224:
Because people are focused on wanting they won’t listen to what we have to say - vegans can scream all they like, but we know we’re looking at a deep seated fear, often unexpressed, that illness awaits them. Yet they still prefer to live dangerously rather than give up anything. Take a person with heart disease who has to face surgery. They might have avoided the damage by not clogging up their arteries with fat-saturated food, but they didn’t. They continued as if nothing was happening, letting hospitalisation deal with the problems later.
So vegans have two jobs: to make plant foods attractive enough to live on without needing animal products, and to convince food addicts that prevention is better than cure. We need to inspire on the one hand and warn on the other.
Those people who are most obstinate are the most food-seduced, who’re unable to be without animal food. It’s not just a matter of nutrition, it’s the problem of getting out of the habit of it. It’s easier said than done.
For two whole decades, before reaching adulthood, most of us have been powerlessness to change our eating habits. In this respect most parents are guilty of feeding their children addictive, harmful and unethical foods. When kids grow up and start feeding themselves they soon get hooked on the fast-food version of what Mum used to cook for them. Weight creeps up and a ‘live-now-pay-later’ mentality sets in. Kids aren’t warned about the dangers of addiction, so usually Mum and Dad turn out to be the kids’ drug dealers.
Like the use of narcotics (or anything else that’s stimulating but difficult to give up), animal foods are in our daily lives from the word go. And with such a great variety of mildly addictive products on the market, many of them are as difficult to shake off as any of the classic abuse-substances. Once we’re in the grip of these products there seems to be no way out.
If animal foods are addictive, not in quite the same way as narcotics but addictive all the same, then these foods, the taste of them, the thought of them, the low cost of them, make people determined to get them. It may be a burger or chocolate or quiche, but every day that ‘hunger’ leaves its mark. For the wealthy Westerner there’s no thought of doing without these foods. The very idea of giving up a favourite food because of the link with animal suffering or ill health consequences is unthinkable. In fact even animal welfare, let alone animal rights, is something most people never give a thought to. It wouldn’t even be on their radar.
If it is … they’re probably already on their way to becoming vegan.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Momentous or mundane
215a
Why is everything so momentous when, at the same time, it’s also mundane? Sitting here, I can’t think of anything more momentous than writing about an animal’s right to a life when the humans have enslaved it. It’s surely momentous stuff - the very quality of our relationship with the world we live in. But how do we marry that with the mundane? The ordinary, routine, never-changing world which is the only reality for almost every human on the planet?
I’ve got no answer to that, probably because I know that most humans don’t give much thought to anything but ‘my own life’. Liberating animals is pie in the sky, since the animal trade is so entrenched in our culture. It seems absurd to try to interfere with it. But still I sit here wanting to interfere with it, to bring it all into consciousness, in order to set off a course-change in thinking - if such a change occurs it will only be brought about not by some physical improvement but by an attitudinal one, on a higher plane of consciousness.
A friend of mine, Tom, quotes Forster’s maxim “only connect”, and he goes on to say the he believes that what we are all trying to do is to connect with the people and the world around us and with our own true nature. I couldn’t agree more but in practice it may not work out that way.
The teacher, inspired by “connecting”, takes her students to the zoo, but by taking them she implies that it’s all okay. And what if the kids kick up a fuss about the caging of animals, what can the teacher say? Behind her stands the institution of the zoo which makes itself look as if it’s a conservation centre for endangered species. When kids ask questions about the individual animal’s life in this imprisoned state, when they ask some very fundamental things about freedom, how can their teacher respond ... to the children’s satisfaction? They may have to be fobbed off ... since she was inspired by her students’ need to connect with animals ... to see the animals who they feel part of. She inspired the zoo-visit.
Tom says, “I am fairly sure that you would dismiss a hunter’s professed “love of nature” as mere hypocrisy; a smoke-screen behind which he can continue to have his fun. I certainly don’t condone hunting, but I can believe them when they say this. I just think their impulses have taken a wrong turning. Indeed many ex-hunters now do their shooting only with a camera; their love of nature now having found a more positive outlet”. .
Would ‘people wanting to connect’ be the primary reason people go to the zoo? I’d suggested (in a previous blog) that they go to mock the caged lion - “me human: you animal ... me great: you nothing but a banged up prisoner” - but that was just me trying to sound cynical. I know the people walking around the zoo are not sadistically revelling in the animals’ discomfort, but at the same time they aren’t empathising with the animals either. They aren’t asking how the lion feels. And they may well say “who cares what the lion feels?” ... but there’s the rub.
