WFPB for Health, Vegan for Love

WE ALL KNOW:
Animal flesh is not supposed to touch any other foods when raw because it is contaminated. The reason you have to cook it so long is to kill off the potentially deadly bacteria. When baking with children you should not let them lick the bowl if using raw eggs due to the risk of illness.

BUT DID YOU ALSO KNOW:
Plant-based diets meet all human needs and humans thrive on plant-based diets. Germany’s record-breaking strongman is plant-based, and you can find amazing plant-based athletes in every sport, often winning. There are also all kinds of delicious *mock* meats available, and eggs/dairy are also easy to replace.

So what is the benefit of going plant-based?
You avoid having these potentially deadly organisms near your family
You avoid harming animals and contributing to the global issues of animal agriculture
You strengthen your personal health and immune system
You feel good about your meals because they stem from meaningful informed choices
AND, best of all – you can safely lick the bowl!!!!

Go plant-based for health.
Go vegan because you are opposed to violence and exploitation.

The Abbey of St Walburga

Anyone else see the show on NBC the other night about the nuns at The Abbey of St Walburga in Colorado? They have a ranch and are quite successful at selling "beef" based on the consumers assumption of "humane meat" and "irreverence" for the animal's life... (???) I found it quite upsetting, to be honest. I am sending them a letter, although I am well aware that the chance of being *heard* might not be very high (or no chance at all lol).

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The Abbey of St Walburga
Benedictine Way
Livermore, Colorado 80526

With Respect to Those of The Abbey of St Walburga:

Sometimes I am so overcome by pain I simply feel at complete loss as to what to say…how can I adequately express what I need you to hear?

I saw the television segment about your ranch. It made me so very sad. In the hopes you will hear me out, I decided I must write my deep sorrow on paper and share it with you. PLEASE just take a few moments to read my short letter - in hoping to make my point initially I will surely struggle to find the right words - so please read it through.

To see this industry garner the support of what I assume are such lovely, dedicated people at The Abbey of St Walburga - such a terrible industry with such horrible effects - is absolutely heartbreaking to me. I had tears in my eyes and felt such deep sadness seeing that segment.

Our society has long-held beliefs that we have justified in irrational ways. We cause the suffering of other species to the detriment of our Earth and other humans. We know it takes a lot of food, water, and land to raise animals. We invest a lot more resources ‘farming animals’ than we receive back as a benefit, making it a counteractive and detrimental method of producing food for humans. As one of the many consequences of this the ‘animal farming’ industry globally contributes to world famine, all while causing soil depletion, pollution, and loss of biodiversity on a massive scale.

By encouraging and aiding the ongoing consumption of meat and animal milk we also nonverbally support the egregious loss of our rainforests and the displacement of indigenous people everywhere. Many activists have been killed fighting against the very industry you align yourself with. While erroneously believed to be ‘different’ in fact you are complicit. Are you familiar at all with Sister Dorothy Stang? The documentary “They Killed Sister Dorothy” is the beginning of a small peek into a VERY deep rabbit hole of crimes against all humans, animals, and Earth.

We know that even at minimum we must do unnatural things to these vulnerable beings - such as the removal of male calves and/or forced insemination, which is actually sexual assault on another woman when viewed objectively.

Additionally we have no dietary need for animal ‘products’ and they are known to increase rates of human disease – so no matter how ‘cleanly’ raised – you are potentially complicit in harming the health of another, harming our Earth, ignoring the overuse of available resources, and also assaulting a sentient being who inherently values their own life. Why be a willing participant in all these horrible things when instead we could easily choose to support life SUSTAINING and life GIVING habits that are truly about love and compassion for all beings?

There is no need for humans to kill to live. Our humanity, our ecology, our spirituality, and our health aligns with this simple yet utterly moral principle. We can feed more people with plant-based foods, we can have less pollution, we can have healthy bodies and clean ecosystems, and we don’t have to be violent. Not to mention it is a fallacy of logic to state “irreverence” of anything mercilessly killed for no logical purpose or bodily need. To truly respect life would be for The Abbey of St Walburga to become a SANCTUARY, a safe place for all sentient beings – a place of love, nonviolence, and true reverence.

Our falsely-held beliefs allow us to justify a plethora of negative effects, along with system-wide horrific injustice and oppression of thinking, feeling, fellow beings. Beings that are able to clearly communicate the emotions of love, suffering, and pain. Most people who are complicit are not cruel people, most are not indecent intentionally. In a sense we are all victims – of lies, manipulation, and an extreme cognitive dissonance that allows us to believe we are kind and decent while actually being horrifically cruel and violent and being harmful to all we love – and to everything that truly matters.

Perpetrators throughout history have explained their violence and oppression by insisting it was "natural", or they were abiding by God, or that their victims were “different”, or “inferior”, or did not have the sameness in capacity for emotion or thought. Throughout our entire history those have been our [wrong] reasons for the disregard of other sentient lives. I personally do not feel any loving God would support the utterly unnecessary destruction, bloodlust, and negative impacts of animal farming but would instead embrace peace, nonviolence, and avoidance of killing except possibly under dire survival circumstances.

By killing some species and valuing others we are setting nonsensical criterion for who is inferior, deciding whose lives matter less. That is the basis for *all* discrimination, oppression, violence, and judgment of others and is simply wrong.

We can change history. We can have peace. We can have a clean planet. We can have health. We can stand in support of the wonderful, brave people such as Sister Dorothy, and the hundreds of others who have been killed just for speaking up. We can just stop being violent. Right now – we can stop. 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.

What I have said here makes total sense and is in alignment with all that is good and just and compassionate in this world. Tradition does not make right, as many abject traditions have been ejected when shown to be erroneous or obsolete.

To see such good people supporting such a deplorable industry breaks my heart, sincerely and truly.

Thank you for listening.

Do unto others…

Sincerely,

Karyn Swaney

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.