Ideals and our self-perpetuating energy - part two

1500:

Within ideals is an energy generator.  This has to be an imagined generator because I doubt if there's any concrete evidence for it (any more than there's evidence of 'ideals'!).  In this 'believed-in' generator, is a fuel processor.  A self-perpetuating-energy-generation unit.  On the physical plane, the heart pump circulates, cleans and renews the blood supply.  On a less-physical plane we might imagine that another pump exists.  It operates as an energy-circulating system.  It comes as part of the human package, that controls and produces a certain form of energy.  It might sound a bit quirky, yet the germ of this is probably what we all need for our journey through life.  It's nothing more than imaginary energy and an imaginary mood in which to use it.  But the canny thing about it is that it illustrates just how close certain opposites can be.  By tapping into a strong energy, like a 'cause'-energy or a 'repair'-energy, there's a distinct confluence of selfish and selfless.  It's where what does you good is also doing good somewhere else.

This (imagination-based) ‘energy-machine’ operates on the belief that: ‘the more energy you put out the more energy you get back'.  It could be put another way, 'the more energy you get from life, the more of it you want to put back'.

Vegans light up over that: because our cause involves the 'repair' of liberation.  On that liberation cause we want to spend much energy.  And that energy is gratefully received from those wonderful green foods we eat.  The longer you're vegan, the more you put into this sort of food, its preparation, until it's not only scrumptious but provides the best energy.

I presume this self-perpetuating energy-production-unit operates independent of the moral high ground. I hope so.  This sort of energy doesn't come from being good or inflicting self-punishment.  It's meant for fun, and not specifically for repairing.  But maybe that's the message: what we do, even if the off-shoot activity is repair-driven, must be fun.  'Self-perpetuating' happens when we're having fun.  However serious the activity.

Once upon a time, giving gifts and hospitality was regarded as a pure pleasure.  It wasn't offered for moral reasons, to help, for triage.  It's a bit different now - in this age of consciousness, with all the waste and cruelty of today.  We've, generations of us, have made so many mistakes.  Now we need an all-round fix up.  So, there's work to do.  And preferably with not-too-many mistakes.  We have ideals to keep us on the straight and narrow.  But, beyond the 'mistake-zone', the serious stuff, we should remember that ideals are for enhancing pleasure.

Pleasure.  Nah!  Back to the real world.  Whatever this is all about, it's still about business.  Making money.  Me making money for me.  For my survival.  Okay. 

But it has to be made without squeezing anything.  Becoming energised is nothing more than giving support to money-making schemes that aren't exploitative or resource-stealing.

Ideals and our self-perpetuating energy - part one

1499:

  

This omnivore insult is hard to take - "You vegans are nuts" - but it's not exactly a mortal blow to us.

As vegans we have a great advantage over those who aren’t vegan.  Our conscience is clear and our health is all the better for our plant-based diet.  So, why begrudge others their small pleasures, when they're making fun of us?  For them, what is it?  Perhaps a nervous, if-nagging guilt?  Probably there is a desperate need to justify one's own actions?  I don’t know.  But what I do know is this - for vegans it's not at all bad.

What makes it all so worthwhile is that we have a special goal.  We have the goal of the idealist, tapping into a sort of 'guardian-consciousness'.  I'm sure anyone can feel it if they dare to apply it.  A feeling of being protective.  But this isn't to do with ideals, it's more likely driven by our senses, as a response to sensual beauty.  We show it towards children or puppies, but we don't necessarily show it towards the less-cute.  For the most vulnerable, our 'protectiveness' is not so forthcoming.

At this time, we are not driven by ideals.  We are therefore an ideal-poor society.  If you’re a non-idealist, there is no profound basis for developing any sort of consciousness.  You don’t see stars in your children’s eyes because there are plenty of them in the sky.  You don't see the beauty in a forest or feel pity for the lowly farm animal.  If, for instance, you've never felt empathy for the vulnerable animals, you won't feel strongly about helping them.  If you haven't felt this kind of 'ideal' in yourself, then it’s unlikely you'll ‘get’ why idealists thrive on their ideals and how ideals allow the idealist to thrive.

         

Idealism is more or less selfish, because it pays back - it is simply another form of energy which motivates.  And this idealism-inspired energy seems to be self-perpetuating.

         

All this 'energy-talk' might seem too lofty for down-to-earth people, who might be right when they suggest that idealism can lead to arrogance.  But whether it's arrogance or just being 'up in the clouds', the danger of idealism is that it separates one from another.  Like a vegan, thinking themselves better than non-vegans. But we shouldn't blame the ideal for that.  The ideal itself is golden.  The big problem with ideals is they don't match optimism with design; we might look ahead and see better things but we're short on designing those 'better things'.  I suppose you could say that ideals are applicable to whatever seems to you to be most important in life.  But, necessarily, those ideals can only ever involve harmless activity and ‘repair’. 

No room for ideals

1498: 

       

Our society admires people who get ahead, and that includes those who squeeze the land or the people or the animals, or any ‘resource’. How they squeeze isn’t usually seen. But the results seem satisfactory and are generally appreciated by the consumer. (The consumer society is so well 'resourced' in every imaginable way).

         

The producers of goods, we may call them the ‘admired ones’, are often loving people and kind to their families and friends, but they can also be ruthless when it comes to protecting their source-of-income. In the animals industry, anyone using animals to make a living are simply ‘advantage-takers’. The animals themselves are no longer regarded as living-feeling entities but some thing on a production line. The producers, who have to kill them and pack their body parts for retail, these people have to numb their feelings, and just ‘do it’.  This is how they make a living - from these enslaved animals. There's no room for sentimentality here. It’s a matter of making a 'living-wage’ out of them. No room for ideals.

If they are animal farmers, their livelihood involves successful imprisoning, cruelty, deprivation and betrayal of animals. It contradicts everything the idealist stands for.

As an idealist with no longer any need for products of the animals industry, I can be aloof to it all. I don’t get mixed up with anything or anyone involved in the cruelty trade. And that includes all animal farming (since all animal farming is cruel and abusive).

         

The pastoralist or the factory farmer can earn big money. Their businesses boost the country’s economy. These people, who are helping to ‘feed the masses’, are comforted by Society’s approval of what they do. In contrast the idealist is left out in the cold – given no encouragement and get no interest shown from anyone.

         

As yet, there are so few ‘idealist-animal-advocates’ that we're an easy target. It’s open slather on the insulting-front. Anyone can say anything and get away with it. So, when it comes right down to it, at the end of the day, I will always be a ‘bleeding heart’ to them. That means I take a too soft approach to these farm animals, whilst ignoring Society's very real need for abattoir products. The animals MUST NOT MATTER.