How is it that we do something which hasn’t been thought through empathetically? In today’s consciousness-raised atmosphere why is an animal’s perspective not relevant and important?
If we can accept that zoo-prisons are okay places to visit, isn’t that rather worrying? Isn’t that a sign that we really ought to be trying to interfere with a culture that encourages children to accept one-sided connectiveness?
Why is everything so momentous when, at the same time, it’s also mundane? Sitting here, I can’t think of anything more momentous than writing about an animal’s right to a life when the humans have enslaved it. It’s surely momentous stuff - the very quality of our relationship with the world we live in. But how do we marry that with the mundane? The ordinary, routine, never-changing world which is the only reality for almost every human on the planet?
I’ve got no answer to that, probably because I know that most humans don’t give much thought to anything but ‘my own life’. Liberating animals is pie in the sky, since the animal trade is so entrenched in our culture. It seems absurd to try to interfere with it. But still I sit here wanting to interfere with it, to bring it all into consciousness, in order to set off a course-change in thinking - if such a change occurs it will only be brought about not by some physical improvement but by an attitudinal one, on a higher plane of consciousness.
A friend of mine, Tom, quotes Forster’s maxim “only connect”, and he goes on to say the he believes that what we are all trying to do is to connect with the people and the world around us and with our own true nature. I couldn’t agree more but in practice it may not work out that way.
The teacher, inspired by “connecting”, takes her students to the zoo, but by taking them she implies that it’s all okay. And what if the kids kick up a fuss about the caging of animals, what can the teacher say? Behind her stands the institution of the zoo which makes itself look as if it’s a conservation centre for endangered species. When kids ask questions about the individual animal’s life in this imprisoned state, when they ask some very fundamental things about freedom, how can their teacher respond ... to the children’s satisfaction? They may have to be fobbed off ... since she was inspired by her students’ need to connect with animals ... to see the animals who they feel part of. She inspired the zoo-visit.
Tom says, “I am fairly sure that you would dismiss a hunter’s professed “love of nature” as mere hypocrisy; a smoke-screen behind which he can continue to have his fun. I certainly don’t condone hunting, but I can believe them when they say this. I just think their impulses have taken a wrong turning. Indeed many ex-hunters now do their shooting only with a camera; their love of nature now having found a more positive outlet”. .
Would ‘people wanting to connect’ be the primary reason people go to the zoo? I’d suggested (in a previous blog) that they go to mock the caged lion - “me human: you animal ... me great: you nothing but a banged up prisoner” - but that was just me trying to sound cynical. I know the people walking around the zoo are not sadistically revelling in the animals’ discomfort, but at the same time they aren’t empathising with the animals either. They aren’t asking how the lion feels. And they may well say “who cares what the lion feels?” ... but there’s the rub.
How is it that we do something which hasn’t been thought through empathetically? In today’s consciousness-raised atmosphere why is an animal’s perspective not relevant and important?
If we can accept that zoo-prisons are okay places to visit, isn’t that rather worrying? Isn’t that a sign that we really ought to be trying to interfere with a culture that encourages children to accept one-sided connectiveness?
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Queering the pitch
215
The real friction between non-vegans and vegans is that what they relish we avoid. They still enjoy animal foods and wearing animal clothing and we avoid it like the plague. We can speak-out about animal treatment but they can’t, even if they wanted to.
Our main difference concerns sentience - most people probably don’t even know what the word means or that it has any great significance, whereas if you’re sensitive to the plight of domesticated animals you’d know the word very well. To us, the mistreatment of an innocent, sentient creature is obscene. Human nature, animal availability and centuries of tradition have brought animals into slavery ... and omnivores don’t think this is bad. And even if they did they mustn’t, otherwise they couldn’t be omnivores any longer.
Omnivores sit in the ‘quiet corner’. The only satisfaction for them is to take full advantage of what’s on offer ... and I’d see that as being pretty much subservient to The System. It may give people lots of present-time enjoyment but it usually means a lot of chronic stomach and digestive problems. If you still eat animal produce you’re sure to be wrecking your body, as if by slow poisoning. And what a waste! To disqualify your body from working properly plus denying yourself the chance to be an agent of peace in the world. It seems sad, to hold back on both counts because of a food attachment or wanting to have your feet bound in leather.
