“Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they are: both are the most dangerous pseudosciences.” Nietzsche. Daybreak. #11
“The good mood was placed on the scales as an argument and outweighed rationality…” ibid. #28
5/16/22
Thinking about the Buffalo/Tops shooter who managed to kill 10. The most disturbing part is that I think more of his life than the lives of his victims. Perhaps I recognize that their suffering is over while his is just beginning. Yes, those who knew and cared for the deceased will mourn, and that is a pain that spreads and thus is naturally addressed and mollified by the supportive community. At some point (one would hope) the shooter will have realized that his pre-meditation was ‘incomplete’ let’s say. An 18y/o ‘adult’ destined for engineering-school decided to get a jump on his curriculum by doing some independent research on 4 or 8chan and performing voluntary social engineering, believing himself to be some great white messiah doing that lord of logic’s work, believing himself an example worthy popularity and vindication. Interesting to think how technology advances access to information, yet in many ways has a regressive effect on individuals inundated. “All actions may be traced back to evaluations, all evaluations are either original or adopted – the latter being by far the most common. Why do we adopt them? From fear – that is to say, we consider it more advisable to pretend they are our own… we arrive at it as children, and rarely learn to change our view; most of us are our whole lives long the fools of the way we acquired in childhood of judging our neighbors (their minds, rank, morality, whether they are exemplary or reprehensible)… ibid. #104 “And if the reason of mankind is of such extraordinary slow growth that it has often been denied that it has grown at all during the whole course of mankind’s existence…” ibid. #107 Of course I don’t always agree with every evaluation, but one’s ability to conceptualize abstract topics with cogency may be more or less admirable. Next-generational ‘influencers’ resort to more extreme tactics in order to get noticed! “The striving for distinction keeps a constant eye on the next man and wants to know what his feelings are: but the empathy which this drive requires for its gratification is far from being harmless or sympathetic or kind.” ibid. #113
These readings remind me of how Nietzsche is often considered an integral link between philosophy and the psychoanalysis of Freud since re-evaluated morality becomes linked to mental disorder. What was previously evaluated as sinfulness by religions (where all are born sinners who could only hope for redemption through faith (orthodoxy) and saved from excess suffering though adhering to God’s Laws (orthopraxy)) now, the route to power could be obtained by putting the Human Condition in other words viz. through science! And who is more knowledgeable of the gay sciences than malignant narcissists?! Grandiosity: the protracted narrative. ‘Knowing thyself’ becomes a complex/diverse symptomatology that has the capacity to become all-consuming (solipsistic). This self-subsumed psychology organizes one around a schedule for what is popular in dietetics and maximal for sleep. Alimentary! And once one is optimally primed due to such self-care, it is to such an extent that any outside entity not in complete admiration, agreement, or harmony are threat to comfort, convenience, or material satiety (mental stability reevaluated). What kind of hagiography does this map? A rags-to-riches overcoming of oppression mythos? Oppressed by the lead (Pb) in the water, Flint? Oppressed by random police raids, Chicago? Oppressed by staggering levels of homelessness every city on the west coast? Is there nothing to oppress but oppression itself, Kennedy? The fearful shudder. If the Lord oppresseth, long-suffering (patience) is the only correlative value. Afterlives matter!
12/12/23
Ominous hominy:
“It looked thin and etiolated; a sort of vegetarian substitute for the more organic loves.” C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves. p59
Debating a friend on relative virtues of veganism: A list of points I’ve abstracted:
1) Cannibalism would be vegan since a human being could provide consent.
Animal consent is absurd.
“Blink twice! Give me a sign!” Old McDonald looking for a reason.
“Moo! Bark! Oink!”
“You just signed your death warrant, pig.”
As if human consent could not be coerced, Judge Dee.
2) 98%+ of cows are factory farmed. It is an unsustainable resource suck.
