Violence

1381: 

The Animal Industries not only exploit animals but their customers too.  Chemically addictive and economically attractive but unhealthy foods are the big money spinners of each stage of these industries, be it production, processing or retailing.  It is in their interests not to reveal the violent origins of animal-based foods.  Therefore the cruelties go largely unnoticed by most people.  In every country of the world, when it comes to domesticated food animals, the vast majority of people don’t give the matter of 'animal cruelty' a second thought.  Most people are only vaguely aware of what goes on behind the closed doors of factory farms and abattoirs.

What does concern people is the quality of the product.  Is it good tasting, is it healthy, is it cheap, is it fresh?  With food, particularly food with animal content, provenance is hardly ever considered.  Some make a gesture.  They’ll ensure their eggs are free-range or their milk is from organically fed cows.  But that’s as far as it goes.  The customer doesn’t enquire too deeply, for fear of what they may discover.  Mostly, the animals themselves are of little concern. 

           

Violence-free fridges

1380: 

Every day I work in other people’s homes and often put my lunch in their fridge.  I can't help having a squiz, to see if I’ve stumbled on an animal-free content - a vegan fridge.  In thirty years of fridge-peeping I’ve had no luck.  How disappointing is that?

         

All too often, there they lie, the same old bits of dead flesh in nice white trays or cheese or cow’s milk or a pc-correct carton of free range eggs.

Here in the privacy of people’s fridges is evidence of how far we’ve come in making ethical progress.  What we eat at home is usually a secret – no one (but for a nosey person like me) is ever going to find out what foods one has spent money on and intends to consume.  So no one ever knows what humanitarian values are held regarding food animals, be they sheep, lobsters or chickens.  For the sake of keeping a well stocked fridge, most people ignore the ethics behind the stock.  What's there has been somehow magically transformed from something ugly, the killing of a live animal, into something beautiful, the product which when eaten will give so much pleasure.  The animals' treatment and death is not associated any longer with the food product.  But in truth, there would be no product without the violence, and so we must conclude that it is violence that so profoundly characterises our species.  And let it be said that if we are happy about the violence, and the mass death cult that results from it, then we’ll carry on behaving as usual, as carnivores and omnivores.  But if we aren’t happy about human violence, and if we can see a far improved world without it, then moving away from animal food and clothing is where a ‘transformation-of-the-species’ starts.

Animal-based food symbolises humans’ most uncaring attitude.  No caring where this sort of food comes from, represents a general acceptance of the hard side of ourselves.  The softer side of ourselves is drawn towards harmlessness and non-violence, and that’s what vegans are trying to emphasise.  This approach to life makes ours very different to other’s, because we buy different things to eat and consequently we have ‘violence-free’ fridges. 

Environment and Animal Rights

1379:

Environmental concerns potentially bring us all close to agreement with each other.  Who in their right mind thinks the environment doesn’t matter, especially now that it’s so badly damaged?  If we love nothing else, we all love this planet.  We hate to see it being destroyed, and when it's in danger we all want to save it.  We love the sea, the forests, the mountains and the wild beings that live there.  But there's an exclusion clause - we exclude anything that can be used for food, and that includes those animals we have domesticated for the purpose, and if not that purpose then some other.  We don't love them!!  We don't see that by making use of animals for our own purpose has anything to do with saving the planet.  Which is why Animal Rights doesn’t sound like a planet-saving matter, nor that our giving rights to animals could be of any benefit to ourselves.  It’s almost as if the animals we enslave, for the purpose of feeding and clothing us, are so central to our own ‘rights’ that there’s no room for the animals to have any.  In the light of self-interest, Animal Rights isn’t in any obvious way good for us, and if there’s no ‘me’-benefit there, then all we'll see is inconvenience.  We say, and win agreement for saying, “Let ‘animals’ become an issue later on.  It isn’t urgent, like ‘the environment’”.

But of course it is urgent, as can be seen by the deadly decline of animal welfare standards and the shame it causes many of us to feel.  But, it’s likely we’ll do nothing about ‘animals’ until we have to, until it impacts on us much more directly.  We might want to develop our ‘nice side’, certainly, but not that much.  We’ll support larger cages for hens but little more.  That’s as far as empathy-for-hens goes.

This is as far from ‘the abolition of animal slavery’ as you can get.  The acceptance of ‘confinement’ is a product of confined thinking, and it’s a long way from thinking-humane.   Even the free-ranging hen, no longer confined to a cage, has to be brutally executed at the end of its economically viable life.  And that too is as far from addressing the matter of animal rights as to make a joke of it.

Communicating without Violence

1378: 

When we become vegan, if we speak up, then we automatically stand out, and obviously our nearest and dearest will notice.  We run the risk of becoming outcasts.  Our decision to stand apart like this may seem radical but it’s necessary, in order to balance the bull-headedness of the majority of people.  When we criticise the institutional violence of the meat trade we also criticise the consumer; most people will feel that is being levelled at themselves, because they eat meat.  So when we imply that omnivores are guilty of “attacking and killing animals on a mass scale”, we will always inflame emotions.  And that makes us seem aggressive.  That’s hard to handle maybe, but it’s not surprising considering what we are saying.  For our part, there’s no reason to fall out with our friends about it.  We must come to accept emotional reactions and learn to live with them.  And hope they can do the same!

         

For any of us who believe that what society is doing to animals is wrong, our making a strong statement might seem justified.  To us.  We may be surprised at the strength of the reaction we get - that no one takes this subject seriously or even appears interested in it.  But why be surprised?  If we go out to meet them and ‘stir’, we’re effectively attacking a person’s whole lifestyle.  Obviously the animal advocate is going to be seen as intrusive if they bring the subject up, so we’re not going to be winning any brownie points from them on the strength of being passionate.  That passion, along with our message, will always be downplayed or ignored.  People will always turn away - they have to, because they eat animals.  By trying to shock people into changing their minds, we risk pushing our arguments too hard and too fast.  We don’t need to take advantage of a captive audience, and free-willed people won’t stand for that anyway.  That’s why we need to examine this interface very carefully, to see what opportunity there is for creative communication. 

Attitude versus Attitude

1376: 

Being vegan means putting up with people’s misunderstanding of veganism.  Vegans seem like ‘refusniks’, as if we’re resentful and uncooperative, and people who think themselves superior.  But that’s not how we see ourselves and it’s not what we are on about.

A non-vegan friend of mine mentioned to me the other day that global warming was the biggest issue facing us, but I said the other big issue threatening the world was the practice of animal eating.  But before I could expand on my outrageous theory I was stopped.  He ‘knew’ what subject I wanted to bring up and he wanted to close down the discussion.  The problem was, he thought he knew what I was going to say, guessing I’d have no trouble opening up a whole, deep discussion of certain matters for which he had neither the time nor the inclination to get into.  So I never got the chance to explain what I had in mind. I wanted to equalise the argument, certainly not disagree with what he thought but to add another dimension which he might not have considered before.