To a greater or lesser degree most people have got blood on our hands and plenty of poison in their bodies, and maybe bruised souls too - simply by ingesting animals’ body-parts on a daily basis. By consuming the concentrated toxins from these foods plus the adrenaline surge at the point of an animal’s execution, our immune system doesn’t stand a chance. Vegans say “keep off the stuff and keep your health (and conscience)”.
I suppose it’s safe to say that by being vegan, I’d automatically be avoiding many of the crap foods and treats on the market ... and so it means I’m no longer living under a tastebud dictatorship. Personally I worry about the ethics of those who aren’t avoiding crap food, but it’s not only food but shoes and zoos and thousands of other goods and services provided by our animal slaves. By using animals we lose our best chance for a truly meaningful spiritual development ... we’re in very real danger of dying unfulfilled and with a stomach ache too.
The real friction between non-vegans and vegans is that what they relish we avoid. They still enjoy animal foods and wearing animal clothing and we avoid it like the plague. We can speak-out about animal treatment but they can’t, even if they wanted to.
Our main difference concerns sentience - most people probably don’t even know what the word means or that it has any great significance, whereas if you’re sensitive to the plight of domesticated animals you’d know the word very well. To us, the mistreatment of an innocent, sentient creature is obscene. Human nature, animal availability and centuries of tradition have brought animals into slavery ... and omnivores don’t think this is bad. And even if they did they mustn’t, otherwise they couldn’t be omnivores any longer.
Omnivores sit in the ‘quiet corner’. The only satisfaction for them is to take full advantage of what’s on offer ... and I’d see that as being pretty much subservient to The System. It may give people lots of present-time enjoyment but it usually means a lot of chronic stomach and digestive problems. If you still eat animal produce you’re sure to be wrecking your body, as if by slow poisoning. And what a waste! To disqualify your body from working properly plus denying yourself the chance to be an agent of peace in the world. It seems sad, to hold back on both counts because of a food attachment or wanting to have your feet bound in leather.
To a greater or lesser degree most people have got blood on our hands and plenty of poison in their bodies, and maybe bruised souls too - simply by ingesting animals’ body-parts on a daily basis. By consuming the concentrated toxins from these foods plus the adrenaline surge at the point of an animal’s execution, our immune system doesn’t stand a chance. Vegans say “keep off the stuff and keep your health (and conscience)”.
I suppose it’s safe to say that by being vegan, I’d automatically be avoiding many of the crap foods and treats on the market ... and so it means I’m no longer living under a tastebud dictatorship. Personally I worry about the ethics of those who aren’t avoiding crap food, but it’s not only food but shoes and zoos and thousands of other goods and services provided by our animal slaves. By using animals we lose our best chance for a truly meaningful spiritual development ... we’re in very real danger of dying unfulfilled and with a stomach ache too.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Animal ‘use’ is always abuse
214: Monday 25th
If we aren’t ready to move on, towards being vegan, we’re still lumped in with the meat heads - if we’re animal consumers we can’t condemn their abuse. If you don’t eat meat but still use animal by-products they’re still involved in the same level of cruelty and sometimes worse. Look at the egg-laying hen, for example, and what she has to suffer.
If you’re not vegan you can hardly advocate for animal rights, that is if you want to avoid sounding hypocritical. By the same token, the onus is on vegans to take up animal-advocacy ... and if we can’t buy cruelty-free we don’t buy at all.
If we aren’t vegan, we can never play a part in animal liberation, let alone the world-wide-awakening of consciousness. To rule ourselves out of that process might leave us with not a lot of meaning left in our life, simply because we’re still so subservient to The System.
If we can’t leave it, if we can’t change it, and if we’re unable to condemn it because we also condone it, we’re effectively hand-tied. Most people are still falling for second best, falling into the arms of what they now best, the-traditional-way. What’s left after you take that away, the escape, future prospects, expounding the future? Not much. We can only divert ourselves with things like entertainment and eating. The energy expended on seeking pleasure is absolute, pleasure, duty, sleep. And that very same energy could be used to help end waste and cruelty.
By doggedly remaining omnivores we’re blocking a better source of satisfaction. If we don’t advocate for animals (and boy, do we at least owe them that!), we’re effectively taking the part of ‘gaoler’, retreating back into childhood, into the fun world ... (keep the laughs coming) ... it’s probably a poor substitute for many better meaningful, passionate and goal-oriented activities. (Wow, it’s easy to sound pompous, ha, ha, ha.)
