"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin -
more even than death...Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and
terrible, thought is merciless to privelege, established institutions and
confortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought
is great and swift and free, the light of the world and the chief glory of
man." - Bertrand RussellI have chosen to call this blog, 'A Lone Vegan' because when one's ideals and philosphy of living is contrary to the mainstream population of society; then one feels very much alone. That is not to deny the existence of every other vegan in the world and any person who is making vegan choices. But we are all essentially lone vegans. Some people make the change to being vegetarian or vegan for purely health reasons. And others choose this life-style from humane/animal rights motives: wanting to no longer be a part of the problem; hoping one day for an end to the cruelty, use, abuse, torture and murder of non-human animals. We know that human beings won't stop hurting each other until we are motivated by respect, compassion and empathy, which is directed also at species other than our own.
A vegan is someone who does not consume animal flesh or their by-products, does not use the skins or other parts of animals nor uses products that have been tested on animals. We all have choices. For those who are challenged by the questioning of the legitimacy of their long-established choice of eating and using animals, I humbly ask you to quell any feelings of hostility and to please read my submission of some reasons to make vegan choices. These reasons are:
1. Humane/animal rights
All animals have inherent rights. To be vegan is the least we can do to respect those rights. Animals have eyes, a brain, a central nervous system, emotions, families; they feel love and they communicate. Animals feel fear and pain. They avoid both if possible. They have a survival instinct just as we do. They have the right to live a life free from danger, abuse and early death.
We humans prize our intelligence. This intelligence is not being used as it ought if it is thought to be a fundamental human right to enslave non-human animals. Some use the argument that animals should not have the same basic rights as we do because they don't have intelligence. For a start they do have intelligence, but not in a generally human-valued way. A cow cannot do maths or change the oil in a car, but neither can a three year old human child. But we would not think of treating a human child the way we treat a cow. Animals have curiosity and the ability to make decisions or survival. All animals have consciousness. They possess instinct and intelligence integral to their well-being.
If more people could have interaction with animals soon to be killed, compassion and feeling would automatically arise. These animals feel fear. They have lives. They experience pain and pleasure. If slaughterhouses with glass walls were located in the midst of suburbia we'd soon see an end to flesh-eating and the use of animal by-products. People would opt out of the system of persecution and harm. Places such as Treblinka and Auschwitz were located in relatively isolated places. The mentality of the Nazis continues whilst people, when speaking of a slaughterhouse, say, 'well, they are only animals.'
We believe the lies fed to us from childhood. We believe television commercials which tell us that eating the sizzling muscle of a butchered gentle animal is a 'delicacy.' When I see how people 'accept as true the commercials that lead them to believe an enslaved nonhuman animal is happy to give them his or her bodily secretions or dismembered body parts, I can see how Nazism was able to come to be.' (M. Butterflies Katz, 'Rising above speciesism', Vegan Voice, Dec 09-Feb 10, p.25 )
Egg production: live male chicks are mutilated and dismembered and then ground up in a machine. Female chicks are hooked up to another machine which mutilates their sensitive beaks with a laser. These are standard practises in hatcheries from which eggs are produced by hens overcrowded in small cages. These eggs are labelled, 'cruelty-free' and 'free-range'. From the first day of a chick's life, she experiences stress, fear and pain.
The cruelties involved in all intensive animal farming are well known and you can find this information easily on the web. Pigs, chickens and cows are kept penned up for all their short lives, fed growth-hormones that make standing impossible as their legs cannot support their bodies made unnaturally large at an early age. They are kept from the sunlight and from all activities natural and innate, such as scratching the earth, walking and eating grass. Pigs are kept in small pens in which they cannot move at all. They are considered 'units of production' and exist in an artificial hell. And the arbitrary cruelties in the these feedlots for chickens, pigs etc... by workers, are rife. These animals live in an 'eternal Treblinka' that ony draws to an end when they line up to die, their individual deaths are preceded by the sounds and smells of fear and the death of others in the queue ahead of them. The use of the stun gun and electrified water is not always effective and many feel the knife and suffer in agony as they bleed to death.
The litany of sufferings at the hands of humans is endless, and not only in the dairy and meat industries. Animals are hunted for sport, they are experiemented on, used for entertainment etc, etc...Here are just a few websites:
http://www.animalssuffering.com/
www.veganpeace.com/animal_cruelty/dairy.htm
http://www.joyfulvegan.wordpress.com/
www.freebetty.com/cage_eggs.php
www.animalliberation.org.au/pigs.php
www.animalliberation.org.au/fishrec.php
www.fishinghurts.com/CommercialFishing.asp
www.animalsaustralia.org/issues/animal_experimentation.php
www.veganpeace.org/animal_cruelty/hunting.htm
www.animalliberation.org.au/circuses.php
2. Environmental.We are at the tipping point, if not past the tipping point of causing irreversible environmental damage.
