Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
Will Tuttle, PhD,
The World Peace
Diet
November
2018
The practice of herding animals emerged in western Asia about ten thousand years ago for reasons that are still not fully comprehended, and the resulting practice of herderism has continued unabated to this day, and has grown and spread throughout the world. This practice of herderism led to the drastic reduction of animals’ status, the rise of a wealthy elite class of herder-rulers, and the introduction of war and slavery as established social institutions, all of which continue to this day, with narratives to support them. Because herderism requires the repeated forced breeding of female animals, it led inexorably to the exploitation and suppression of women and the feminine aspects of humanity that nurture and protect babies and children, and to the exploitation of our children as well.
Pig by visionary artist
Madeleine Tuttle
One of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves, our loved ones, and
our world is to question the prevailing narratives in our culture, and
realize that they are not only imprisoning and destroying animals and our
Earth, but us as well. The core false and devastating narrative—the
progenitor of a whole spectrum of deluding narratives—is that animals are
mere commodities that we are entitled to breed, kill, eat, and use by the
billions every day. This false narrative has real teeth, ravaging not just
animals but ourselves as well. We eat it from infancy and we build both the
cells of our bodies and the attitudes and social institutions that define
our lives out of the toxic terror and misery of these relentlessly abused
animals.
There is no way to overstate the magnitude and depth of this indoctrination
and its debilitating effects on our awareness and our society. This food
narrative of violent exploitation is delivered by well-meaning parents,
relatives, neighbors, teachers, and doctors, and for us, like for virtually
all animals, teachings about food by parents and elders to offspring are the
most significant and binding of all teachings. The primary bonds of animals,
especially mammals, are forged through eating food together, and so for us
the food narrative continues to be the most challenging to question—and the
most invisible—despite its obviously devastating effects on every level of
our health.
Animal agriculture is completely
obsolete. It is also anti-rational as well. It’s immoral, unjust, unhealthy,
and unsustainable, and yet it persists, not because we are naturally
predatory or violent, but because we are conditioned by our culture’s
routine mealtime rituals to become numb to our feelings and to disconnect
from and repress our natural capacities for intelligence and awareness.
The practice of herding animals emerged in western Asia about ten thousand
years ago for reasons that are still not fully comprehended, and the
resulting practice of herderism has continued unabated to this day, and has
grown and spread throughout the world. This practice of herderism led to the
drastic reduction of animals’ status, the rise of a wealthy elite class of
herder-rulers, and the introduction of war and slavery as established social
institutions, all of which continue to this day, with narratives to support
them. Because herderism requires the repeated forced breeding of female
animals, it led inexorably to the exploitation and suppression of women and
the feminine aspects of humanity that nurture and protect babies and
children, and to the exploitation of our children as well. Herderism is the
deep festering wound, the ongoing hidden fury at the core of our culture,
generating war, the abuse of women and children, social injustice, and
reducing our capacities to deal effectively with our problems and issues. It
wounds all of us from conception onward with its pervasive and unquestioned
violence and its narrative of hard-hearted domination.
The good news is that we are discovering that animal agriculture is utterly
unnecessary, and the rising tide of millions of healthy and happy vegans is
making this discomfortingly obvious. We are realizing that the narrative
that our Earth can’t feed everyone is also false. We can feed everyone on
less land, water, petroleum, and other resources than we’re using now. A new
narrative is being born that honors and respects the abundance and beauty of
our Earth, and that refuses to imprison, rape, and kill animals for food or
other products.
Compassionate Harvest by visionary artist
Madeleine Tuttle
This is helping us
question the narrative that humans are naturally violent as well. Whom does
this narrative benefit? In many ways, it benefits the same forces that
benefit from the herderism narrative. It benefits what I refer to as the
military-industrial-meat-medical-pharmaceutical-media-banking complex. This
complex and the tiny elite that is enriched by it, profits from conflict,
disease, and environmental destruction, and of course the narrative that
humans are innately violent serves the agenda of increasing “security”
measures, escalating military and surveillance operations, and taking away
our freedoms.br />
WWe can regain our inherent capacities for freedom, peace, and health, and
become worthy of them, when we question our culture’s indoctrinated
narratives, and stop routinely stealing freedom, peace, and health from
billions of animals. We can create new narratives of liberation and healing
by questioning the culturally-mandated narratives leading us to abuse and
kill animals for our kitchens, wardrobes, and medicine cabinets.
Our world is created and
sustained by the stories we tell and believe. When we change the narrative,
we change the world. We can each be an agent of this change. Animal
agriculture erodes all five levels of our health—environmental, cultural,
physical, psychological, and spiritual—and by questioning the herderism
narrative, we are helping to heal the inner wounds that create the outer
conflict in our lives.
There are two fundamental powers in our human world, the power of the
individual and the power of the community. As individuals, we naturally
yearn to learn, grow, and awaken, and to work with others and contribute.
However, we live always in the context of the human groups in which we are
embedded. The only reason any of us pays for and eats animal foods is
because we’ve internalized (literally) the prevailing cultural narrative and
are following orders injected into us from infancy by our families and
communities. We believe herderism’s narrative because we eat it every day,
along with other toxic narratives, such as the human-superiority narrative,
the insufficiency-of-the-Earth narrative, the humans-are-naturally-violent
narrative, the consumerism narrative, the
technological-progress-will-save-us narrative, the competition narrative,
the trust-the-authorities narrative, the materialism narrative, the
essentially-separate-self-narrative, and so on.br />
These interconnected narratives are all emanations of herderism’s basic
orientation of reductionism, disconnectedness, and exploitation of the weak
by the strong. We can each as individuals make efforts to heal the wounds we
have endured by living in and absorbing this obsolete set of narratives, and
not only heal ourselves, but help to heal our communities as well, bringing
liberation to animals and to our repressed inner kindness and awareness.
The path is two-fold. First, on the outer level, transitioning to a healthy
plant-based (vegan) way of living and additionally doing our best to
minimize our consumption of resources. Minimalizing and simplifying our
lifestyle and reducing our desires are long understood to be foundational to
happiness and inner peace. Second, on the inner level, engaging in a regular
practice of self-inquiry, or meditation, or silent inward listening. The
idea is to free our consciousness from the many layers of colonization and
programming by practicing awareness.
WWhen we can witness our thoughts, emotion, and desires without identifying
with them, we begin to get a glimpse of our true nature: that we are a
manifestation of eternal consciousness. This realization can help free us
from indoctrinated narratives so that we can live with more congruence. Our
outer vegan nonviolence toward animals is part of a new narrative and we can
extend it to human animals as well, helping us heal the roots of racism,
sexism, classism, separatism, and egotism within ourselves. Our words and
actions will naturally carry more weight, and our advocacy for liberation
will flow spontaneously and creatively from our thoughts, words, and
actions.
As individuals, raised in
community narratives justifying pervasive violence toward animals, we can
give thanks that every day brings fresh opportunities to heal ourselves on
the inner and outer levels, and to work with others to help transform our
communities. By cooperatively engaging our imagination and love, we are
creating new narratives and building more conscious communities of freedom,
abundance, and sustainability for all. Every day, we can explore these new
pathways and help each other toward a beckoning doorway into a world that
reflects a new story based on a deeper understanding of our true nature of
kindness for others. Thanks for every effort to awaken more fully! Each
effort is a gift that radiates into the infinite web of relations,
benefiting all beings.
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