At the end of the day – bed time - imagine: a feeling that we couldn’t have done better with our day. We may not be experiencing pure ecstasy on a daily basis, but isn’t it better to lie down to sleep, knowing we’ve minimised harm.
If we aren’t ready to move on, towards being vegan, we’re still lumped in with the meat heads - if we’re animal consumers we can’t condemn their abuse. If you don’t eat meat but still use animal by-products they’re still involved in the same level of cruelty and sometimes worse. Look at the egg-laying hen, for example, and what she has to suffer.
If you’re not vegan you can hardly advocate for animal rights, that is if you want to avoid sounding hypocritical. By the same token, the onus is on vegans to take up animal-advocacy ... and if we can’t buy cruelty-free we don’t buy at all.
If we aren’t vegan, we can never play a part in animal liberation, let alone the world-wide-awakening of consciousness. To rule ourselves out of that process might leave us with not a lot of meaning left in our life, simply because we’re still so subservient to The System.
If we can’t leave it, if we can’t change it, and if we’re unable to condemn it because we also condone it, we’re effectively hand-tied. Most people are still falling for second best, falling into the arms of what they now best, the-traditional-way. What’s left after you take that away, the escape, future prospects, expounding the future? Not much. We can only divert ourselves with things like entertainment and eating. The energy expended on seeking pleasure is absolute, pleasure, duty, sleep. And that very same energy could be used to help end waste and cruelty.
By doggedly remaining omnivores we’re blocking a better source of satisfaction. If we don’t advocate for animals (and boy, do we at least owe them that!), we’re effectively taking the part of ‘gaoler’, retreating back into childhood, into the fun world ... (keep the laughs coming) ... it’s probably a poor substitute for many better meaningful, passionate and goal-oriented activities. (Wow, it’s easy to sound pompous, ha, ha, ha.)
At the end of the day – bed time - imagine: a feeling that we couldn’t have done better with our day. We may not be experiencing pure ecstasy on a daily basis, but isn’t it better to lie down to sleep, knowing we’ve minimised harm.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Abolitionism and greatness
213a
The very idea of putting another human into slavery is abhorrent but we do it to animals without a second thought. We empathise with other humans because they’re just like us, but animals ... they aren’t anything like us, so we don’t see them as individuals but like peas in a pod. We see them collectively. Each is part of a whole and not much more - the antithesis of the ‘great individual’ (exception: Inspector Rex). Animals are the great un-great. They’re furniture - beautiful to look at, useful, but of no importance beyond that. An animal doesn’t even have a soul ... so we say!
We’re so used to seeing animals in paddocks in the countryside or in cages at the zoo (both animal prisons) that we see no ugliness. In fact we see them in the opposite way - the countryside and the zoo are fun to go to. Kids love to see the animals - they ask to go ... and we don’t tell them there’s anything wrong with these places. Is it any wonder that abolitionism has to be invented, to prick or expunge this insane gaoling instinct humans have concerning animals?
So, what do we have here? What am I saying? That in some ways our attitudes have been high-jacked, that our thoughts are not our own, that all adults in every country (and that includes your mum, your friend, your doctor, your teacher, almost everyone) have lost touch with their very soul ... that they have no opinions of their own ... do I mean that everyone’s been manipulated?
It’s come to this - we accept the worst thing imaginable - the torture and murder of animals. We accept it as being okay. But, in reality, it’s rather like thinking child-molesting is okay, and everyone knows that’s one huge crime.
Animals-in-slavery number as many as humans. They’re our slaves. We’ve got used to that ... so used to it that we no longer know it ... that is, until we sit down and try to imagine a human being actually, deliberately hurting even one them. Wow! And for what? But to say this, to denigrate virtually everyone for this, makes me seem like one angry dude, as if I’m standing in the middle of a hundred thousand football fans and shouting at them, “Football stinks”.
What Animal Rights advocates are saying looks like one
gigantic insult, levelled at the hugest number of people imaginable.
So, I’m trying to turn that around by saying ... “Yes, it’s wrong, it’s all so unnecessary, the enslaving and abuse of animals ought to stop ...”, but I know this won’t attract anyone. I must come up with something more optimistic, about us all. So, here it is.
The meat-eating, zoo-visiting, ethically-challenged person is a mix. I’m a mix. It’s not about who is better than the other, it’s just that we each have sensitivities in different areas, and those who’re sensitive to the animals’ plight may be less sensitive in some other areas. None of us can afford to be smug. In my own personal mix there are stupidities and insensitivities mixed in with things no one would quarrel with.