A recent analysis by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, co-authors of "Livestock and Climate Change" in the November issue of World Watch magazine, finds that livestock and their by-products actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 per cent of annual worldwide GHG emissions, because of respiration, land use and methane. Goodland and Anhang conclude that the best strategy for reversing climate change would be to replace livestock products with soy-based and other alternatives. 'This approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations - and thus on the rate the climate is warming - than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.' worldwatch.org 20.10.09
Humans tip the delicate balance of vital ecosystems by fishing, poluting rivers and other waterways, destroying habitat, logging, introducing species to specific areas which then kill the native fauna. Some websites:
www.all-creatures.org/articles/env-world.html
3.Health
The first health-related fallacy I want to address is that of the drinking of cow's milk. We do NOT need the bodily secretions of another species in order to survive. The much publicised notion that we need milk to prevent osteoporosis is merely an advertisement. This myth is promulgated by the dairy industry. Even the Osteoporosis website has Dairy Australia as its major supporter. The other supporters are pharmaceutical companies.
The ethnicities with the least amount of incidents of osteoporosis are African and Asian groups, and these have the least consumption of dairy milk. The highest consumption is Australia, the US, Scandinavia and New Zealand. Thes countries have the highest hip fracture rates. It is not the amount of calcium consumed that prevents osteoporosis, but the amount of calcium that is leached from the body. Those concerned about adequate calcium intake should turn to leafy greens and other plant foods. It is the high intake of proteins (milk and flesh), as well as caffeine and alcohol, that contribute, not only to many degenerative diseases, but to the loss of calcium in the body. There have been many studies done on this and further information is readily available.
Meat is full of growth hormones and pesticides. Meat takes a long time to travel through the digestive system which puts a great strain on the body. Meat is high in fat and acid. Flesh-eating can cause obesity, bowel cancer, heart attack, stroke and gout, to name a few diseases. And on an energetics level, when you eat meat, you eat fear and death.
Eating a plant-based diet provides all the body's need for calcium, protein, vitamins, iron and other minerals. Those who change to a vegetarian or vegan diet, report that they feel lighter and experience an increase in energy levels.
4. Karmic
Karma is the Buddhist notion of cause and effect. Our actions and words have an effect on others as well as ourselves. What we do and say now will come back to us, either in this life-time or the next. If we allow another to suffer, then we too will suffer. We are offered this life, I believe, in order to grow and evolve. To reach enlightenment. To see the reality of existence. To live a life of right deeds, right thoughts and right actions is to live a compassionate and empathetic life.
To reach for self-actualisation; to be the best we can be, what is necessary is to first take of the blinders and see ourselves as part of the whole. To do no harm and to no longer be part of the problem is to evolve. And to speak out against oppression and harm is to end one's complicity. To remain silent is to condone.
The mainstream of society is entrenched in values of the stone-age. People defending meat-eating say that we've always done it so therefore we are meant to. As if that is any kind of reason. We've committed murder and rape since the stone-age too; is that any reason to continue the practice?
The Christian view is that God gave us animals and he put us in charge, to do with them as we please. This is an erroneous indoctrination. Humans have no right to think we own other species. Humans can make choices that save other species from harm. We can save them from ourselves. This requires a general and generous amount of consciousness-raising, in order to have a world where no one is motivated by personal greed, and all desire to do no harm.
All species are interconnected. To liberate oneself from guilt (even if not consciously felt) of inflicting suffering on other beings, then we free our higher-mind and spirit. Our true nature emerges. We evolve. Consciousness is raised to its highest level. We emancipate ourselves as well as other species when we make the choice to be non-violent and to fight for the rights of others. Being vegan is just the beginning.
www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm
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Meat-eating is normalised from infancy. Children are brought up to accept the food given to them and not to question where it comes from, further than the supermarket shelf. We don't eat other people, not because it is against the law, but because it is cannibalism. We are taught that cannibalism is immoral and gross. What if children were taught that eating other animals was immoral and gross? How's that for an idea for future change?
To be overtly vegan or vegetarian is to sometimes attract anger. When people are presented with the fact that they have options other than consuming animals, they can feel unsettled and hostility often results. The System tells us we have little control over our lives and so we continue running around in the maze. Vegans just don't accept that. To quote the editor of Vegan Voice (Dec 09-Feb 10 p.6), Sienna; 'We know that the most power we have in today's world is over what we consume, what we put in our mouths. For me personally, veganism is a rejection of almost everything. There's nothing here for me - the world is morally and physically repugnant. The beauty is gone. I'm creating my own and at its centre is veganism.'
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Friday, February 5, 2010
Why vegan?
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