         

It’s not easy to find anyone to listen to you these days, especially when people get wind of what we are trying to bring up.  But we have to come to terms with that – it’s perhaps not how we’d like it to be but how it actually is.  We can’t expect others to have a ‘Eureka moment’ after listening to what we have to say.  We can’t even expect them to want to listen.  Their attitude-shift is not something that’s going to be handed to us on a plate.  It will have to be worked for, and without a bull-in-a-china-shop approach too.  

Two forces

1375: 

In advocating for animal rights there are two things going on at the same time: we are trying to advocate for the animals but we are also trying to come across as acceptable humans.  On one level we need to seem just like the rest, not better than anyone else.  On another level we want to stand out as principled individuals and be taken seriously.

         

Can they be combined?  Is that an impossible dream, given the subject?  Animal Rights is unpopular and if the subject makes us unpopular for talking about it, we might just have to accept that.

         

Vegans have two choices - we can either be acceptable and risk being ineffective or be just plain unacceptable and “to hell with social acceptance - better to be disliked than ignored”.  These two choices are far apart; we either stand up for what we believe or risk alienating the support we already have.  How hard or how soft do we go in?

         

Some days I just go along silently with whatever happens.  I don’t speak out. I keep smiling and everyone likes me.  Other days I bite back, shocking people who thought I was a sweet guy - one day I’m nice, the next I’m not; if your voice is too soft no one can hear you, but if it’s too loud it’s a threatening value judgement.

Perhaps we’ve got to get people to like us enough to want to listen to us.  It’s the eternal question - be too sweet and they’ll not even hear us, be too pushy and they’ll run a mile.  So maybe it’s best to NOT try to convert friends and family but confine our outspokenness to speaking in public.  Then no one feels obliged to listen – they can walk away.  If they do listen we can speak outrageously and courageously.  If we take a risk, we can win respect just for that.

         

When we’re at home we might think it best to abstain, for the sake of keeping the peace.  And then we can still retain the acceptance and emotional support of those who know us best. That will keep us stable and secure enough to go out and be more outspoken, without needing too much audience-reassurance. 

Why vegans go out on a limb

1374:y

Being vegan is like belonging to a family.  It’s my ‘group’.  It’s nice to belong and to be amongst people I can identify with.  It’s even nicer to feel special, since we all want to feel special.  We like being special to our family, to our circle of friends.  Most of all we’d like to be special to our whole town, and what we wouldn’t give to be famous in our own country?  The bigger the group that 'knows us and respects us’, the more special we feel.  Many people would willingly sell their soul for fame.  And all this is within the bounds of possibility, but only on condition we stay loyal to Society and its core values.

If the values of our society seem wrong and we have to move away from it, as vegans certainly do, then we can expect ostracism and people’s deliberate misunderstanding of us.  It’s the opposite of approval.  We end up feeling alienated, and since no one likes being excluded we all try to look as normal as possible.  No one wants to look like a freak.

         

Yet vegans accept all this downside and stand against almost the whole of their society, caring nothing for their own wants, other than being given the chance to explain why. 

As a society we all more or less dress the same, talk the same, behave the same, that is, until we come to something we can’t accept, which we must speak out against, even if we’re going to be harshly judged for it.  To vegans, that very judgement is the worst thing we have to put up with from our society.  It’s the unfairness of the judgement that makes many of us so angry, because some of our very sensible arguments are being wantonly ignored.  And they’re being ignored by people who are obviously capable of understanding them. 

Animal Rights advocates often feel like victims, and that’s bad enough, but there are dangers for us in this; we victims tend to show it.  It can looks ‘martyr-ey’.  It can seem like conceit, as if we are feeling superior to others.  In response to being made to feel like a victim, we are tempted to become victimisers ourselves, with our swag of arguments at hand.  We seem to be the types of people who want to be judging those who don’t agree with us.

         

The real reason behind Society’s harsh judgment of us is that we seem to be following principles which haven’t even been thought about by the average omnivore.  So, from our vegan point of view, it seems like a no-win game we play with our adversaries: it starts off reasonably enough, then, when dialogue changes to a vegan monologue, it all goes pear-shaped.  It’s hard to know where we should stop, especially when we’re getting no intelligent counter arguments.  It’s easy for us to go too far, and maybe blow our whole relationship with a person, by being too ‘over the top’ with what we say.  Sometimes if we spot an unreasonable disagreement, we become aggressive in order to make ourselves (and our good sense) heard.  And if the response to what we say seems frivolous, we might feel compelled to show how deeply we feel about Animal Rights issues.  And then it’s a fine line between being assertive and being aggressive.

To be outrageously noisy is one thing - making value judgements about people to their faces is another.  It’s usually counter productive.  Today, at a place I was working, a client said to me, “I see you’re a vegetarian” (he’d read the slogans on my bike, and thought it said something about animal eating) and I hit back with, “Yes, I don’t eat what you’re eating” (he was eating meat stew for lunch).  I thought about it afterwards.  That was a rude way of replying, even though I said it as ‘a laugh’.  Perhaps I was miffed, because he’d been cooking beef for his lunch and I couldn’t stand the smell, and couldn’t remove myself as I normally would.  He’d been innocently making himself some lunch, as he does everyday.

         

I looked back on it, when I got home in the evening.  I got to thinking “me different to him”.  Apart from his beef lunch and he being thirty years older than me, he was overall a much nicer person than me.  And that made me think!

         

As soon as there’s any disapproval in my mind, however convincing my argument, the message of it gets lost-in-delivery, in the sound my words make.  And I know that when the message doesn’t actually get across, I’m not being much help to the animals.

         

The big negative here, after any bun-fight, is that we get a reputation for being a bit aggressive.  That way we lose support all round.  And, after all, the losing of friends isn’t really the main aim here!  It isn’t for reasons of wanting to make war, that we go out on a limb in the first place.

Non Separation

1373: 

Being associated with the Animal Rights movement or the Vegan movement requires a big commitment.  There’s so much ground work to be done by so few people.

To keep up our drive, we need to have a high frustration threshold, because almost everyone is opposed to what we are saying.  And people don’t tell you so.  Instead, they ignore us and hope we’ll go away.

Of course we don’t go away, even though we’re suffocating under an avalanche of indifference.  It’s debilitating, maybe because no other activists, in minority groups, put themselves up against such a brick wall.  Vegans are up against the ‘convention of animal eating’.  Almost everyone is implicated.  If it’s not eating them it’s wearing them or using them in some other exploitative way.

What happens to animals is ugly.  We know it and we don’t want to be reminded of it.  Vegan animal advocates are a thorn in the side of almost everyone (maybe not yet consciously so) and, for that reason, we are not liked.  And because we are scorned, we get lonely. We get lonelier still because, within this small grouping of people, there are so many different approaches, and lots of disagreement.  Each one of us believes, “my way of ‘breaking through to resistant people’ is the best way”.