I see greatness in most every person I meet (because I choose to go looking for it) but I don’t conjure it out of thin air, I actually see it. And I see it because I can’t miss it. Because it’s there and so common in all of us. But if you don’t consciously go looking for it, it goes unnoticed. I, like most others, employ modesty to hide it from myself (and so I should) but that hides it from others too. I don’t see myself as great and others don’t tell me so anyway, but when they do tell me I’m special, that’s a fantastic feeling. However, that’s how I might want to feel, to feel ‘special’, but that might be my biggest problem.
We want to be special. That is better or more outstanding than others ... as famous people seem to be. And we all know that famous people are few in number (at any given time), whereas the not-famous are many and very forgettable ... and we do so want immortality, to be remembered ... as if that could make us happy ... by helping us live longer in others’ memory of us. We want to be so ‘special’ that we’re unforgettable. That’s vanity gone crazy!
‘Great’ may be different, in that it’s a feeling of satisfaction which has some sense of motion about it, as if we’re ongoing, striving to be engaged in universal pursuits. The trouble is we want to be recognised for our greatness all the time. On the one hand we deny our own greatness and on the other we want it so badly. And it doesn’t come. And eventually we give up and settle for conformity - the big second-best. Our greatness is allowed to wither, or worse, become a need for ‘specialness’, for the preciousness of wanting-to-be-remembered-or-revered (read ‘immortal’). How stupid is that when we’re already as ‘great’ as ever great can be.
To those few individuals who might know us well, who like us, to them we may seem great - they possibly see it ... but not exactly in that way. When this same word is used to describe just about everything these days it becoems so watered down as to be meaningless. What is truly ‘great’ is something maybe too universal to be defined. ‘Great’ may not be in our lexicon, it being too overpowering a concept to contemplate. We may not feel adequate enough to acknowledge it, either in our self or in others ... and out of that comes a depreciation that is nothing short of wasteful.
I might be greater than I could ever want to be, but if I simply don’t see it I might instead, out of desperation, become narcissistic and ego-driven. Oh! And then the frustrations hit. Oh the agony! Then, certain of my more impressive attributes are concealed from me ... and a much more uncertain person-within pops up, who is swamped by past mistakes, saying, “I wouldn’t have done that if I were really great”. “Great people are like this ...not like me”, and in my own mind I string off a list of famous people I admire, and say, “I can’t identify with their greatness because it’s too different to any greatness I see in myself”.
When kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up they say “famous”, which probably means they just want to be thought of as ‘great’.
The hum drum world doesn’t recognise me because I’m not rich - we aren’t worthy to be rewarded for who we are. If we are nothing, and have nothing, it’s because we’re not special enough. And so eventually we give up on our own greatness and emulate the specialness we see in others ... who seem ‘much greater than me’. We lose touch with our own original thinking (based on instinct and personal experience) and say, “If ‘they’ do it, it must be okay for me to do it” ... but, as it happens, the ‘emulated’ are not very great at all - the ‘great’ people don’t set much of an example.
So we take the kids to the zoo, and parade them in front of majestic lions, locked behind bars, and say “me human: you animal ... me great: you nothing but banged up prisoners” ... then there’s lots of laughs.
It doesn’t make us feel ‘great’ but at least, in the eyes of our children (who we’ve taken to the zoo and fed hamburgers) it makes us feel a whole lot better about ourselves. We’re momentarily popular with the kids ... ‘special’ to them.
The very idea of putting another human into slavery is abhorrent but we do it to animals without a second thought. We empathise with other humans because they’re just like us, but animals ... they aren’t anything like us, so we don’t see them as individuals but like peas in a pod. We see them collectively. Each is part of a whole and not much more - the antithesis of the ‘great individual’ (exception: Inspector Rex). Animals are the great un-great. They’re furniture - beautiful to look at, useful, but of no importance beyond that. An animal doesn’t even have a soul ... so we say!
We’re so used to seeing animals in paddocks in the countryside or in cages at the zoo (both animal prisons) that we see no ugliness. In fact we see them in the opposite way - the countryside and the zoo are fun to go to. Kids love to see the animals - they ask to go ... and we don’t tell them there’s anything wrong with these places. Is it any wonder that abolitionism has to be invented, to prick or expunge this insane gaoling instinct humans have concerning animals?
