Decent People Being Decent

People who know me know I am generally extremely kind and respectful to all, but I am NOT going to manipulate truth and tell people it is OK to be cruel to all beings and destructive to the planet for their own selfish reasons.

Some people only surround themselves with feel-good reassuring stories that largely serve to reaffirm all they already think. I am not like that. I expose myself to sadness and suffering almost every day because there is no better way to effectively help others than to be informed and aware of HOW you can help, to understand what the issues actually are.

I freely admit, at times I feel extremely frustrated with the happy-go-lucky and the unseeing eyes of the majority of society destroying all I love. The ongoing groupthink and self-reassuring smugness can be extremely frustrating when many suffer so much. A large portion of society ignores and denies obvious facts…covering their eyes and ears and claiming to love others while they willingly wreak havoc on all.

So yes, I am sometimes frustrated, maybe at times even angry. It does not come from a desire to be hurtful to anyone. Quite the opposite, it is a reaction to witnessing the harming and being unable to stop it.

Many in society, while blindly ignoring the hurt they cause, express flippant and trite phrases such as "don't worry, be happy" and “live and let live”. These ridiculous clichés are a LUXURY. They are sayings of "I can feed my kids tonight" or “I have shelter over my head and food to eat” or "I'm not in line at the slaughterhouse" – it is a LUXURY to be so able to casually shrug their culpability in the suffering of others in trite meaningless expressions.

No, I don’t think most people are bad, but the importance of one individual’s lifestyle in relationship to global affairs is a subject that few actually consider with any degree of seriousness, despite overwhelming evidence. There are also rare, exceptional people who absorb information and are open enough to give the facts and rational thought due consideration.

If most people were informed and not severely dissonant, I KNOW most would change, I KNOW most want to do good, and I KNOW most have not seriously spent 2 minutes checking any facts on the matter, or giving any thought to why it is not their beloved dog on their dinner plate tonight, or why they would wantonly pollute and squander their future generation’s dwindling water supplies, etc.

Ongoing discrimination to others who we deem ‘less than’ us has not yet ceased. It has not stopped with religion, or color, or sexual orientation. Discrimination and oppression are ongoing, pervasive, violent, shameful, and is harmful to all of us.

If there is one thing I can predict with 100% conviction, is that the majority of us WILL realize eventually. Why do I know this? Because it just makes rational sense – IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT!
 
THE EFFECTS OUR DIET HAS ON A GLOBAL SCALE:

• Land, air, and water pollution
• New diseases such as Swine Flu/Avian Flu
• The rise of new strains of virulent organisms like E. Coli 0157H7
• Excessive chemical/pesticide use
• Antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance/development of superbugs
• Growth hormones and drugs in our food
• Dead zones (areas in waterways with no oxygen content often from farm run-off)
• Deforestation (animal consumption is the leading cause of deforestation)
• Extreme animal cruelty (look at factory farms/CAFOs)
• Loss of biodiversity (such as wolf culling, wild horse round-ups, etc.)
• Organisms in our water such as Pfisteria, Cryptosporidium, etc.
• Human health issues such as cancer/heart disease/the increased cost of healthcare
• Climate change (one of the largest contributor to greenhouse gases)
• Famine (it takes more grain to make animal foods than if you just fed people!)
• Extremely high and inefficient use of natural resources such as land and water
• Farm run-off contaminating our plant foods (such as the spinach recall - the E. Coli did NOT come from the spinach!)
• Thousands of pounds of wasted food from recalls and multiple food poisonings because of poor farming and soil practices, and the unmanageable amount of manure from CAFOs
• The unnecessary death of billions of sentient beings who wanted to live and whose individual lives held value beyond what we could ‘use’ out of them

 

What is impossible? It is impossible for someone to be a decent and moral human being AND take a good look at modern farming and the state of our Earth’s resources and NOT change. THAT is what is impossible. Decent humans WOULD change – if truly decent humans actually decided to be decent.