Unscientific Postscript, again · 28 June 2008
I. Art/Science
Do practitioners treat eating as a science? Do chefs? Or do they learn the chemistry and then use it to experiment and create interesting variation and rich experience?
(Is ashtanga a “science” or is that reductionis bluster?)
What is lost when personal food choices, a chef’s creation of a menu, or a yoga practice is treated as science? What forms of inquiry, relationship and chances for sublimity?
II. Being Empty
Ashtanga generally feels and works better when you eat less. But… strong practice also kickstarts your metabolism and this, for some, can make it difficult to eat enough. Especially if you’re eating a clean, plant-based diet, given that these foods are expensive and high labor but also low calorie.
Does a person who eats less enjoy food less? (Does food taste better when you’re already full?)
Can one attribute too much or too little meaning to food?
Does it make sense to resent what we have eaten?
Are people afraid to feel empty? Is it correct to associate hearty eating with self-care, and what about western families might wrongly shape that association? Could allowing the belly to empty be a form of self-care… and what would it take to get the mind-body to believe that this was true?
III. Meat, etc.
Holy mechanized death Batman, why are people hostile or apathetic to questions about the morality of eating meat and dairy?
Is this not a moral question?
Are people afraid that if they start knowing about feedlots, animal welfare, and the big environmental picture they will have to take too much responsibility? Is it possible to know these things and still eat meat and dairy?
Have the dork-vegans and the sanctimonius-yogis captured the question?
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: having a body
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
When I cook, I’m all Dali and no science, none at all, unless maybe I’m trying to specifically cook down a certain amount of sugar and water into a precise type and color of caramel.
Food tends to taste better, to me, in the first few bites. Full negates a total appreciation, or at least it makes the OPENING appreciation impossible. It’s like (pardon the simile) having sex twice in quick succession: the second isn’t the first, however, it still is the second.
I can see a degree of emptiness, a chosen and elected asceticism, as self-care, yes.
Meat is a moral question, I’d agree. I go as far as buying things like cage-free veggie eggs and hormone-free milk, which still allows some moral “I don’t see that” moments.
My parents’ continuing insistence that I “need my protein” (read: meat is protein, beans are somehow not) would be, I think, a step toward putting some light on the role of the Western family’s prioritization of fullness.
Posted by: patrick · Jun 28, 05:51 PM · #
most of us eat way too much. i just ate seven yummy chocolate bars, not vegan, not raw foodist, but they were a gift. from a far-away place.
Posted by: eeyore · Jun 28, 11:15 PM · #
“Holy mechanized death Batman, why are people hostile or apathetic to questions about the morality of eating meat and dairy?
Is this not a moral question?”
Owl, I have been wondering the same thing, but was too scared to ask. I keep reading stuff like “I fucking hate vegans” and “vegans are boring assholes” etc etc. But the same people seem to be very angry and self-righteous about other kinds of destruction to the environment and the people who contribute to it. So this is a mystery. There are also plenty of meat eaters who would like to make other choices based on morality and ethics, if their quality of life wouldn’t suffer, but who don’t feel it’s do-able right now. I totally get it. Of course.
But, WTF? Thanks for asking this question. Very interesting.
Posted by: joy · Jun 29, 12:52 AM · #
Ashtanga is an empirical science, with a sample n=1. We act as scientists and guinea pigs at the same time, figuring out what works and what doesn’t for our own practice. Guruji changed/changes the sequence according to his observations of the hundreds of students in the shala and what happens to them and their bodies over time.
And in a similar fashion, we soon learn what works and what doesn’t in terms of food. Exercise science says that you should always exercise after ingesting some carbs; yet many Ashtangis find that practice is best when there have been at least 12 hours between your last meal and practice. And still others need to eat a banana 1/2 hour before going to the shala.
And still, it’s difficult to treat food as a science, even if empirical, because so many of us have emotional attachments to food. I see it all around me, from my father who needs to finish off everything on the table because he was hungry as a kid in post-war Spain, to my mom who went on a diet age 30 and never went off it, trying the sensible and the crazy and f-ing up her metabolism in the meantime. So when I’m tired and stressed at work I reach for the chocolate cake even if it’s not the best thing for me.
