Vegan Freaks

Yes… they make people fear us and call us extreme...we are said to be terrorists... because they don't want them to THINK.

They tell them to laugh off our “childish” and “emotional” rantings, for as long as people see vegans as “weird” or “crazy” or “overly emotional” then they won’t feel the need to further consider how they provide fuel for a society of violence and oppression and devastation.

I have no idea why or how it dawned on me, but ironically it is clear as can be, totally and ridiculously simple and oh-so-obvious - oppression and violence is all the same - no matter who we irrationally justify perpetrating it on.

In rearing us to accept the daily violence and oppression we inflict upon others we deaden our senses to the principles of love, compassion, empathy, and justice, and most of us ultimately end up in this twisted state of dissonance, as I once was (though I didn’t know I was at the time).

It is simple. We are perpetrators - and our methods of ‘criminal’ behavior involves system-wide horrific injustice and oppression and criminal abuse of thinking, feeling, fellow beings. Beings who are able to *clearly* communicate with us their desire to NOT be enslaved. Beings that are able to *clearly* communicate the emotions of love, suffering, and pain. Our utter dismissal of their obvious pleas are so abhorrent to anyone *awake* that the only the comparison that could be rightly made is the wrongness of human slavery or genocide.

Most slave owners didn't see it, whole societies have supported horrific crimes, because they couldn’t *see* it. Most are not cruel people, most are not indecent intentionally. In a sense we are all victims – of lies, manipulation, and an extreme dissonance that allows us to believe we are kind and decent while being horrifically cruel and violent.

Just like nonvegans of today, perpetrators throughout history have explained their violence and cruelty by insisting it was 'natural', or they were abiding by God, or that these other beings (their victims) were “different”, or “inferior”, or did not have the sameness in capacity for emotion or thought. Throughout our entire violent history those have been our [wrong] reasons for being indecent to other sentient lives.

Vegans are mocked and told they think themselves *superior* to others when it is clearly the nonvegans setting nonsensical criterion for who is inferior, deciding whose lives matter less. That is the basis for *all* discrimination and oppression.

Being nonvegan is the pinnacle of being a bully, of ‘judging’ others, of ‘thinking you are better’ than another, yet ironically vegans are the ones [wrongfully] accused of these sentiments. But because we speak of a deeply-set societally-accepted injustice the denial and defensive reactions to these self-evident statements is often taken as insulting rather than as the rather simple TRUTH.

We can change history. We can have peace. We can just stop being violent. We can stop suppressing our inherent love and empathy for all Earthlings. We can focus on the development of the person most of us were born as – a nonviolent, nonracist, non-judgmental, nondiscriminatory, nonspeciesist, with little (none?) desire to harm or kill anyone.

Can people please stop pretending that any sentient Earthling does not have feeling? Does not have the capacity for love, fear, pain, loneliness? The ability to suffer? Does not beg us to be spared? Does not treasure their own life? Because we *KNOW* that they do. Yet we continue to insist on age-old policy we have ALWAYS used when seeking to oppress another - when seeking to justify [albeit irrationally] our perpetration of crimes upon them.

When the people wake to the repetitive cycle, when people stop inflicting violence and oppression upon others, when we covet empathy, knowledge, and compassion…we will have finally figured out peace.

While the victims may have changed, the excuses and brainwashing and horror and oppression is the same.

What is “extreme” is not being vegan.

“As long as there are slaughterhouses... there will be battlefields.”
~ Leo Tolstoy

From *Speciesism* the Movie

“Oh my God…I saw it…

I can’t pinpoint the time or moment when I realized there was something to the argument, it was kind of a cumulative process…but there was a tipping point. When you come out on the other side intellectually - I would almost say it’s crippling. 

You’re immediately confronted with a holocaust that is occurring everywhere, at all times, and everybody you know - your loved ones, and people you hate - everywhere - they’re all participating in it.

And yet here I am, I’m just talking about it…I’m kind of somewhat impassionately talking about it, because I am trying to relay my feelings about it - when really the only response to that realization - to waking up to this world we live in - is a fucking explosion, right? That’s the only reasonable response. 

This is something - it’s so bad - how do you possibly talk about a holocaust that’s happening everywhere, all the time, every day, and everybody’s included? How do you talk about that when knowing it’s a laughable subject when you bring it up, when your friends and family, when they think it’s “cute” that you've decided to take an interest in “animals”?

“But, y’know – you've made your choice, please respect my choice.”