Vegan Principle

1497: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

If we were all to go mad tomorrow, it would probably be because we hadn't been able to 'fess up' to a few private home truths.  Instead, we maddened people would be finger-pointing at who was to blame for the mess we're in at the moment. Our madness would come from not sharing the blame around and in particular, forgetting to point the finger back towards ourselves.  It's a version of the Church's "We are all sinners!" and leads people, onwards and upwards, towards judging and blaming and recriminatory breast-beating.  That is true self-harm and it does more damage than bombs.

What’s done is done however and surely it's best to 'move on'. But move on into repair mode.  Most of us have a certain reluctance to look too carefully into the 'mirror of repair' for fear of seeing what we don't want to see.   Another reality.  It's uglier than we thought.  Looks like a lot of hard work! But the mirror tells it's story and isn't needed after that.  It's down to 'onwards and upwards' focusing on the need for repair.

Unfortunately, most people are doing either ever-so-small repairs or nothing at all.  Most of us hardly dare to look at any major problem.  It's not as if we don't know what to do.  It's just that our approach to repairing the telly was always to kick it - and that no longer works!  We've kept stolidly to the same old approach to anything that poses a problem for us or anything that could be made better for us - we touch it with the wand of violence and (whoof) the problem disappears!  We show no real interest or concern for other beings, only wanting to get stronger ourselves by using them.  I would call this the "go-to-war approach".  Humans make war on people, they attack the environment, they attack animals.  And in consequence, we humans have earned the reputation of being environmental outcastes.  Our intellectual superiority led us to believe we could control anything we wanted, including all the animals and ecosystems.

But for those of us who don’t see 'others' as our inferiors, who’ve come to respect Nature (especially the animal world) it's true to say that we see things differently.  We see Nature's world as a wiser world from our mock-up, human-made version.  We're working for things to be different.  Most of us have strayed so far from the 'natural order' that you could say we've  royally missed the point - which is surely to be found in a place of peace.

'Teachers' surround us - the animals!  We can (and must) train ourselves to learn from them.  They represent two major learning experiences. They are both victims of our violence towards them and exemplars of peace in the world.  We should be imbued with them and on their behalf, for reasons of atonement, we have a constant repair job to do.  As long as the repair work is being done, Nature's momentum will take care of the progress.   

 If you want a 'How To Do It' manual, there's one on the top-shelf. It's called vegan principle.  By getting with this one behaviour daily, you start 'repairing' - and it's no small repair!

Our equals, the animals, even the pig?

1496: 

Captive animals, such as a pig:  Care is withdrawn, and any kind of relationship with any human must not exist throughout an animal's life.  The love of the little piglet vanishes on day two, and stays that way till the animal is terminated.  The farmer's emotional detachment and withdrawal-of-caring, starts with the farmer and continues on, through packers, producers, retailers and customers, until the 'very dead' material of the animal is eaten.

How are humans able to change attitude, from loving the animal at birth, to the cold 'handling' they receive from then on?  Perhaps because the farmer knows he has to finally betray the animal when it leaves him for the abattoir?   We can't seem to grasp what that ability-to-betray means?  There's no direct repercussion, Nature works her way slowly, for better eventual effect!  But we must ask, today, how the farmer or customer is going to see animals differently, if only for the sake of their own self-respect. How to respond kindly to the animal, not just the cute and cuddly ones but all animals, even the pig? How we look out for them. How we see them, and 'see' is the key word here. See with open eyes.

What is mostly keeping our eyes closed is food.  We can't see anything about our relationship with animals by eating them.

The first step in changing the nature of our relationship (especially with these animals) is not by eating them.  But the real problem here, in anticipation of improving our relationship with the animal is that after the first step there's always another step.  And at each step there appears yet another self-requirement.  And that becomes overwhelming.  THIS is what mostly puts people off becoming a vegan.  Not the food but the follow up which is too daunting

Following on leads us towards that most indigestible thought that, just possibly, not in every way of course, but in general (this is where we take that step-further)  we come to regard animals as our equals.  So that, if humans have rights then so should animals.  Not the right to vote or receive a comprehensive education or wear warm clothing, but for us to live alongside them as equal partners.

Egalitarianism is really a gigantic levelling process, where dog, human and tree exist on one plane, without separation - if we’re affectionate towards our beloved dog, then surely we can be the same with any living thing, even to the least lovable.  Even to the pig.

Exploitation and Theft

1495: 

It’s a nasty trait, taking what isn’t ours.  We love what’s free, and we also love a bargain.  Domesticated animals seem like a bargain.  They’re easy to handle and cheap to keep, so the animal exploiter can treat them as machines and make money out of them for food or clothing.  Unlike our cats and dogs at home, the farmer feels nothing for these animals as individuals.

         

Not cuddly, not cute, these animals are unattractive.  We don’t have any affection for them - we see them as ‘beasts’ living in filthy conditions!  When the time comes these animals are transferred, like so many shares in a company, to the next owner.  They may have been in-care since birth, almost like a child in the family, but at the appointed time they are ‘let go’ without a second thought.  The animal is transferred to another person and thence to another place specifically designed to destroy them … money is exchanged, the deal is done, and if there’d ever been any care shown for them it is now forgotten.

         

To the farmer, it makes more sense not to show any care for them in the first place, so what they don’t know can’t be missed, and the farmer’s children are not encouraged to pet them.  They’re property, they provide the farmer with income - as important machines they’re looked after in the same way a valuable car is kept running smoothly.  The purpose of the animal is to lay eggs or give milk or to fatten ‘for market’.  As soon as an animal is no longer economically viable - when it can’t justify its keep - it gets the chop.  Any loving care lavished on animals at birth is turned off like a tap as they grow older.

"I'm Great and I'm Not Wrong!" (A Human Omnivore Quote)

1494: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

Everyone has a last resort defence shield against humiliation or feelings of invalidation.  "I am me, this is my point of view.  I nail my flag to the mast and defend my position to the last.  I eat animals, always have, always will and it's my right to do so.  I can't agree with you because there's no way my ego is going to submit that easily.  I won't give you the satisfaction.  You won't hear me saying  'I was wrong and you are right'.  Otherwise there'd be no end to it".

And I can almost hear you say to yourself, "And you've been wrong for a long time!!".

The reason why abolitionist arguments must be ignored, is obvious.  Even by showing a glimmering of agreement, you blow it.  You create a wedge for them to follow-through.  You're self-strangling.  With one or two demolishing words, a vegan can knock out any justifications for 'using animals'.  If you agree to even the tiniest vegan argument, it means trouble. Don't show outrage over animal cruelty.  If you do, you paint yourself into a corner.  It means you have to disconnect from all animal cruelty.  And this leads to commitment - to a life of 'non-use-of-animals' and putting things right. 

This is not to everyone's taste, literally.  It's not everyone's cup of tea.  And as far as one can see, it's not even anything anyone else is doing.  "Veganism" is known chiefly as a food thing, particularly involving a lot of food restrictions to do with animals on farms.  The very idea of becoming a vegan means life deteriorating into a 'meal misery' for ever onwards.  We'd be eating veggies to the end of our days and on top of that, we'd lose a lot of friends and associates with whom we once ate.