So, what do we have here? What am I saying? That in some ways our attitudes have been high-jacked, that our thoughts are not our own, that all adults in every country (and that includes your mum, your friend, your doctor, your teacher, almost everyone) have lost touch with their very soul ... that they have no opinions of their own ... do I mean that everyone’s been manipulated?
It’s come to this - we accept the worst thing imaginable - the torture and murder of animals. We accept it as being okay. But, in reality, it’s rather like thinking child-molesting is okay, and everyone knows that’s one huge crime.
Animals-in-slavery number as many as humans. They’re our slaves. We’ve got used to that ... so used to it that we no longer know it ... that is, until we sit down and try to imagine a human being actually, deliberately hurting even one them. Wow! And for what? But to say this, to denigrate virtually everyone for this, makes me seem like one angry dude, as if I’m standing in the middle of a hundred thousand football fans and shouting at them, “Football stinks”.
What Animal Rights advocates are saying looks like one
gigantic insult, levelled at the hugest number of people imaginable.
So, I’m trying to turn that around by saying ... “Yes, it’s wrong, it’s all so unnecessary, the enslaving and abuse of animals ought to stop ...”, but I know this won’t attract anyone. I must come up with something more optimistic, about us all. So, here it is.
The meat-eating, zoo-visiting, ethically-challenged person is a mix. I’m a mix. It’s not about who is better than the other, it’s just that we each have sensitivities in different areas, and those who’re sensitive to the animals’ plight may be less sensitive in some other areas. None of us can afford to be smug. In my own personal mix there are stupidities and insensitivities mixed in with things no one would quarrel with.
I see greatness in most every person I meet (because I choose to go looking for it) but I don’t conjure it out of thin air, I actually see it. And I see it because I can’t miss it. Because it’s there and so common in all of us. But if you don’t consciously go looking for it, it goes unnoticed. I, like most others, employ modesty to hide it from myself (and so I should) but that hides it from others too. I don’t see myself as great and others don’t tell me so anyway, but when they do tell me I’m special, that’s a fantastic feeling. However, that’s how I might want to feel, to feel ‘special’, but that might be my biggest problem.
We want to be special. That is better or more outstanding than others ... as famous people seem to be. And we all know that famous people are few in number (at any given time), whereas the not-famous are many and very forgettable ... and we do so want immortality, to be remembered ... as if that could make us happy ... by helping us live longer in others’ memory of us. We want to be so ‘special’ that we’re unforgettable. That’s vanity gone crazy!
‘Great’ may be different, in that it’s a feeling of satisfaction which has some sense of motion about it, as if we’re ongoing, striving to be engaged in universal pursuits. The trouble is we want to be recognised for our greatness all the time. On the one hand we deny our own greatness and on the other we want it so badly. And it doesn’t come. And eventually we give up and settle for conformity - the big second-best. Our greatness is allowed to wither, or worse, become a need for ‘specialness’, for the preciousness of wanting-to-be-remembered-or-revered (read ‘immortal’). How stupid is that when we’re already as ‘great’ as ever great can be.
To those few individuals who might know us well, who like us, to them we may seem great - they possibly see it ... but not exactly in that way. When this same word is used to describe just about everything these days it becoems so watered down as to be meaningless. What is truly ‘great’ is something maybe too universal to be defined. ‘Great’ may not be in our lexicon, it being too overpowering a concept to contemplate. We may not feel adequate enough to acknowledge it, either in our self or in others ... and out of that comes a depreciation that is nothing short of wasteful.
I might be greater than I could ever want to be, but if I simply don’t see it I might instead, out of desperation, become narcissistic and ego-driven. Oh! And then the frustrations hit. Oh the agony! Then, certain of my more impressive attributes are concealed from me ... and a much more uncertain person-within pops up, who is swamped by past mistakes, saying, “I wouldn’t have done that if I were really great”. “Great people are like this ...not like me”, and in my own mind I string off a list of famous people I admire, and say, “I can’t identify with their greatness because it’s too different to any greatness I see in myself”.
When kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up they say “famous”, which probably means they just want to be thought of as ‘great’.
The hum drum world doesn’t recognise me because I’m not rich - we aren’t worthy to be rewarded for who we are. If we are nothing, and have nothing, it’s because we’re not special enough. And so eventually we give up on our own greatness and emulate the specialness we see in others ... who seem ‘much greater than me’. We lose touch with our own original thinking (based on instinct and personal experience) and say, “If ‘they’ do it, it must be okay for me to do it” ... but, as it happens, the ‘emulated’ are not very great at all - the ‘great’ people don’t set much of an example.
