The ‘compassionate’ kill?

Hi everybody! This is my first blog at HappyCow and I am inspired to be here. Its much better than talking to a wall in other communities that are not so supportive to a cosmic vegan on a soap box. Bear with me ok? Thank you.

If you’re anything like me, you work… and if you work… well, you make sacrifices. Sacrifices like needing to share close quarters with the guy with terrible bovine-in-human-form body odor…  Sacrifices like needing to listen to the occasional terribly inappropriate sexual remarks. Such is the woes of living in a world where we are encouraged to accept each others differences in the workplace if we want to survive in the modern world. So far have we gone with this trend of acceptance that we even have learned to accept what we don’t accept! Oh so mighty is the strength of survival and our fear of being outcast.

Survival… its a very important element of we humans lives. Some might consider it to be the most vital element of being here on earth. But how interesting it is that most of us humans manage to realise how important it is to survive, yet completely overlook that desire for virtually every other species?

If you’re even a bit more like me, then you’ve had the chat over lunch with some of the colleagues on the topic of your eating choices as they look at you a little strangely for ordering the rocket salad that costs more than the roast lamb on special.

“You don’t eat any meat?”, she asks while a little ashamedly looks down at the plate of freshly fried up rotting carcass. Oh so confused do the meaties get that you would actually spend more for something that doesn’t have flesh and blood in it.

“Well of course not” I respond, finding myself bemused society is taking so long to realise its disconnection to health… “why would I want to create a holiday retreat for super diseases in my colon?? Can I have some prion with my meal pretty please?

It goes quiet. I sense I went a little too far and maybe put her off the dish. Afterall, who wants to talk about worms at the dinner table? But really, putting things into perspective, going too far would be killing my friend and eating her for a snack. I mean, isn’t the real ‘too far’ or ‘across the line’ thing to do is completely take another beings life? This girl loses her appetite for one meal. While the animal she is munching on doesn’t even have an appetite anymore. Its all over red rover for the little creature who I’m sure wanted to have another 50,000 meals in its life. I’ve ruined 1 meal for a person. Do the math. I’m not the bad guy here. So I don’t mind pushing the envelope on what is considered socially ok to talk about over lunch. 

In my books, (or blogs I should say)… you bring a dead animal to the table, I’ll bring the tough love.

“But cosmicbdog” they try to help me understand “you’ve got to respect everybody is different and has different choices..”

“Too true”. I say. Honestly, I don’t mind hearing the arguments people use to defend murdering for a meal. What I’ve found is that in each argument contains the very key to change. Convenient to us humans, this argument only holds strength because for now we are at the top of the food chain… for now.

Doo-doo-doo-doo   doo-doo-doo-doo *sounds the twilight zone music*

“I agree with you, everybody deserves the right to have their individual expression respected. But tell me, how is the animals rights weighed up in this equation? How are you walking the talk when you take another creatures right to live and enjoy its own life away completely?”

Generally, the conversation ends about there. Who can argue against themself? My friend makes a mental note to exit the sensitive topic and reaches deep inside for another irrational and self delusional reason that makes it possible to swallow the flesh.  Of course, if there is a really close minded Christian or Catholic in the house thats easy they will retort with something along the lines of “God put animals here for us to eat”. Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell my fellow vegetarian friends that this argument is a complete and gross misinterpretation of any bible I’ve ever come across. I’m not sure what sort of blood lust craze I would need to be in to read something that roughly says “Take care of the earth and its creatures” as “Rape and slaughter for snacks”. If anybody actually bothers to read a bible and take the time to get an overall understanding of its message and not just take a snippet here and there to justify the agenda of the moment, I think they would find that the only time ‘God’ said it was cool to chew on the fellow animals of the land was when Noah was in the boat and the whole earth was flooded and there was no way he could eat anything else. It was purely a temporary pardon for the greater good. Its quite different from killing an animal to make it through the morning munchies.

The best one I’ve heard though is “if God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make animals out of meat, and not something like wood, or stone?”. Oh god. Sometimes I think the best way to bring more people into the light is just simply to get the really hard edged meat eaters sharing in public why they eat meat and the archaic reasoning used to justify it.