Inevitably antipathy exists between individual activists.  We’re not unlike any other political grouping in that way.  But it’s perhaps worse for vegans, who are working for Animal Rights, because we’re such a tiny percentage of the overall population, especially here in Australia.  The realities of ‘animal activism’ are hard enough on a personal level, so what I’m suggesting here is that we don’t need to add to our considerable present-day difficulties, by distancing ourselves from the omnivore.

The aim, after all, is to connect, NOT to draw apart.  If we even feel slightly superior to others, whether they’re fellow activists or red-neck meat-eaters, we head into separation.  By separating, we make ourselves look morally superior, and that’s not a good look. 

The Cageman

1372: 

Here’s a re-definition of altruism - things we do voluntarily but which we do because it’s difficult not to do them, and ultimately because it gives us pleasure.  Perhaps it’s relative altruism?  I remember my parents playing with their first grandchild and just loving it, even though they were exhausted by her.  It seems they wanted to be exhausted in that way.

         

Does 'balanced altruism' sounds better?  We’re using whatever energy we have, to find a really satisfying balance between selfish and selfless - our actions benefitting our self as well as others. It’s not done for the brownie points or for enlightenment, just for the fun of it, although primarily it aims at making fun for others.  If there’s no fun there’s no altruism.

         

A less self-righteous type of altruism keeps just one eye on one’s self; it restores energy back to the giver-out, relative to what’s being put out.  In this way the energy is self perpetuating - indeed expanding not expending.  And if we risk our precious energy on uncertain outcomes, it’s important to keep it interesting and original, so that it becomes part of our own creativity.  It's part of  ‘creating the reality’ we want, without necessarily seeing it become that reality.

         

Having good intentions or seriously attempting something, if we’ve done our best, the end-result will justify the energy outlay.  If it then noticeably works, our altruistic act builds confidence in our instincts.  It then becomes a ‘certainty-of-instinct’, which is a central building block for next time.  Our own energy supply is precious - too useful to squander.  But trusting our own instincts lets us risk our energy on future uncertainties.  It fosters experimentation and trialling.

Having said all that as a prelude, we come to the grim nature of things today.  We come to ‘The Cageman’. He makes money out of building cages to imprison animals.  His instrument (which immobilises the animal to conserve energy) maximises the cheapness of the animal's useful end-product.  This cheapness is attractive to animal-product consumers, and blinds them to the horrors of the caged-animal's life.  By withdrawing our support from ‘the cageman’, we contribute towards putting him out of business.  But this isn't just about Animal Rights politics but core values associated with altruism.

         

There are two sides to every story.  Once people go vegan, the animal-farmer (as well as the cageman) loses his or her means of making a living.  However, the farmers have a role to play in our society, so we must keep a place in our heart for them - but encourage them to make their living another way, by NOT farming animals.  However, let it be said that alternative money-making ventures are few and far between in the country, which is why farmers make use of animals to make their income.  If there were other ways of making a living in rural areas, animal farming would be less attractive to any but sadists.  And if there were no more animal farmers then we’d have to end our habit of using animals’ bodies for food and clothing and entertainment.  We’d use more ethical products instead.

Altruism provides us with an instinct for finding alternative ways.

Good greed

1371: 

The more confident we are with altruism, the bigger the difference we can make with it.  Or, put another way, a revamped altruism isn’t so much about being good as being confident.  If it does nothing else it gives others the feeling they want to make a difference, attracted by the idea of being confident, attracted to the optimism contained in that feeling.  Confidence is launching a boat that will float, having faith that things will turn out well, indeed faith that we ‘live in a safe universe’.

         

If life is really all about having faith, whether in some master plan-for-our-planet or whatever form it takes, it’s a faith that things will turn out the way they’re meant to.  If we have that sort of faith, call it optimism, we won’t allow our doubts to screw up everything we aim to do.

         

Doubt makes things look impossible.  Doubt makes it impossible to see ourselves operating more selflessly.  And if that’s true, then it’s ‘doubt’ that makes us think altruism’s only about goodness and idealism, whereas it might be nothing less than a good business deal.  Maybe it’s like ‘clean dealing’, that is motivated, and galvanised by an opposition to greed - turning it on its head, and making it a greed for others, a greed for a fabulous future for all of us.

         

You may say, "Dream on Brother!"

The sticky point here is that altruism doesn’t bring happiness, or not quite as one might expect it, anyway.  It's suitable for long term plans which we might not still be around to benefit from.  Altruism means back-breaking work for a while longer, requiring (developing) patience.  But the killer is doubt and pessimism.

         

Doubt plunges us back into this bad habit of gloom and self pity.  Altruism, if it’s about anything at all, is about the adventure of problem solving.  It's the stimulation we all need to challenge ourselves, which ultimately makes altering our lifestyle easier.  When we do things without needing to get materially rewarded for doing them, then we have altruism in the bag!

Altruism is Irresistible

1370: 

We need to discover if altruism can work for us, at first privately and then collectively.  As individuals, we need to take the initiative without waiting around for others to go first.  It’s up to us to bite the same bullet we accuse others of not biting.  It’s up to us to find out if our initiatives are safe, then go ahead and enjoy adopting them.  We have to be happy taking on more than our fair share of responsibility (which in truth is the most satisfying side), and it’s not a matter of who does more or who is guiltier, who’s more culpable or more capable - the repairing-ness of altruism shines brightly enough here, because it’s going to be the one thing that transforms violence.  It gives humanity a different type of motivation, which will take us into the future and help us gear up for an entirely different type of world.

         

However, big repair needs big numbers of people, armies of advocates, not just a willing few.  Today the army is growing but slowly.  Humans drag their heels because it seems like such a big step to take.  This is a very big personal step, to go vegan and then start to advocate.

         

For each advocate there must be the energy source and motivational force, strong enough to withstand anything thrown at us.  We have to transform the way we function as individuals, the way we think and act, to set off a certain type of chain reaction.  Vegans are hopefully trying to inspire people by making altruism irresistible.

         

As a force for transformation, altruism might just do the trick, but there are dangers, one of which being that we advocates get carried away by ‘the idea’.  And we forget the principle of thinking about others before, not after, we think of ourselves.

         

If this idea is to work, it must ‘go to the feeling’; it must be comfortable enough within us for us to 'do' it.  Altruism is potentially strong enough to dissolve our value judgements of others, and in so doing it allows us to step aside from violence.  And if that means being not quite so pushy or not being so righteous, or not being so right, then so be it.  Ego-bruising at worst; this is not about us. It’s about the animals, okay?

         

Our eyes are so well trained that they’re usually focused on the main chance.  Opportunity.  Altruism suggests a revolution in our thinking, no less.  If we’re willing to accept a different sort of reward, then it comes in the form of seeing others also acting altruistically.