So, whatever you do, don't go agreeing with these people.  Don't cave in to their pressure and persuasions.  It's like those people who phone from call centres - don't let them in!  "Thanks but no thanks".  It's the same with vegans, the proselytising ones anyway.  Avoid getting into any sort of discussion with them.  They're dangerous.

Victims of the powerbrokers

1493: 

What is most urgent for repair?  Why are we all so scared about the future?  Why are we immobilised?  Surely what makes us so afraid is that, as individuals we can’t do anything about any of it, let alone all-of-it.  We feel as though we are victims of the people who run the show.  Our fear is perhaps being conscious of our circumstances and knowing we're helpless to change things for the greater good.

         

To a very great extent, once you’re vegan that fear largely dissolves.  It’s likely that, once we stop using meat, we are engaged with something bigger than ourselves.  We have crossed a bridge.  We have a cause to fight for.  By being vegan we also develop enough self-discipline to bypass a lot of the pedestrian fears.  By not giving fears any mind-space, we can divert our energies towards something more interesting and useful - repair.  And perhaps more than any other reason for things having got so out of hand is pessimism -  the appearance of things getting worse makes any attempt at making things-get-radically-better seems unrealistic.  Perhaps this delusion stops things moving forward faster.  Look how slow we are at coming to terms with global warming, for instance.

Using a shipping analogy: the great ship of Society is sailing towards rocks – it hits and begins leaking. It needs running-repairs, to avoid sinking.  Steering away from the rocks is difficult due to inertia, and the fact that the ship is taking on so much water.  The atmosphere on board is close to panic.  Just when the opposite is most needed, the atmosphere is least energetic and creative.  The smell of panic is not conducive to making running-repairs, to keep the ship afloat.  Everyone seems to be transfixed by the gashing rocks. 

Repairs are slow.  The ship is getting heavier.  Disaster is almost inevitable.  Rescue is unlikely.  Should we jump?  Should we give up?  Give in?

Whether it's a matter of global warming or unethical treatment of animals, our habits of daily living are our sinking ship.  They are habits which are so heavily ingrained in us, that we can't be creative about a response to the unexpected; we can't act since we are so transfixed by the danger-rocks gashing at our hull; we don't even see our deteriorating health.  We only experience a fug of feeling overwhelmed by it all.  The ship of our society is foundering.

Vegan principle covers a lot of issues, including many of the greatest problems facing mankind today.  The principle of sustainability, non-violence and eco-friendliness is just one idea that is likely to avert catastrophe.  This is at the heart of vegan principle.  Whatever isn't immediately or obviously covered by it, will follow on logically from it.  It's one idea for steering away from the rocks and for repairing the gash in the side of our ship, all at the same time.

To repair the cumulative damage we’ve done to ourselves and our world, we need a safety principle.  A self-repair and an environmental fix-up principle.  The very beginning of this repair involves boycotting animal farm produce, not just because it’s crap-food but because it symbolises all that nasty, anthropocentric arrogance in the human soul. Our ‘species-domination’, more than anything else, is perpetuating a near-catastrophic relationship problem with each other, but also on an interspecies level.

Meltdown and hooked

1492: 

We humans, especially those in the affluent West, have never learnt how to grow most of the food we eat.  Nor have most of us ever had to deal with the harshness of Nature, when it seriously affects our daily life.  Most of us have lived on Easy Street all our lives.  We’ve become both softened by wanting things and hardened by the use of violence in getting them. Easy Street is particularly dependent on animals - we've grown used to taking from them.  We don't care about it because we see everything anthropocentrically.

It’s almost impossible for us to see things from another species’ point of view.  From where the animals are standing, it's likely they see us as the dumb and barbaric ones.  And I bet, in a major global collapse, they’d have a greater ability to cope than we humans, who live in fear of any destabilisation of our social structures and food supplies.

I wonder how we humans would react if we hit hunger?  We’d realise, too late, how far we’ve drifted from Nature.  In such a crisis, I think the animals would survive better than us.  Not so much because they’re smarter, but because they’re used to fending for themselves and the fear and panic that goes with it.

We humans like calm and comfort.  We want to avoid crisis and panic wherever possible.  But in doing so, we've numbed both our natural instinct and sensitivity.  Crisis-fear, but particularly fear of losing our food supplies, drives us to become passive recipients for what's on offer. We've lost touch with our own inner natures, with instinct and with conscience, and these losses might be a type of mental health issue shared by almost all humans today.  Everyone is in a vulnerable position because we have to be dependent on others for food - we fear any sort of food shortages.  To guarantee supply, humans have done some strange and very selfish things.  If I were Gaia, I‘d be nervous right now, at the prospect of seven billion humans, gripped with fear, causing ever more catastrophic damage.

         

For you and me, there are alarm bells ringing?  We think, we see, we worry. With people in general, who may not be great thinkers, they are easy prey for the market.  Lured and netted by the advertising industry.  Most people don't stand a chance.  They haven't given things much thought, and like it or not, they act like hooked shoppers almost mesmerised by the belief that what sells, holds power. 

Now, what if one isn't particularly needy of these supposedly tempting foods on the market?  What if we're happy not to be a regular consumer.  What if our own dollars are spent supporting a cruelty-free market?  Then soon enough we'd be wondering why anyone would carry on their support of the cruel animal industries.  Why wouldn't they be boycotting every item if animals were in any way involved in the making of it?  At least, by boycotting, it proves we're not hooked!

Eating Dead Babies

1491:

Edited by CJ Tointon

I think of all the billions of fellow humans scattered around this planet, and the numbers are beyond the scope of my imagination to grasp.  The human species is what I can relate to.  Each human has many things in common with me - the way we think, the way we talk and walk, the way we share the same drives.  But there's a great fundamental difference between me (and a few other people like me) and the vast, vast numbers of others. 

To be so different, to find it so disturbing to be unlike others in such an important way, that's one big worry!  It's not a feeling of superiority in any form at all.  It isn't even feeling luckier or more blessed.  It's just this yawning gulf between us-few and them.  During any one week, I doubt if I speak to more than one or two others who think and feel the same way as I do, and likely it's the very same one or two with whom I often speak.  I know there are more who feel as I do, but I don't know them or they don't feel the need to discuss their own feelings of alienation with me on any forum or place I'm likely to come across.  So, effectively, it's not difficult to feel cut off from my whole species, over one single important crime that most everyone else is taking part in - eating animals!

To use an extreme example in order to make this sort of alienation-feeling clear, I'll propose what would have to be something that should be utterly impossible to ignore.  It's the practice of engaging in sexual intercourse to produce a baby, which is fattened and then eaten, regarded as a delicacy!!  It's not beyond the bounds of possibility to produce baby flesh. The reproductive mechanism can be used to experience pleasure at one end and another pleasure at the other.  A more revolting suggestion could hardly be contemplated.

