i just wrote this impromptu
"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." ~ "The Outermost House"
-- from Henry Beston, Author (1888-1968)
I got this amazing and enlightening quote from a film someone recommended to me. This is it:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967&q=eart...
I also recommend it to you and anyone... It is very informative, credible, professional, and honest.
This film, though it became very hard for me to finish watching at certain parts, has rekindled my original reason for becoming vegan so long ago: animal rights. Now, I am no eangelist or militant vegan; I chose my diet for myself and I feel very comfortable with it... I also don't believe that a lover of animals and animal rights necessarily is vegan or vegetarian - I don't think it is a contradiction to be eating meat and called oneself a believer in animal rights. Why?
Because there was a time when people were not as fortunate as us, when things like food, distant communication, diverse trade, and shelter may not have come as easy to them. If one goes far back enough, there have been times in human history when our homes were not even consistent... With agriculture, we changed this. And with that change came quite a few others that essentially brought about what we refer to as civilization.
But what is that value that we seem to have lost in our present day when it comes to food, clothing, electronics, and so on? There is a disconnect in our system between the consumer - the user of the item - and the very source. We lose a sense of appreciation and thankfulness, because we can always buy whatever we need or want; whatever it is we can think of will always be available at a store any time. In eating our breakfast each day, do we thank a generous pig and a farmer for our bacon? Do we thank a generous chicken and a farmer for our eggs? Do we think of the effect on our Earth's soil that the grain field harvest had when our cereal was made,; do we graciously thank a mother cow who supplied us with more than enough milk, and a farmer's careful hands which squeezed it for us? I don't think many of us think to do this, care to do this, or are ever even taught to do this - at least in the city I grew up in and in many of the places my good friends have grown up in.
And besides, the laid-back, down-home, colorful, child-friendly, family farming we picture in our heads is quite rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The food we consume, animal or vegetable (vegetable being any living thing besides an animal), is no longer a product of a small farm we could identify by the name on the box, but, provided it is not speciifcally known to be a local product, merely made in a factory of sorts... Mass production, genetic engineeering, more machines and less humans to be paid inividual wages - these things bring more yield, more money each year, and the food created is all abut profit, about efficiency. And then it arrives, our Deans milk and vanilla ice cream, our steak and steak sauce, our frozen broccoli and Wonder bread, our already-made microwave dinners, our wool jackets, out cotton pants, our fur coat - and we eat them and use them without any thought to their origin or the life that was lost for them - generally, speaking.
There was a time, as I said, when such things did not come so easily to humans. We hunted, we farmed in unreliable conditions, we survived through scarce and cold winters... When we found a good meal, we knew where it came from, we knew who killed it/picked it/harvested it, and we knew we were hungry for it. It was a time to be glad for another substantial meal and a time to be thankful to all who provided us with it - including the plant or animal who sacrificed their life for us...
The lack of respect and awareness we have in this culture for what we stuff in our bodies and wear on our bodies disgusts me. It is quite obvious that many people simply don't realize their disrespect because they have never lived in a way that they couldn't get something. Something about this needs to change because at this height of complexity and dicsonnection in our producer and consumer system, both the consumers and producers, but perhaps moreso, the consumers, would be rendered absolute helpless fools as soon as this system malfunctioned. None of us know of the cource of our products, including those most important: food. We have not seen the farms they are from. We do not know how these products are extracted from their original being. We would not survive without our complex system - a system many people don't even comprehend.
So this is why I ask that, at the very least, you begin by watching this film and letting in a bit of knowledge. And if you question the validity of the information, I urge you to contact those who made it and ask for more proof. i urge you to look into where your food and clothing and other products come from, and really give thought ot what it means to be a consumer, not only on the economic scale, but on the ecologicaly and perhaps even spiritual scale.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967&q=eart...
Thanks for reading.
-- from Henry Beston, Author (1888-1968)
I got this amazing and enlightening quote from a film someone recommended to me. This is it:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967&q=eart...
I also recommend it to you and anyone... It is very informative, credible, professional, and honest.
This film, though it became very hard for me to finish watching at certain parts, has rekindled my original reason for becoming vegan so long ago: animal rights. Now, I am no eangelist or militant vegan; I chose my diet for myself and I feel very comfortable with it... I also don't believe that a lover of animals and animal rights necessarily is vegan or vegetarian - I don't think it is a contradiction to be eating meat and called oneself a believer in animal rights. Why?
Because there was a time when people were not as fortunate as us, when things like food, distant communication, diverse trade, and shelter may not have come as easy to them. If one goes far back enough, there have been times in human history when our homes were not even consistent... With agriculture, we changed this. And with that change came quite a few others that essentially brought about what we refer to as civilization.
But what is that value that we seem to have lost in our present day when it comes to food, clothing, electronics, and so on? There is a disconnect in our system between the consumer - the user of the item - and the very source. We lose a sense of appreciation and thankfulness, because we can always buy whatever we need or want; whatever it is we can think of will always be available at a store any time. In eating our breakfast each day, do we thank a generous pig and a farmer for our bacon? Do we thank a generous chicken and a farmer for our eggs? Do we think of the effect on our Earth's soil that the grain field harvest had when our cereal was made,; do we graciously thank a mother cow who supplied us with more than enough milk, and a farmer's careful hands which squeezed it for us? I don't think many of us think to do this, care to do this, or are ever even taught to do this - at least in the city I grew up in and in many of the places my good friends have grown up in.
And besides, the laid-back, down-home, colorful, child-friendly, family farming we picture in our heads is quite rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The food we consume, animal or vegetable (vegetable being any living thing besides an animal), is no longer a product of a small farm we could identify by the name on the box, but, provided it is not speciifcally known to be a local product, merely made in a factory of sorts... Mass production, genetic engineeering, more machines and less humans to be paid inividual wages - these things bring more yield, more money each year, and the food created is all abut profit, about efficiency. And then it arrives, our Deans milk and vanilla ice cream, our steak and steak sauce, our frozen broccoli and Wonder bread, our already-made microwave dinners, our wool jackets, out cotton pants, our fur coat - and we eat them and use them without any thought to their origin or the life that was lost for them - generally, speaking.
There was a time, as I said, when such things did not come so easily to humans. We hunted, we farmed in unreliable conditions, we survived through scarce and cold winters... When we found a good meal, we knew where it came from, we knew who killed it/picked it/harvested it, and we knew we were hungry for it. It was a time to be glad for another substantial meal and a time to be thankful to all who provided us with it - including the plant or animal who sacrificed their life for us...
The lack of respect and awareness we have in this culture for what we stuff in our bodies and wear on our bodies disgusts me. It is quite obvious that many people simply don't realize their disrespect because they have never lived in a way that they couldn't get something. Something about this needs to change because at this height of complexity and dicsonnection in our producer and consumer system, both the consumers and producers, but perhaps moreso, the consumers, would be rendered absolute helpless fools as soon as this system malfunctioned. None of us know of the cource of our products, including those most important: food. We have not seen the farms they are from. We do not know how these products are extracted from their original being. We would not survive without our complex system - a system many people don't even comprehend.
So this is why I ask that, at the very least, you begin by watching this film and letting in a bit of knowledge. And if you question the validity of the information, I urge you to contact those who made it and ask for more proof. i urge you to look into where your food and clothing and other products come from, and really give thought ot what it means to be a consumer, not only on the economic scale, but on the ecologicaly and perhaps even spiritual scale.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967&q=eart...
Thanks for reading.