Plant-based Diet

1369: 

This crude, human-advantaged world we live in wasn’t what Mum and Dad expected for their family - surely the world had learnt its lesson, about violence and war?

         

But it was never going to be that simple.  The war on animals was continuing, and about to get worse.  ‘That’ war, that bomb, that cage - I suppose each had to come into being, so that humans could see good reasons for finding alternatives.  The lesson couldn’t have been clearer. The Second World War was a true performance of violence.  This war, and The Bomb that appeared in the finale, were supposed to revolt us so much that we’d say, “Stop.  We must find a better way to live together”, but intentions are ephemeral.  The resolve to end violence gave way to the wonders of post war washing machines and TV, disposable income and a generally more modern world, skating on the thin ice of hope.  We hoped that war was a thing of the past, as was hunger.

Food became plentiful and cheap.  The insecure human, with a dread of hunger, ignored the fact that war-violence on humans had connections with food-violence on animals – we took it for granted that we had always used violence to feed ourselves, especially since our primary foods always came from animals.  And now, with new farming methods, there was a promise of food security, so we took up these 'improvements' with enthusiasm.  And because we were, and still are, almost entirely human-centred, we've been able to accept the cruelty of the technologies of animal husbandry, and even come to accept that they've reached diabolical levels.

In terms of food, it seems we humans always get what we want, if only because we are used to using violence.  We’ve never tried any other way.  When it comes to our favourite animal foods, we are prepared to enslave and then kill them, and then eat them.  Here are animals.  They’re simply here for humans to make use of.  

But instinctively we suspect this is all wrong.  This is the big ethical question which we must now face.  But most people still say, “We’re not ready for it”!  And you can see why.  Peoples’ attention is directed elsewhere, towards other matters, in fact ANY matter that will divert them from this bete-noire, this matter of animal slavery.

The whole world is currently focused on climate change.  It’s made us sit up and take notice, but not much more.  We still believe in serendipity, that it will all work out.  We talk about it a lot but don’t do much.  It's the same with ‘going vegan’ - it's a nice idea but we just can’t get it together, because we keep imagining the inconvenience!  Our own lifestyles would be screwed up overnight, and as for our personal relationships!  And then, what about our own habits-of-addiction?

Acting for the greater good is also a nice idea, but one is reluctant to ‘make a start’ when one’s mates won’t.  Whether we are proactively working to save the environment, feeding the hungry, boycotting animal products, we’d rather say, “You first, me next”!  So we wait.

         

Any excuse will do.  We wait for vegan foods to come down in price, so it’s cheap enough to consider buying.  We wait.

But we know that there must be a way of supplying food without causing chaos and misery to so many sentient beings.

Vegans can do one thing better than omnivores, they can look at the faces of the animals.  We can look them in the eye.  If you take up a plant-based diet the experience is so lovely that you almost scream at the lost time spent dithering.  It’s something that gets more important as you grow older.  Plant-based foods fix up most health problems, but that’s quite incidental.

Humans win the day

1368: 

By associating with the cage-building anti-altruists, by buying their products, consumers condone what they have done to animals. In other words, they show their acceptance of cruelty when it comes to the production of food and clothing from animals.  

Since we humans have corralled and kept animals captive for our own convenience, we have learnt the benefits of cruelty.  We know it is opposite to empathy, just as we know that it runs counter to the central tenet of altruism.  But nevertheless we do it, 'for the best' - our best.

         

Take eggs for instance.  Scarce during the hungry times of the second world war, but afterwards plentiful.  When we allowed the cage to be used as an emergency means of feeding hungry people, we neglected to write in a twilight clause, and so it has continued.  Now 'caged' eggs are mass produced, available everywhere, and cheap.  The food industry uses them liberally to make their products rich and attractive. People are hooked on them, and like so many other animal products, we buy them because we like the taste of them.

         

Perhaps people didn’t see the ethical dangers when factory farming started.  All those lovely cheap eggs, and who knew or cared where they came from?  Boycotting the battery cage would have proved very inconvenient for all concerned, so it continued.  The animal industries were proud to be supplying cheap food, and consumers were dazzled by the new food-aplenty improvements to their lifestyle.  Too bad if billions of animals had to suffer.

         

We thought we were going to get away with it - at last it was proven that humans can rule Nature, by perfecting the enslavement of animals.  Score to date: humans one: animals zero.

Dodging ethics

1367: 

The men who came up with the idea of imprisoning hens in cages, set a trend.  As pioneers of the ultimate pragmatism, they invented and then developed the caging system.  Many of them went on to build other prisons, for other animals.  The ‘factory farm’ came into being.  Perhaps the idea came from a ‘death-camp’ mentality, giving a clue to the main weakness of humans - our ability to turn a blind eye for the sake of our own convenience, and to be able to dodge our ethics when it suited us.

The Cage

1366:

The first cage system was built to house the egg-laying bird.  The hen was to become the complete victim of her own menstrual cycle.  In order to mass produce her powerful protein package for humans, flock numbers were greatly increased and each individual animal was locked into a tiny cage (with two or three others), from which she would lay even more eggs than a free-ranging hen would.  This cunning idea was about to revolutionise food production systems.

The cage became an essential component of the industrially-mechanised treatment of animals.  By caging birds, the cage itself came to represent the most cynical suspension of compassion imaginable.  In order to guarantee food supply, humans decided to become thoroughly pragmatic.  The caging system, an emergency response to war-conditions, was a measure taken at a time when many other horrible things were happening, and its introduction was barely noticed.

         

By the end of the war, ‘battery farms’ were already established.  The system was based on the idea of having batteries of life-imprisonment cages.  The hen had been reduced to an egg-producing biological function of her body.  This was as far from caring and welfare as you could get.  Hens and other farm animals had become mere machines enslaved by the food industry.  These cage systems had been deliberately-created for efficient egg-laying, despite their being hell-hole environments.  Who could argue that the 'cage' was not the most anti-altruistic thing humans could have created?  Amongst an alarmingly few people there was outrage, that an animal, any sentient life form, could be reduced by humans to this tortured state; it gave rise to the concept of ‘speciesism’.

New levels of barbarity

1365: 

Seventy years ago, three near-simultaneous events took place.  First, there was a war grinding to a halt, millions dead, millions dying of starvation.  The ring master, Hitler, had badly scared people, and when he died, when this was all over, there was a new confidence to enlarge or start families.  Second, around the same time, an atom-splitting device was exploded (over two Japanese cities) showing how we could wreck the whole planet by just pressing a button.  These two events marked the end of an era and the beginning of another, a 'cold' war.  No sign of violence abating.  The third event, happening around the same time, was the problem of feeding people, where the war had brought hunger and much need for a reliable food supply.  Brains went to work, ethics were laid aside, and in came the cage.  Caged animals were now to become production units of human food, and animals were to be no longer regarded as sentient or to be considered as individuals.  A new and very nasty piece of violence!

