A Summer Solstice Dream about Freeing the Pigs and a Very Dangerous Idea
Happy first day of summer everyone.
Today while browsing on Toronto Pig Save’s Facebook group, I found this beautiful and touching fragment from the head of the group, Anita Krajnc.
“Today I dreamed that a transport truck had sick pigs and had to return to the farm and I let the pigs out of the ‘barn’ and created an opening in the fence. I had plans to give them a bath too”
Isn’t there something very beautiful about her dream.
It makes me tear up honestly.
One of the things that made me open my eyes to veganism is watching a must watch vid of Anita confronting the workers at now shut down Quality Meat Packers.
It stunned me really to see heroism like that.
You don’t see that that much.
Anyway, this summer solstice dream about freeing the pigs has me thinking about an idea that has been forming in my head since reading the awesome The World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle.
At first I thought this book was going to be like new age hippie pseudo science whatever. NO. It’s actually one of the most interesting books I may have ever read. So many cool ideas. Very radical ideas too but they make sense.
One of the main ideas in it is we used to be a very different kind of culture.
We used to live in fertile valleys, and we only ate plants.
I like to envision we were fruitarians with perfect glowing health and fitness, or maybe we were high carb vegans, and ate delicious rice bowls all the time.
Have you heard of the goddess cults? In those days, god was a woman, (I have this book When God Was a Woman about it) and we worshipped women and femininity and softness and the magic they possessed to bring new life into the world.
I like to envision a lot of pagan rituals and like children running through wheat fields as tall as their hands by the banks of the river and ribbons in the hair and dancing by the light of the moon and all that.
Ok, but then this awesome culture was invaded by a violent people. Yes, you will never believe it, these violent people were shepherds. The seemingly peaceful guardians of sheep.
But the fact is they killed the sheep. They started herding wild animals and one by one killing them off. Tuttle says this made them violent and these violent people overthrew the peaceful plant eating cultures and started instating new values like violence and domination of women and stuff like that.
He thinks their violent mentality was caused by killing animals.
And this herding culture is the same culture we live in today, except the herds are out of sight in factory farms.
But because we still eat animals, the violence and violent mentality still pervades our life.
I mean it sounds crazy, but it kind of makes sense.
He says we worship violence in our culture instead of life.
It makes me think of how a PG-13 movie can have tons of graphic violence and death but put sex in a movie and it gets a Nc-17.
Ok you got to read the book.
But it is interesting because ever since becoming vegan, which is really becoming aware of other LIFE on our planet, I have just had these dreams, visions, flashes of yearning, to go back to the fields and live closer to nature.
Almost like I was remembering this goddess worshipping fruit eating fertile valley living culture from ancient times.
I don’t like watching violent movies anymore. I don’t like the city. I want to eat only plants, I want to go fully raw. I want to swim in the ocean and be in water. I want to wear like nothing and go swimming.
Sigh.
This is what being vegan did to me.
This is what Toronto Pig Save did for me.
For everyone to go vegan it would mean more than just meat was gone from the supermarkets.
It would be a huge shift. It would change our entire culture and return us to something ancient.
Replacing violence and domination with life. Freeing the pigs.
Letting all life live harmoniously. Letting us be frugivores and experience peak health.
Letting the animals raise their own children.
I think this is what they call a dangerous idea.
Happy Summer Solstice to everyone.
Dandelion writes:
Will Tuttle has visited Chicago on a number of occasions and we’ve met, nice guy. His recent speaking engagement tour in Chicago compelled me to finally read this thing. The description of his talk didn’t seem like my cup of tea but I decided to give the book a fair whack since so many people were raving about it and all.
Welp, I might say I was disappointed but my expectations were low so I really wasn’t surprised honestly. The premise of the book seems to hinge on a typical new age search for enlightenment where here veganism is a tool to “spiritually evolve”. The problem I have with this is the same thing that nagged me via cognitive dissonance when I was a lackadaisical karma believer. Doing something to benefit somebody else only to really benefit yourself is itself a selfish and shallow act. Seeking enlightenment similarly is self-defeating and ultimately a fool’s errand.
Just like Skinny Bitch he gives relatively brief lip service to the plight of animals and instead makes dubious attempts of vegan advocacy. Most of the book focuses on the “spiritual” aspects of veganism with a good dose of pseudoscience. He both speaks the languages of religion and science and then systematically tears them down in an attempt to seemingly justify his own pseudo-religion where veganism is like ‘love vibrations, man’ and every cell has an intelligence that is toxified through meat murder.
He does a John Robbins Gish Gallop making veganism the end-all-be-all of everything. I’ve been around long enough to now be very wary of anybody who touts one answer. Tuttle does a good job of it though steeped in his new age interpretation. He tries hard to justify this spiritual mumbo jumbo through a mish-mash of teachings from various religions along with his own vague new age fluff.
The researchers he mentions to back up some of the claims is like a who’s who of pseudoscience which include the likes of Sheldrake and Chopra (or as I like to call him chOprah). For example he actually cites the dubious psychic dog studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#Seven_Experiments_That_Could_Chan ge_the_World) and The Maharishi Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-Sidhi_program#Study_on_the_Maharishi_Effect_in_Was hington.2C_D.C.) which is just poor evidence of the supernatural. I might also admonish his efforts to lend value to non-human animals through such strained efforts when they have inherent value and that is the true crux of veganism for which seems to escape him. He even gets the damn definition of veganism wrong as originally defined by Watson and instead uses the updated Vegan Society definition, TWICE. You’d think he’d at least get THAT right…ya know writing a book on veganism and all. (it’s just a matter of wording but shows poor research imho)
There’s the typical boogeyman of toxins, toxins, toxins, conspiracy rants of Big Pharma keeping us ill to line their pockets, the denouncement of science materialism rigmarole expected in such a new age treatise. Oh and not eating meat will cure you of alcoholism (http://www.compassionatespirit.com/charles-fillmore-and-spiritual-veg.htm) :confused:. Heck, this book DRIVES me to drink. There’s just so much more I took issue with (i flagged pages with sticky flags and herbi had to put up with my gasps and groans) but now I’m just coming off cross. This isn’t a personal attack after all but I do take issue with many of the ideas presented in this book and really dislike his interpretation of veganism. That’s just me and I’m a big crank as you’re starting to understand. :p
But hey maybe you’re into this kinda stuff. Maybe you should get certified as a facilitator to teach the World Peace Diet.
http://worldpeacediet.org/retreat1.htm
Ok guru…
LOL I loved your review. Thanks for taking the time to write it. I too was dubious about some of his claims, but I do think the whole thesis is a cool idea…and cool that someone believes veganism is the answer to everything and the way to spiritual enlightenment…He has a lot of cool ideas, whether they are true or not is another story lol. I got skeptical at the end when he said the world becoming vegan will lead to us living a more communal way of life like he lived on the commune he found on his spiritual quest. Was the commune even real hehe? Or was it all a dream… You make an excellent critique of the book, I greatly enjoyed it. You should have a youtube channel or blog. Do you?
Only on FetLife.com
There are several vegan and AR forums there.
LMAO. Is that a joke? You are hilarious.
Totally serious. Login there and do a search for words like:
Animal liberation vegan etc