It would help activists if they could at least consider the need to work hard for other generations. It makes it feel all uphill. It doesn’t yet look promising, that people are going to turn en masse towards vegan principle, so the slowness may require a shift of perception. Vegans: transmigration of souls, other lifetimes, reincarnation, all that sort of thinking certainly gives me a sense of optimism, not that the world will be repaired but that over the lifetimes I have lived and will live, along with vast numbers of fellow transmigrators, we may need to feel the essence of that before we really get to work on repair.
We may see our ‘lives’ as considerably longer than ‘three score and ten’. We might have only ever considered our life stretching into lifetimes. This, whether it’s true or not, does allow us to at least see through the ‘dream of personal success’. It allows us to dive into the warm waters of altruism with a nice mix of both selfish and unselfish motivation. Wherever we’re at on this spectrum, advanced and self developed or untouched completely, any stage that we are at relates to two sides, one of which is always the inner oaf. We’ve all behaved badly and still continue to do. Unless we consciously move away from bad behaviour and encourage others to do so too, nothing will happen. But as soon as the ball starts to roll, as we’ve seen with some environmental matters involving most of us in new habits, it can grow exponentially ... whoich may happen a little later than we hope. It’s as if most of us aren’t yet near the starting line. We’ve already come out of our burrows and noticed the mess humans have caused. As we are rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, perhaps a determination forms to move away from the old attitudes. Instead of feeling entitled to do whatever we feel like doing we start to move towards a feeling that we none of us have an entitlement to be destructive. If we are destructive then is that simply because we can’t see any other way to achieve our aims?
Imagination and courage are the watch words of the future age. To survive, we need to be unaffected by competition. If we’re locked into the old ways we’ll simply be up against competition and a never ending struggle to outdo other advantage-takers.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Oafs
Blog Friday 4th June 2010
What is it, when people behave badly, that then lets them NOT think ill of themselves? Perhaps it’s a slow process, almost as slowly as evolution itself, moulding normality into the way it is done. I’m okay because I’m normal, doing no worse than others. Who is this humans who has an arrogant sense of being special, privileged and the ultimate saviour of the planet. Are humans meant to be the dominant species, have a role to play in taking primitive lifeforms and transforming them into sophisticated beings? It’s as if humans have swallowed a sci-fi fantasy leading them to not question the dominator role … the human prerogative to be the way we are.
If we put it this way it makes us sound like oafs, but that’s more or less what we are by what we do. And alongside that we do some really wonderful things. We have become mesmerised by our own achievements and conveniently forgotten how we’ve paid for them. Our oafishness, arrogance and insecurity we inherit from our culture, parents, etc, and if we don’t spot it soon enough it all stays with us. It comforts the lonely and emboldens the value of ‘me-first’. It says “I must succeed within about seventy or eighty years of life”. If I fail I will be unhappy.
Only when we come to question this do other things fall into place and we se why we must start to change. Talk about a breathing space, this is one big space, not that there isn’t urgency but no reason to be hasty. Slowness of purpose doesn’t always indicate indecision, it sometimes shows patience and long term purpose.
Vegan Animal Rights, the movement, has embarked on a long struggle which could end overnight if the collective attitude changed, but maybe we have to endure this awful world as iut is for quite a bit longer yet, as if the time it changes hasn’t yet arrived and during these intervening years people who are part of the Movement are exploring ways of communicating the idea that all animals are royal.
What is it, when people behave badly, that then lets them NOT think ill of themselves? Perhaps it’s a slow process, almost as slowly as evolution itself, moulding normality into the way it is done. I’m okay because I’m normal, doing no worse than others. Who is this humans who has an arrogant sense of being special, privileged and the ultimate saviour of the planet. Are humans meant to be the dominant species, have a role to play in taking primitive lifeforms and transforming them into sophisticated beings? It’s as if humans have swallowed a sci-fi fantasy leading them to not question the dominator role … the human prerogative to be the way we are.