And then there is the society one lives in. Try to be a vegetarian in a country (Spain) where the choices in almost every restaurant menu are either meat or fish!
As for the people who call vegetarians sanctimonious, boring, or whatever…it’s their deal, I guess.
Posted by: V · Jun 29, 06:08 AM · #
Perhaps those of us who still eat meat don’t want to listen to the morality of it because if we force ourselves to look at what’s really going on, we’ll need to stop eating it, and we’re not ready? Or else because of the slippery slope? If I stop eating meat for ethical reasons, well, what about my leather coat and suede jacket and boots? My shoe collection?
And I remember how I felt many years ago at Jivamukti when they preached veganism during class, and it seemed so obnoxious that I stopped practicing there, because that’s not why I was going to yoga.
This being said, lately I have been learning more about the factory farms and it makes me ponder eating that kind of cruelty.
However – the shoes are here to stay. ; )
Posted by: Anna · Jun 29, 08:50 AM · #
It doesn’t need to be a black-and-white either/or situation: I don’t eat meat, but I do have some leather shoes. The idea might be to eschew dogma, learn where things come from, and then make choices you can live with. The bottom line for these recent posts, at least from my perspective, is to try to be mindful about what I’m consuming. I don’t want to create a bunch of rules and regulations for myself, but I also don’t want to blithely consume consume consume.
Posted by: karen · Jun 29, 09:22 AM · #
I hate fucking vegans:) I also can’t stand born again Christians. They share a lot of the same characteristics. Preachy self righteousness is ugly no matter what the obsession. Oh, and boring.
Even with yoga…..
Posted by: Susan · Jun 29, 10:31 AM · #
It’s never felt like an obsession for me, just a choice that I make. And I never preach. My bf is a meat eater. I’m a nice girl, I promise.
I do feel this weird pressure to pretend like I don’t eat meat because I don’t like the taste of it.
Posted by: joy · Jun 29, 11:05 AM · #
Joy, so interesting. I definitely present myself that way as well, and I will admit I overstate the case with family and academic colleagues.
We need a map of vegan hatred, cos there are two things going on here.
There is what Anna says: swearing them off because they represent TOO MUCH AWARENESS. Anger and fear for self-examination is totally normal, and gets directed at people who have gone there.
But also, there is Susan’s issue: she hates vegans because they have TOO LITTLE AWARENESS. Mindless forest-for-the-trees self- righteousness, self-congratulation over something so trivial as refraining from cheese. That completely annoys me too.
The first one is what interests me. Self-defensive belief is something that everyone runs in to if they’re reflective. Self-defensive belief protects the areas that feel especially vulnerable (the trapezius or hamstrings seizing up in response to stretching is kind of a comparison). This case seems like a great illustration.
For me, I am less interested in people’s conclusions about what is a moral, peaceful, whatever way to live. What interests me is their process. Mindless vegans are not different from mindless carnivores in some ways (though, ok, their choices probably do way less damage).
Katie reads Temple Grandin (right on), was vegetarian for years, and now eats small but regular amounts of non-industrial meat. Works for me.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 29, 11:10 AM · #
But people can be self-righteous about everything! Being vegan, being meat eater, doing yoga, not doing yoga, being a yuppie, being a hippie…what is it about vegans that irks so much?
Posted by: V · Jun 29, 11:31 AM · #
I wasn’t saying it was just the self-righteousness that people hate. It’s either
(1) that vegans represent conscious living and this scares us, or
(2) that vegans represent mindless living that masquerades as consciousness, and this gives good politics a bad name.
So you either hate them because you secretly know your politics are bad but don’t want to change them, or hate them because you believe your politics are well worked out and you don’t like peolpe who pretend to be better than others while not actually knowing or examining anything.
Consumer ethics is very touchy. This is what I study!!!! As people work out these choices, vegans can become symbolic of whatever you fear most—either (1) consciousness or (2) unconsciousness that falsely believes it’s conscious.