My cursory search shows 70.4% to be the actual figure for cows in the U.S. Still a high number, but not an insignificant difference. “Factory farm” is also a legal definition for a farm with greater than 500 heads of livestock, but this says nothing about the living conditions of the individual animal. Factory farming exists to increase efficiency. Many fewer resources are used as compared to the past due to advancements in knowledge, structure, and training.
3) Cow farts are ruining the planet.
https://www.iowafarmbureau.com/Article/Question-Do-cow-farts-really-contribute-to-global-warming
I understand that there are sources designed to be equally pro-industry as anti-. Source matters upon citation (what is the agenda?). This source suggests cows contribute to 4% global methane. Reuters suggests 15%. Either way, methane (CH4) is one of many greenhouses gases and one of the more innocuous. Plus, according to this article, “Cattle are natural ‘upcyclers’...Food waste in landfills is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States…(EPA)” I think the implication here is that carbon emissions would be even greater without livestock consuming agricultural waste products that would be present in the production of fruits, vegetables, grains, and finished products.
4) “We will destroy less of the Amazon.”
By-product of rapid industrialization in Brazil. Global corporations (JBS foods – the world’s largest meat producer) should be held accountable for unsustainable practices. This speaks more to ethics of greed & economic imperialism. “Confessionsof an Economic Hit Man” provides a basic framework for what is really happening in the “developing world.”
5) We are not carnivorous animals.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma!
6) Unhealthy: especially colon cancer, heart disease risk, etc.
This is find is mainly due to overly processed foods, especially with nitrates/nitrites. This can cause stress on blood vessels sensitive to nitric oxide (NO) especially combined with high salt content. Toxic buildup mainly due to over-consumption (gluttony) + sedentary lifestyle (sloth).
7) “Mindless suffering”
As opposed to the mindful suffering of humans? Ironically, many humans seem to find a mindless animal existence preferable (comparing themselves to dogs and cats). This fits into Buddhist afterlife architecture – animal reincarnation being a possible plane of afterlife existence. And not all Buddhists are vegetarian, although they are prohibited from killing. Jews and Christians are also technically under such prohibition (right Israel?), but this does not extend to (all) animals.
8) “Workers are excessively violent towards the animals, and how could they not be?” P.E.T.A. “Faces of Death” raison d’etre cult commercial.
I’ve beaten this dead horse before, but I became vegetarian for a few months after watching “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (original) while stoned and insightful was able to grasp its deeper significance – human beings become animals in a slaughterhouse. Now that I’m thinking about it again, it’s clear that the cannibal family represent a very poorly managed abattoir. There used to be chickens there until the family got greedy. These butchers were very sloppy. What it takes to actually manage a successful farm in the modern world requires years of training. I have a friend, Paul, who graduated Warren Wilson, and now manages free range cattle in Colorado, and he was one of the sweetest people I’ve made the acquaintance of. It is possible that it requires a higher level of compassion to do that sort of work. Care and attention.
It’s easier to appeal to feelings/sentiment and PETA has that much figured out. Essentially PETA is an NGO psychological operation. They do not produce anything except propaganda, tee-shirts, and fanatics. People who have been working hard their entire lives to feed their families and communities are suddenly forced to respond to “ethics” which essentially is a vehicle for greater governmental control in previously unregulated industries. And this is most likely what brings conglomerations over small farms because the larger entities are able to pay the ethicist’s (lawyers/tax) indulgence fees. What good has ever come from fear-mongering? It’s entertaining (as a horror movie) until you start believing it’s the entirety of reality.
Before he became a great Zen master, he spent many years in pursuit of enlightenment, but it eluded him. Then, one day, as he was walking in the marketplace, he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer. 'Give me the best piece of meat you have,' said the customer. And the butcher replied, 'Every piece of meat I have is the best. There is no piece of meat here that is not the best.' Upon hearing this, Banzan became enlightened.
9) Earth will check humans out of existence.
Ecological Eschatology! Add it to the list of possibilities! Morally superior? No. “Moral superiority complex?” Yes.