The idea of confining a whole sentient species, holding their bodies in straight jackets for the span of their foreshortened lives, was the order of the day.  As we started to exploit the biology of the animal’s body, so we introduced an almost gratuitous cruelty into animal farming.  New husbandry methods brought new levels of barbarity, most especially by entombing and completely enslaving any animal deemed useful for feeding humans.

As the war was ending so the intensification of farming was being introduced, and it has increased exponentially, becoming more and more demonic in character, up to the present day.  Perhaps the most interesting and frightening phenomenon was that the more people knew of the cruelty involved, the more they turned away from knowing.  This was nothing short of a cauterising of consciousness, a backward step in human evolution.  As a response to both the cruelty and this convenient ignorance came the Animal Rights Movement.

Learning from the past

1364: 

Repairing Earth means repairing ourselves, and the most productive way to do that is by learning to put ourselves out a bit.  Altruistically.  But we need to look at our history and learn from our mistakes, so we don’t fall flat on our altruistic faces.

Now, since we can’t know what’s up ahead (any more than we can reach for the stars) we have to be schooled by the past, so that we can constructively bring the future into being.

Maybe we vegans see one simple, sparkling idea which stands out from the rest, allowing us to think differently.  Substantially so.  As soon as we change our thought patterns, then it follows that our whole nature may change.  A wind blows through, as if there's a ‘wanting’ for change.  It’s another way of empathy-governed life; our very nature is evolving, responding to that wind; in very practical terms it is simply uprooting self interest, and replacing that by wanting things to be good for others.  (And incidentally, it’s such a buzz to be around people who are experiencing these sorts of constructive feelings).  This is all rather a complete turn-around from the greed, self-interest motive.

This ‘other view on life’ might turn out to be our most mature quality (certainly the most useful!!).  Perhaps this is the greatest thing to be salvaged from our previous war-torn century – shame and blame growing into a more constructive attitude of resolve to repair things.  By our become conscious of consciousness itself, we start to see how we can actively ‘evolve’.  We see how, by applying ‘this other view’, we act evolve via empathy.

Looking back on how things have turned out, it’s hardly believable that so many humans could have so recently been involved in so much barbaric behaviour, and allowed things to turn out the way they have done.  And yet, albeit in different forms, the same barbaric behaviour is still thriving today.  In the future, others will look back and find what we take for granted today as being unbelievable, and yet, at the same time, they too won’t see what they’re involved with.  How do we, in the middle of this particular era-of-barbarism, stop.  Stop and take stock and consciously alter course?

         

Perhaps we must look back at the extraordinary events of the mid 1940's, where we see human nature in all its best and worst extremes.  We see bravery, altruism, waste and cruelty, all the big bricks with which we might be building a future.  It would be sad to think we could take nothing constructive out of all this.

Repairing the Machine Mind

1363: 

Many humans have been exploited and many lives wasted.  The age of the machines has arrived and the machine-mind is responsible for a lot of the damage we’ve done to each other.  We’ve even turned animals into machines, so that we can have them producing goods for us.  From the confines of their cages and concrete pens, things couldn’t be worse for them.  We don't care.  Our empathy levels are nowhere near as expanded as our intellectual powers.

But perhaps the tide is turning, things are changing, maybe because we can now see many ways of repairing both our attitudes and our bad habits, all at the same time.  Repairs are possible.  Reaching for the stars is possible.  No one can deny the possibility of repair.  So many situations cry out for repair, and each time we address the need for repair, we first have to ask how we're going to go about it.  We can't progress unless we get to know how to bring it about.  By working on repair-answers, we work from ideas, and then have to work out how to implement those ideas.  That's the nature of repair.  But how do we keep it up? The motive for repair is like reaching for the stars.  Progress is dependant on motivation, and that's not straight forward.  Human nature is so deeply set that we often think it can't change. We CAN change our own natures, we can repair on a personal level.  But why change when other don't? And so we return to the reason why we don't change solo, because we believe that we can't change our collective nature.  But if we could, if we were to be convinced that collective consciousness were shifting in the right direction, just imagine how optimism would set in. And wouldn't we find the rewards incalculable?

Reaching for the stars

1362: 

When we look up at the stars in the sky (something which presents no problem for us at all) it’s like watching a cat on a mat.  The cat is content to be as it is, on the mat, and presumably the stars are okay about being stars up in the sky.  We can marvel at them, we can observe both cat and stars.  We can do this without necessarily wanting to posses them.  We are seeing ‘an existence other than our own’.  It’s there, it’s alright, but maybe we feel a yearning frustration for things which we can’t reach, understand or possess.  The state of mind of the cat is as unreachable as the stars.  That’s just the way it is.

Maybe, as we gaze up at the stars and yearn for the unreachable, we know we always have to return to the here and now, to appreciate what we already have ‘at home’, to appreciate within the levels of the consciousness we possess. But we can all imagine what a truly evolved consciousness could be like; and I guess it will be better or at least somewhat different to the pedestrian goals we have at present. In a more evolved consciousness, we'd use our achievements to date as a springboard to do much greater things. And to some extent, that is what many people are doing right now.  But why are they 'doing' it?

Look at it this way: we have our own star, The Sun, we’ve got our own planet, we have each other, and we have the wonders of Nature for companionship.  We are so lucky!  We look up at the stars.  They shine down on us, just as they shine down on their own orbiting planets.  What does it all signify? It's a mystery. It's wonderful to contemplate. And think about. But since we are such thinkers, we focus on less-than-optimum outcomes, too careful, too tight, too vulnerable.  Humans, in general, of late especially, have a way of screwing things up, spoiling wonderful things.  Earth, for example!!  It's surely not worth spoiling that for future generations.  

Perhaps the main purpose of all this is to remind us that our present determines our future, and not so much yours or mine either.  What we do creates the future, for the benefit of others-to-come. What we do today is for them.  But by sheer coincidence, it turns out, it's of benefit to us too!!!

The future itself is something we can’t ‘touch’.  We can’t reach it because it hasn’t happened yet.  But we can reach it in terms of probabilities.  By referring to the past, by listening to the stories and histories which have made us what we are today, we can see that what we are is mainly down to our social attitudes.  But change. Almost suddenly, something is in the air for many people, who feel the unmistakable effects of 'being on the move'.  We're so rapidly evolving during this period, we are both conscious of it and possibly becoming unselfconscious too.  The idea here is that we can access history, learn from the ideas it gives us, and grow.

But implementing any good ideas isn't straightforward. Just because they seem brilliant we don't notice the sting in their tail.  Today, everything is up for grabs - perhaps we are faced with learning new things - and that's great. But there are other things we’d perhaps, at first, rather not know about. And by purposely NOT learning about certain things we run the risk of stunting our growth - which feels like not moving forward satisfyingly. Today's main area of stunted growth, and the main threat to the future might be our generally low levels of empathy and our high levels of self-interest.

