The Green Sheep in the Family

Herewith a set of considerations introduced more than four year ago. It is, therefore, well-neigh time to tie a few strings in the midst of many threads. Encouragement  from the inimitable Katrina of New Zealand.

A Bold Woman who has brought us a grand thought issued by David Bowie: Katrina.

“Aging is an extraordinary process, where you become free to be the person you always should have been.”

Full disclosure first — I am the green sheep in the family: one of “those vegans” who have the temerity to speak up for “others” — more similar to us than not — who have no voice in determining their own destiny. Today I focus on the multiple billions  living in camps

green.sheep

By this time next year 70 billion will have lived from birth to death in one of those facilities. Factory friendly farms.

Well there must be a good reason then.

Many reasons, but each is specious, spurious and tawdry. We deny inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to “the others.” Is that ethical behavior? Do animals volunteer their own destruction?

Bill, they outnumber us 10 to 1. So it looks like we are the ones endangered here. Do you call that fair? Let us tell you something. life isn’t fair and freedom fries aren’t free. It’s a wonder that any of us are left standing, actually. So it’s self-defense, us or them.

But can we talk about something a little less depressing?

Sorry. Let’s talk about optimal health, vibrance and well-being. In short: those habits that produce a healthy body. There are many ways to become ill: some involve luck, some are viral/bacterial, some are self-induced. I’ve tried many ill-advised styles of life.

Vegan protein icons

To quote my own father “I would rather be rich and healthy than sick and poor.”

Majority rule then. You vegans comprise 3% of the eating public. Why force bunny-salads down our throats? We are not geese. We are designed to eat meat. Some call it stewardship in a dominion over all life. What’s wrong with being top dog? Beats low dog.

3% of human eaters are vegan, 3% of human scientists deny climate-change, 3% is a good guess at the percentage of lifeforms that would survive an extinction event — asteroidal, nuclear or climatological.

Detox is tough because meat is a powerful addiction that is socially acceptable and culturally sanctioned. Secreting toxins is wearying — so is withdrawal from other addicting chemicals. We are living and breathing chemical factories, walking bags of chemicals.

Some very good news: craving for meat and meat byproducts metamorphoses into revulsion.

Why are you vegans always so negative?

We aren’t. And being a green sheep is a very good thing.

Thanks for reading.

Veganism vs. Cannibalism

There comes a time — quite often actually — when a reader’s “like” inspires me to craft a post from a comment.

Bill, you have a highly overdeveloped sense of your own importance. Is that not a superfluous sentence you’ve just written?

As a vegan, I join with non-such at a restaurant, open the menu and bite my (own) tongue at the overwhelming quantity of non-vegan fare that tastelessly adorns the menu — beef tongue is but one. Hey, why is tongue not among the lurid photographs of dismemberment, decapitation, mutilation and third-degree burns?

Vegetarian_Dating

Wonder no more my friend, you do exactly the same thing with produce — dead on arrival at the supermarket.

Tongue bite: What is the difference between cannibalism, eating body parts from a fellow specie, and consumption of any other highly evolved sentient creature? “Meat” cuts come from an animal with a highly developed central nervous system.

 

It is societally sanctioned. Call it an appetizer, entree, craving, tradition, custom, rite, blessing, a dominion-over thing. We’re talking about a nutritionally healthy and balanced diet. Humans are hard-wired…

vegan.meat

You see, it’s OK — those animal remains on our plate did not have four fingers and an opposing thumb, did they? Nor did they have vocal chords that produce words. So it’s OK, OK? It is OK, Bill. By the way, have you ever heard of the Natural Law? 

Look here, Bill. We’re getting a little tired of vegans trying to stuff kale down our throats all the time. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Do you? Well let me tell you about the Natural Law. It’s what gives us dominion over all the beasts. Scripture tells us that man has an immortal soul, all other animals have mortal souls.

If that isn’t enough to stop your insane raving, we have saved the very best argument for last, so please, if it’s not asking too much. Might you leave us these two words — CANINE TEETH.

canine.teeth

Thanks for reading.

Veganism as Enlightenment: What Gives?

Today’s fortune cookie papers:

  1. Choose to eschew animal flesh, choose to chew plant nutrients.
  2. Make good lifestyle choices,
  3. A vegan diet a day keeps an extinction event at bay.

This is another in What Gives? — a series of articles designed to promote intellectual curiosity on a range of healthful topics.

 

michael-pollan

Caution: today’s post may not be suitable for all audiences.

Veganism and enlightenment go together like birds of a feather in a lush wetland — a match made in heaven. Allow me to entertain a wild guess, to estimate a ballpark figure on vegans’ good taste in matters of truth and beauty. In a word — legion.

Lisa informs me that my web search has led to Mark 5:9 — the one in which Jesus exorcises demons from a haunted soul, sending each demon into the souls of unfortunate pigs who drown themselves rather than suffer.

Veganism recognizes the right of all sentient beings to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s not a matter of lions laying with the lambs. No, a lion is a carnivore by nature. Canine teeth not withstanding.

vegan-we-are-legion

Veganism argues for the inherent right of animals to live by their own device — not a life ordained and enforced by a single specie, one with a storied history of arrogance. Homo Sapien might look into the eyes of another specie and imagine stretch-wrapped plastic slabs resting on styrofoam tubs in a super-duper market — factory-farm fresh from the slaughter house. Live and let live (in a Tyson death camp perhaps).

OK Bill, you are indeed “one of those vegans.” QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM, ERGO SUM.

Legion — the number saved, not the number served.

Bill, before you go back to your bunny diet, take a goose and a gander at the highlights on Sunday’s grand buffet:

  • foie gras,
  • veal cutlets (let’s cut),
  • bottomless meat bowls

Why do you not slaver?

ex-carnivore

Today’s reading is from Rama Ganesan:

Enlightenment and Speciesism: On the domain-specificity of awakenings

From Rama’s byline:

Vegan and former vivisectionist. BA (Oxon), PhD, MBA, Humane Educator. Mother of four, two humans, one dog and one cat. From Tucson, Cardiff and Chennai.

Highly recommended because it’s well written and inspiring.

Thanks for reading.

An Uncertain Will (reblogged from Summa Amare)

 

An Uncertain Will

German Nazis Embrace Vegan Cooking

 

2000px-ingsoc_logo_from_1984-svg

From the comment thread:

The synopsis here is that there is a generation of superficial people who are utilising moral concepts as a fashionable tool rather than for any genuine concern; being a vegan is ‘cool’ and thus an image while fraudulently promoting products that is completely anti-animal rights and if not, certainly is lacking in morality such as cosmetic surgery. These same people talk of being an individual and ‘unique’ – a very trick in itself instigated to promote the idea that they have not actually submitted to this ploy – obvious since they are all doing the same thing. That is because they themselves have become a product.

They are reverberating the same tools that has been instilled by marketing and advertising ploys; ‘marketing’ is basically the master indirectly telling the slave that he is ugly – thus making him feel anxious – before convincing him to willingly submit to his enslavement by offering him the opportunity to be relieved of the anxiety. He profits and since the slave becomes willing and thus more productive, the profits become sustainable.

The problem here is, if we have a generation of people who submit to this speciousness, then why would it be presumptuous to assume that they will soon submit to something like neo-Nazism where they too are now utilising an effective method of justifying their hatred through fashionable tools.

The problem here is, if we have a generation of people who submit to this speciousness, then why would it be presumptuous to assume that they will soon submit to something like neo-Nazism where they too are now utilising an effective method of justifying their hatred through fashionable tools.

nazihipster

Con artists do not preface a pitch with  the disclaimer: “First, I must tell you that I am a con artist.”