So we take the kids to the zoo, and parade them in front of majestic lions, locked behind bars, and say “me human: you animal ... me great: you nothing but banged up prisoners” ... then there’s lots of laughs.
It doesn’t make us feel ‘great’ but at least, in the eyes of our children (who we’ve taken to the zoo and fed hamburgers) it makes us feel a whole lot better about ourselves. We’re momentarily popular with the kids ... ‘special’ to them.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The pleasure-heads
213:
Those who make a living out of animals aren’t likely to recognise animal rights. But for those who don’t, who’re simply held by food preference, there’s some hope ... and it’s from these the Animal Rights Movement potentially finds support.
If the hard-hearted animal abusers hate AR it’s because of the potential threat it poses to their livelihoods. They’re not only committed meat-eaters themselves but they get their wages from the Industry. Animals are economic concerns not ethical challenges. It’s bank accounts before moral accountability, pragmatics before ideals.
People who are more sympathetic to the liberation of animals, despite having a foot in both camps, are the ones we try to persuade. We suggest they boycott what the other lot sell. Change is very slow, but the tide is turning towards compassion for animals and better food. A better-informed, more sophisticated customer is less attracted to what’s on offer, because it’s looking dodgy on all counts.
Vegan principle and talk of animals having rights is not good for the Animal Industry, but it’s not only that customers are becoming more conscious of health and compassion, it’s that they’re getting weary of hedonism ... of using attractive-looking animal products. Today, as never before, we seek pleasure, but it’s a ‘Seconds-World’ pleasure. It’s as if we’re squeezing the last life out of the animal-machine, knowing it can’t last much longer, probably realising the time to change is fast approaching ... that ill-health and horror-stories about animal-torture aren’t going to go away. And if we don’t change for ethical reasons then surely economic and ecological factors will eventually force us.
So what have we got? There are vegans and there are ‘pleasure-heads’; while we’re mindful of what we eat, they still consume their favourite foods, undisturbed; we say what we say and they maintain a protective shield against it; they prefer their hedonist lifestyle and we can’t change that, which is why we must move on.
Our place is with those without vested interests, who’re more likely to listen to what we have to say, who’ll still think their food tastes good, but be more open to the suggestion … that other tastes and textures and richness exist in plant-based foods. On that basis alone they may be willing to listen, and once they know a few central facts, then it’s up to them to shop around and try new things.
It’s perhaps the first time the ethical dimension to shopping is considered. And when people realise, to their amazement, that non-animal foods are okay to eat ... or in fact better to eat ... they become open to eating ‘vegan’ all the time.
Those who make a living out of animals aren’t likely to recognise animal rights. But for those who don’t, who’re simply held by food preference, there’s some hope ... and it’s from these the Animal Rights Movement potentially finds support.
If the hard-hearted animal abusers hate AR it’s because of the potential threat it poses to their livelihoods. They’re not only committed meat-eaters themselves but they get their wages from the Industry. Animals are economic concerns not ethical challenges. It’s bank accounts before moral accountability, pragmatics before ideals.
People who are more sympathetic to the liberation of animals, despite having a foot in both camps, are the ones we try to persuade. We suggest they boycott what the other lot sell. Change is very slow, but the tide is turning towards compassion for animals and better food. A better-informed, more sophisticated customer is less attracted to what’s on offer, because it’s looking dodgy on all counts.
Vegan principle and talk of animals having rights is not good for the Animal Industry, but it’s not only that customers are becoming more conscious of health and compassion, it’s that they’re getting weary of hedonism ... of using attractive-looking animal products. Today, as never before, we seek pleasure, but it’s a ‘Seconds-World’ pleasure. It’s as if we’re squeezing the last life out of the animal-machine, knowing it can’t last much longer, probably realising the time to change is fast approaching ... that ill-health and horror-stories about animal-torture aren’t going to go away. And if we don’t change for ethical reasons then surely economic and ecological factors will eventually force us.
So what have we got? There are vegans and there are ‘pleasure-heads’; while we’re mindful of what we eat, they still consume their favourite foods, undisturbed; we say what we say and they maintain a protective shield against it; they prefer their hedonist lifestyle and we can’t change that, which is why we must move on.
Our place is with those without vested interests, who’re more likely to listen to what we have to say, who’ll still think their food tastes good, but be more open to the suggestion … that other tastes and textures and richness exist in plant-based foods. On that basis alone they may be willing to listen, and once they know a few central facts, then it’s up to them to shop around and try new things.