But that's more or less how it feels for me, that anyone could so use the reproductive process of a 'non-human' for the purposes of eating their offspring.  Surely it would be better to eat our own offspring than that of another species?  But that's not how the vast number of other humans think.  They eat the babies of our fellow sentients, each of whom are indisputably beautiful, sensitive and full of the same sorts of feelings I have myself.  And these unimaginably large numbers of fellow humans eat these babies - because they've always eaten them.  The seven billion inhabitants of this planet act similarly, like automatons.  None of them think twice about it.  They never consider NOT doing it.  It's as if their imaginations have been shut down over this matter of 'eating dead babies'. 

Part Five - Death by Proxy

1490: 

Edited by CJ.Tointon

     

If Nature had a head to scratch, it would be scratching it pretty hard by now.  It seems that we humans just won't learn what it is that is dooming our species (and collaterally, all other species too).  Unfortunately, we're going to have to learn the hard way.

  

History tells us how, in the name of Western imperialism, we used force to steal the best resources from the most impoverished people, leaving them high and dry.  We've then looked back to see them violating each other in terrible ways, allowing us to accuse them of being barbarians.  We rip the Earth apart for resources such as fossil fuel and burn it into the atmosphere.   Another violence!  Over a period of time, global warming takes place, altering the delicate balance of the Earth's climate.  But we say, "It's too late to repair things and anyway, I'll be dead by the time things go belly up for the planet".  In truth, none of us are really that concerned.  We continue to burn and heat and force the climate to change at an ever more dangerous rate.

         

We least learn what we don't want to learn, forcing Nature to build the danger until we eventually tumble to what's happening.  At which time we rush for the first aid tin and grab a few sticking plasters to stem the bleeding, to stop the draining of life energy, to avoid panic.  At the eleventh hour we try to rectify things, if only for the short term.  And still we fail to realise that our conceited brains and precious free will are no use to us at all.

         

If we'd learnt our lesson sooner, none of this would have happened.  The animals wouldn't have been enslaved, the planet wouldn't have been trashed, and we wouldn't have been at each other's throats.  Violence (as if containing the seeds of plague) would have been avoided.  Instead, we'd have used our brains to build a sustainable system to the advantage of all life forms.

Nature has one clear message - life can only flourish when it is allowed to develop without being exploited or violated.  Human life will only make real progress when it admits to the part each individual plays in the practice of proxy violence.

Part Four - The proxy's 'hide-away' violence

1489:

Edited by CJ.Tointon

Resorting to violence is our greatest weakness.  We use violence for tackling problems or gaining advantage.  If we are so blind to what we are doing or condoning,  then the appearance of the violence we're involved with must become increasingly apparent until we do see how we're engaging in what we most condemn.

         

Milk is a good example.  A most familiar 'food' substance.  As milk (or as a main ingredient in many thousands of food products) it's something we've grown up with from day one.  Mother's milk, or more often cow's milk, is fed to us as infants.  Later in life, when we no longer suck at our mother's breast, we transfer to the cow.  We don't actually suck at the cow's teats.  There's a machine to do that for us!   Again, a proxy removes us from direct involvement and we continue drinking bovine milk for the rest of our lives.  'Cow's milk'  is in every corner shop and supermarket.  It's the one item in almost everybody's fridge, fresh daily.  It may look benign, yet most adults should know by now how it is produced.  The dairy cow can only produce all this milk because we trick her body into mass production.  By inseminating her, we stimulate her mammary glands to produce large quantities of milk in time for the birth of her calf, which is then killed off (or removed) so that we can keep the milk for ourselves.  That's one cynical act of violence!  The cow has been turned into an industrial unit of production.  When she's halfway through her natural life span, her milk production is exhausted and she's taken out and executed.  This nasty piece of truth is something we humans don't want to know about.

         

Indisputably, we are involved with the violation of the cow if we drink milk - and again involved in yet more terrible violence when we eat the body parts of other executed animals.  Yet we don't consider ourselves violent??  That's the paradox.  We say we hate violence, yet we are implicated in it ourselves.  We call for an end to violence, but won't end our own violent ways.  It's all 'violence' and it will continue to eat away at our chances for a peaceful and sustainable future if we don't change.

Part Three - Enter the Proxy

1488: 

 Edited by CJ.Tointon

We are continually trying to hide from our own violence-sickness.  We refuse to be directly implicated in violence.  We let others commit violence for us.  We approve of our governments keeping the refugees at bay so we can carry on with our lives unhindered.  We approve of our soldiers bombing the enemy to make us feel more secure.  We let others do our animal killing for us, so we can eat meat and remain ignorant of the suffering behind it.  Nature gives us the clue - waken your conscience.  Once we refer to conscience - we get it.  By disassociating from 'normal human behaviour' we can understand how individual ethical action releases the dormant conscience.  And when one's conscience is fired into action, it wakes another's conscience.  But its purpose is not to covert others.  It is impelled simply by a single principle - the need to take the initiative and avoid violence and especially to avoid proxy violence.  You, me, each of us, can personally set the example for others.  It may take time, but who knows?  These days such initiatives spread fast on the grapevine.  But unless we are prepared to act alone, then nothing can happen and we, as individuals, won't be able to find solutions to the world's greatest problems.

         

Only by actively disassociating from what our appointed proxies are doing on our behalf, can we escape involvement and become free enough to learn what Nature is attempting to teach us about sustainable living.

         

If we attempt to ignore this, our refusal to act will inevitably bring with it confusion and panic.  We look at the crime scene and say to ourselves, "I can't understand how 'these people' can be so violent."  We refuse to believe that we are also condoning, supporting and encouraging an equivalent violence by the simple act of supporting the mass murder of innocent animals.  We refuse to think about that because we're addicted to products taken from these abused animals.  We don't believe we could ever move away from the foods we're used to or address the whole ugly business behind these foods.  The fact is, it's exactly the same violence, only it's being inflicted on victims that have no defence from us at all.  Killing people, abandoning people - killing defenceless animals, abandoning defenceless animals - it's all one and the same thing.

Part Two - Humans acting like delinquents

1487: 

Edited by CJ.Tointon

Nature, being much older and wiser than its delinquent child, grants us enough brain power and free will to discover our weaknesses.  Through intellect and free will we can, in theory, learn from our mistakes.  But the human is too protective of its image, too full of hubris and conceit, to see the mistake we keep making.  And still Nature accepts this, letting our imbalance burn itself out until we start to want to understand, to sufficiently want balance to be restored.

