Conscience

1920:

A numbed conscience lets us get away with things. A troubled conscience casts a dark light on what we do. Does conscience prick when we eat a steak? Does it sleep when we want it to NOT notice something?

Either sub-consciously or consciously, we presumably suffer ‘conscience pain’. Unless we can switch it off. But then, if it can be switched off, the habit of doing that might grow, until we lose that sensitivity altogether, meaning we can only ever be half awake.

It seems that part of human development relies on our seeing things very clearly, but a distortion arises where we are determined to close our eyes, for fear of being blinded by what we’re looking at.

When it comes to food we’ve learned how to desensitise. With animal-eating we say, “Everyone does it, so why shouldn’t I?” Just to help us along, we have ads on the TV to help us normalise animal-eating. Cooking shows on TV always use lots of meat and dairy. Dead animals play leading roles in travel and get-away holiday programmes.

Promoting animal foods is big business. Animals are always portrayed as being here for our benefit. The messy or cruel side of animal life down on the farm is never shown, only the ‘end product’ from dead animals - we never get to see them as live beings being prepared for their starring role, as dead food products. Even well educated people are capable of speaking nonsense about all this. They somehow convince themselves that, because they haven’t personally been involved in torturing or murdering animals, that they can’t be held accountable for what goes on behind the scenes. Conveniently, we pretend we know nothing, even though we know enough. We all know what the Animal Industry does, and we all know how we support that Industry with our dollars.

We try not to see ourselves as cold-hard-bastards. We try to let our untroubled conscience sleep on. And in this climate of acceptance, where meat and animal secretions are ‘just normal’, essential to satisfy our chronic wants, the only time we might be disturbed is when we meet up with one of those ‘damned vegans’, who ask how we can possibly go on supporting all this. The trick is to avoid all contact with vegans!!