12/13/23
This is a complex issue! One point is that a superiority complex in an Olympian is that it is personality defining, reinforced, and validated! Patriotic even! It’s the complex psychological disorder of the gods! A local regression analysis would trace this back obviously to the topic of conversation, veganism, which is simply a spearhead, an alimentary concern. Diet and exercise can be personality defining, but they are more often the more mundane parts of an individual. It’s how people protect themselves from psychic onslaughts, (or leave themselves exposed, as the case may be). What motivates an individual to become an Olympian? What motivates an individual to dominate their peer group? Moby and Morrissey – best vegan musicians in existence (they might be irrelevant otherwise)!
Clarification (1/20/24): While I find Morrissey unlistenable, I loved listening to Moby's "Play" album in middle school. I respect anyone who has the courage to reach the artistic echelon they inhabit. My scrutiny is only the result of their being easy targets for this particular subject. Levels of relevance be damned! Obviously they are relevant if I'm talking about them in general.
Considering why I even got on this topic, I believe it's just the pride and arrogance of vegans, from a Biblical standpoint, as in they believe they have discovered a superior belief. Do they believe that they have truly exited the Danse Macabre?
12/16/23
A desire to “have known” with regards to superiority. Elimination over improvement with regard to agriculture (certain aspects). Elimination is discipline when it comes to abstention. What functions do animals serve on farms? Permaculture ideal, personal art of living (Sepp Holzer). 500 sentient humans herded into a high school, yoked. Forced to sit still for hours at a time, milked for knowledge, fed arguably inadequately. Receive your diploma! Is this the afterlife? How should I know? Microscope – telescope – scope, distance, magnification, and focus? Anarchist calf – mad honey, mad milk. A reference to Socrates. Cow compassion. Share my knowledge – suffer with me. What profession isn’t monstrous? Wrestling, pharmacy, suicide, brain damage, broken bone, narcotic earthling. “Can It Be All So Simple?” Dualistic deduction: one quarter of what mystics in ancient China called the taijitu. A person with a superiority complex: what the French used to call a bigot. Insert “How dare you?!” meme.
12/17/23
Animals are an integral part of agriculture. Their numbers have been reduced over time due to a variety of efficiencies including complex machinery. They are larger, dumber, more pacified, easier to manage. “The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery...the smoke which is the slavery of freemen, has fallen into the fire which is the tyranny of slaves. Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.” Plato. The Republic. Book VIII. Even bees must be managed or they become inclined to produce only “drones’ honey” – an intoxicating admixture – to the detriment of substance with more nutritive properties, and thus destroy themselves in the process. It is true that veganism is a practice that requires discipline greater than no discipline at all. It is also a belief that is informed by statistics parading as facts. “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.” Agriculture has existed since the advent of civilization, of which animals have always played in integral part. Before agriculture, humans consumed meat, a necessity that would cause some to resort to cannibalism. It is true that individuals have different nutritional requirements. If one feels that they need not consume animals or animal products, so much the better for the rest, I guess. Agriculture ought to be free of cruelty and violence, and it makes economic sense for that to be so. War and violence only makes sense to those with excess power, money, and resources. It would be good if our policy administrators would break up monopolies and multinational corporations. It is not a given that a “factory farm” is a cruel, violent place that is an ecological disaster any more than any individual is cruel, violent, or a burden to their mother.
12/23/23
8b) “Earthlings” and “Dominion” are the really convincing videos that must be seen to be believed.
The horror/documentary genre, full of malnutrition, mutilation, confinement, gassing, torture, and gore. How humans dominate the environment and what that looks like on an industrial efficiency scale. Aligned with the topic of war. “Doesn’t anyone remember when war used to be civilized?” when in reality it never was. A game of kings, masters, and feudal lords at best. And this points to the topic of violence that my friend emphasizes. She hates it, as most humans and animals do – the only exception are those corrupted and in power who enjoy viewing abstractly (or intimately and protected) the feelings of lust fulfilled. Sadists. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I’m about half-way through reading Leo Tolstoy’s “On Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence” which is a series of essays on “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and the responsibility of the individual to not participate in war. He was also a famous vegetarian. He was a contemporary and shared many views with Gandhi, another notable vegetarian. This follows in the resistance to power motif (a power unto itself (how can there be power without resistance?)) or more accurately a resistance to the powers-that-be meaning those who goad soldiers to violence. And both of these men were influenced by the American author, Thoreau – mostly vegetarian. So there is a definite, noble pattern here of abolition, anti-violence, and vegetarianism established among many of humanity’s great thinkers. Also worth noting, Tolstoy was a devout Christian, Gandhi an inspired Hindu, and Thoreau a transcendentalist. Anyone with eyes to see can spot injustice – it happens all around us. How does one maintain a sense of justice and integrity in an unjust world?