If we put it this way it makes us sound like oafs, but that’s more or less what we are by what we do. And alongside that we do some really wonderful things. We have become mesmerised by our own achievements and conveniently forgotten how we’ve paid for them. Our oafishness, arrogance and insecurity we inherit from our culture, parents, etc, and if we don’t spot it soon enough it all stays with us. It comforts the lonely and emboldens the value of ‘me-first’. It says “I must succeed within about seventy or eighty years of life”. If I fail I will be unhappy.
Only when we come to question this do other things fall into place and we se why we must start to change. Talk about a breathing space, this is one big space, not that there isn’t urgency but no reason to be hasty. Slowness of purpose doesn’t always indicate indecision, it sometimes shows patience and long term purpose.
Vegan Animal Rights, the movement, has embarked on a long struggle which could end overnight if the collective attitude changed, but maybe we have to endure this awful world as iut is for quite a bit longer yet, as if the time it changes hasn’t yet arrived and during these intervening years people who are part of the Movement are exploring ways of communicating the idea that all animals are royal.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Long term peace
If we have no system of personal restraint it’s likely we don’t care about behaving badly. If we see no REASON to be restrained it may be because we don’t expect to be confronted. If we can get away with it, if it’s done discretely so that we don’t draw attention to ourselves unnecessarily, we can behave badly, with the minimum of judgement from others. Religion tells us that God notices and that may be superstition but it is a form of restraint. Superstition itself is much more up-front - it tells us it’s all down to luck and that’s ‘luck’ that we sow.
Of course none of this matters if we already have a system that prevents us making a fool of ourselves in the long term. A philosophy?
Of course none of this matters if we already have a system that prevents us making a fool of ourselves in the long term. A philosophy?
Slavery
Wednesday 2nd June 2010
We’re each trying to ease our load in life. That seems to lead to me-first and benefiting from slavery. We make full use of the weak to gain advantage. Humans have enough brain power to take advantage of any resource. Why wouldn’t we have a slave to clean our house if you could own one. Why wouldn’t we own a car if we could and needed to travel? From where comes restraint?
We’re each trying to ease our load in life. That seems to lead to me-first and benefiting from slavery. We make full use of the weak to gain advantage. Humans have enough brain power to take advantage of any resource. Why wouldn’t we have a slave to clean our house if you could own one. Why wouldn’t we own a car if we could and needed to travel? From where comes restraint?
Tempting towards exploiting
Tuesday 1st June 2010
If we are a mixture of good and evil then most of us who are sensible enough and kind enough to be in favour of ‘good’ can smell the ugliness of bad – we try to tune our ‘vibration’ away from it. We resist temptations when they are insidious and harmful. At the opposite end we have the “to hell with it” attitude. Temptation is too great – we risk the dangers. And that brings us to exploitation.
If we are a mixture of good and evil then most of us who are sensible enough and kind enough to be in favour of ‘good’ can smell the ugliness of bad – we try to tune our ‘vibration’ away from it. We resist temptations when they are insidious and harmful. At the opposite end we have the “to hell with it” attitude. Temptation is too great – we risk the dangers. And that brings us to exploitation.
People behaving badly
Monday 30th May 2010
We set up an attitude along the lines of “what we sow, we reap”. We create our own reality absolutely, according to one wisdom. We bring down upon our heads either disaster or bliss or variations of each, We want to come down on the ‘bliss’ side but we ignore the warning signs and land up in a mess. I like to think superstition moderates our behaviour more than good sense. And on this matter of taking advantage, if we are careless of the ethics of what we do, we risk things unnecessarily. Superstition sees the pitfalls and lets us respond in the best way, therefore you could say it keep us honest. If we’re careless of an idea which makes us a profit but doesn’t feel right, superstition taps us on the shoulder. Perhaps superstition is merely instinct, but with a warning bell fitted to it. A nasty attitude brings bad luck, we all know that! Superstitiously ‘good luck’ flows towards people who are trying to clean up their act. Sense doesn’t necessarily come into it. Superstition helps us to feel badly about behaving badly.