We are confronted by opposites.  We know we have the potential brain power to be productive for the greater good, but there's an equal potential to push on with 'progress', by ignoring our mistakes and creating ever more violence-based solutions.  You'd think we'd have learnt our lesson from the twentieth century's orgy of violence - but we haven't!  Maybe this means there's a bigger lesson yet to be learned.  It may have something to do with our having perfected certain parts of our physical and mental prowess and now we can't control them.  We haven't recognised the importance of our 'second brain' which houses the spiritual side of us and counsels greater wisdom.  On an intellectual level, we can see our imbalance, but get sucked into Society's attitudes and 'normalities'.  But even if we know in theory what is needed, we are still part of the whole.  The collective mind is made up of individuals, each of whom has free will, each afraid of being pushed down by others.  By being overprotective of our own free will, we avoid acting for the greater good.  So, in effect, free will is the enemy of collective action.  The 'will' part allows us to be constructive, but the 'free' part is more selfish, holding us back (individually and collectively) from being constructive.  We're yet not altruistic enough to think about 'the Other', or to think constructively about a future in which we won't be around to enjoy things.  All the same, we can see a complexity of crime being committed by our species and we do know that each of us should be riveted by the possibility of getting to the bottom of it.

It's like a complicated murder mystery where the chief clues aren't immediately obvious.  The prize at the end is a very big prize, so solving the mystery was never going to be easy.  There are too many clues and links-between-clues and we are either too selfish or too panicked to see which is the most important clue.  And even if you or I understood the seriousness of the crime, no one individual can do much about it, since it's entrenched and involves just about every individual human on the planet.

As an example of this global and unsolvable 'crime', we have huge numbers of displaced people with nowhere to live. These days, there's a never-ending tide of refugees flooding into 'safe haven' countries.  'Kind' countries take them in, 'unkind' countries turn them away.  As word gets around and the fleeing masses surge towards the 'kind' countries, those safe havens eventually have to join the 'unkind' countries for fear of starting a civil war amongst their own population. Even the best brains can find no solution or clues as to how this problem may be solved. 

We are faced with many similar major problems where no obvious solution is apparent.  These problems provide us with an intellectual stalemate, which brings us to such a point of panic that we can no longer think straight.  So - what do we do?  We go bull-at-a-gate at these 'insuperable' problems.  We respond with ever more extremes of violence and a reluctance to go back to the drawing board to re-examine the causes.  The causes inexorably will refer back to some past violence that has led to the present situation.  It's as if we self-harm, bleed, and then attempt to stem the blood loss to avoid facing the much more painful 'cure'.  We won't associate external violence with how we conduct our own lives.

         

To the outsider, this might all seem crazy!  A three year old could see how things are going wrong!  "As we sow, so shall we reap".   Violence always leads to instability and an escalation into further violence.  Nature can only restore balance by drumming the same message into the 'advanced' human brain over and over until it gets it - violent solutions are not solutions at all.  Humans are locked into selfish attitudes, lifestyles and habits where 'charity starts at home' and remains there while the bigger problems are left outside.  We can't address the big problems of the world because we're blinded by the constraints of our own lives.  Our unconstrained three year old can see what the big problem is - a hardness of attitude. Amongst hardened people the child can sense danger, but the child's voice is too weak to be heard.  And yet the child sees straightaway what all adults will one day have to see - the need to avoid hardness and violence.  It's the simplest of lessons we all have to learn and we learn it without having to use either our 'free will' or our 'big brain'.  In whatever form it takes, violence is our greatest and most dangerous enemy.  It acts as our worst killer virus.

Death by Proxy    in five parts

Part One - Humans. The superior species

1486: 

Edited by CJ.Tointon

Nature is so beautiful because it is so beautifully balanced.  Imagine the chemical balances that keep everything stable in our atmosphere.  There's even a natural balance amongst predatory fauna.  Everything seems to be in balance - until we come to humans!   Humans bring about 'imbalance' by resorting to violence and Nature deals with imbalance in very particular ways. 

We humans think we have outsmarted Nature.  But it's in the 'nature' of Nature, to allow everything to find its own balance.  It's in the 'nature' of human brains, however, to not slow down long enough to learn from mistakes.  Instead, we push past them as if they don't matter.  By failing to deal with our mistakes at the time, we only allow them to fester.  

It's the combination of self-reflection and self-admiration in our species that is so destructive.  We have enough narcissism to keep us in a permanent state of imbalance.  Because we can't bear being anything but the dominant species, our power obsession turns towards megalomania.  Even if we're not conscious of it, it's this characteristic which makes us the most dangerous species on Earth.

If we humans eventually get to rescue ourselves from our feelings of superiority, we will have arrived at a balance point from which we can then progress to become true guardians for this planet.  Problem is, we first have to be conscious of this role and drop our belief that we are 'superior' because we have big brains!  

As the human brain advances in power, its grip tightens on the notion of human-entitlement.  We believe we have the right to take control of the planet, not for its sake but for the purposes of advantaging ourselves.  We believe we have been given 'free will' so that we can lord it over lesser brains.  In consequence, the human brain finds faster and more brilliant ways of growing bigger, but only by 'taking'.

The brain of the human grows by 'greeding' off things outside itself, not for the purposes of self-protection or survival but for enlarging its own power and strength in order to dominate smaller brains.  The human brain has become like an over-fertilised plant which has taken too much nourishment from the soil.  The soil can't sustain growth because it isn't being re-fertilised.  In other words, the 'taking' is not being balanced by 'giving-back'.

Appearances are deceptive. When the taking is done by force, it gives the impression of progress.  But in the long-run it simply accelerates our species' decline.  Force and violence are the mistakes we keep making because they seem to allow us to progress in defiance of Nature.

In time

1485: 

In time, we’ll realise what we’ve done and we’ll treat all animals with as much dignity as we do our own children or companion animals.

         

In time, just as environmental consciousness has sprung out of a concern for the planet, so a plant-based diet will spring out of our concern for animals.  In time we’ll forget why we kept and ate animals.  Veganism will be normal, and in fact there won't be a dedicated word for it.  In time we'll be able to properly atone for what we’ve done to the animals, and in time there won't be any more need to rehabilitate the survivors in safe sanctuaries.  What is to happen to these species is still something we (and it is down to us) will have to consider, for it will be up to us to take an initiative about this, if only for safety reasons.  But before then, we'll have needed to retire the survivors and intervene to stop their other-than-sustainable breeding.  (Obviously, during that time, we certainly wouldn't have been actively breeding them, since we'd have had no reason to, since their usefulness to us would be no longer a factor). By then, our 'in-time'- reasoning would be pointing in a very different direction!

In time, the very idea of enslaving, let alone interfering with another species’ breeding cycles, and let alone imprisoning them for their entire lives, will be as unthinkable as approving Dr. Mengele's experiments on humans, in Nazi Germany.

         

In time, when humans become animal guardians, both human and animal will surely start to find peace.  But let's face it, a very great damage will have been done by then, that can't easily be undone.  Animals have been so completely altered from their wild state, their having been prisoners-of-the-state since time out of mind, that they wouldn’t survive for long on their own. It will be up to us to take some measures, not all of which we'd normally not want to take but for the greater good - I refer to 'stopping them breeding'.  I just hope they’ll find it possible to forgive us.

