Thoughts on Activism
I’ve been getting this reflection lately about switching up
my vibe. Tomorrow, December 2, I will have been living a vegan lifestyle
for one-and-a-half years. The identities that I’ve built up in myself as a
vegan have largely been concerned with my diet and purchasing choices, with an
eye toward compassion for animals and Mother Earth, and it’s all been good. But I’m feeling now that it’s time for a kind of psychological
death, and a rebirth as a vegan with a purpose beyond vague or personal interests.
The issue that has always, always pushed my buttons, even
before I went vegan, is the meat and dairy trades - animal agriculture. There’s so much corruption. It’s so
ruthlessly corporate, and years of clever and deceptive marketing has convinced
many people that animal and animal-product consumption is not only acceptably healthy, but
necessary. Consider how protein consumption has become our obsession. And yet,
you’ll be very, very hard pressed to find someone in a developed country suffering with a
protein deficiency. It just doesn’t happen.
The protein deficiency myth is total bunk, and it doesn’t
take much work to find that out. The science on this is solid. Those who have discovered this have, I believe,
a responsibility to share what we know, to become busy activists, and to
challenge our very government on its advancement of the cruel, lethal diet that
American eating has become.
We have no friends in the agencies that we’ve been led to trust
exist for our wellbeing – this includes our elected officials, and
organizations like the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes
Association, and the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Our government is in bed with whomever gives it the most cash. If you doubt that at all, just
follow the money. It always leads to the most powerful players in the game.
Animals are being slaughtered at staggering rates and under
ever worsening conditions. I had the thought last night that this enterprise of
animal agriculture that we’ve allowed to exist is going to no-doubt end in
karmic disaster for us.
There’s no way and no how that it can continue without dire
consequences for the planet, and hence, for life, all of which relies on the well being
of the planet's soil, air, and water. Backlash is inevitable. There’s no growing food in
dead soil. All gardeners know this. Water must be reasonably clean if it’s
going to be safe for drinking and irrigating food crops. We’re constantly
breathing, yet deforestation is eradicating our oxygen supply – which, in case
you didn’t know, is not limitless. Trees are the lungs of the planet.
There’s just so much wrong that it makes one feel helpless.
But I believe, I really do, that we’re not helpless. It will, however, take a
lot of effort and risk to bring the facts to the fore, to convince those around
us that we have no need – no need whatsoever – for animals as food. What’s
more, our monstrous industries of meat and dairy production are laying this
planet to waste. And at the center of it all is the biggest human defect of the
soul there is: the all-consuming obsession to get more money. At any cost.
We are in a state of emergency. There are
huge and powerful forces that push against those trying to sound the alarm,
and those forces are unscrupulous. But speak up we must, so that others
may benefit from our efforts. Vegans have goodness and medicine to offer the
world. We should get to work on it.
