Anybody want to talk about food issues? I think I will now and then. This board raises my awareness of a lot of things...why not that? (I watched a Humane Society video of factory farming at my desk today. I'm glad I did. I know about it, but I go in and out of denial. I'm lazy and I want gratification.)
I've been bingeing on sweet stuff (vending machine garbage, coffeecake, anything sugary) and I'm toting a belly I never had before. Iggh. Maybe as penance, I'm letter-writing to Salon again. Thought I'd share this one I posted today in response to their article on the foie gras ban debate.
(In a personal way it's in honor of my D's birthday yesterday. This is something I have always admired in her. (BTW, she called yesterday, affectionate and very happy. "I love you" is back!
--Hops
----------------------------------------------
Can't Legislate Compassion
...so, EDUCATE.
My baby had chances to see cows and horses. We would stop by the road and I'd let her pat their noses or feel their coats. Sometimes I felt like a spectator at something sacred. A calm and friendly animal would stand at the fence and regard my baby for some time, listen to her excited preverbal chatter. It seemed as though they, and she, enjoyed their awareness of each other. Perhaps as an infant she also FELT them, like a forcefield. And likely they always have this openness.
It was amazing to watch their mutual curiosity. She responded with intense delight and recognition, pinwheeling her arms and legs and crowing. When we started from the car she'd pummel me with her feet until we got to the fence. Then she'd have long moments of complete stillness, while she gazed at the animal. Excitement would break through periodically and she'd flail her arms at them, but they rarely shied.
Long story shorter, I believe that many people are unmoved by animal suffering because to feel enough compassion for an animal to become vegetarian, you do have to face the reality of their presence, their intelligence, their openness, their ability to bond, to greet, to form relationships, to suffer. It requires a kind of security coupled with vulnerability to the wholeness of life, to do this.
We could teach children to be grateful for the presence of animals. To greet their existence with a sense of wonder. Or perhaps our infants don't need to be taught reverence. Perhaps we do. Or, we can just let them go extinct and boil the planet. It is a choice.
When she was three, my chatterbox asked me in the car one day, what is your purse made of? I answered as gently and simply as I could. You mean, cows? she said. It hurt to nod "yes". She cried all the way home and never ate meat again.
She's now 26. She never lectures anyone. But she knows.
It really doesn't hurt anyone to eat vegetable forms of protein, does it. We do so many more difficult things in our pursuit of health and good looks (imagine the gym). We're not being deprived of anything we need badly when we give up flesh. I think most of us are just so cut off from the natural world that our senses are blunted such that only something as concentrated and intense as the flavor of a tortured, cooked and slaughtered animal can sate our cravings.
It wouldn't hurt to ask at a deeper level, what are we really craving? Is it to be more alive? If so, is it really unimaginable to inquire how we might do that without asking an intelligent and defenseless animal such as a cow or pig or goose to pay the cost of our journey?
Goose Guantanamo. Bovine Bataan. Once you know, you really do know. It's hard to stuff innate compassion forever.
I don't think absolutism of any stripe is much help. But denial isn't either.
-- 90% vegetarian & determined