We set up an attitude along the lines of “what we sow, we reap”. We create our own reality absolutely, according to one wisdom. We bring down upon our heads either disaster or bliss or variations of each, We want to come down on the ‘bliss’ side but we ignore the warning signs and land up in a mess. I like to think superstition moderates our behaviour more than good sense. And on this matter of taking advantage, if we are careless of the ethics of what we do, we risk things unnecessarily. Superstition sees the pitfalls and lets us respond in the best way, therefore you could say it keep us honest. If we’re careless of an idea which makes us a profit but doesn’t feel right, superstition taps us on the shoulder. Perhaps superstition is merely instinct, but with a warning bell fitted to it. A nasty attitude brings bad luck, we all know that! Superstitiously ‘good luck’ flows towards people who are trying to clean up their act. Sense doesn’t necessarily come into it. Superstition helps us to feel badly about behaving badly.
The mental block
Sunday 29th May 2010
Prioritising is an advantage. We see what’s most important, the issues which needs special effort from us, but there’s a danger of putting off dealing with other important issues. Omnivores who are environmentalists and working for social justice may decide to put ‘animals’ on the everlasting backburner.
The process of assessing and reassessing priorities may be tedious but it forces us to look deeper. The deeper we look the more obvious is ‘the conspiracy’ (it’s handy to call it a ‘conspiracy’ since issues not in the ‘public interest’ are down graded quite actively by the vested interests. Denigrating the ‘bleeding hearts’ and ‘lettuce leaf eaters’ is as much part of the promotion game as pushing chicken nuggets. Put it any way you like: the wicked 1%’ers crushing the rights of the proletariat, it doesn’t help much but the idea of conspiracy helps make important links - health issues link to food, to the animals, to the environment, to the unfair food distribution around the world. The links are obvious enough once you dare to look and each of us are drawn to a particular ‘worst issue’ but it’s wise to keep a weather eye on all the rest. Is this too overwhelming?
If it is too much to take on board we must address our own comfort in living amongst so many worrying issues. Having a direction through it all (for instance, the vegan might have an angle on almost all issues by seeing them as manifestations of the violence within society), seeing the thread that links so many specific abuses helps us to develop habits that are NOT destructive and yet which we hardly notice being changed. New habits settle in and become as comfortable as the old ones. We have an autopilot for this. We must get using it to help us move along, to get essential work done, to help us avoid getting side-tracked.
I think the way it starts is that we set up a train of habits we know we can more or less handle. They’re aimed at our having minimal negative impact on the planet. Eventually we heal our own reputation – the human race aiming collectively to atone, especially in the eyes of the animals who’re the MOST abused of all our resources, the most damaged part of Nature.
Prioritising is an advantage. We see what’s most important, the issues which needs special effort from us, but there’s a danger of putting off dealing with other important issues. Omnivores who are environmentalists and working for social justice may decide to put ‘animals’ on the everlasting backburner.
The process of assessing and reassessing priorities may be tedious but it forces us to look deeper. The deeper we look the more obvious is ‘the conspiracy’ (it’s handy to call it a ‘conspiracy’ since issues not in the ‘public interest’ are down graded quite actively by the vested interests. Denigrating the ‘bleeding hearts’ and ‘lettuce leaf eaters’ is as much part of the promotion game as pushing chicken nuggets. Put it any way you like: the wicked 1%’ers crushing the rights of the proletariat, it doesn’t help much but the idea of conspiracy helps make important links - health issues link to food, to the animals, to the environment, to the unfair food distribution around the world. The links are obvious enough once you dare to look and each of us are drawn to a particular ‘worst issue’ but it’s wise to keep a weather eye on all the rest. Is this too overwhelming?
If it is too much to take on board we must address our own comfort in living amongst so many worrying issues. Having a direction through it all (for instance, the vegan might have an angle on almost all issues by seeing them as manifestations of the violence within society), seeing the thread that links so many specific abuses helps us to develop habits that are NOT destructive and yet which we hardly notice being changed. New habits settle in and become as comfortable as the old ones. We have an autopilot for this. We must get using it to help us move along, to get essential work done, to help us avoid getting side-tracked.
I think the way it starts is that we set up a train of habits we know we can more or less handle. They’re aimed at our having minimal negative impact on the planet. Eventually we heal our own reputation – the human race aiming collectively to atone, especially in the eyes of the animals who’re the MOST abused of all our resources, the most damaged part of Nature.
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