Vegans are extreme, but they’re common enough that people have opinions about them. In 10 years when a significant proportion of wealthy people are raw-foodists, they will be the new vegans.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 29, 11:53 AM · #
You didn’t, but Susan did :-)
Posted by: V · Jun 29, 12:07 PM · #
For one, I agree with V. Sanctimoniousness is MUCH broader than veganism. But then I nod to 0v0’s counter-question, about consumer ethics.
I’ll put this in terms of Nabisco. My partner was raised by broadly anti-Nabisco people. I was raised by Nabisco-fine people. We rarely partake in Nabisco, Inc., but now and then it’s a sort of “eh, what the hell” thing. A lot of the allure, I think, of factory farming, and such, is its naturalization of itself, its normalization, “come on, kid, everyone’s doin’ it.” It’s hard to stand off all the time.
MOST of my negotiation with processed food (in particular, processed cheese) is a matter of money. I do NOT have the income to go raw unless it’s coincidental (for example, avocados, apples, carrots, etc).
So when I’m annoyed by a vegan, often it’s a sanctimoniousness which doesn’t acknowledge that it is often saying “I am PRIVILEGED ENOUGH to eat healthier than you do.” THAT is the vegan-sanctimony which most annoys me.
Posted by: patrick · Jun 29, 12:15 PM · #
I’ve never really considered feedlot ethics in evaluating meat consumption for myself. I feel strongly about the unethical chemical and hormone contamination of animals intended as food though. Modern mass food production stretches the buyer-beware free market paradigm far beyond common principles of decency and it all fails to make sense anymore. It makes better sense to eat food from local producers I can identify. The vegans I know generally are very level-headed about their choices. They don’t fit the stereotype of the vocal, axe-grinding militant vegans with dreds and whatnot.
My observation is that the healthier, whole food-type diet is much cheaper than the Standard American Diet. I buy in bulk at the co-op though, and that brings a big monetary savings. Oats are about $1.20/lb now and I eat only about a pound of those per week. Quinoa is something like $1.80 and I eat several pounds of that. The price placcard on the avocado bin makes them seem expensive but I can buy enough of them to eat half a fruit per day and it costs me less than a pound of salmon, which is enough for about 4 days. All my standards — i.e., carrots, spinach, celery, broccoli, etc. — add up fairly inexpensively, even though I graze on large amounts of them.
Posted by: Carl · Jun 29, 12:23 PM · #
Oops, I meant that a week’s worth of avocados costs me less than does a pound of salmon. I don’t use salmon as money, though it’s a neat idea.
Posted by: Carl · Jun 29, 12:26 PM · #
That’s interesting, Patrick. But it’s totally possible to eat nasty processed junk and still be vegan or vegetarian. That was the case with me for a really long time. And I’m still poor. I always have been. ;)
In fact I would say that most of the long-term vegetarians I know did not make the choice based on healthy-living concerns. It was purely out of concern for animal welfare in the beginning. Had nothing to do with maximizing physical performance for yoga or anything else.
Does that represent a split from the yoga-raw foodist-athlete crowd of vegetarians?
Posted by: joy · Jun 29, 12:29 PM · #
But there are ashtangis who eat meat because they feel they can’t meet the demands of their practice without.
My first try at being a vegetarian, some five or six years ago, was a total failure because having been brought up in Spain, all I could think of as “vegetables” were french fries and tomato slices. And cheese, which I don’t eat because I just hate the stuff.
Posted by: V · Jun 29, 12:33 PM · #
I was a vegetarian for 7 years, and like Joy and others here, not sanctimonious about it. Continued to cook meat for my boyfriend at the time. People do what they do, I never tried to convert anyone.
Thinking of this thread, I did an experiment this afternoon on otherwise highly boring date with a carnivore who doesn’t drink so he thinks he is totally healthy. Brought up that lately I was thinking of going back to vegetarianism and maybe even veganism most of the time, and had given up processed and artificial things, to see how he’d react. He informed me that chicken and fish are really good for you and splenda was a splendid product. I informed him that sucralose is associated with genetic, immune system and reproductive damage, and splenda also contains about 2% heavy metals and arsenic.
