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!