How in the hell do you possibly go on in that world? How do you not see the world – and everybody in it - as dark, and dangerous, and irrational? And how in the world do you not see your life - that you've lived up until that point when you've woken up - as inexcusable?

~ Mark Devries, in the movie Speciesism

Guilty

Guilty as charged. I accept my [awesome] sentence.

Guilty of the charge of oversight. Of apathy. Of ignorance. My retribution for this crime and to avoid criminal acts in the future I deem I will be forever vegan. I am feeling so very lucky for this chance at rehabilitation and recovery from being addicted to bad habits and silly traditions that represent conditioning humans to accept violence and discrimination, and actually have little in common with the love and thankfulness and compassion many of us falsely believed we were partaking in.

Vegan For Life

I used to think I didn't want to know, too. Just never thought about it. Have no idea why I finally did think about it. Not that the info wasn't available, I just never *saw* it. When I did I immediately wished I had done so long ago. I would have NEVER been a part of it. I would have NEVER done all the terrible things I did (paying someone to do it *for* me counts as MY responsibility).

As I have often heard said,
"The only thing I regret about going vegan was that I didn't do it sooner."


I actively saved dogs and cats, I rescued and donated and was angered and offended by stories of their abuse, never even realizing I was a horrific violent perpetrator, a victim myself, of ignorance and brainwashing.

Could I live not eating animals? What about protein??? (lol) What was I going to eat? Wear? Overwhelming and seemed so very difficult, the idea. But, I had no choice, I had awoken, and now there was only one way to live decently...

So many years later I chuckle at myself...I was so severely dissonant back then. My words and actions did not match. My choices were harmful and violent and not destructive and quite frankly, selfish. I caused so many terrible things.

I have never been happier, felt more confident, positive, empowered, or aligned since going vegan. I can honestly say that the day my husband and I went vegan was the best day of our lives, since few other choices we have ever made or events we have ever partaken in have had such an overall positive effect on our spiritual and physical well-being and happiness for the rest of our lives...

VEGAN FOR LIFE

I Believe!!!

I believe in you. We have to stop the violence. We have to make people listen. We need clean air and water to live. We have to make others understand how much harm they are doing. How it is their responsibility. We have to find a way to make them want to know the truth so they can help us make a better world. It is imperative that we come to recognize that the people hold ALL the power. That people CAN change the world.

Our daily choices dictate the kind of world we create - somehow we MUST make everyone see that. People can be healthy, we can feed the hungry, we can have a green, healthy planet, we can have peace - we can have it ALL. We HAVE to stop tolerating the intolerable. We have to say “NO MORE” - because when we don’t we allow many to suffer – animals, other humans, and our Earth. We can’t be passive or silent while war is waged on all we cherish.

As we would fight for our home and backyard, our own family, our own beloved companion animals, we must fight for all. To any in peril right now your ability to act and speak on their behalf is of dire emergency. For many there is no more time. We are losing irreplaceable ecosystems as I type…our land, water and air is being polluted, many are sick and dying, forests are burning or being clear-cut, and still we desiccate more and more land, waste more and more water – all while annihilating biodiversity…even though WE DON’T HAVE TO do any of this to live happy, healthy, fulfilled lives.

We DON’T have to be like this! We can live cleanly, gently, harmoniously with our world. But first we must get people to understand that WE are a society failing to shape the world that most of us claim to want; that we are a society who points the finger at others for the ills instead of understanding our own personal culpability and taking responsibility.

I believe in the woods, and the birds, and the trees…I believe in fresh air, clean water, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick and the poor, and I treasure all the wonderful creatures of Earth. I wish no being any irrational, unnecessary harm and I am happy to use care with my actions to support the positive change I would like to see in the world. I KNOW I do not *own* the life of another. I also KNOW that all I have ever felt compelled to do was ease the pain and suffering of another, not be the cause of it.

I believe in telling the truth, and I believe in education and research before making judgments…I believe in critical thinking, and I believe societal ‘norms’ should always be examined for validity. Mere habit does not provide legitimacy. I believe in good over bad, and right over wrong. I believe in decency and morality. I believe in caring about the vulnerable and oppressed.

Take the power back. Be the change you wish to see.

Intolerant to Violence

I do not tolerate nonveganism well. I admit it 100%. I see no reason to selfishly cause unnecessary suffering, and I am easily agitated in the presence of the 'screaming'. That said, I have some random thoughts.