Why justice? (I’ve already referenced Plato’s Republic.) What benefit does a man possess in sound judgment? Why not be unjust? You could gain many more material possessions/ creature comforts by screwing over your neighbor! You could take what’s theirs! Since we live in an unjust world, it stands to reason that my neighbor acquired his material wealth in like manner! He only acts civilized! When I could act better! I would look even grander in a cuirassier with epaulettes! Porter! Ready Bessie!
“Your horse is on its way, sire!”
I’ll get back to the argument, because I’m happy proving my friend’s points for the time being. No use in yes-butting industrial practices that are truly sick and horrific.
10) Cognitive dissonance.
For ease I’ll quote what may be a relevant Healthline.com infographic:
Conflict: You feel guilty about eating meat because you consider yourself an animal lover.
Cognitive Dissonance: You enjoy the taste of mean but you’re also aware of inhumane conditions of animals. You feel guilty that you can’t afford better meat options.
Resolving Cognitive Dissonance: You decide to buy less meat and opt for cage-free eggs and meat substitutes like tofu or tempeh.
And for some that may not be good enough – tofu and tempeh all the time to a vegan! Now my brain is conflict free! I think that’s called a submission in the martial arts community. Still, most people wake up after being choked out in that realm. It’s not like conflict, you know, ceases or anything. Just because you came up with like a “final solution” to a problem. Just because it’s vegetarian does not mean it’s not factory farmed! Soy beans (the base of tofu and tempeh) is typically produced in monocrop using industrial farming techniques that strip the soil of nutrients, could be considered inhumane.
12/26/23
What about deer hunting? A short search shows that this practice is of ecological necessity in most areas where other apex predators’ populations have been greatly reduced. “Well, the ecological balance has been offset by human interference,” one might argue. Were wolves more merciful killers? And if culling herds, considered a proven necessity (best practice) to prevent “over-browsing” in forestry, should carcasses be left to rot and not consumed?
One thing my friend wanted to make known is that honeybees were a natural and peaceful evolutionary offshoot of carnivorous wasps. (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were an unnatural and warlike schism of Christianity!) I believe the science is still out. Are cats and dogs natural peaceful offshoots of lions and wolves? And how many generations did it take to completely alter genetics? (See drosophila as model for genetic science). With honeybees, it’s probably a combination of co-evolution with flowering species that were not present in primordial landscapes. Do we call an exploitation of a niche peaceful? Also, the hand of man has a way of rapidly altering genetics and may have improved efficiency. Today, honeybees will produce more than necessary for their own individual colony, therefore it is a helpful, not deleterious practice, to remove some of the honey that has been overproduced in order to maintain a certain type of harmony within the hive.
I somehow get the impression that an underlying notion of veganism is that there ought to be no symbiosis between man and the animal kingdom. That our connection with nature is somehow irreparably perverted or maybe man is pure evil to begin with? This leads me to:
8c) Vegan muckraking smut films.
A vegan is like a virgin who watches a pornographic video. Innocent in “media literacy” the individual believes “this is sex”. (Anyone who has seen a video of labor and childbirth knows that humans should NOT be having babies! ("sex is violent")) However, sex with a camera is sensationalized, and adds an extra element that alters the direction of the sex itself. In quantum physics, there is a classic “double slit experiment” where a light-producing device will emit single photons in sequence against a film obstructed by two narrow slits. The hypothesis was that if photons were particles they would produce two narrow lines on the developed film. However, the light particles miraculously produced what would be described as a wave-pattern on the film. Confounded, scientists attempted to “observe” the experiment. Through the process of observing, it collapsed the light into two narrow strips! Light is both a wave and a particle...
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
[Genesis 1:28-30]
I imagine that this is where the name for the film “Dominion” came from, which is ultimately sarcastic. Isn't the title of this movie sarcastic?
Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, then what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk...and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.
[David Foster Wallace]
I imagine the double slit experiment. I imagine an intruder with a camera [Chris Delforce]. There is an entire post-production team [Farm Transparency Project] that has decided what the film should be about beforehand. Lo and behold, they found what they were looking for. Animals dying in a slaughterhouse, great wonder! They collapsed the light! I’m sure that America has the wrong idea about efficiency, but is “the land of milk and honey” ultimately nefarious? I guess it depends on who you ask.
Here are some suggestions for (less pornographic) films on Regenerative Agriculture:
1) Sacred Cow (trailer)
2) The Biggest Little Farm (trailer)
3) To Which We Belong (trailer)
4) Honeyland (trailer) – I watched this last night on Vumoo. More of an art film than a documentary.
5) Kiss the Ground (trailer)
12/30/23
6) Bones And All – horror/romance/B-movie
Did I ever tell ye that the scourge of contemporary colonial capitalism all started with the banana? … In the 1890s fruit was the commodity of choice. The post-Industrial Revolution bourgeoisie middle classes across the world all wanted their tropical bananas. So the Americans secured them with ‘democracy and freedom.’ The militarily ‘intervened’ in the internal conflicts of South America to lower the price of bananas in their favour through a dirty shower of cunts called the United Fruit Company and the Cuyamel Fruit Company and General Lee Christmas the mercenary, now known as the Chiquita Banana Corporation. They got together a private army and performed a coup d’etat on the civil government of Honduras, and installed a military junta that were puppets for the fruit companies, aided and abetted by the U.S. government. Not long after, gigantic plantations of bananas were built and the Honduran economy came to rely solely on the production of bananas. Almost the entire population was reduced to slaves of a corporate-run banana republic. This pattern was repeated throughout Latin America. That’s why bananas cost fuck all today, lads. Will ye stand for that?”
[The Gospel According to Blindboy. p.244-6]
“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Sinclair, U.
I’m going to paraphrase the Wikipedia The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, published 1906. I’ve read Oil! by him, which “There Will Be Blood” was loosely based off of… So he worked undercover at a meatpacking plant in Chicago for seven weeks in order to expose the working conditions. Readers at the time fixated more on the quality of meat that the exploitation of the laborer. This created public pressure that mandated a popular response by government to enact inspection and purity laws that have given rise to the FDA that is still widely influential today. Now, this appears to be an improvement, but it goes back to something I was saying earlier, that all this government interference ends up serving are the larger corporate interests who are able to incur the costs, squeezing out competitors, and further consolidating the market. Tragic! On a side note, I was very excited about “There Will Be Blood” coming out in 2007, because I had just finished the book it was based on not a year before that. It was extremely neutered. The book had much more to say about government corruption (The Teapot Dome Scandal) and focused solely on the roles of the capitalist and church (and ironically, also avoided the topic of Hollywood hypocrisy, also present in the book). Imagine my disillusionment! (Imagine the illusion of the general public!)
Granted, the superior stance here is probably Tolstoy’s who might say that non-participation or disobedience to be best. He would say the individual meat packer has a choice. Sinclair thinks it’s wage slavery. And realistically, the less one is paid for their work and the more hours one is assigned, the more the work suffers. A person gets tired and makes poor decisions. In this case the animal also suffers consequently. The primary considerations however are the conditions of the worker. If the worker’s conditions were improved, the animal’s would naturally improve. Otherwise, it’s bananas!
1/14/23
A good vegan ought not eat food grown on manure. Bullshit, horseshit, chickenshit, and batshit are all products of animal suffering. Furthermore, the leaves should not be exposed to the birds of the sky nor the roots to the worms beneath!
Even the most advanced chemical-nutrient composed hydroponic grow systems will produce only enough to feed an elite few – those generously endowed with what a Christian would call, “the root of all evil.” And many advanced hydroponic systems opt for carp, the suffering of fish. It appears to me that suffering is baked into food in general. If some sort of suffering didn’t spurn on the strawberries, what brought them into being? Did intelligent Nature only think things through partially? Did humans (put in charge after the god of the pagans, Moloch, died of colon cancer from white mice) misunderstand Her will? Is suffering not mandatory?
We are in the midst of a great war. Arjuna is having doubts. If you haven’t noticed, our friends are dying at an alarming rate. Young, otherwise healthy people are dropping dead in cities both on the streets and behind closed doors. And why do people from all over the world move here in droves – for what dream? Our defenses our down, we’re dying, now’s their chance to invade. America has the land, it has the food, and it has the peace and prosperity that much of the world envies. And many of us are numb to it. Myself and many of my generation, the previous generation, and the next generation are addicts, and we wouldn’t be such grievous addicts if it weren’t for mass media conditioning. Pavlovian behavioral conditioning and the operant conditioning of B.F. Skinner make psychological dogs and rats of humans. Much of the battle is within the individual in society to understand how this subtle weaponry is being utilized on populations. What would be more effective, concerning veganism, would be a media fast. Cut out the grit and the gristle. Divide and conquer.
I would like to help people understand that every moment we exist on this earth is food, is suffering, and we ought to be grateful. A famous pranayama instructor said, “inhale suffering, and exhale peace.” This is done so that one can acknowledge the suffering in one’s environment, utilize it as strength, and find the peace within oneself to alchemically alter the world.
How much of this peaceful projection is delusion?
This depends on one’s own cognitive dissonance – is what we were calling it earlier. People look down on faith and belief because organized religion is, simply put, not science. People would rather know and attain a sense of superiority than not know – and paradoxically, this is what the wise know is wisdom. Knowing to not know. Having faith is superior to knowledge simply because there are limits to what one can know, but there are no limits to what one can believe. And actually science is projected through this philosophical ability for one to imagine and not simply know for sure. Those who simply know are who the Irish call quare. Those quares know, but their knowledge becomes endarkened (the opposite of enlightened). They begin a process of only being able to imagine the world based upon presupposition, preconditioning, and prejudice. And this process makes them feel young because it reminds them of a former time when they were smart enough to find out what was in the dark corner of the quare. They found out what it feels like to be quare! (And they are so brave, and so strong, and so proud now to have discovered what lurks over there and section it off with an arc. They have set sail on a journey of the righteous. The rest of the world, that antediluvian hellscape, can all drown beneath floating intelligence.)