“Defensive” wasn’t the word to describe his reaction.
And I was nice, sweet, smiley, my most charming, when I chatted about antibiotics, hormones, pesticides that are used in factory farming, all of which he was eating. He didn’t want to hear it.
It was interesting, to observe his knee-jerk reactions.
Posted by: Anna · Jun 29, 01:16 PM · #
What a totally adorable picture, Anna. Because I know that the whole time you were serene and glamorous and annoyed with him.
“This practice is so hard that I must eat meat to do it.” Uhhh…. So many levels there. Why not be honest about the choice (both to do practice to the point that it feels “demanding” and to eat meat) instead of setting it up as some kind of hardship or obligation? Kind of another version of self-defensive belief here, protecting both the extreme practice and the desire to pass meat off as necessary for health. If animals have to die in order for you to do your practice, but you wouldn’t eat them otherwise, may as well be conscious that this is the calculation. That’s ok. I ate fish last winter precisely to fuel my practice. But both choices are totally within a person’s control.
Rich veganism and poor veganism: I’ve seen both sides and they are so different! Bagels and bugles vrs. spa salads. Hmm…
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 29, 01:26 PM · #
Well taken, Joy! I mis-spoke, given what I wanted to say vs. what I said. Vegans in general don’t annoy me, but the one specific strain which does, is the “privilege vegan” (or vegetarian, or “healthy eater” generally) whose diet is based not on actual health concerns or philosophy, but on commodity fetishism. Let’s say that “Chez Whoever’s” starts to have a “healthy line” or better, a “heart conscious” line (oy!) and that people who were perfectly happy to eat Black Angus T-bones the night before, suddenly “go vegetarian.” These people annoy me, because in general (I’m sure with exceptions but I haven’t met any, and I’ve since lost contact with such crowds) their healthy eating comes down ENTIRELY to whether or not Cafe HooHa offers such things or not. When such places stop offering, these people have NO IDEA how to eat healthily, they were only ever in it for the fetish value so they can tell their friends about it at the golf club.
THOSE are the healthy/vegan/etc people who annoy me.
Now as to poor vegetarians, I’m all about those. Once upon a time, I took a long road trip with a vegetarian who ate, mostly, french fries. For several days.
Posted by: patrick · Jun 29, 03:29 PM · #
Testing? Looks like textpattern has blocked several comments this morning. Zee, yes you are banned so you unfortunately cannot call out someone who you see struggling with this topic, as you tried to do.
Everyone else, if your comment was blocked, apologies. Should be working now.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 30, 08:31 AM · #
LOL Owl, now you’ve got us all wondering :-D
Posted by: V · Jun 30, 08:45 AM · #
He had some righteous Zen slaps for me and Anna.
When Zee is enlightened, he can deliver all the Zen slaps he wants in my space.
Meantime, it’s just a lot of cruelty. His heart has closed right back up and crusted over in not-funny jokes.
Love ya, Zee.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 30, 09:58 AM · #
You should set up your spam filter so that you don’t even have to SEE his messages. I used to do that; worked a charm.
Posted by: V · Jun 30, 10:23 AM · #
Nah, I know most readers here don’t see Zee’s point and can’t stand my stupid exchanges with him. When The Editor lost his temper (which never happens) that was the end.
But I do think that Zee has a point, and that his mis-applied, harsh “pointing out instructions” always contain something useful.
Even though he’s wrong about the nature of the body and the mind. :)
On principle, I really dislike censoring Zee. But I do because he’s simply cruel.
Your shadow is raging, Zee, old boy. :)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 30, 10:34 AM · #
my neighbors treat me like a circus freak for being a vegetarian – it freaks them out every time we have a bbq. I sincerely don’t care what people eat and I cook meat for my kids. But people still seem to infer some criticism. Weird.
I’m a pescetarian now, for my wife’s benefit, although I could care less about eating the fish. I think it’s more important for me to make some concessions for her than for me to hold firm on any position.
