Teaching ignorance

and distorted ways of understanding and obliviousness to cruelty and suffering begins as soon as we're born and continues throughout our lives.

Most likely, every person reading this post was given the flesh of animals and the products of animal bodies to eat before they could speak. Their parents believed this was "normal" and "good for them" therefore their children should eat this 'food'. Otherwise...their would not be "healthy" and they would be "bad" parents.

No one spoke about the cruelty and the suffering inflicted on the animals, the children were never offered a choice...it was all "good" and "normal" and "natural".

We are corrupted in our thinking and our understandings early on by the examples of corrupted adults who had the opportunity to "know better" but didn't take it. Parents and other adults who "went along" with the status quo...with what everyone else did. Who had "no idea" that confining and killing animals for "food" was unnecessary...but...those adults could have known. It would have taken some effort...some discomfort...some perseverance...but...they could have known.

And should have known.

I remember being in elementary school and clothing drives for the refugee children in Europe (this was in the early 1950s in response to the post WWII refugee crisis) were campaigned for and I remember bringing clothing to school where it was collected and (apparently) sent to Europe. I remember feeling good about helping the children and adults in Europe.

I did this in a nation that was "legally" segregated...I did this in a nation that cruelly excluded children and adults of color from public spaces and societal resources...where poverty and deprivation for people of color was rampant.

I was taught to be ignorant...I was taught to be cruel...I was taught to not think and perceive clearly...and...I was taught to feel good about myself for not being one of the "bad guys". It's not the "bad guys" that are the problem (not that they aren't despicable, but thankfully there aren't many of them and can be dealt with)...it's us.