Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
The way forward is through the ancient wisdom: to give to others what we’d like for ourselves.
Art by
Madeleine Tuttle
It’s fascinating to look at animal-sourced foods and products as
metaphors of our current situation. The animals whom we imprison in our
mechanized herding operations, large and small, are reduced to commodities
and to the profits and power that we can take by exploiting them.
Meat is the once-living flesh of these animals, the intelligent, amazingly
coordinated muscles enabling them to run, swim, fly, mate, and articulate
themselves through their lives and through the purposes they are born to
fulfill as members of families and ecological webs of living meaning. From
infancy, we are taught the narratives that steal their bodies, their
purposes, and their sovereignty, and that destroy their lives so we can eat
their muscles, tissues, and organs. The narratives propel us. The narratives
we learn at daily meals become our flesh, and we find that as we imprison
them for meat, our flesh becomes diseased. At a deeper level, we ourselves
become meat to be consumed by industrial forces that consume the flesh of
our purposes, and that enrich and fatten themselves with the muscles of our
time, creativity, effort, and energy.
Art by
Madeleine Tuttle
Eggs are the menstrual discharges of animals, the virtually infinite
potential that can be fertilized to bring forth new life celebrating on this
abundant Earth. From infancy we are taught the narratives that imprison
helpless females and steal their creative potential, reducing them and their
eggs to mere commodities, and ultimately reducing our creative capacities in
the process. Like imprisoned hens, our creativity is stolen from us to be
used by the institutions of wealth and dominance to distract and disempower
us as we serve and promote the herding culture into which we’re born, like
hens, and which exploits human people nearly as effectively as it exploits
animal people.
Dairy products are the maternal lactations of young mothers and represent
and constitute the loving care that nourishes babies in their critical first
months of life. We are all compelled to eat the narratives that propel the
sexual abuse of young females (and males for sperm), stealing their
vulnerable offspring, and destroying the primary sacred social bond that
runs through all of nature: that of the mother for her child. Like mother
cows, our children are stolen from us by systems of violence, and we are
milked relentlessly by the hard hands of an enforced economic system that
reduces everything to commodifiable products.
Leather, wool, down, and fur are the protective coverings of animals that we
steal from them. In so doing, we find our own protections increasingly
destroyed, and we are reduced to being naked and vulnerable in the face of
heartless economic, political, educational, and military systems of
oppression.
Art by
Madeleine Tuttle
The many ways we exploit animals represent, ironically, the many ways we
are often exploited by the same herding apparatus that herds and imprisons
animals and herds and imprisons us. As we waken from this harmful cultural
trance and question the herding narratives we’ve internalized–and that
exploit and destroy the bodies, creativity, and interconnected lives of
animals and ecosystems–we gain the capacity to become healers and
liberators, and to inspire a benevolent revolution of kindness and respect
for all forms of life.
The way forward is through the ancient wisdom: to give to others what we’d
like for ourselves. Stealing and destroying the flesh, eggs, mammary
secretions, and skins of billions of animals is not just metaphoric; it is
also concrete, causing immense unnecessary misery, pain, and suffering. Our
suffering is also concrete. Our flesh (lives and energy), eggs (creativity),
mammary secretions (feminine caring and children), and skin (protection) are
stolen as we steal them from helpless animals. Fortunately, ever-increasing
numbers of us are realizing these connections and together we are creating a
world where animals, ecosystems, creativity, mothering, freedom, and caring
are respected rather than being exploited. A plant-based world of abundance
is available and ever-beckoning, if we can escape the fears that keep us
trapped in the industrial-strength tribal ignorance, violence, and
superstition that define our situation today.
Art by
Madeleine Tuttle
Every day we are making progress. Every day, each one of us can contribute more, learn more, love more, heal more, awaken more, and liberate more. This is using our own flesh, eggs, and milk (bodies, creativity, and caring) wisely. This is our sacred obligation and the source of our effectiveness. longevity, and joy.
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