Category: vegan

Barnyard-Animal Values

Humans are not the only Earth residents born with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Homo sapiens are not the only Earthly beings born to thrive, to live long and prosper, to experience joie de vivre. They do not show up at your door intending to be killed and dissected for humane consumption. More likely, they will run as soon as you open the door.

comparative anatomy

Running for your life: is it instinctual?

Vegan humans reject a conventional “wisdom” that deems beasts naturally occurring resources, food options, and fashion statements. NonVegan humans devise clever ways to subdue and conquer, to enslave, to transport “livestock” to butcheries, tanneries, renderers. Dominion (dominance) over animals is an arbitrary human conceit.

How many animals can you name that have intensely complex central nervous systems? Highly developed processes relay sensory and autonomic information to the brain. Gaze into a pig’s eye and know how much you share, how much you communicate, how much information transfers in the blink of each eye. Is it comparable to looking into a child’s eyes? That’s a loaded question. A barnyard animal’s heart was already beating prenatally inside her mother’s womb. Her fate was already decided, but not by her mother.

Does a pregnant cow know that her calves will disappear immediately upon departing the womb? Is she relieved at having her children separated from her teat so that bovine milk might be redirected into ice cream and casein? Is her boy prepared for a vealy good future?

Where are the bovine fathers? Insemination is artificial, so the point is moot. Long ago sets of bovine ancestors lived as nuclear families. Is this irrelevant information?

Does a sow wish her piglet a brutish life, an incarcerated existence and an early death?

plants.feel.pain

Anthropomorphism does not explain the enormous emotional and physical characteristics that humans share with barnyard animals. I envisage a book about such animals as a sanctuary that offers a refuge from the colossal carnage that occurs every second of every day.

Veganism is the only conceivable way to counter global warming. Many nonvegans recognize that reality but consider it unrealistic, unfortunately, the reality is as realistic as real can possibly get.

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?

A. To get hit by the truck that conveyed her family to death camps: meat-processing facilities, if you will.

Please consider reading my earlier posts on vegan alternatives

Thanks for reading.

 

Anthony Bourdain: “Vegans Should Kill Themselves”

Gratefully reblogged from Amanda’s think&thrive blog. Worth your moment, I believe.

I was not a Bourdain follower and did not know how viscerally vegans repulsed him, but it should come as no surprise whatever. Sideshow geeks draw paying customers and repeat business.
Endless memorials and testimonials celebrate a life well lived if decadently conducted.  His views were highly respected and acknowledged, they have been immortalized. This video is the first negative review I’ve seen published, but vegan tails do not generally wag the dog, do they?

eye.2.eye vegan

What happens when sentient beings gaze at each other? They glimpse each other’s soul. You glimpse into a soul and a soul glimpses back. Earthlings with eyes have evolved them, developed them, and loved them since the Cambrian Period — half a billion years ago.

animal.eyes.morgans.lists

Do the eyes have it? Aye! What about eyeless sentients?  Certainly, there are blind and deaf sentient beings. There are strange and unusual sentient beings. Use your senses to understand, to witness and to share.

Vegans do not kill fellow sentients, in person or by proxy. Dealing death by proxy does not remove complicity.

Hey, I didn’t kill the cow, I’m just eating lunch.

Nor is it okay to eat mor chikin. Humans are already eating 67 billion chickens per year. Small and appetizing, grounds enough?

It was self-defense, your honor.

stand.up.for.what.you.believe.in

Slaughterhouse managers find it difficult to fill kill-stations. Only 2% of slaughterhouse employees actually pull a trigger or knife the victim. I say “victim” because a meat-processing plant is a death camp. Once the “farm animal” is dead you don’t have to kill it a second time.

Dairy factories and egg factories are torture chambers. Only after they have produced the requisite quantity are they escorted to a slaughterhouse kill station.

Vegans confront the four stages of cruelty — directly and with kindness. It’s a lifestyle that embraces coexistence and a genuinely peaceful planet.

Slaughterhouses are unhealthy for children and other living things.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

Surprised by Arabic

At its largest extent, the Roman Empire surrounded Middle Earth, literally “The Mediterranean.”

inscription_cartilia2

 

In the parlance of social media, the Romans SHOUTED all their written words — minuscules would not arrive to soften the literal commotion until the 7th Century. Latin seems suited for chiseling into stone, mostly with straight lines that run from left to right. It’s not easy to curve while chiseling your way along a flat rock-face. A glance at the English alphabet reveals that individual letters also run from left to right, letters such as B D E F K L P R

The letter “J” is quite the exception. It’s one reason that some school children do this:

printable-letter-backwards-j

That letter never appears in Roman imperial inscriptions, nor did U, nor did W.

K, Y and Z were adopted to accommodate Greek vocabulary. They are not the Etruscan uttering way. Nay, they ain’t.

Let’s look at a language that appeals to my left-handedness. It’s quite a relief to see my writing as I write. Arabic was not designed with a chisel in mind. The language begins with cursive in mind, not a bland sequence of letters imprisoned within imaginary boxes, then proclaimed “words.”

My last post looked at a procrustean camel, an animal led to the eye of a needle by dint of faulty translation. Why are mistranslations carved into stone? Do not allow your metaphors to become stilted, clunky, confusing and hackneyed. That’s what I say.

Well, Arabic comes equipped with a J-sound. In fact, it’s standard equipment. However, the language does not permit a “P” letter, so please apply a “B” for words like Paris: call it Baris and learn to live with it. Palestine never needed a “P” because that name is an imposition anyway: they are the Philistines. Arabic comes equipped with an “F” sound.

 

 

arabic.jim
25+ Arabic Alphabet Letters

 

Instead of imaginary boxes, Arabic allows for up to four ways to write each letter of the alphabet. Learners of this language and readers of the Qur’an receive the gift of ten diacritical marks to aid the learning process in a clean and coherent manner. Should you ever decide to tackle Arabic, this is handy indeed. Those marks reveal the sound one millimeter at a time; however, once you become comfortable and confident with the words you can dispense with diacriticals altogether — you’ll recognize the pattern and you won’t need the training wheels.

Returning to the Romans for a moment: would you ever wish to return to Roman numerals once you’ve learned the efficacy of Arabic numerals? The word “cipher” in English is from the Arabic word for “zero”:صفر

Here is a tip for my readers who consider learning German or Arabic: if you can pronounce Cincinnati you can pronounce  صفر (sifr). Just pedanting.

Learning languages removes artificial separations between cultures and lifestyles. Those separations take the form of borders, walls and prejudice. In their stead you acquire perspectives that remove each border, wall and prejudice. They serve the minions of geopolitical advantage and the clarion to endless war, endless confusion and endless imprisonment. Producing propaganda is criminal activity. Always. Whatever your intention.

And go vegan while you’re at it. No sentient being benefits by closing the book on the Anthropocene 🙂

Thanks for reading.