Happy Birthday to a superlative human animal person.....

Thanks to a post by VegBlogger, I just discovered that today, September 2nd, is Donald Watson's birthday.  Not only is it his birthday, 2010 marks his 100th birthday.  If you are looking for a hero, you can do no better than Mr. Watson.  He died at the age of 95......this is the individual that came up with the term VEGAN.  Mr. Watson's definition:

"..the word "veganism" denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practical — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment."

He was a carpenter, lived a simple life, avoided the spotlight and was committed enough to non-violence that he was a conscientious objector (while living in England) during WWII.  He introduced the concept of veganism in a newsletter in 1944.

I am not big on the hero thing, but I believe if anyone qualifies for such...it would be Donald Watson.

Thank you (both from me and on behalf of the other animals) Mr. Watson, and Happy Birthday!

Time travel and a thought experiment................

Ever wonder what you would have thought of slavery if you had lived in, say, Georgia in 1838.  Would you have owned slaves?  Would you have opposed it and engaged in activism against it?
 
Consider....slavery is legal, the population of the united states in 1830 was 13 million of which 2 million of those were  slaves.  There was one person in slavery for every 5.5 that were not. About 15% of the population was owned by the other 85%. 

The law was on the side of the slaveholder, tradition and custom were on the side of the slaveholder.  Slavery was commonplace, it has always existed, it is in the bible. The churches, social clubs, community groups, governments and businesses supported slavery.  African Americans (most of whom are slaves) are considered to be inferior, stupid, dirty, undisciplined, insensitive, uncivilized, ignorant beings.
 
Would you have opposed the institution of slavery, at the risk of ridicule, at the risk of being thought to be strange, weird, silly, sentimental, foolish, stupid?  Slaves were property, would you have risked arrest, fines, prison for helping slaves escape?  What would you have done?
 
Do you believe you would have had the courage to oppose and resist this way of living?  Or would you have gone along with it, participated in it.  Maybe you would have ignored it, turned your head, pretended it didn’t exist and thereby tacitly condoned its continuation.  What would you have done?

There was some resistance, the Quakers for instance.  Nat Turner’s rebellion had occurred in 1831.  William Loyd Garrison was actively calling for abolition, Oberlin College was accepting African American students. If you had objected you would not have been alone, there was spotty and inconsistent support for those opposing slavery.

What would you have done if faced with this obscene spectacle of human behavior?  Would you have joined the resistors, supported them, leafleted on their behalf, spoke out in their defense and agitated against slavery?

Consider the American Indians, 1838 was the last of the Indian Removal from Georgia and other states (The Trail of Tears).  The Supreme Court had ruled the removal to be illegal, the president (Jackson) ignored the ruling and took away the lands and homes of the American Indians in the southeast and forced them to walk to Oklahoma, thousands died along the way. American Indians are considered to be inferior, stupid, dirty, undisciplined, insensitive, uncivilized, ignorant beings.

Would you have objected, protested, resisted?  Or would you have gone along with it, participated in it.  Maybe you would have ignored it, turned your head, pretended it didn’t exist and thereby tacitly condoned its continuation.  What would you have done?

There is a curious thing about life, each of us in our own time of living can be faced with significant moral questions.  Great injustices and horrors occur on a seemingly perpetual basis.  We often ignore or deny or seek obliviousness to these occurrences, nevertheless, they exist.  You can pretend they don’t…but pretense does not magically make them disappear nor does it absolve you and your actions or your failure to act.

We live in a time of injustice, of horror and obscenity....the American people....annually, cause the unwarranted and unnecessary deaths (and prior to that death a life of unending misery and suffering) of 10 billion living sentient beings (land animals only....the number of fish is incalculable). Sentient beings that feel fear, form friendships, feel love, care for their children, cry in terror when frightened, scream in pain when injured. That is 10,000,000,000 lives.
 
Lives of beings that had mothers, that would have sought comfort from those mothers had they been allowed, that had they had the opportunity they would have run and played like Bella the pig does in the video.  They would have played with a friend like the deer plays with the dog in the video.  They would have played in a puddle, if they had been able, like the young elk does in the video.
 
The law is the side of the animal owner, tradition and custom are on the side of the animal owner.  Killing and eating animal people is commonplace, it has always existed, it is in the bible. The churches, social clubs, governments, community groups and businesses support killing and eating animal people.

Animal people that are not human animal people are considered to be inferior, stupid, dirty, undisciplined, insensitive, uncivilized, ignorant beings.
 
Being able to rise above and see beyond the current traditions and customs and “common sense” of the time and culture they were born into is part of what prompted those whose efforts helped end past injustices.
 
Your thoughts, beliefs and actions or lack of actions help make the world how it is.

What would you have done in 1838?
 
This is your time of life, great injustices are being practiced as if they were “normal” every second of every day.  You have the opportunity to rise above the awfulness of your times.  You have the opportunity to object to, to resist and to not participate in a great injustice.

What are you going to do now?
  
Do you have the will and the courage to oppose and resist this way of living?  To have friends and family and your culture perhaps think you are weird, silly, strange, sentimental or peculiar.

Or are you going along with it, participating in it.  Maybe you are ignoring it, turning your head, pretending it doesn’t exist and thereby condoning the continuing suffering and death.
 
What are you doing?  What are you going to do?

(Veganism is a philosophy and lifestyle whose adherents seek to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind.)

(Vegetarianism is the practice of following a plant-based diet including fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, nuts, and seeds, with or without dairy products and eggs. A vegetarian does not eat meat, including red meat, game, poultry, fish, crustacea, and shellfish.)