Anyways, each to their own, I guess. Oh, unless you’re an animal. Then no each for you! You see that Golden Rule or Karma only works for humans. We’re the only ones who experience energy that goes around and comes around. “Animals… pfft… they aren’t energy… they aren’t souls… geez… what are you crazy vegos thinking? You must have a shortage of iron in your diet cutting of your brainz”.

Moving on from the dogma which the blood lusters pat each other on the back for continuing to propogate, I get an email. The subject reads: “Cosmicbdog, I thought you’d like this…” Inside is a link to a news post about the ‘compassionate carnivore‘. Some of you may have come across news of similar taste and the general tail goes something along the lines of ‘slaughterhouses are cruel, come out to a farm and kill the animal yourself!’. 

People who have participated in killing their own pigs have been quoted as saying things like “it really helped me respect the pig”. … “we got to know the pig first, and then put a nail through its brains”.

Ahem?? Is anybody else wriggling in their skin at the moment?

My friend made a comment that “its still killing, but at least its moving in the right direction” but I can’t help but see that this is very far from moving in the right direction. How is it a compassionate kill unless the animal is laying there in torturous pain wanting to be put out of its misery? How is it compassionate to kill a creature that wants to live, that has the basic primal urge to survive, and yet to completely overlook that and put a bullet in its brain? How is it allowed that compassionate and killing even be used side by side to describe anything on a TV channel or major news outlet? Its moving far from the right direction when we are entering into an era where mainstream television is furthering the desensitization of the masses when they are making it a fun family outing to go out and get close to a creature while patting it as it falls to the ground in a bloody murder. I’m not sure if it gets any more twisted then that.

As far as I’m concerned, the real ‘compassionate kill’ metaphorically is talking about the mad cow disease slowly infesting the meat eater of the animal. The Alzheimer’s that is surely coming down the track. Its asking the guy how the manure flavor tastes as he takes a bite on the burger and educating him that half the taste of the steak is the feces and urine that pours out over the flesh as the animal hangs upside down and literally craps itself to death. And the compassion is in explaining how the meat can take 6 months, even longer to travel through our herbivore colon and that a whole civilization of little worms and disgusting bacteria (the bad type) are having a little tea party in the digestive track thanks to that next bite.

Compassion isn’t about putting on a nice smile and on the surface pretending to accept one another. Truth is, we’re in a war and all around us all over the world billions of animals who feel emotions of every kind are in a massive genocide. Real compassion is about actually sharing the things with each other that we need to hear. Reality is, there is a new reason everyday being realised as to why eating meat is ethically wrong, spiritually void, nutritionally stupid. The question is now, how can you make it harder for people to get away with murder? In our office now, there are 3 vegetarians a vegan and 5 meat eaters. When we goto lunch together, do the meaties eat meat? They sure don’t. We figure by going to lunch with the meaties and being strong in our vegetarian ways we’re saving at least 10-20 animals a year from being slaughtered. Maybe they double up on the meat intake when we’re not around, but at least we sleep better at night knowing we’re not sitting around pretending to be ok with murder happening right in front of our eyes. Hopefully, over enough time enough people will make the meaties feel so uncomfortable and primitive as though they are stuck in an ancient era that it just won’t be cool anymore to chow down on a fellow creature of the earth.

This is cosmicbdog and I thank you for taking the time to read and maybe even be provoked by this blog. I leave you now with a photo I took of my neighbor in Northern NSW Australia and this final thought…

Isn’t he adorable? Munching on his grass. Looking at me. Who knows what he is thinking… maybe he is trying to work out what that black square like thing is in my hand and whether or not I pose a threat. Sadly those tags in his ears are there to keep track of him as what is termed ‘livestock’. Thats stock, which is alive. Another 2 words which should be unacceptable to use in the world. But hey, if its ok to use words like ‘compassionate kill’ and ‘livestock’ well then maybe we’ll coin new ones like ‘friendly genocide’ and if a rape between a man and a girl is done with a condom we let it slide and call it ‘safe rape’. Its cringe worthy stuff ladies and gentlemen, but the only difference here is a few definitions that keep the unnacceptable, from being the accepted.

Until next time.