Order and Chaos

1361: 

Bringing order to chaos - how do we achieve that?  It’s like pulling out weeds to make room for a tree to develop.  Chaos becomes ordered when we start to see the tree growing, where there were once weeds.  In the human context, creating order out of chaos is what humans can be so good at.  We are altruistically driven to often consider the greater good.  And I’ve never met anyone yet who wasn’t keen to minimise destruction.  But there are always energy considerations.  Ideas might be expanded but the application of them can be limited.

"I loved your script, but where do we get the money to put the show on the road?"

So, there might be a dilemma here.  ‘Order’ doesn’t necessarily solve anything; a little chaos is needed too.  But where things are badly out of kilter, as with the 'Belsen Holiday Camps', then some ordering has to take place, if only because it brings a humane and sustainable system into being.  If we let weeds grow, the trees will die; smiling at someone or making eye-contact is bringing order to the chaos of going around as solitary, separated and competitive beings.  Creating order out of chaos is key to rescuing human nature itself.

In theory, if humans have the ability to restructure physical systems, then we can restructure our own nature too.  If we have brought about a state of imbalance to our world, then repair we can it by way of attitude alone.  With clear attitude we can reach out to the most extreme point, where we can even initiate a re-balanced Earth. 

Altruism as a reference point

1360: 

Living within a partially unknowable universe, we have to make the best of things. There are still a lot of mysteries around.  So, it's best to do things on the safe side, safe from potential disasters anyway, and doing as much as possible with affection.  In that way we can lubricate difficult or painful processes.

         

Our instincts tell us what to do and when to be giving-out affectionately and when it’s more appropriate to be business-like and safeguarded. Intuitively, we know life isn’t just about doing good, it’s also about optimising our opportunities. We weigh up our choices. And we all being selfish bodies, the selfish motive comes naturally to us. But then, on after thought, so does being selfless. Like doing something for the sake of the kids, altruistically, but knowing that it can feed back again, to ourselves.

         

Altruism and learning the various levels of it, is a part of the maturing process. It's experienced most obviously (and most compulsorily) in parenting - a child screams for attention, the parent comes to the rescue, altruism kicks in to make the best out of the situation, best for both child and the parents’ personal sanity.  Altruism is always the reference point - being hard or soft, indulging the child, denying the child.  Each decision is swayed by instinct, and altruism is never very far away from influencing our choices.  It’s never partial.  It's never harm-causing. So, we can always see the link between veganism and non-violence - both are always primarily motivated by altruism. 

The Ant in the Sink

1359: 

Altruism usually means putting-in first.  It needs some effort which is usually inconvenient.  It’s made easier (‘being’ altruistic) if it’s done as easily and naturally as we breathe fresh air.  It shouldn’t be too planned nor so casual that it goes completely unnoticed, in a flourish of false modesty.

         

Say we choose to act unselfishly, in the best interests of our own child.  That feels very altruistic, but that's an everyday thing, so it's quite natural and unremarkable.  Say we now try to apply that to everything else, not too ambitiously at first, but perhaps quite rigorously.  In our next decision, it might seem something relatively small.  Small in both ways, small in an inherent speciesist way and small is size - we find an ant in the sink.  Do we act altruistically?

It might go something like this: I want to act compassionately, since it's the image I want for myself.  But I don't want to be inconvenienced.  I'm at the sink, all psyched up to do the washing up (very righteous!), but there's an ant in the sink where no ant should be (uncharitable thoughts kick in!).  It’s so easy to turn on the tap, and presto, the problem is gone.  It's just an ant.  I will decide its fate.  I’m irritated by the 'damned ant'.  I don’t want it there.  I don’t like ants.  I think of drowning it.  I resist the temptation (to turn on the tap).  I switch from self interest to the interest of the ant.  I decide to save it.  My hand reaches for a sheet of paper to scoop it up onto dry land.  I’ve learned a valuable lesson, dealing with a familiar ant-in-the-sink situation.

         

By making this choice I don’t so much solve a problem (of the ant in the sink) as recognise my own need to act non-violently.  My nose should twitch at every temptation to be selfish.  I wish it would twitch whenever I have the chance for opposite-thinking, for NOT taking the line of least resistance.

         

I have to ask myself why would I not treat the ant with the same consideration as the child?  It’s kind, yes, but it's a valuable lesson which seems so trivial at the time.  It's just another aspect of our inherent speciesism, taking me a little further on a great journey.  I draw closer to the ant’s world.  I open up my imagination, to get closer to the ant's world, an unknown world in which there is no reason to hurt the ant and good reason for the ant to remain outside human understanding. 

Mutual support

1358: 

Because people who aren’t vegan dismiss it as unimportant, they aren’t likely to give much encouragement to vegans.  For us this is a hard cause to fight because of that.  Of course, we aren't ‘being-vegan’ to win admiration, it’s just that being ignored is hard to bear.  We all need some sort of recognition.  Vegans get it mostly from fellow vegans, but it’s thin pickings because other vegans also suffer from marginalisation and encouragement-deprivation.

It often pans out this way: vegan magazines and newspaper articles usually focus on food and health issues, with some mention of factory farming to cover the ethics angle.  That’s about as radical as it gets, and enough of a package that we might can glean some sort of support for it.  It’s rare that we see writers focusing on the broader ethics concerning the rights and wrongs of human-use-of-animals.  Whatever branch of animal issues we’re presenting, part of what we are pushing for is approval, which we reckon will help to motivate us.

For vegans, our main source of motivational energy must be drawn from within, probably as part of our own self-development (which includes our own health improvement).  But to maintain focus on the most needy areas, eventually leading to animals having a right to a life, we need some sort of altruism.  I don't know where it comes from but its aim is clear enough -  to develop empathy.  And a big part of that is always going to be acting selflessly and without reward.  When it comes to advocating for animals, there's going to be no appreciation coming from the carnivores, and there will be nothing coming from animals themselves (wishing to "extend their grateful thanks", etc.).

         

On the positive side there’s potentially a lot of energy from one another, just by connecting with each other, in unspoken support.  No one needs to be 'needy' or give that impression.  If it comes, it comes as unasked-for encouragement.  The trap here is in expecting it.

If you’re a vegan, then supporting other vegans is a big part of the whole thing.  Whatever cause we’re fighting for, part of the obligation which comes with the cause is giving support to others, not calculated out of kindness but coming spontaneously from one's excitement at finding another's enthusiasm for the greater good and for their acting from sound motives.

         

Each of us is capable of being content with very little encouragement, not because we’re good but because we’re intelligent enough not to run up gratitude-debts, where we end up owing-big with little to give back.  And if there are only 'thin pickings', then in the end it comes down to building one's own reasons to be altruistic, and being altruistic without showing a trace of it.

Relative altruism

1357: 

If we are vegan and can’t understand why others are not, it may be worth considering what actually has to happen, and why vegans are willing to give away a lot of the benefits of life for the sake of not condoning the exploitation of animals.

