Our main fears

1277:

Being vegan doesn’t protect us from everything - we can have the same fears as anybody else and suffer just as much as others do, but it’s significant that we probably suffer from different things.  Vegans perhaps fear and suffer from being isolated within the community. But in an entirely different way, the wealthy also suffer from being isolated within the community.

Most ordinary people, who are not wealthy enough to build a fortress about themselves, will experience guilt about what they eat but lack sufficient knowledge to prevent ill health.  The small percentage of wealthy people are likely to be rusted-on materialists, and won’t feel too insecure, because they’ve numbed their guilt and used their money to buy health insurance.  (And so they might, since they do inevitably become ill as a result of their rich lifestyle).  For rich and poor, fear is the driver, for the poor it's about survival, for the rich it's fear of not getting richer. But the wealthy industrialists, especially the manufacturers of food fear current trends.

There is change in the air, and the wealthy manufacturers must be getting nervous these days.  They sense changes in the market place.  Their fears are based on the withdrawal of the ‘retail’ dollar – the loss of their loyal customers.  They fear rebellion, not by violent insurrection but by customers becoming better informed and taking their dollars elsewhere.

These are very real fears for them, sensing their time is almost up.  They know they’re at odds with Nature.  And in this computer age, they realise that their whole way of life is jeopardised by public access to solid information.  They almost invented misinformation and grew wealthy on the strength of it, by way of false advertising and hype. In that way they've stayed afloat for as long as they have.  But now they’re beginning to see their world washing away.  The availability of ‘new information’ is making an impact, and that’s down to the Internet, where so much information is made so easily available.

In so many ways, by learning sources who have no ulterior motives, ordinary people have access to a whole raft of reliable information.  We now develop our inner security by referring to Nature, in the sense that many people are coming closer to the model Nature intended for us.  It feels like ‘being-at-home IN Nature’.  Our foods are becoming more 'whole', less synthesised and processed, and certainly coming from more humane sources.  The trend is away from the mass-produced, pre-packaged products, and towards 'health foods'.  And the more the market grows the less expensive these products will become.  And it doesn't mean we have to go native or take up residence in a forest, but simply become more streetwise and less vulnerable to the influence of mass marketing.  Our feelings of at-oneness with animals, even the most domesticated ones, lets us experience, to some extent, how it is IN Nature.  Without the trappings of rich living, life is uncushioned and we naturally develop survival skills, like enquiring more deeply into the nutritional value of our foods.  Perhaps by living in a more Nature-oriented world we are, like the wilder beings, living off our own wits.

Life regularly tests our metal, and in that way we can explore our own individuality as we draw away from the pernicious influence of the big food corporations. We liberate ourselves, help to liberate others, and liberate the enslaved animals along with ourselves.  Perhaps we are already witnessing the beginnings of a transformed species, with far fewer self-imposed limitations, and with our eyes already focusing on a more hopeful future, where the sky is the limit.