We continue with a brief retelling of Will Tuttle, Ph.D., The World Peace Diet. This book is a voluminous philosophical work, which is presented in an easy and accessible form for the heart and mind.
“The sad irony is that we often peer into space, wondering if there are still intelligent beings, while we are surrounded by thousands of species of intelligent beings, whose abilities we have not yet learned to discover, appreciate and respect …” – Here is the main idea of the book.
The author made an audiobook out of Diet for World Peace. And he also created a disk with the so-called , where he outlined the main ideas and theses. You can read the first part of the summary “The World Peace Diet” . Four weeks ago we published a retelling of a chapter in a book called . The next, published by us the thesis of Will Tuttle sounded like this – . We recently talked about how They also discussed that .
It’s time to retell another chapter:
Problems in our working life come from meat-eating
Now is the time to see how our minds, shaped by a meat diet, affect our outlook on work. It is very interesting to think about work as a phenomenon in general, because in our culture people do not like to work. The very word “work” is usually accompanied by a negative emotional connotation: “how nice it would be to never work” or “how I wish I had to work less!”
We live in a pastoral culture, which means that the first work of our ancestors was the captivity and killing of animals for their further consumption. And this can not be called a pleasant thing. After all, in fact, we are beings with multifaceted spiritual needs and a constant desire to love and be loved. It is natural for us in the depths of our souls to condemn the process of captivity and murder.
The pastoral mentality, with its dominance and competitive spirit, runs like an invisible thread through our entire working life. Any person who works or has ever worked in a large bureaucratic office knows that there is a certain hierarchy, a career ladder that works on the principle of dominance. This bureaucracy, walking on heads, the constant feeling of humiliation from being forced to curry favor with those who are higher in position – all this makes work a heavy burden and punishment. But work is good, it is the joy of creativity, a manifestation of love for people and helping them.
People have created a shadow for themselves. “Shadow” is those dark sides of our personality that we are afraid to admit in ourselves. The shadow hangs not only over each specific person, but also over the culture as a whole. We refuse to acknowledge that our “shadow” is actually ourselves. We find ourselves next to our enemies, who we think are doing terrible things. And even for a second we cannot imagine that, from the point of view of the same animals, we ourselves are enemies, doing terrible things towards them.
Because of our constant atrocities towards animals, we constantly feel that we will be treated with malice. Therefore, we must protect ourselves from possible enemies: this results in the construction of a very expensive defense complex by each country. Even so: the defense-industrial-meat complex, which eats up 80% of the budget of any country.
Thus, almost all of their resources people invest in death and murder. With each eating of an animal, our “shadow” grows. We suppress the feeling of regret and compassion that is natural for a thinking being. The violence that lives on our plate constantly pushes us into conflict.
The meat-eating mentality is similar to the ruthless war mentality. This is the mentality of insensitivity.
Will Tuttle recalls that he heard about the insensitivity mentality during the Vietnam War and no doubt it was the same in other wars. When bombers appear in the skies over villages and drop their bombs, they never see the result of their terrible actions. They do not see the horror on the faces of men, women and children of this small village, they do not see their last breath … They are not affected by the cruelty and suffering that they bring – because they do not see them. That’s why they don’t feel anything.
A similar situation occurs daily in grocery stores. When a person takes out a wallet and pays for his purchases – bacon, cheese and eggs – the seller smiles at him, puts it all in a plastic bag, and the person leaves the store without any feelings. But at the moment when a person buys these products, he is the same pilot who flew to bomb a distant village. Somewhere else, as a result of human action, the animal will be grabbed by the neck. The knife will pierce the artery, blood will flow. And all because he wants turkey, chicken, hamburger – this man was taught by his parents when he was very young. But now he is an adult, and all his actions are only HIS choice. And his responsibility for the consequences of this choice. But people simply do not see firsthand the consequences of their choice.
Now, if this happened right in front of the eyes of the one who buys bacon, cheese and eggs … If in his presence the seller grabbed the pig and slaughtered him, the person would most likely be horrified and would think well before buying something from animals next time products.
Just becausethat people do not see the consequences of their choice – because there is a vast industry that covers everything and provides everything, our meat-eating looks normal. People feel no remorse, no sadness, not the slightest regret. They experience absolutely nothing.
But is it okay not to feel remorse when you hurt and kill others? More than anything else, we fear and condemn murderers and maniacs who kill without any remorse. We lock them up in prisons and wish them the death penalty. And at the same time, we ourselves commit murder every day – beings who understand and feel everything. They, just like a person, bleed, they also love freedom and their children. However, we deny them respect and kindness, exploiting them in the name of our own appetites.
To be continued.