(Animal rights, also referred to as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. Advocates approach the issue from different philosophical positions, but agree that animals should be viewed as non-human persons and members of the moral community.They argue that human beings should stop seeing other sentient beings as property.....)


(This post  was inspired by Marjorie Spiegel's excellent book: The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery)

What's all the fuss about?

My experience of going completely vegan (after many years of diddling around as a semi-vegetarian) was a profoundly emotional one. Others have written about this phenomenon much more eloquently than I can (see here or
here for instance). By the way, that second link takes you to a copy of the original newsletter about veganism by Donald Watson written in 1944.

My path to reaching that emotional point began because I ended up in a situation in my employment where I interacted with some of the American Indian tribes and tribal members. Folks in Oklahoma drive around in vehicles where Native America is displayed on most license plates. However, most Oklahoma citizens are as ignorant about American Indians as they are about veganism. Poke the typical Okie and she/he will tell you that Indians have it good because they get all that government money and now are getting rich off the casinos. I made the error of deciding I wanted to educate myself about American history and American Indians.

I do not recommend doing such a thing, unless you are prepared to begin a journey that is disturbing beyond that which words can express. I am compressing several years of reading and learning here and I will post some references in the future.......for those interested there are numerous websites (here for instance or here) and resources on the internet that are easily accessible that provide useful information.

To summarize, the United States (and every other country in this hemisphere) is founded on nothing less than theft, Europeans invaded the western hemisphere and over time almost completely destroyed the indigenous peoples living here. Columbus was a rapacious asshole who was out to make a buck and he did so by exploiting, murdering and enslaving indigenous peoples. The prevailing ethic of European contact with the North and South American Continents was and still is "might makes right".

Now, all the wonderful soothing fairy tales that European Americans tell themselves to avoid this knowledge constitutes what passes for American history. Thieves and murders become "settlers", "pioneers", "heroes" and "leaders". Every person in the western hemisphere that does not have indigenous ancestors is a recipient (in one way or another) of the fruits of these crimes. Don't agree? Next time you happen to handle a twenty dollar bill, take a look at the picture on there and then go educate yourself a little about the Cherokee tribe and the "trail of tears".

So, here I am, a well-educated fellow suddenly coming to realize how blissfully ignorant I was and had been. Fooled by the soothing words like treaty, stupidly not realizing that when you hear the word treaty connected to Native Americans you should know that it means the Native American most likely had a gun pointed at her head when she "signed" the treaty. Agree or die. Even then, the treaties meant nothing if the Native Americans ended up with something the white folks wanted. It was embarrassing to discover how ignorant I had been.

I appreciate the patience shown me by my friends that are Native American, they, of course knew all this, had grown up with it, still lived it...... often wryly accepted it in some form or fashion. Continued to be impacted by it on a daily basis.

In terms of innocence, likely some of the most innocent groups of people on the planet are the Indigenous Americans. They are the victims, the survivors, living in the aftermath of the American Holocaust. They were living here, in their lands, and here come the barbarians (who touted themselves as civilized). Coming because they had screwed up things so royally in their own lands they wanted to get out. Welcome to America. Don’t like what you have done to your own homeland? Come on over and invade the homeland of others.

Trying to hold together the remnants of their cultures and tribes and families and lands. Some Native Americans have disconnected almost wholly from their ancestral cradle, others have managed uneasy accommodation with the dominant culture, finding ways to walk in two worlds. Make no mistake, the slow motion disaster continues for Native Americans, just take a look at health, crime and poverty statistics regarding American Indians.

If this country (and others) could so blithely devastate groups of humans and behave as if nothing at all was wrong, what else might be going on that was right out in plain sight but overlooked completely? At least the humans being exploited could sometimes fight back, could protest.

What about living beings that couldn’t fight back, had no voice with which to protest? Who didn’t have a chance of trying to learn the ways of the dominant group, the language of the dominant group, who could never ever maybe fit in and possibly be left alone.

Well, consider the buffalo. These beings were unlucky enough to be associated with the lifeways of a number of plains tribes. Oops, European Americans almost sent them to extinction. Well, maybe that was an accident of history --- perhaps "collateral damage" from efforts to "subdue" the Native Americans. What about the Passenger Pigeon, apparently at one time the most numerous bird on the planet? Oops, all gone. Being "easy" to kill doomed them to extinction at the hands of European Americans. The Carolina Parrot, also hunted to extinction.

Death, death and more death characterizes this culture and its attitude toward any being or groups of beings that possesses something that is desired and cannot resist effectively. I find all this odious and disgusting and prompting of despair beyond words.

The animals, the others, those with no human language. Joy Williams (Ill Nature) wrote it doesn't matter, even if the animals could speak with the tongues of angels they couldn't save themselves from us.

We have deemed their feelings to be worthless, no matter that they suffer at our hands. We ignore their experience of this world we share, care not for their homelands, their shelters, their paths, their families, their fears or joys. If we think their flesh tastes good, all their wonders and dreams are swept away and we slaughter them and slaughter them. We take their children and kill them, the milk meant for their children and drink it, their fur and their skin and wear it, their pain and terror and discount it to nothingness.

We take magnificent beings and make them parade in silly costumes for our entertainment, we terrorize baby animals and rope them and tie them up for "sport". We pretend we are "civilized" yet behave toward the other beings on this earth like the most brutal and depraved despots and tyrants that have ever lived. We inflict suffering and misery beyond measure upon creatures that have never left Eden, and cover it up with stories of contented cows and happy meals.

These are some of the things I have learned over the past few years, and I am stunned by my knowledge.