Will Tuttle, Ph.D., The World
Peace Diet
April 2010
The way out is straightforward: Do not do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you. The ancient universal principles are infinitely wiser than our science’s latest theories and concoctions. All we need to know is in our basic human sanity, which has been relentlessly polluted like the clear Gulf waters by toxic cultural effluent.
As environmental devastation continues to escalate, it’s essential to
look at the roots of our abuse of the Earth and her complex and fragile
ecosystems. Why do we allow industries to pollute and destroy with such
impunity?
The latest disaster, the massive underwater oil geyser in the Gulf, may be a
far more destructive and malevolent onslaught than the media is letting on,
and it is but another in a long and accelerating series of attacks we are
mounting against our home planet. What underlying force drives this
machinery of violence? Why do we insist on stabbing, burning, and cutting
our precious mother Earth instead of cooperating with her miraculous bounty,
respecting and loving her? Why are we ripping apart the fabric of living
creation, destroying the beautiful interconnected life that is celebrating
through the communities of birds, fish, animals and plants around us?
I believe we have to look much more deeply than mere economic and political
forces to the underlying, driving mentality that is ritually injected into
all of us by our cultural upbringing, and more specifically, by the foods we
are indoctrinated to eat by all the institutions in this culture. What we
need more than anything now are conversations and discussions about the
irresistible consequences of our routine violence toward billions of
enslaved animals for food.
The mentality that is required to hyperconfine, mutilate, kill, and eat
hundreds of millions of animals daily is precisely the mentality that
ruthlessly destroys ecosystems without remorse. It is the mentality that is
injected into all of us from birth by powerful cultural forces that
indoctrinate us into seeing beings as mere commodities to be used. Our
innate inner landscape of compassion and wisdom is devastated by
relentlessly eating the flesh and secretions of enslaved animals, just as
the outer landscape is devastated by the same behavior.
The hidden and mostly ungrieved tragedy is that all the devastation caused
by eating animal foods—diabetes, cancer, arthritis, heart disease,
osteoporosis; dementia, depression, insomnia, anxiety; air and water
pollution, global climate change, massive species extinction, soil erosion;
starvation, malnutrition, war, inequity; and the inconceivably vast
enslavement, torture, and killing of billions of fully sentient animals for
food—is utterly unnecessary. There are no nutrients in animal foods that we
cannot get directly from eating plants. The door is open! Each and every one
of us can walk out of the prison of misery of eating animal foods, right
now! There is nothing holding us except the bone-deep disconnectedness that
we don’t realize we’re in a prison. We are forced by our culture to forget
the truth that we are all connected, and that as we harm and imprison others
for some supposed benefit, we actually harm and imprison ourselves even
more. Our violence toward animals for food is ultimately violence toward
ourselves. It inevitably and elegantly boomerangs. We are so obtuse as a
culture that we don’t realize it.
As I write this, I sit in our rolling home, parked for a few days here at a
sanctuary for some abused goats, sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and
other animals who have miraculously escaped the giant industrial meat
grinder they were destined for from birth. Caressing them behind the ears,
rubbing their bellies, looking into their eyes, feeling the warm
subjectivity of their presence, is all deeply sobering. They respond when
their names are called. They are subjects of lives that are to them as
important as mine is to me, and their interests are to them as important as
mine are to me. Yet most of us participate in destroying them by the
billions without remorse. Stealing their purposes, we lose our own, and
become unwittingly enslaved ourselves in a heartless system that is
devastating our Earth.
What we do to ourselves, we do to the Earth, and what we do to the Earth, we
do to ourselves. We are not essentially separate from this beautiful Earth,
from beautiful animals, and from each other. Like the cows born into a
system that forces them to eat meat to produce more milk, and get fat for
slaughter, we are similarly forced to eat meat, and as we reduce beings to
things, we ourselves are reduced to mere objects without abiding
self-respect. Animals, the Earth, future generations, and starving people
all suffer directly because of this.
The way out is straightforward: Do not do to others what you wouldn’t want
done to you. The ancient universal principles are infinitely wiser than our
science’s latest theories and concoctions. All we need to know is in our
basic human sanity, which has been relentlessly polluted like the clear Gulf
waters by toxic cultural effluent.
The great metaphor of our culture is the knife. We use knives to stab and
dismember 75 million animals every day in the U.S. for food. We carve up
forests, we stab and maul millions of acres of land for monocropped grains
for animal feed, and cut and splice the genes themselves into unnatural
abominations, and stab the living body of the Earth for oil, gas, and
minerals. Just as we don’t see cows and pigs as being alive, but as merely
hot dogs and burgers, we don’t see the Earth as being alive, but as a mere
resource, and go on stabbing ourselves in the hearts and brains, laying
waste our wisdom and compassion, suffering heart attacks, strokes, and
endless war.
It is now absolutely clear. Our culture must go vegan or perish. Those who
live by the sword will die by the sword. I see a great awakening on the
horizon. We are not essentially condemned to slavery and oblivion. We are
here to awaken from the nightmare of delusory separateness and celebrate our
lives as manifestations of benevolence, joy, creativity, and love. This is
the core teaching of veganism: we are all connected and love is our true
nature. As we live this more deeply, we can transform our world.
The clock is ticking; the oil and blood are spewing. How do we respond?
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