Concern for Farm Animals

1484: 

Edited by CJ Tointon

A farm animal (a cow in particular) is a victim of many abuses done 'behind the scenes'.  I actually looked behind a farm door once to see what went on.  It was like watching someone being raped!  All I've got is concern.  All anyone should have is concern.  

My concern - and your concern - counts for a lot.  It’s our powerhouse.  It's our wellspring of potential.  That is, if you 'put your money where your mouth is'.  We have to show concern.  We cannot travel with old worn out methods of solving this animal cruelty problem.  Politics, guns, hating, judgement - none of this will help the animals.  

We live in a world ruled by the 1%'ers - the educated rich.  They allow animal cruelty to happen.  But the rest of us, the 'innocent' 99%'ers, still condone it in some form.  We moan about disparities of wealth:  they - rich and bad, me - poor and good.  But we're all in the same boat over THIS matter.  Nearly all of us are doing it.  Eating/using animals and having no regard for them at all. 

"Our first concerns usually go to humans in trouble.  These are members of our own species after all".  But with attention focused on concern for our environment, world peace and world hunger issues, there seems to be none left over for …. ANIMALS ... especially farm animals and for what they are being put through day after day after day.  Any show of concern, however slim, can be the beginning of a very slippery slope of change.  It will change our lives.  But changed for the better.  We can be holding fast to our beliefs regarding the abolition of animal cruelty/usage. 

The acknowledgement of 'concern for animals' flowers, then floods our senses.  It keeps us feeling secure and nicely balanced from day to day.  To acknowledge that we need to stop the terrible things we’re doing to animals is a very big acknowledgement to make!

Understandably, it's too much for some.  Their 'concern' remains hidden, silenced, almost blanked out!  But thoughts, once thought, can't be unthought.  Why vote for people who have 'blanked out' on animal issues.  The politician and the producer, the wealthy and the poor - all of us (except for a few true vegans) - bury our heads in the sand when it comes to 'making use of animals'.    'Animal Welfare' - it's just too 'messy' a subject to think about. 

But if you're in the mood for 'messing', then know this.  'Domesticated' animals face execution every day at the hands of humans.  We 'ordinary people' hire assassins to do this executing as very few of us have the ability to kill on such a large scale.  

Playing with another being's destiny is the central factor here.  It's the biggest trauma for anyone - including animals.  Not the death as such, but the coldness of the execution.  This is abattoir style. These animals' fates are in human hands.  Whichever way you look at it, their fate is inevitable and with no salvation.  One can only hope that some 'magic bean' of innocence protects them.  I shudder to think how it could be for them if they somehow CAN premeditate what's coming.  

Humans who eat animals think they can get away with it and remain healthy.   It's more likely, however, that the adrenalin rushing through an animal’s body at the point of terror and trauma, saturates its body tissue, toxicifying it's flesh, passing the toxins along to any who eat 'it'. 

I wonder if the most terrible diseases afflicting humans are linked to a weakening of our immune systems brought about by the toxic effect of continuously eating animals, animal parts and animal secretions!  I nod to a truth which says:  'If you kill them, they'll kill you'.

 Now that's Justice for you!

The seriously deficient fridge

1483: 

Our most valuable failsafe is supposed to be personal ethics, working alongside conscience and intelligent-thinking.  When following a social norm, something in our upbringing should stop us in our tracks for long enough for us to do some serious questioning. In this case: "Should I be eating this?"

That 'something' is often overridden by our senses.  Sensuality tugs at us like any temptation.  If we want something enough we'll numb our common-sense conscience and say to ourselves, "YES!!!  Grab those shoes",  "Bog in" to that steak or that chocolate bar. It's normal to be passionate about shoes and chocolates. So this is where a 'conscience-cauterising process' takes place - the mind manipulators go to work on us, to skilfully manage us, for this is the job of the normalisers.   'Normalising' involves being 'cool' about using questionable items. It's the job of advertising, which, not surprisingly, is a very wealthy industry. It is somewhat in the pay of the even wealthier Animal Industry, who is never unwilling to sink money into an effective advertising campaign.  

Copywriting (and continuity writing) leans heavily on the customer's 'temptatious-ness'.  Making us want what we don't need, etc. If customer-demand is there, the Industry will respond.  And, inevitably, the greater the demand the greater the zeal of the Animal Industry, to continue attacking ever more animals, for ever bigger profits.

From a tender age, there is a standard mind-fix imprinted on all children; they are exposed to that phrase, "They’re only animals". They conclude that it's okay to use, attack, kill and eat them. And, covering the safety angle, kids are informed that these tame animals pose no retaliatory threat.  And if they can’t retaliate, why not exploit them? After all, "Animals were ‘put here’ for us to use!"

Animals are seen as economic assets to the farmer or the drug company.  We, the consumer, let them do what they do to animals because they come up with the goods we want and benefit from. Our 'letting them' (giving our financial support) also 'lets' governments have voter permission to 'let' everything continue as it is.  No one plays the innocent part here. Pollies, producers, customers, we all allow Society to shaft the animals, and we allow it because there’s something in it for us.  This is where the word 'selfish' is not overstating the case. 

"I want". "I want ice cream". "I don't want to know about cows and calves, I just want ice cream, because there's something in it I like very much. And I want it, now".  In contrast, if I protest and boycott all the thousands of products which contain bits of animal in them, it seems as though there's nothing in it for me, except inconvenience.

What happens to our self regard when it's based on poor quality decisions? What happens when we act against our best nature, no longer acting as protective, loving and guardian-like people? What happens when we cave into cravings? Then, we have to turn off our protection-gene and switch on the indifference-gene.  And to make this possible we have to believe that animals don’t have feelings, not in the sense that we do.  Which makes them not much different to machines - and for machines there's no need for feelings at all.   But here's the thing - we don't equate them with our 'pets' at home.   If we did to our cat what we do to our cattle, we'd have the TV cameras crawling all over us.  They’d be exposing everything and everybody connected with the case, and telling us that "It's never-okay to hurt cats".

But it's okay to hurt farm animals - by all means, go ahead!

What is the difference between a mistreated dog and a mistreated cow?  Why aren’t we as interested in the cow’s emotional wellbeing as we'd be for 'companion' animals at home?  Why don't we give a stuff about a hen’s health unless it affects her ‘lay’?  And what's more to the point, why aren’t we mourning our own fall from grace, by letting our beautiful consciences close down?

The symptoms are clear enough, but the cure isn't obvious unless it's as simple as stopping being so selfish.  We have a ‘spoilt-brat’ attitude. "I must have it".  We must have milk on our corn flakes or our day won't be quite right.  Let's get our priorities right - human comfort first. Any compassion left over after that, by all means, be effulgent with it.  But never forget one's own convenience.  And remember, a fridge without a carton of milk is a seriously deficient fridge. 