I was standing at my window this morning watching the birds. Suddenly thinking, “What if someone walked into my yard right now and viciously killed one of the birds?”


Obviously I would completely lose my mind. I would call the police (oh yes I would), and the person would be lucky to get off my property without being seriously harmed. What if it were my dog? My cat? My husband? Most of us would be completely distressed under such circumstances.


True vegans (in the quickest summary possible) believe that every life holds inherent meaning, to the individual whose life it is. Vegans generally avoid harming any being intentionally, as we believe we would not want to be irrationally harmed by another. A ‘do unto others’ kind of thing…nonviolence, nondiscriminatory, equality and justice and peace for all who live. It is more than that but for a summary that will suffice.


Anyways, if that is true - if we truly view lives as we would the lives of our dog, cat, wildlife, even our family – how do we tolerate nonvegans?


Hear me out – I would NEVER go to a gathering of pedophiles, or rapists, or murderers. None of us would. But if we make the connection, how do we then tolerate the presence of nonveganism? The presence of such horror and fear and death? Yet many tolerate it and even soothe nonvegans in an ongoing effort to be ‘nice’.


Some will respond that this is because society is overall blinded by a culture based upon animal use. So I pose this scenario…


You grew up being partially raised by loving well-treated slaves. You loved them as family. In your late teens you realized…you saw the reality of the ‘wrong’. What do you do? I suppose (as with everything), that is dependent on each individual. But knowing what we know about slavery…if you knew…do you continue unfettered to your slavery-run gatherings and events?


I am increasingly intolerant to being around anything nonvegan. I certainly believe in tolerance when no one is being harmed, or even sometimes when one is only harming themselves. I DO NOT believe in tolerance when it involves the harm of other innocent beings, injustice, oppression, and/or violence.


If it rape, abuse, oppression, murder, violence, destruction, etc. - and IT IS – why is it any more tolerable? I am not going to attend the next racist meeting I come across, or defend a serial killer, or try to understand or offer support to a rapist.


While some of this is just random thinking, because I am certainly kind to people overall, please do not expect me to be tolerant to the abuse of fellow Earthlings and the health of our planet, because I DO understand it IS injustice, abuse, cruelty, rape, murder, oppression, discrimination, along with this incredibly annoying human ego trip that I find utterly distasteful and intolerable. We are (thus far) a shameful species.

Willful Ignorance

It is rather easy to formulate an opinion, especially if you never seek rational thought and science to support that opinion. If truly decent people saw the amount of devastation our daily choices inflict on Earth and all other Earthlings, truly decent people would find themselves incapable of further rationalizing such nonsensical harm - they would have to change. So, instead, there exists a refusal to actually look or consider the truth, a failure to want to know facts, a sad state of being - “willful ignorance”.


The willfully ignorant say this is because they are “comfortable” with their choices – “I am OK with it”. How can one be “OK” with something they actually know very little about? Are they saying they CHOOSE to be violent and destructive and oppressive and harmful and apathetic? If the willfully ignorant are really so comfortable with their choices, doesn't that mean they could both look at all the facts, give due consideration to the moral contradictions within themselves, AND continue their current lifestyle unfettered? If the willfully ignorant are so confident in what they believe, no amount of new information should be able to shake that belief system, right?


But clearly that is not the case – a large portion of society overwhelmingly refuse to look at facts or consider these very rational thoughts - of nonviolence, of not harming the innocent when so utterly unnecessary, of the devastating result of our choices on our Earth and ecosystems, or on our health and health care crisis.


They don’t want to take responsibility. I have no comprehension of being that kind of person. I value knowledge, I value science, and I value ongoing self-improvement to always do better and life a deeply meaningful life. I value the connection created by my Earth-friendly, nonviolent lifestyle. I can no longer imagine being any other way.


I certainly have a lot to improve upon, and I will work on the betterment of me until the day I die. I hope to NEVER be completely “comfortable”, because learning and growth often forces change, especially when you refuse to live in denial, when you refuse to be soothed or quieted by the dumbing-down machine, and when you seek truth and justice and education and deeper values.


The willfully ignorant have convinced themselves they have made choices. I am convinced they themselves have been oppressed and lack free thought. Many have yet to realize they are flesh-eating, family- and Earth- destroying corporate slaves who unknowingly defend and support the most unethical and abhorrent for-profit tactics that brings harm to EVERYTHING that should actually MATTER to them.


"Big egos have little ears."
- Robert Schuller