, to inspire us to act, sooner rather than later.

It might be scary, changing, but nothing helpful can be said about that. Change, big change, is associated with a shift in the way we look at everything, from being scared of it to being safe with it; not being afraid to look at each problem that comes up. Ideally, we get interested in observing the problem and ways of dealing with it. (And we try not to get superstitiously afraid, that there’s a demon inside every big problem, trying to taunt us.) This specific change (concerning animal consciousness, speciesism, etc) is a big change. It leads inevitably towards taking a position on violence.

Did the last century reach a climax of violence? Perhaps in a relevant way, it did, by showing the violence of modern weaponry and the violence of mind manipulation. Generations later, we are still affected by the fear of human violence. And yet we perpetrate the very thing we fear, and of course I refer to the daily torturing and mass murdering of animals, for food for humans. Nearly everyone on the planet is at the least a mild okay-er of violence. They still support a system which applies force to manipulate people, animals and resources. Violence has fingers in many pies.

Today’s is a particular type of challenge where we see problems clearly but can’t see any workable solution. Perhaps the un-solvables are like the unlovables, they symbolise the gravity and depth of changes needed (and which are currently being made, voluntarily, by some). As problems come up, we should be prepared to give them  contemplation time, so we don’t go off half-cocked, and not too quickly get put off by the thorny-ness of it all. Not be too easily overwhelmed by it all.

I think the idea is that we simply look at ‘it’, as if the problem were talking to us (even as it beseeches us, to taking an attitude of non-violence and letting the rest inevitably fall into place.