Farms

1482:

We’ve been brought up to see animal farms as romantic or at least useful places.  And we even regard animal research laboratories as essential.  As a community we value the work of farmers and scientists who ‘work with animals’.  Consumers, along with factory farmers and vivisectors, are becoming increasingly desensitised to the suffering of animals.  For instance, consumers let themselves be persuaded that an animal laboratory is a benign place, where the safety of pharmaceuticals is tested, and animals co-operate with the scientists, each valuing what the lab is doing!!  As if they'd ever had any choice.

The animals know what's happening, whereas most humans prefer not to know, since we play a 'part' in it.  

Ignorance is the best friend of any consumer.  The last thing we want to know is 'animal connection'.  Most of us have seen the pictures, and know more or less what goes on in labs or on animal farms.  Which is why farms and labs are surrounded by secrecy which they say is essential for bio-security.  That means the general public can't see what's going on, making it difficult to find fault with what you haven't seen, in these places. 

We have double standards running through our decisions - I hate hens in cages: I love fried eggs for breakfast.  It's inconvenient to be thinking about the daily things we do, which require so little thought.  That's the luxury of being human!!  So, the public prefers to ignore animal treatment and focus on price or usefulness of a product.  The public doesn't want to be considering enslaved animals when out shopping.

Every being, human or non-human, wants a life of their own.  But we deny 'domesticated animals' just that, along with affection and/or pain relief when subjected to mutilation.  They certainly aren't given anything to ease the pain of their terrible deaths.  (A sheep that is stunned before slaughter does not constitute a humane killing).

If we humans can’t see the wrongness in any of this, it’s likely we’ve bypassed not so much the guilt in it as the intelligence in it, knowing that using animals is wrong in whatever way we do it, because it doesn't involve cooperation and is always underlined by the threat of punishment.  Foodwise, we should be more circumspect about what we put in our mouths.  Who knows what they put in things these days, especially in processed foods, and in animal-based foods.  And when this circumspection has an ethical component, we see how unethical animal-based foods are but also the ethics of the clothing we wear.  Your feet won't be poisoned by leather shodding, but the conscience will be, from leather shoe-wearing.

As members of our society we conform.  We follow the crowd. "I will not feel guilty".  And if we do feel conscience niggling, it's minimised because our guilt-by-association is dramatically lessened by the lawmakers making animal abuse legal. 

Cow prisons

1481: 

Why should we care about cows living on prison farms?  Surely, cows are the living example of how we’ve made a machine out of Mother Nature.  We’ve harnessed Nature to supply our needs and insured our future survival by having so many animals ‘on tap’.  Consequently we can guarantee our major animal-based food supplies.  And we've been able to bring this about simply by using our brains and losing our outmoded ethical standards.

Again, it’s illustrated best by the way we handle the dairy cow.  With our useful knowledge of the biology of this animal, we have taken control of her, body and soul.  Keeping a cow as a milk-producing machine involves forcibly impregnating her, letting her carry a calf to term, letting that biological process take its course, to stimulate her mammary glands to produce maximum milk.  And by disposing of the newly birthed calf, in order to draw off milk for ourselves, we arrive at a perfect example of slavery.

Certainly in Nature, ants enslave aphids and terrible predatory things happen between creatures, but everything, predator or predated, is always allowed its sense of being part of the natural world.  But that's not the case with cows, nor any other farmed animal.  They are enslaved, shut up in cages or enclosed by barbed wire and concrete, and live in constant contact with cold hard steel.  They’re attended by cold hearted humans who, when they deem fit, will have their animal sent off to be executed.

Something in our instinct should tell us this is profoundly wrong.  But for most of us, our instincts, in this regard, have been cauterised.  We've been so brainwashed that we can no longer see any wrong in it. 

Milk

1480:

Many people today are realising that cow’s milk is not nutritionally essential, and even that it is an unhealthy food.  Because there are thousands of different products made with it, almost all people still continue to buy it or foods that contain it.

There’s a tendency amongst humans to insist on getting what we want.  Perhaps it’s a ‘dominant species’ thing - we want it and prefer to get it without any struggle.  Take milk, for example.  It is legal, cheap (subsidised) and plentiful.  It is therefore the favourite low cost, 'enriching' ingredient used by many food manufacturers.

For the consumer, fresh supplies are available everywhere.  We often need to go no further than a few meters down the road, to the nearest corner shop, to get our milk, at which shop they also sell many other products, with milk as a chief ingredient.  As consumers we almost fall over ourselves to get milk, because we can only contemplate our tea and coffee with some in it.  It is a product so widely used that life without milk is unimaginable.  Everyone has a carton in their fridge (except vegans and those who are lactose-intolerant).  There is no more prevalent consumer item on the market, and therefore milk is a guaranteed money spinner for the Dairy Industry.  They’ve turned it into something as natural as fresh air. They say it’s essential to human life, turning the use of milk into an entrenched consumer habit.

         

We forget that whenever we buy milk we implicate ourselves with the violence practised in cow prisons. 

Economics of Farms

1479: 

Perhaps humans don't have any sadistic inclination to harm animals, just for the sake of it.  It’s just that economics dictates how we keep them whilst alive and how we bring them to their deaths.  We do what we have to do, to get what we want from them, without spending too much money.  Since the world is a very competitive place, it all has to be done at the lowest cost.  Those with lowest ethical standards set the benchmark.  For example, caged eggs are the cheapest to produce, so every egg-producing farmer in the world must cage their hens or go out of  business. It’s the same with all commodities.  If milk is cheaper to ship in from overseas, then it will come from there, whatever conditions are like for their dairy herds.  Economics determines customer choice, and if it's overseas milk we buy, then Australian dairy farmers - eat your heart out!

         

To get milk (her milk) and sell it for a profit (our profit), a cow must be cheap to produce and cheap to keep.  Oceans of milk must flow at a minimum cost - rivers of milk supply maximum numbers of consumers.  If this is how milk production works then it’s the same cruel system that's applied to all farmed-animals.  If we want it, the animals must suffer and die for it.

It’s unusual, this idea vegans have, of being compassionate enough to refuse being implicated in the harming of these animals.  In our culture we are so used to animal products, that to voluntarily deny ourselves of them seems absurd.  In our culture, the enjoyment of food is linked with sensual taste.  We think of animal-based cuisine as an art form.  The enjoyment of animal food is greater still if we think it makes us strong.  It’s unimaginable to deny ourselves something we enjoy on the basis that these products are unhealthy and represent human cruelty.  And likewise, omnivores can’t imagine animal products being satisfactorily replaced by plant-based products.  They just don’t believe it’s possible.  And because they can’t imagine it (whereas of course vegans can), they continue to demand these products and, in consequence, deprive animals of their lives and help to sustain a particularly ugly industry.

