When you announce your vegan beliefs expect incredulity, perhaps not visceral, perhaps visceral. Make public your support of Palestinians to self-determination and expect raw nerves to flare — it comes with the territory. Or am I tilting at windmills? Why must Palestine be a verboten topic?
Misunderstanding happens to “the least of these, my brethren” (Matthew 25:34). I mentioned recently that I am the green sheep in the family. Do I hold a lightning rod aloft, inviting impending doom? I guess.
I live in an area of the country noted for its borders — political, racial, climatic, geomorphic, social: there are others. Our planet does not need more division and more rancor. Welcome the green, the black and the rainbow. Welcome the stranger.
Languages fascinate me intensely. Learning them lightens my spirit and dispels an illusory separation. We are all one. I lived and studied in Germany, a country that knows something of borders — their erection and their dissolution. Loving languages is a joy that requires patience, but it rewards that patience by several orders of magnitude. Or is it a waste of time, a conceit if you already speak THE international language — one dipped in the blood of imperious arrogance. Just saying. Colonialism is not dead. Were that it were.
My intense interest in the Middle East began in 1967 when I began to seriously study its physical, cultural and religious geography. Study makes friends of pain and joy. I was living in West Germany in 1972, at the time of an ill-fated Olympics in Munich. Stasi was still going strong in East Germany. That same year I learned about Savak and the Shah of Iran from my fellow exchange students of the University of Tehran — a full seven years before the revolution in their ancient land, one with the longest continuous civilization in history, one that started with Cyrus the Great. Many cool people are Persian. Yes they are 🙂
Perhaps this is an overlong preface to my topic. I hope not, but please accept my apology if it is.
Let me meld two curiously similar joys and pains — veganism and Palestine. Mix them together and you have The Palestinian Animal League. That kind group of animal activists knows that “acting like an animal” is an expression to deflect misbehavior of a specie with an overdeveloped ego that imposes their self-righteous “superiority” to the innocent fellow sentient beings possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, though it be inexpedient to the self-described exceptional.
We’re not the top dog, we are the arrogant yapping selfish being that always takes advantage. Are we not a part of the cycle of life? Who made us the boss? What is the difference between cannibalism and meatism? I suggest that the difference between eating the flesh of your own and eating the flesh of an other is as trivial as the difference between apples and oranges — both are fruit. Human flesh and the flesh of any other sentient being — both are meat.
Let me now lighten the burden of writing. I yield the pen to The PAL. They know more about themselves than I. Expect joy.
Thanks for reading.
billziegler1947 
Bill, thanks for introducing PAL.
And well played, the difference between cannibalism and meatism.
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Thanks for the kind remark, Peter. You have inspired me to add a bit to the argument — a couple extra sentences:
We’re not the top dog, we are the arrogant yapping selfish being that always takes advantage. Are we not a part of the cycle of life? Who made us the boss? What is the difference between cannibalism and meatism? I suggest that the difference between eating the flesh of your own and eating the flesh of an other is as trivial as the difference between apples and oranges — both are fruit. Human flesh and the flesh of any other sentient being — both are meat.
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Nice. And any argument to the contrary is merely subjective.
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“Human flesh and the flesh of any other sentient being — both are meat.” Precisely Bill, and why this can’t be seen or embraced as the truth it is, is mystifying to me. Equally so, some meat-eaters have a repugnance (no pug pun intended) for those who eat dog meat, yet think nothing of eating a baby lamb and feeding the scraps to their beloved dog. There’s a lot of confused thinking going on in there.
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I much appreciate your words, my friend — nothing appalls more deeply than profound truth uttered in polite society. It is not nice to udder (pun intended :-)) in public.
I saw a photograph of a punctiliously appointed buffet. There was an entire lamb standing on a silver platter — guests spooned out innards directly from *its* stomach and put it in *their* stomach. Has anyone else seen such a photo? I can imagine people taking selfies with that fellow mammal — and bringing home souvenirs for their beloved dog.
But no worries — the lamb was already dead when they arrived at the party, so don’t look at them, they didn’t do anything, and it’s not nice to waste.
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Inspiring. Good to hear of caring people people looking out for their brothers and sisters in different parts of the world.
But people don’t like being made to see the reality of their choices and habits and it’s not nice of you to keep pointing them out!!
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It really is wonderful to discover fellow humans all over the planet who arrive at this truth — killing fellow sentient beings for the pleasant taste of that sentient’s lifeblood is evil. Meat-processing facilities really are death camps, but as you say —
it’s not nice to point that out.
Political borders are arbitrary at best. Driving people into ever smaller pieces of land is not cool. Empires separate people who formerly lived peacefully together, enclose warring factions so that they fight each other. Meanwhile they rule their “colonies”, or ethnically cleanse undesirables. George Orwell was a tool of empire in Burma, but he lived to write about it. I recommend two essays here: “A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant.”
http://www.george-orwell.org/A_Hanging/0.html
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph
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I read the rap by the PAL. Quite interesting, and no doubt I’m often guilty of white sins like those described. I do try to honor action for change more than charity work, where, yes, us “good white people” can feel okay about our structures of power over the people we’re “helping.” My church supports the neighborhood food pantry and the nearby school with books for their bookstore. Okay, fine, but first and foremost, we must all make revolution together, and I wish more of our church members understood this difference. Some of us do try to help make revolution, though are we ever getting anywhere on this little task? But again, it would actually be inconvenient if there WERE nobody needing our help — we wouldn’t know we were “good white people” any more.
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Thanks for the kind words, Martha. You guys do great work in precisely the local neighborhoods that need it most desperately. It’s most heartening to know that UU actually shows up where social contracts are either crushed under the guise of ‘prosperity’ for the prosperous, or where a church follows a platitudes-only service. Your church actually shows up and supports the most marginalized in our community — a mission that the current administration and its coddled minions seek to exploit even further.
They seek to eviscerate the ACA because it “robs from Peter to pay Paul.” Those are the words of a Congressman who enjoys ultimate healthcare services, attractive offers on both sides of the revolving door, any manner of junket (an obsolete term unfortunately) and plenty else, ad nauseam! Meanwhile no one in the legislature has drafted Articles of Impeachment to enforce the 25th Amendment.
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