Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
Sun, Gentle World
July 2016
The state of the world in which we live indicates that so far, our collective violent nature is winning the human race. From a very early age, we are fed heaping portions of it. Our history is fraught with violence, our books are violent, our entertainment is violent, our sports are violent, our heroes are violent; even our gods are violent. But the most insidious influence is the violence we ingest in our food, in the form of the bodies and things that come from the bodies of other species.
Whichever part of us wins this age old struggle between our violent and gentle natures will determine the destiny of the human race.
We human beings are a complex, multi-faceted species. The consciousness
that motivates us is a dichotomy in which a battle rages between the
violent, angry, unreasonable, selfish, jealous, greedy, cruel part of our
nature and the gentle, compassionate, kind, reasonable, just, empathetic,
generous part. Whichever part we choose to nurture is revealed, moment to
moment, in our behavior, which molds our individual and collective
character, and ultimately determines our destiny. 0
The state of the world in which we live indicates that so far, our
collective violent nature is winning the human race. From a very early age,
we are fed heaping portions of it. Our history is fraught with violence, our
books are violent, our entertainment is violent, our sports are violent, our
heroes are violent; even our gods are violent. But the most insidious
influence is the violence we ingest in our food, in the form of the bodies
and things that come from the bodies of other species. When we eat these
foods, as we do throughout our lives, including our formative years, we
consume all the violence that brought them to our plates along with the
misery of its victims. By the time we become “adulterated,” we are
contaminated on a cellular level, so that we accept and even expect it as
the norm.
From the beginning of recorded history, we human beings have been killing,
exploiting, abusing and in general, perpetrating one or another form of
violence upon every species in our power, including our own. Violence is so
much a part of our human history, that it feels safe to assume that this
behavior is inherent in our species, and it may well be. We teach our
children, by example, that anger, which is its trigger, is a natural,
acceptable response to those who disagree with us. For our governments and
even our religions, violence is the “go to” solution of choice for many
problems, including that of violence itself. It is so ingrained in our
culture and psyche that few of us take the phrase “peace on earth” any more
seriously than we do “have a nice day.”
How can we oust such a powerful force from our very nature to become the
gentle selves we know we can be? How can we even acknowledge, lest we be
perceived as weak, that there is a part of us that cringes at even the
thought of violence and is shocked and sickened at the sight of it? Is there
any hope at all for a peaceful resolution of the opposing forces in our
nature, which are driving us mad? If so, the answer must be the pillars of
sanity we call reason and compassion.
Veganism is reason and compassion in action. It is a spiritual, yet
practical giant step toward that end, available to all who are willing to
take it. It is a force for justice and sanity that empowers our gentle
nature to lead us out of the ocean of violence in which we are drowning, to
the safety of its shores. By eliminating animal products not only from our
diets, but from our lives, we actually lose our appetite for violent
behavior, with each day that goes by. And miraculously, as we do, we evolve
ourselves to a gentler species. Our minds are brighter. Our hearts are
warmer. Our health is more vibrant. Our integrity increases. Our self-esteem
soars. By simply living a gentler way, a new perception emerges, from which
nothing ever looks the same again.
Count Leo Tolstoy said, “As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be
battlefields,” and those we consider some of the greatest minds agree.
Voltaire, Shaw, Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Franklin, da Vinci, Gandhi, The
Buddha, Einstein, Schweitzer, Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, Pythagoras
and many others have written that in order for human beings to create real
peace on earth, we must first stop feeding ourselves and our children
products of violence. Isaac Bashevis Singer, the great Yiddish story teller,
believed that our heartlessness and utter mercilessness toward our fellow
earthlings for our own gratification is reason enough for the pandemic
guilt, depression, anxiety, disease, and never-ending wars that plague our
species.
Whichever part of us wins this age old struggle between our violent and
gentle natures will determine the destiny of the human race.
Which will we choose?
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