Animals wild and enslaved

1478:

If an animal is wild (and not regarded as a pest to humans) we study them, marvel at them, protect them, although sometimes we hunt them down and mount their heads on walls, as trophies.  Or here in Australia, hunters go out at night and shoot kangaroos for the pet-meat market.

Other animals are seen as imprisonable and edible, for human consumption.  If an animal is docile and edible or can make useful products for us, then we call them ‘domesticated’, as if we've trained them to cooperate with us.  Indeed, they are put into service.  They certainly can't escape, and in fact their very bodily movement is restricted.  We take these animals very seriously indeed because they aren’t meant for entertainment or for studying - they play an important role in the lives of most humans, for food or clothing.  It follows then, that if an animal is not for cuddling or admiring it must be for enslaving.  

The children of animal farmers are warned not to get too close to these particular animals, since they’re going to be murdered when they’re either big enough or their productivity is exhausted.  We don't build any sort of relationship with these animals unless it's based on fear and obedience.  We must never seem too friendly with them, especially if we’re soon enough going have them banged up in prison, and being made ready for that unhappiest last day, when they'll have their throats slit.  (Perhaps it’s their happiest day, since it brings them blesséd relief from having humans torturing them).

Companion animals and the fate of others

1477: 

Our attitude to animals in general is a paradox. It’s curious how we humans can be so thoughtless about animals, keep them locked up in slum conditions and then execute them at abattoirs and eat them, whilst feeling quite differently about other specific animals. We can show entirely different feelings for our cats and dogs, even sometimes closer than with human companions. In our culture we never eat them (whereas in other cultures humans do see them as food). We might do everything for them to make their lives happy, despite the fact they only offer us companionship (‘only’!) and produce no useful products for us to use. We call them pets or companion animals and value them. Mind you, when they no longer fulfil their role as ‘companions’ they may also be shot, well, ‘shot’ full of lethal chemicals to ‘put them to sleep’. But when they’re alive, living with us as working companions, we often try to give them the very best. We give them love, food, shelter and expensive medical care.

         

As for other animals, who are valued not as companions but as property and edible property at that, these animals enjoy no quality of life whatsoever. Theirs is a life of perpetual torture in fact. Ending in betrayal by the people who fed them and a grisly death at the slaughter house.

It's strange, how the human has such obvious double standards of care and love of animals but thinks nothing of it. 

The dairy cow

1476: 

Humans will manipulate anything to gain personal advantage.  We exploit resources to strengthen and protect ourselves, and especially when there’s no danger in it for us (like using captive animals).  Our advantage-taking inspires systems like slavery, so that our lives are made easier.  The 'developed' nations have exploited the weaker nations, bleeding them dry and then spitting them out.  We do the same with weaker species.  Much of our food and clothing is taken from animals.  We keep them 'on tap'.  We put them to work for us because we can, because there are no negative repercussions.  (Or so we think!)

         

Take the dairy cow for instance.  She is the victim of theft and assault on a daily basis.  Her fate is in the hands of humans who want to get 20-40 litres of milk from her every day.  The new-born calf is pushed aside so that we can get its milk.  We’ve always stolen it for ourselves and now we hardly notice it, and we see no reason to stop it.

         

On the farm, the calf is dispatched as quickly as possible, having served its chief purpose in embryo.  As a foetus, it has stimulated its mother’s mammary glands so that when milked she'll provide large quantities of milk.  As for the new born calf, there’s often little point keeping it alive, so they are shot on day one.  One or two female calves (of the five or six born to a cow) are sent to ‘calf prison’, until they’re ready for dairy duties, or for fattening purposes.

         

It’s a sad thought that we abuse such a peaceful creature.  Anthropomorphically, we can guess that both cow and calf are unhappy about their treatment.  But the whole thing is still legal, so there’s not much anyone can do about it.  The milk is drunk, the profits made and the cow remains a slave.

         

Most people have never even thought about this.  If they have, they’ve chosen to ignore it. Humans have been nicely brainwashed.  Our desensitisation has reached the point where considering ‘the rights and wrongs of dairy farming’ has never entered our heads.  And that's convenient for consumer and producer, since there are so many food products on the market made from milk, or which use as an ingredient.

I’m from a dangerous species

1475: 

Humans might think they’re free of fear but fear is our main driver.  We fear losing our freedom, so to prevent this loss we acquire enough power to feel safer.  We build up stocks of money and exploit resources, including animals.  We’re good at being guardians, but even better at finding security-in-life by raising money and having good stocks of food we like to eat.  And if we have to compromise ethics to gain more feelings of safety, we will.  We don’t care if we damage the environment or hurt the feelings of an animal, just so long as it makes me feel happier or safer.  In my quest for security I can adopt a coldness of heart.  I’m from a dangerous species.

Pay-back time

1474: 

For those who won’t accept the dietary changes being suggested by vegans, there’s a hard lesson to be learned, notably in the health dangers of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, each associated with eating too much animal protein and animal fats.  Not to mention dangers to conscience.

With a weak conscience we are led into advantage-taking whether it is by supporting the fishing-out of oceans or the caging of hens.

We tend to think that what might matter to the ecosystem or to individual animals doesn’t need to impact on one’s enjoyment of  'the bounty'.  But abuse and exploitation has a sting in the tail, even though it’s not obvious immediately.  And because it isn’t obvious, we blithely continue our way of life, almost pretending that we needn’t bother about things that we’re actively condoning.  We figure that because everyone is doing it that we may think nothing of it.  And if we do think about it at all, then we realise things have been going this way for a long time, and it's now too late to change anyway.

The weird thing is that it's never too far gone, or never too late to change.  In fact a late change can be the most effective.  I’ve seen people in their 80s make a complete change attitudinally, and followed up with specific changes to their diet, in accordance with their new found non-acceptance of the norm.  And they've thrived.

We can see ourselves as being trapped by our own entrenched habits.  Perception-wise the door to our own cage is shut tight - we just can’t believe it can be opened.  But it’s deceptive.  Although the door may be opened, it may only remain open for a while.  And it can only be held open by a deliberate and determined intention.  And in this case, it's the intention to care about the animals’ plight that counts.  The door is kept open by resolve alone, and while propped open, we can start the slow process of escape from the cage.  And that involves giving away some of the advantages-of-habit for the sake of the greater good.

As we emerge, as the habit-self is changed, so we get the first taste of freedom and of course begin to feel all the better for it.  Sure, we have to deal with some inconvenience, at first.  But in the long run, our decisions are justified by the gratifying feeling of better health and lighter conscience.  It’s a straight forward exchange, from enjoying the advantages of being an abuser to escaping all of the imprisonment which that involves; shifting across from being the abuser to the role of being the repairer.

We all have to move that way sooner or later, and as soon as we do we can enjoy not only freedom but a huge expansion of personal consciousness.