I’m in favor of conscious eating. for me that means avoiding a tendency to overeat.
last night I grilled up a white peach with cayenne pepper. now that was art!
Posted by: cody · Jun 30, 11:21 AM · #
Very inspiring… and certainly more art than science in that food choice.
Yes, I think all people are saying here is that eating consciously is the idea. Eating fish in order to share a meal with the family… good call. Conscious Cheez-it indulgence: yes. (If you don’t get all vritti about it, which I do. I need some Kashi brand Cheez-its.)
It is easy to go to sleep where food’s involved. So many triggers there on the micro-emotional level.
I know some people have found this conversation overwrought, way too involved, and booooring. What’s up with that?
Food and for that matter money, are SO interesting in the ways that we relate to them. Very worth discussing every now and then, right? Even though it feels a little annoying or dirty to do so.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 30, 11:30 AM · #
Let’s talk money, then! :-D
Nah, just kidding, I don’t think I could. Weird, huh?
Posted by: V · Jun 30, 11:41 AM · #
Can you imagine, V?
I’ve put a lot of irritating stuff out there in the form of questions, but relationships to money would be SO emotionally taxing for all of us.
Especially considering that while our relationships to food and our own bodies are at least similar because of ashtanga, among the readership of the Owl blog, social class, income, savings and spending patterns vary SO DRAMATICALLY.
I would love to go there, but I don’t think anyone would appreciate it.
I taught a social psych class years ago, and the final project was to study a friend or family member in depth in terms of their relationship to money. I had an online discussion board up for the class, and the students ended up going crazy talking about all the personal stuff the project brought up for them. To a person, they loved the project, though in the end I thought the course veered a little too much away from social science in to “all about me” territory.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 30, 11:47 AM · #
Hi (0v0)
I’m at lunch, so I have to be brief. You ask important questions. I think it is good to regret having eaten food that you know is bad for you. People who don’t end up sick and out of control.
Regarding the eating meat and dairy. It’s easier to address the dairy first. I don’t consume too much of it because of lactose intolerance, not because of some veganism stance. I do consume kefir under advice of a yogi. However, I’m thinking these days that if the dairy comes from a cow that is humanely treated and not killed for food later, that milk or its products would be fine to consume.
The meat question was posed to the Venerable Robina Curtin. If you’re interested, I think it may be online at the tail end of one of her presentations, in the question and answer period. I’d have to dig it out. The main point is where are you in relationship to where the animal was killed. Are you a guest in the home of a wealthy butcher, and you’re being served a meal from an animal that was killed in the butcher’s farm adjacent to the house? Seems there there would be bad karma. Are you eating meet where you are far removed from the place it was killed? There you’re more removed. I am relying on memory and so my point is not coming across too well. It’s a difficult subject. She is a Tibetan nun, and the DL, the head of her order, eats meat, so she is sensitive to what she says.
We yogis are told not to eat meat. But within that framework, teachers of mine who have gone to India say that there is a lot of variation on the theme.
cheers,
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Jun 30, 12:02 PM · #
I think it’s easier for some people to talk about money than food. Especially an American. I’ve found the French are more reserved and private than Americans on the topic of money, but love to talk about food. And since I get asked about my vegetarianism, oh, I would say DAILY, I’ve been surprised at how their reactions differ from those you get in the US.
Everybody knows the French love their meat. But, I can answer the “why vegetarian?” question more honestly here—I don’t eat meat because I don’t want to cause suffering if I don’t have to, environmental concerns… ethics and morality, quoi. Even if they can’t see an end to their love affair with magret de canard, they usually seem to “get it”. They’re always game to talk about the politics of food, for sure. (And they are happy to learn that I’ve caved on the cheese issue, because at least I have some respect for the artistry of French cuisine.:)
In the US yoga blogosphere—among yoga peeps, which personally I find extraordinary (I say that without snark, I promise), almost all downplay the morality of vegetarianism. It’s all alright and it’s not obnoxious if I say it’s so I can poop better, or so I can karanda, or so I feel really great, etc. etc. I can even talk pages and pages about my digestive system and the benefits of raw food to improve backbending, whatever. But I have the impression that were anyone to say something like “ahimsa”... forget about it. The only way it’s ok to mention the concept is in relation to not pushing yourself to excellence so relentlessly that you pull a hamstring. You type A, you!
