Tag: veganism

To Serve Man

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a laudable mission statement signed in 1948. It’s a worthy list of inalienable rights. Unfortunately they are self-ordained by a single self-admiring specie for a self-admiring specie.  There were two billion humans alive in 1948, there were 7.6 billion by 2018. At least 70 billion animals who do not qualify for human rights will become “what’s for dinner” and other consumer products by this time next year.

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Universal rights? No. Membership is limited to just one specie.

Inalienable rights? No. I can violate them each and every day, with or without impunity. At a supermarket for example.

Can you name any species as selfish, self-serving, arrogant and violent? Humans excel at both inter- and intra- species exploitation. They are toolmakers who waste no time weaponizing every clever invention they devise into a long list of engineering marvels — to serve man. Damon Knight’s story is also set at the UN and is also a curious take on human rights.

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Humans domesticate every creature on this planet: inter- and intra- as well. They are toolmakers who can transmit their will at the speed of light, who recreate by watching blood sports and who domesticate their domestic realms with domestic violence. Do I hint at patriarchy here? Yes, it’s by design and by inheritance. How many matriarchal societies can you inscribe on the head of a pin?

Look at the Elephant in the Room as it looks back at you. The eyes have it.

theres.an.elephant.in.the.room

Built-in optical systems for locating sustenance and for detecting danger are not trivial physical characteristics. Eyes are something that homo sapiens have in common with other sentient beings who developed them during the Cambrian — about half a billion years ago.

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Creatures with eyes possess an astonishingly complex central nervous system that channels cognition to intention. Sentient creatures share a long list of extraordinarily similar organs, systems that pump lifeblood from the heart to each organ and back again — sentient beings possess extraordinarily similar oxygen-breathing mechanisms and waste elimination processes. Glance at the corresponding organs found in pig and in man.

If this all sounds a bit like a rant, initiating a discomfiting mood, I provide the following bit of reading material that contains much more “conventional wisdom” on the state of bacon in contemporary American thought on comfort food:

Where bacon comes from on a pig

for.sheer.horror.thanksgiving

Here is where I found the Dan Piraro (fellow vegan) cartoons. You may also wish to visit Dan’s website, Bizarro dot com

Thanks for reading.

Just Don’t Think About It

Of course “it” will get you down if you keep thinking about it.

What’s this shit?

The things you can change. Epictetus (circa 65 c.e.), a Greek slave, is often quoted, usually without attribution, on such matters.  You may know it by its most familiar incarnation: The Serenity Prayer. Epictetus represents the more stoic side dreamt of in philosophy, a view from the complement.  The other side of the coin features the much better known Greek philosopher: Epicurus. Eat, drink and live as comfortably as possible.

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A coin has two sides, you won’t encounter many one-sided coins in the agora. Any of the way, imagine a coin with the names of those two philosophers, may each take a side.

Epictetus Epicurus.

There’s nothing new under the sun, even Earthly extinction events; in fact, we live and love in the shadow of extinction possibility number six. The sun abides however. No wonder so many worship. Sol so.

We will return to tet and cur following these words from our sp*ns*r.

We’re whispering because Bill is hard-of-hearing (we have switched off closed captioning too). He can’t hear us. Please don’t spill the beans. It’s just us, just us. 

Who are we? We are an apocryphal (in your dreams!) den of con-artisans who conspire to keep the population glued to a shiny entertaining crystal, one with innumerable facets, like a diamond formed from coal under heat and pressure — a distillation of a rich biomass: a rapid metamorphosis: life to death at nearly the same time, and without a funeral service. Ironically that biomass is organic matter long dead but now continually pressed into the stuff of instant energy, such as coal, such as oil. Bringing it to the surface quickens carbon dioxide accumulation in Earth’s thin atmospheric. Lungs like yours breathe it. Take a deep one and hold it.

Don’t forget: we don’t exist. We’re more gravy than grave. Relax and enjoy, enjoy and relax, relax and repeat….

…Hold on a second. Did I fall asleep during a nightmarish commercial? I don’t feel very well, actually quite nauseous. What the freak?

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Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Er lag auf seinem panzerartig harten Rücken und sah, wenn er den Kopf ein wenig hob, seinen gewölbten, braunen, von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch, auf dessen Höhe sich die Bettdecke, zum gänzlichen Niedergleiten bereit, kaum noch erhalten konnte. Seine vielen, im Vergleich zu seinem sonstigen Umfang kläglich dünnen Beine flimmerten ihm hilflos vor den Augen.