It’s perhaps the first time the ethical dimension to shopping is considered. And when people realise, to their amazement, that non-animal foods are okay to eat ... or in fact better to eat ... they become open to eating ‘vegan’ all the time.
Monday, July 18, 2011
The disconnect
212:
Because the law allows us to exploit animals it’s not a crime, whether it’s zoo-caging of exotics, vivisecting mice or factory farming.
There’s a ‘disconnect’ between our own inner beauty and our base food cravings. Animal food is endemic to human lifestyle, to which most of us are addicted. It’s attractive to educated and rich in the same way as the uneducated and poor. We’re seduced by it (to the blood-salt-sugar-texture thing).
Our number one impulse is to find food that’s nutritious and enjoyable ... and hot on its heels, guilt, sends us to number two impulse. We hurry to justify eating ‘that type of food’. No problem ... because it’s justified simply by being socially acceptable. If we can afford to buy it, we can eat what we like, and be liked despite what we eat. And in reality, it’s made even easier for us - because rarely, if ever, do we have to justify ANY of it anyway, to anybody. It seems that, for almost all people, the (ethical) provenance of our food is not a problem - animal-eating doesn’t bother us.
But it does bother children. When kids first find out about bacon being a pig or tender mutton being a lamb, it’s disturbing. I doubt if most kids ever get their head around that one - the contrast between the indelible feeling of adult-love and what must seem to them like adult-cruelty, in regard to animals just like their own pets at home. They possibly feel conflicted - perhaps smelling breakfast bacon cooking, conflicted between their own salivating tastebuds and thoughts about ‘what happens to animals’.
As usual, reality wins. Kids mustn’t complain. If they don’t do what they’re told they starve ... or, more realistically, they’re denied lots of yummy things that kids like. Children are bribed with food. They’re indoctrinated, from birth, to conform to a ‘meat-and-two-veg diet. They must conform, otherwise their carers are put to all sorts of inconvenience.
Is it called ‘neotony’, when you carry something juvenile into adulthood? Do we secretly just want to suck at the breast and not have to bother about investigating everything we put in our mouths? This ‘provenance’ thing (over food) - what’s behind it? Is it really worth looking into? Isn’t it better just to ignore it altogether.
It’s 2011, and are we still stuck between being loving-responsible-adults and teat-hungry-out-of-controls?
Because the law allows us to exploit animals it’s not a crime, whether it’s zoo-caging of exotics, vivisecting mice or factory farming.
There’s a ‘disconnect’ between our own inner beauty and our base food cravings. Animal food is endemic to human lifestyle, to which most of us are addicted. It’s attractive to educated and rich in the same way as the uneducated and poor. We’re seduced by it (to the blood-salt-sugar-texture thing).
Our number one impulse is to find food that’s nutritious and enjoyable ... and hot on its heels, guilt, sends us to number two impulse. We hurry to justify eating ‘that type of food’. No problem ... because it’s justified simply by being socially acceptable. If we can afford to buy it, we can eat what we like, and be liked despite what we eat. And in reality, it’s made even easier for us - because rarely, if ever, do we have to justify ANY of it anyway, to anybody. It seems that, for almost all people, the (ethical) provenance of our food is not a problem - animal-eating doesn’t bother us.
But it does bother children. When kids first find out about bacon being a pig or tender mutton being a lamb, it’s disturbing. I doubt if most kids ever get their head around that one - the contrast between the indelible feeling of adult-love and what must seem to them like adult-cruelty, in regard to animals just like their own pets at home. They possibly feel conflicted - perhaps smelling breakfast bacon cooking, conflicted between their own salivating tastebuds and thoughts about ‘what happens to animals’.
As usual, reality wins. Kids mustn’t complain. If they don’t do what they’re told they starve ... or, more realistically, they’re denied lots of yummy things that kids like. Children are bribed with food. They’re indoctrinated, from birth, to conform to a ‘meat-and-two-veg diet. They must conform, otherwise their carers are put to all sorts of inconvenience.
Is it called ‘neotony’, when you carry something juvenile into adulthood? Do we secretly just want to suck at the breast and not have to bother about investigating everything we put in our mouths? This ‘provenance’ thing (over food) - what’s behind it? Is it really worth looking into? Isn’t it better just to ignore it altogether.
It’s 2011, and are we still stuck between being loving-responsible-adults and teat-hungry-out-of-controls?
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