Everyone has to assure everyone (you see, I did too) that we don’t preach. I don’t preach, because it doesn’t work anyway. But I do try to influence my bf’s decisions about what he eats, and so now there’s one more Frenchman who doesn’t eat meat with every meal or automatically use ham instead of salt to give flavor to whatever. He’s made that change because he’s come to drop some defenses and see why I eat the way I do. If vegetarianism is a question of ethics for me, why wouldn’t I like to see others making similar choices? Why wouldn’t I hope to influence that, if possible? Why are we so afraid to admit that we make a choice based on concern for something other than ourselves?
Anyway. I just noticed that if one of your reasons for eating veg is animal welfare, that better come LAST on the list. And you should probably say it like you’re a little embarrassed about it. Add something like this, I always do: “I grew up in the country? And, um, I had to feed the chickens/pigs/cows? And, they were, um, my friends? And so, I know it’s crazy, but I just don’t like hot dogs any more.”
OK, sorry Owl. I see you already tried to put this to bed. That’s enough out of me. ;)
Posted by: joy · Jun 30, 08:40 PM · #
If someone can’t feel the animal suffering side of it, I don’t imagine I can influence their perspective, so I put it down. I understand a case can be made for trying to raise people’s consciousness, but quite honestly, if someone wants to eat meat, or ignore the suffering side, my input is not going to affect their perspective — and is likely to polarize the issue.
And yes, the sensitive-to-animal-suffering viewpoint is generally taken as wacko or sanctimonious.
Posted by: karen · Jul 1, 04:12 AM · #
Oh I will have to be succinct here, I missed the boat and being a meat-eater was enmeshed in sudden realisation that my mindfulness practice was blind on meat!
So Science is cause and effect.
Empty is cause and effect.
Meat is tasty, and causes suffering.
Mindfulness of reducing suffering, understanding ones own role with cause and effect and being aware and in tune with context is my modus.
I liked what Joy said, mindfulness is making the people you are with happy by forgetting your needs (within a good ego container). I like the whole question, and it brought up guilt. But the good kind. The kind that prompts looking at my shadow, and extending into that journey. This is where the overwrought resides, unraveling the resistance to see clearly.
Ok that wasn’t succinct! Bleh.
Posted by: Gregor · Jul 1, 05:38 AM · #
It was GREAT. Really helpful for me, as I will explain in a second. I like what everyone is saying… I have my own stuff going on here. Balancing the belief that eating meat is one of the most intra-species and ecologically violent things humans do with a recognition of humans’ needs and self-perceived needs, and with an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of my role in this….
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 1, 08:38 AM · #
Geez you gals, guys. If you don’t stop carrying on about this I am actually going to have to share my own thoughts about it! The come from an evolutionary perspective.
Meantime, why make refusal to feel compassion for animals a free pass? We don’t give that pass to those who refuse to feel compassion for those of another skin color, or gender, or citizenship.
We are segregated from animal-killing, so most people don’t have Joy’s opportunity to experience compassion up-front. For most, that experience only happens in the imagination, when someone or some aspect of our creativity suggests it. (I’ve known people who hurt animals as kids: most emotional vegetarians of all. Hmm….)
Vegan and vegetarian hatred (itself an extreme moral position) is intense because it’s on a precipice. Fear of change. Abhinevsa. It knows changed emotion or behavior is guaranteed if consciousness expands.
If I can be the stimulus in a vegan-hater’s environment that restores that impulse to imagined compassion, that’s not about my moral agenda. It’s just about providing some epistemic options that they didn’t get cos unlike me and Joy they did not grow up in the country.