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing Eye to Eye

In regione caecorum rex est luscus — a proverb from at least as early as 1500, authored by Desiderius Erasmus. A short story by H. G. Wells.

illustration of 3 reaching hands to nunez
The guys without the eyes are trying to locate those two roundish objects  in Nuñez’ face. They feel like peeled grapes, perhaps the source of the hallucinations that cloud his mind and prevent Nuñez from fitting in. Would enucleation (surgical removal of an eye or two) correct his vision?

My father once mentioned to me that a curious aspect of growing old is a realization that you no longer fit contemporary society, and that immortality wouldn’t help you socially adapt. My dad was a sagacious fellow, he often told me that he would rather be healthy and rich than sick and poor. A little sage makes the dressing. That’s what I think.

I didn’t wait for old age to know that feeling of disorientation, confusion and re-disorientation that the inexplicable brings. The only thing 100% predictable in life is the unexpected.

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Let me tell you about my friend from Edinburgh, from that town north of Hadrian’s Wall that isn’t Glasgow.  Well, he met my son around 1981, said son was going on three — it’s what happened to earthlings born in 1978.

Any of the way, that Scot spent some time with my boy and proclaimed that he liked him because the youngster recognized the essential absurdity of life. Recognizer of essential absurdity, ‘twould make a fine line on a business card, would it not?

These are the confessions of a guilty bystander, to borrow a few words from Thomas Merton, a philosopher I heartily commend to your attention. He died young and he died tragically, but his works are immortal and always fresh. I wish to confess generational theft: squandering limited resources for a lifetime and lifestyle of self-absorbtion by elders who do know, or should know, far better. If the glove fits, don’t acquit. I must remember to have “generational thief” included in a future obituary.

We’re supposed to leave the planet better than it was when we inherited it. You don’t improve a tightly shared planet by chowing down on the products of animal husbandry, that’s what I believe.  No eyeball-equipped planeteer should consume similarly eyeball-equipped planeteers for the dining pleasure that meats you from the inside out.

You don’t just have a law passed that decrees husbanded animals as free of pain, so that you can just get on with it all legal-like by saying “So there! Now let us serve man.”

You’ve inspired us to write ad-copy, Bill —

“The only grass our cows eat spring from the fruited plain.”

“Our contented cows eat only amber waves of grain.”

Let’s talk about the creatures who developed eyes during the Cambrian Era. Eyes improve your odds of surviving, you see something dangerous and you get out of the way, you see something nutritious, like an apple, you eat it and you’re better for it.

james.herriot.soul.animals

Creatures with eyes also possess a highly developed nervous system, complete with complex nuanced nerves from brain to brainstem to tailbone, from tailbone to brainstem to brain. Back and forth, forth and back. Creatures with eyes are not interested in ending up on a plate next to peas and potatoes, or transformed into Andy Capp’s Hot Lardy Fries and Pinker Pork Rinds, Perky Pig Ears? Would you?

Thanks for reading.

 

Call Me Left-Over Man

Call me Left-Over Man — Feeder of Raccoons.

We’ll call you Ishmael. Waste is the birthright of might, the backbone of a God-fearing society. Raccoons spread rabies and babies, so keep your cans closed and your trap shut, pal.

I once attended a team-building session at Procter and God: marketing lion. Spoiler alert: I am not much known as a team player. Any the way, each team member was to reveal their inner animal. I chose raccoon. Quite unsurprisedly I drew beg-to-differ comments from the tigers and bears in the room.

Are you a dumpster-thriver, Bill? A social-justice warrior? Sharing and caring leaping gnome? A cow-worshiper from India who would die before eating a cheeseburger? It’s survival of the fattest now, Bill. You lose — bigly. 

I follow a lifestyle that fits me as well as the knapsack on my back. It also suits my societal role of iconoclast and vegan (several percent of humanity, we vegans). Competitive sports lure me not, particularly the concussive world of American football. I hug trees instead.

welcome.to.the.anthropocene

To the victor go the spoils. God loves US most because our unimpeachable forefathers, originalists to the man, trusted in Him. You’re rewriting history, Bill — an imprisonable offense.

Yes, I understand that criticizing the Oval Office tweeter can land you 20 years.

Advertisers sometimes lie about their products. Advertising lingo leans on ambiguity, truth in advertising has left the building along with business ethics. Gone south, now approaching Antarctic waters.we.come.as.liberators

All’s fair in love and lotion. We brought civilization and faith to the Indians. We gave slaves a free ride to faith and civilization. 

Today I celebrate something that a counter-advertising team in Canada started promoting in 1989: Buy Nothing Day. I step back from the freneticism that troubles my spirit often enough. Borrowing a tidy phrase from Bartleby the Scrivener: I would prefer not to.

buynothingday

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading.