Such efforts are ultimately doomed to failure. Instead, we
need to build a web of understanding and awareness that
helps us see the connections between our food choices, our
individual and cultural health, our planetary ecology, our
spirituality, our attitudes and beliefs, and the quality of our
relationships. As we do this and act on this understanding,
we contribute to the evolution of a more harmonious and
liberated shared experience of life on this beautiful but
misunderstood planet.
I believe that until we are willing and able to make the
connections between what we are eating and what was
required to get it on our plate, and how it affects us to buy,
serve, and eat it, we will be unable to make the connections
that will allow us to live wisely and harmoniously on this earth.
When we cannot make connections, we cannot understand,
and we are less free, less intelligent, less loving, and less
happy. The most crucial task for our generation, our group
mission on this earth, perhaps, is to make some essential
connections that our parents and ancestors have been mostly
unable to make, and thus to evolve a healthier human society
to bequeath to our children. If we fail to make the connection
between our daily meals and our cultural predicament, we will
inevitably fail as a species to survive on this earth. By refusing
to make this essential connection, we condemn others and
ourselves to enormous suffering, without ever comprehending
why.
The call to evolve
Though I spent the first 22 years of my life eating the large
quantities of animal-based foods typical of our culture, I've
spent the past 30 years or so exploring the fascinating
connections and cause-effect relationships between our
individual and cultural practice of using animals for food
and the stress and difficulties we create for each other and
ourselves. I've discovered that the violence we instigate for
our plates boomerangs in remarkable ways.
It becomes immediately obvious, though, that our collective
sense of guilt about our mistreatment of animals for food
makes recognising this basic connection enormously difficult.
Eating animal foods is a fundamental cause of our dilemmas,
but we will squirm every which way to avoid confronting this.
It is our defining blind spot and is the essential missing piece
to the puzzle of human peace and freedom. Because of our
culturally inherited behaviour of abusing the animals we use
for food and ignoring this abuse, we are exceedingly hesitant
to look behind the curtain of our denial, talk with each other
about the consequences of our meals, and change our
behavior to reflect what we see and know. This unwillingness
is socially supported and continually reinforced.
ODYSSEY 76
•
DIGIMAG
Though I spent the first
22 years of my life eating
the large quantities of
animal-based foods typical
of our culture, I've spent the
past 30 years or so exploring
the fascinating connections
and cause-effect
relationships between our
individual and cultural
practice of using animals
for food and the stress and
difficulties we create for
each other and ourselves.
I've discovered that the
violence we instigate for
our plates boomerangs in
remarkable ways.