Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Explore the world of a vegetarian diet - for short term health , ethics , cost , discipline , happiness sustainability , environment , and long term health
A flock of seagulls takes off from Santa Monica Beach
A couple pushing dogs in a stroller.
We love animals. Human beings have a lot to say about animal beings, plus a lot of shared experience since the beginning of time. Animals are painted on pre historic walls, chased, domesticated, written of, hunted, there are centuries of works of art, one longest running musical on Broadway.
Animals are idealized, villainized, feared, loved. They are definitely a significant part of our world, our culture, environment, society and our everyday life.
It's not cool that hundreds are endangered, countless thousands extinct. Around the world museums honor them, PhD thesis candidates depend on them, artists capture them, scholars and scientists study them, marine biologists stand by them. Poets have always written about them.
Bob Dylan wrote a song about animals and how humans named each of them. Classical composer Camille Saint Saens wrote a symphony about the animals. Walt Disney crafted a film industry, built a TV empire and opened theme parks around the planet - all created from cartoons created about animals. Most everyone has a favorite animal, some are pets and part of our family, some we love from a distance.
Steven Spielberg made sharks popular, and then dinosaurs even more popular. Animals are beloved by people, mosquitos not so much.
Charles Darwin wrote a momentous book all about animals and evolution. We can not go a day without being around an animal. ( cat videos are a different column altogether).
Children's fairy tales star animals, the circus was an institution for more than a century, zoos have survived; and Bishop, California is still the mule capitol of the world.
Some of the more popular animals are deeply featured in popular culture - their character defines human personality. Eats like a horse, crazy like a fox, a lone wolf, sneaky like a snake, stubborn as a mule, smart as an elephant, courageous as a lion, slow as molasses on a winter day ( ok, not that one ), slow as a snail, busy as a bee, strong as an ox, quiet as a mouse, eats like a bird.
Sadly, forests and landscapes are destroyed annually by industry farms in pursuit of expanding consumption of animals, and that is a calamity on several levels. It’s true, in every way we are surrounded by animal beings.
Animals are entrenched in our life. Yes. There are humanitarian disasters everywhere, some more dangerous than others, and if you ask yourself what can i do, what actions can i take, the answer is as individuals, we have always been able to take steps to help ourselves, help each other, and help on the challenges we all confront, including - helping animals.
For your consideration, FYC in 2022 one challenge is to explore the world of a vegetarian diet - for short term health, ethics, cost, discipline, happiness sustainability, environment, and long term health. One human to another. love animals, just saying.
All the best. Chuck Levin, vegetarian since 1973 and celebrating my 50th year soon.
Reader Comments(1)
Vegetarian writes:
Well said. Apart from it being a better ecological choice, I agree that it is the more moral choice. We are not hunting animals, we breed them and then expose them to lives that are not very pleasant and deaths that are painful and scary. Most of us can survive without eating them, and we can certainly survive with eating much less of them. The only rationalization for imposing this suffering on them is the belief that we are of superior intelligence. But that is a rationalization that has also been used to harm one another and to exploit one another. Taken to a logical extension, claiming that the privilege of intelligence entitles one to exploit another being endorses the exploitation of a less intelligent person by a more intelligent one. Strength should be used to protect and not to exploit. Eating animals for survival is moral. Eating them for pleasure is not.
07/11/2022, 4:34 pm