2/28/24
One more thing I wanted to discuss was observable cattle driving through rural parts of Florida (#12 rank by state) and Virginia (#18), dairy and otherwise. What I was pondering as I sped by was just how much time does each animal on the lea spend standing around, munching grass and cud, doing pretty much nothing. Day after day, out there, just eating, breathing, shitting, and farting. And dreaming of great works of art? (“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) I try to imagine a world wherein there is no reason to fuck with them, let alone kill and eat them. I think much of this comes down to property, possession, or ownership. My cousin was raising three goats. They were confined to her yard. Eventually her yard became too small, they wanted more grass, so they got out and the neighbors complained. She had to sell her goats to somebody who possesses more land in presumably a district less populated by humans who would complain. This lends the question, what came first? The landowner or the domesticated animal? The chicken and the egg are still paradoxical conundrums. What came first? The chicken or the cramp cage? Is not. The male chicks didn’t pulverize themselves nor did the hens inure themselves in dark barns. There is a particular image that comes to mind from when I flipped through the Bhagavad Gita featured on this page along with a metaphysical philosophy that depicts the alpha-omega transmutation. This Hindu philosophy prescribes a type of bookkeeping called karma to all sentient beings with valence according to sins. It’s a particular type of worldview that runs contrary to what many Europeans would call pragmatic. This has much to do with the land itself. India is lush, tropical, and vastly arable, meaning that there is not a great necessity for meat-eating. Compare that with a place like Scandinavia where people would be eating pickles all winter if not for animal products. Which means that over time peoples become predisposed to one way of being that cannot be applied globally. This could be described via genetics or epigenetics. And historically the man-animal relationship has been symbiotic. Man could provide food and shelter for domesticated animals in harsher climates than they would be able to provide for themselves (after generations of domestication). Domestication therefore implies a certain weakening of the genes themselves, but that’s a whole ‘nother ball o’ wax. What is animal virtue? And how can I stop my goats from grazing in my neighbor’s yard?! In many ways, communities thrive by limiting their membership, but that’s edging on nationalism. If community members are of like-mind, they live in greater harmony. However America is a place of assimilation, increasing complexity, and making ends meet! Technology is a domesticating influence. Imagine the cramped chicken. Now imagine the new housing developments going up in every major city and its surrounding areas meant to provide the minimum square footage per unit of wage and you’ll start feeling cramped too. If you’re not performing profundities in your field, well, you’ll either be milked dry or conversely fattened for what?! The Brahmin see clearly in this regard. Now watch me suplex swine!
3/18/24
“Meats of all kinds are unnatural foods. Flesh, fish, fowl, and sea foods are very likely to contain numbers of germs. Meat contains bacteria. This bacteria infects the intestines causing colitis, and many other diseases. They always cause putrefaction...There is no ingredient in meat which cannot be procured in better quality in the products of the vegetable kingdom. Meat is an expensive second-hand food material and will not make healthy, pure blood, or form good tissues.”
Kloss, Jethro. Back To Eden. p70. c1939.
3/27/24
I thought I ought to cap this article off somehow by expressing my own belief on the topic of diet, since I've been mostly critical without offering an alternative solution. The biggest problem I have with veganism is that it is ostensibly a belief-system (-ism) that implies it expounds a morality. The most concise idea I have read from Kant, who has his critics, is that morality is a universal maxim. A moral law is one that could be applied to every person without exception. He uses the common examples of stealing and lying to make his point often in context. So when I think a belief in a diet that involves no animal product, I consider the Inuit and damn them all to icy hell! I think it would be nearly impossible without a great expenditure of energy to bring anyone who dwelt near the Arctic circle a year's supply of mangoes. Which is why, for the sake of the souls of freezing Siberians, Lord have mercy, (Vikings can still fuck themselves (you know why, Erik)) that I believe that the only morality that could be applied globally is that of the locavore. Eat fish, Aguta. Now when it comes to India, producer of over 50% of mangoes worldwide, it makes sense to adopt a vegetarian or even vegan diet. Their lush land provides. Efficiency dictates. Up north, they get their vitamin C from boiled pine needles. They're not growing a stinking pear! When it comes to temperate climates, these personal decisions become more complex. Jimmy Carter, famous peanut farmer, what is he doing adding palm oil, product of rain forest deforestation in Asia, to his peanut butter? Some food does represent colonial atrocity. Shark fin soup, totally unnecessary, doesn't even taste good, does it Gordon? What I'm saying is that you can get a glimpse of cultural values and even an individual's own morality based upon what he consumes. Get the veal or lamb at a fine dining establishment and see if the server's nose scrunches a little. A likely asshole. Well, it's better than mutton! There are certain cultural traditions when it comes to diet and appetite that stand on dubious merit; vegetable, animal, and mineral. Factory farms, while not unethical per se, ought to balance efficiency with a certain amount of compassion. Observing moderation in all things, perhaps there ought to be caps on heads. That said, there also ought to be perhaps caps on corporate expansion, personal wealth, and the age of the president (if 35 is too young, isn't 75 too old?). But this is me believing I'm making an obvious point, so perhaps that's the end.
3/13/24