For people who eat meat and aren’t shutting off their own thinking, reasoning, feeling selves (who aren’t purposely regressing in the natural evolutionary process of expanding the boundaries of oneself to include other beings) to do it, cool. That’s none of my business except to examine my own capacity to be totally ok with it, instead of looking away and not thinking about it. Usually, I’m cool. :)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 1, 08:39 AM · #
I was a keen horseback rider in my teens and early twenties. Every weekend I’d be at the stables, training horses of very rich people who could affort keeping them but didn’t have or want to make the time to actually visit them.
My mom told me once how when I was a weakly kid, she fed me horse fillets because they were believed to be extra rich in iron.
The thought of someone killing the animals I adored and cutting them into fillets for me (or anyone else) to eat was probably the seed of what would later become my vegetarianism.
Posted by: V · Jul 1, 08:44 AM · #
There is stimulus for restoration of the impulse to imagined compassion in many common daily things, no? Relationship to pets, certainly. And just general current event reading. The recent beef recall due to cruelty in a slaughterhouse. That there is a place where sentient beings are in such fear that they tremble until they falter and collapse, only to be hoisted up by forklift and delivered to slaughter? Why did this not wake up imagined compassion in the heart of anyone who read about it?
Okay, you’ve found the limits of my dispassion.
Posted by: karen · Jul 1, 04:22 PM · #
Thought they might be in there. :)
That there is a place where sentient beings are in such fear that they tremble until they falter and collapse, only to be hoisted up by forklift and delivered to slaughter? Why did this not wake up imagined compassion in the heart of anyone who read about it?
Can somebody answer this? The medium itself, since Shock and Awe, makes us perceive the violence it delivers as a kind of surreal cartoon?
Maybe there’s no excuse. Maybe it’s no use….
I’m such a damn optimist though. So trusting, always.
On another note, people who don’t like cats and dogs make me quite uncomfortable. Adopt a pet. Please.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jul 1, 05:08 PM · #
I can remember a day when, as anti-animal-cruelty as my folks were and are, “cow” suddenly, I realized, was NOT the same kind of “animal” as “dog” in their thinking. There was a sort of cognitive line drawn between “pet” and “food” and it’s bad juju to harm the former and perfectly fine to eat the latter.
A turnaround moment for me was feeling ACTUAL fear in my muscles, inside me, physically present, after a backbending practice. Real quickly, it occurred to me that I spent 30 years eating creatures who were probably plenty afraid as they went back to the One, and that has REALLY put me off animal.
Posted by: patrick · Jul 1, 05:26 PM · #
The disconnect between awful stories of cruelty and just going on with life without batting an eye is so common. We know histories examples. Here is a basic one of mine: I stopped reading the Guardian Weekly because I couldn’t handle all the bad things that I couldn’t do anything about. It was making me very anxious.
I recognised much later that if I read the paper a few weeks later, it wasn’t so bad – the problems remained, changed but somehow were not as immediate. This led me to zen.
Developing (finding) your own view and contextual ethical hierarchy is hard work.
I have always been a cat-whisperer though…
Posted by: Gregor · Jul 1, 07:29 PM · #
I think my biggest problem with veganism is that it’s reactionary, in that it only exists in response to the industrialization of food.
Neither veganism nor eating meat that comes from that industrial complex is really natural for humans. When I think about it, I believe we are constructed, biologically, to eat meat as a treat, and to treat the animals who feed us well, either by raising them kindly or having our first involvement in their lives be as their killer.
As a response to the mass processing of food and of animals, I think veganism is pretty healthy for the world at large. I’m not sure that it’s the healthiest response for humans, though.
I would really prefer something that gets closer to a diet that reflects what humans evolved to eat, and also treats animals well – I aim for this by not eating meat very often and choosing meat that is organic, grass-fed, etc. But I don’t believe that in order to treat animals well we need entirely avoid killing them to eat or wear. A lot of vegans are pretty militant about this, which fits the negative stereotype. And there are plenty that aren’t, too. I guess what I’m trying to get as is that there are other ways to react against the industrialization of food, than veganism – and lots of vegans don’t want to recognize that.
There was an episode of 30 Days a few weeks ago that dealt with this issue pretty well – did anyone see it?
Posted by: katie · Jul 12, 08:29 AM · #