Well, we no longer use a huge range of products.  And that's good for saving animals. But we're probably the same old selfish bastards as everyone else.  We do what we do for ourselves.  We eat serious food instead of crap.  We stop associating with social norms which are unethical (and we can't help but feel good about that).  We feather our own nest.  We stamp our own principles on our own life, and maybe we do that without considering other people who might be trying to do the same.  And in that way our own level of self-determination could be seen to be very selfish.  But, there is one very big difference between our 'selfishness' and the selfishness of non-vegans.  Ours is initiated by our outrage at what is happening to defenceless animals, and there’s no denying the sacrifices we are willing to make for them.  If there are collateral benefits for us, then we do appreciate them without feeling guilty.

         

Why do vegans think so seriously about animals and then translate that concern into their daily lives?  Is it because vegans are more altruistic or because they’ve found something more interesting (than anything they’ve previously found)?  Perhaps it's all relative?  Altruism is beyond reproach, because it considers other's (peoples’) interests before one’s own.  But I’d agree with what Nietzsche says, that this definition is demeaning.  More particularly, it’s unrealistic because it is the kind of purity no one can keep up - being so infuriatingly good all the time.

The fact is that we’re all survivors - we have to be selfish thinkers to survive.  We have to be self-interested.  We have to look after our own first.  Charity starts at home.  The theory goes, that we can extend our love to others, afterwards.  Selfish is good.  As survivors we'll do better by avoiding being squashed down.  But it all gets a bit too logical without a modifying factor, without something to stop us crashing into a wall of 'selfish-ism'.  Perhaps we need some easily digestible relative altruism.

         

We should be able to enjoy life unashamedly, but it is possible that that could coincide with feeling good inside, when one is doing something for others and for oneself at the same time.

When we look about us, we can see that there’s a lot of giving-out needed today.  Give here, give there, I get a phone call most nights asking me to ‘give’.  All the more reason why we shouldn’t neglect our own interests which, let’s be honest, we all think about a lot of the time.  Selfish is like incoming energy.  It seems opposite to altruism (which traditionally is giving energy away), so where is the balance arrived at?  Perhaps we have to be very honest here, perhaps it's a matter of a slightly tarnished version of selflessness, which we might call 'relative altruism', since it has to be self rewarding - because if it isn’t, then why deplete yourself?  The glow of 'being altruistic' soon wears off when nobody notices it.

Doing good all over the place, without getting some recognition back, forces us to go looking for it, which is called boasting.  We all badly need praise.  Without it we become resentful.  I give you a birthday present, I expect a thank you.  And when it doesn’t appear, I’m less inclined to bother buying you anything next birthday.

         

Whatever we do, even if it’s a paid job, we need something extra, a lubrication for our altruism to work.  It’s vital.  It makes us want to give more, to recapture that feeling of being generous.   I need to feel energetic and energised by my generosity rather than the pinched feeling of giving the bare minimum expected.

         

At work, you’d do everything high-quality if you could, but that won’t turn the profit.  There happens to be another ethic, an economic one, which makes more money and makes the cogs of life go around.  But what about job satisfaction?  There’s nothing more satisfying than adding quality to our work.  We all like the feeling of quality, at work, and especially at home where we like giving quality to our relationships.

         

By being vegan we give quality to our own life and at the same time to the lives of the animals we are attempting to save from being reared and killed and eaten.  No one is trying to be Mister Perfect here, but vegans are attempting to up the ante.  And that's both useful and rewarding and often quite altruistic, which levels out at a certain contentment - living a life with a strong element of relative altruism running through it.

Vegan principle

1356: 

I’ve got a friend overseas I exchange emails with, and he dislikes the idea of veganism - it's the ‘ism’ bit he hates.  Perhaps he’s right. 'Isms' sound religious, but being ‘vegan’ isn’t anything like a religion.  It is simply a set of principles which combine kindness and common sense, or wisdom with compassion.  It seems so logical and exciting that we vegans leap at the chance to tell people all about it.  But we know better than that.  We hold back for fear of boasting about it.  We're up against the common perception here - non-vegans see going vegan as all discipline and hardship, and maybe a chance to show off.  But to us, difficult maybe, showy maybe, overall it’s just one big benefit.

         

It’s very hard to shine a light on something without it making you look glitzy yourself. If what I do looks like altruism (empathy, caring for 'the other') I will seem to be showing off, because it contrasts so markedly with the ugliness of selfishness.  The omnivore is likely to giggle at the strictness of it all, and dismiss it.  But vegans look at it quite differently, seeing satisfying food without the animal content as a big plus.  And what better and more interesting goal-for-life to have than looking out for others, and not only other human beings.  Again, it sounds smug but, bottom line, vegans have put away the 'toys' of their childhood, they've dropped the self interest and ‘soft living’ and found a greater interest; within the staid and hard world of animal abuse, our harm-reduction-living seems to us to be that much more adventurous and exciting.

         

Maybe as vegans our life is a bit edgier.  We develop a sense of empathy.  We push ourselves at a greater pace.  And through our boycotting of animal-associated products, the idea of ‘altruism’ no longer sounds to us at all corny or un-do-able.

Keeping Our Violence in Check

1355:

Edited by CJ Tointon

In today's violent world, we desperately try to get what we want.  We bend the rules, with every intention of fixing things up later.  But once we get what we want, we usually forget to do that second bit and thus aren’t true to our word. Eventually we get used to breaking the rules and end up in a mess.  A mess which might show up in our relationships at home or in the way we act outside the home.  If we want to make this a better world, we must first value our home life.  Never neglect it.  It's where we gain the confidence to go outside and it's where we return to.  We should be able to live there creatively and happily, even if the outside world is a violent and harsh one.

Whether by negligence or violence, we often break fundamental rules.  Rules which we’d normally want to abide by.  But human negligence resulting in violent remedies, is not the same as violence in Nature.  Events like storms, epidemics and earthquakes which destroy on a massive scale, are examples of natural unavoidable violence.  What we do, as humans, is for our own partisan benefit and therefore avoidable.  Our violence is all the more damaging because it is so coldly administered.  Ours isn’t necessary for survival, only for satisfying our greed for possessions, money and power.  In this respect, humans are driven by personal insecurity and ambition.  Our destructions are never awe-inspiring, just tawdry and shame-making.

By implementing the principles of non-violence, we stop needing to win (because this usually involves someone else's loss).  If there's one thing that damages our nobility as human beings, it's materiality.  We need to step beyond the material to discover where else we can find satisfaction.  The simplest and most effective start to this process is to stop our violence leaking into everything else that's good about ourselves.  We can downgrade the importance of materiality and the sensual pleasures which often involve exploiting some element of the material world.  Perhaps the most routine of these sensual pleasures is the direct damage done to other sentient beings (animals) when we exploit and violate them for food.  By changing away from these foods, by disassociating ourselves from any such violations, we can eliminate most of our habitual violence.  At least, we will be doing something positive to keep our own violence in check. The dropping of violence involves a long 'to do' list.  But when we change ourselves for the better, others will see our example and act accordingly - eventually.  It’s the nature of the human to adapt to new circumstances.  Change is infectious.

When we see the violence in ourselves, we start to see it in our children and our partners also.  In fact, we start to see it everywhere, especially in the attitudes of our fellow humans.  It’s not immediately obvious, until you link up what certain harsh and uncaring attitudes lead to and what behaviours they excuse.   Nobody is immune to violence.  But the Vegan principle can act as a springboard to leading a non-violent life.  Being Vegan helps us 'check' ourselves and it lets us see how violence can affect our closest relationships at home. 

Home is our 'safe' environment.  But it's also where violence shows its ugliest face.  Who amongst us hasn’t been shown up by a family member, forcing us to look more closely at ourselves?  But home is also where the atmosphere is transparent enough to let us test and trial our most idealistic ideas on other living persons.  If we can be a cool operator at home, we should be able to take it into the outside world.  At home, we get praise, mockery, criticism, intimacy, ridicule, love, etc.  It’s in this mixing bowl that ego gets a good stirring and where we can eventually de-power it.  Then we can really make some progress!  

If the principle of non-violence is going to grow, it does so in the fertile ground where we can be intimate with people who know us.  And we grow best where there’s enough affection to fertilise our strengths and enough latitude to excuse our weaknesses.  Here's where we can work through our differences, perhaps more slowly than we’d like, but perhaps more thoroughly.  At home, we can watch out for each other, not lose interest or leave each other behind.  And if things don't work out, if we grow in different directions and our wish for developing non-violence is not what anyone else at home wants, then maybe we shouldn't be there.  Changes can eventually be brought about in a more civilised and less destructive way.


The building of mutual care is good for developing feelings of safety.  More than anything else, it can build confidence enough to go into the outside world of strangers and say:  "Hey, this is what I reckon!" and find satisfaction in our attempts to discuss our opinions with them.

Dynamic non-violence

1354:

What is the main influence of any good idea?  Perhaps it achieves a better balance by out-convincing the old idea?  And in practical terms, its impact is in its presence, a calming-down presence in the midst of a heated quarrel.  It's almost as if it goes unnoticed were it not for its unexpectedness.

As brilliant as any ‘good idea’ might be, this one never imposes itself.  However convincing it seems, it doesn’t outweigh the need for good manners.  It calmly applies the brakes in time to avoid a collision.  And in being seen to do that, by easing into the controller’s chair, it is seen to take charge, without needing permission.  This idea explains itself without explaining anything that isn't already obvious.  It helps to avoid the bigger mistake from happening, and therefore avoiding the necessity of making a long up-hill struggle to restore things to balance.

Non-violence keeps high emotions under control.  It’s based on a sort of ‘count-to-ten’ principle.  By being seen to be fearless of robust interaction, non-violence becomes the new dynamic.

An ancient idea

1353: 

Non-violence is no new kid on the block.  It’s as old as the hills and the very bedrock of all wise philosophy.  But, until now there were stumbling blocks in our way, we weren't prepared for its implications, and only now are we seeing ways in which it might just work.

Up to now, non-violence has always had to step back to allows violence to pass by.  Violence has been given a long leash and allowed to vent itself.  We've simply had to watch it play itself out.  Perhaps we've had to take our lead from those animals who most come into contact with the violence of the human; they've endured it because they couldn't do anything about it.  Now, primarily for them, we have to deal with it.  So, in reality, if this is not the province of the animal mind it most certainly is of the human mind – the human creates the sort of destructive violence which is destroying the natural order of things.  And we humans have been at it for a long time.  If a new non-violent human is emerging, it would be well for that human not to get too carried away by the logic or imminence of the idea.  It's going to be a slow transformation. It's going to have to be a thorough one.  And it has to start by remembering that we exist in a world where violence still rules. 

A Non-Violent World

1352: 

Is a no-weapon world, where we trust our neighbour, just pie in the sky? A planet of humans - can it exist without our resorting to violent confrontation? We are so used to war that we believe it is enshrined in the very psyche of human nature - a non-violent world is something we can hardly imagine.

But this sort of world can only come about if humans want it badly enough. Our material needs can either generate the whole infrastructure of violence or its very opposite. If humans start by buying cruelty-free and environmentally-friendly products, we would be sending a powerful message to all interested parties, namely the manufacturers, as to how they produce goods. It’s the first step towards a peaceful, no-weapon world.

Two opposites dancing together

1351:

If we think only in the framework of the present time, if we see some present behaviour as normal for all time, then it's likely we don't ever jump ahead in our mind and look back, as it were, to now, and see how absurd we seemed.  For instance, we still have very fixed ideas about violence, and although we might not like it, we still see it as our only option when it comes to dealing with problems or getting something we want.

Non-violence has always seemed a bit passive, as if not defined enough to effectively eliminate violence.  But perhaps that’s the point – we shouldn’t want to kill off anything, and that includes violence itself. It’s the nature of the planet we all live on.  It's within every creature including the human. There’s violence within the body. Alongside the external invasions of diseases there lives an internal battle-worn immune system.  One attacks, the other defends.  Or in Nature, there’s a destructive storm and the stalk of wheat attempts to survive by bending but not breaking in the wind.  There's tension in the mind itself, between the opposites of our own mental processes, alert to violence creeping in unnoticed, alert to our non-violence becoming too unrealistic.

Non-violence dances with violence, that’s all.  Take the animal activist, for example.  We observe the violence-based world making its impact.  We jump ahead in time to watch as it burns itself out.  And now, while it still rules, we can want to end violence.  We can step in to make some sort of different impact.

At this point in time, after the exhausting violence of the twentieth century, we’re looking at a new paradigm, at what could turn out to be non-violent solutions to our problems.  At first, they seem unpromising, because they are largely untested.  But if non-violence is to be the modus operandi of our new century, it must be eased in gradually.  We have to usher it in, learn to walk with it but not yet try to run with it.  We must practice it in all the small ways first.  And if the new process starts with excluding the most obvious violence from our personal lives, then the smallest thing becomes one of the biggest things - it's logical that we start by excluding violence-based foods from our bodies and eventually move onto food that is in no way associated with violence, that is violence towards animals.

Once this is established, one's mind is so focused on the plight of our enslaved domesticated animal populations that it's almost impossible to entertain violent feelings or engage in violent acts. The differences between ourselves, by way of culture, religion, race or education become points of interest rather than threats to our own way of life. And then we could see, perhaps for the first time, the practical sense and beauty of living a life of peace.  Keeping animals locked up and killing them and eating them couldn't be seriously considered, and making war with others wouldn't be anything but a ridiculous idea.