just wonderful !!! I have only read the title and skimmed through the first few paragraphs, but I am so grateful that you are daring to write such important words. I don't have time to get into any analysis, but it doesnt matter - your energy and integrity of words will create light!!!
Tereza, you are brave to enter into this conversation. Thank you. I find myself usually passing on commenting on food war articles, especially those written by vegans. It's one of the touchiest subjects around. I was vegetarian once, and vegan for a while. My failing health got worse, not better. Our bodies are all different, at different times in our lives. I have studied holistic health for many years and the one conclusion I've come to is that there will always be a study to prove one's position in this debate.
I have kind, conscious, open-hearted vegan friends, as well as kind, conscious, open-hearted meat-eating friends. Like you said, we all surely agree that factory farming is horrific and certainly unnecessary. But, I prefer to let everyone make their own food choices, without judgment. Believe me, I work on my own judgment issues every time I walk the aisles of a grocery store and see what people put in their carts. And then I remember how much I love potato chips and strawberry ice cream. Not together, of course. :)
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Tereza. I'm going to check out Lierre Keith’s book, as well as Charles Eisenstein's "The Yoga of Eating" that one of your commenters mentioned.
You're so right, Barbara, that food choices have become the third rail of polite discourse--more so than religion or politics. To be really controversial, I think that there's a correspondence between vegans and right-to-lifers. In both cases there's an embodiment of innocence in animals and unborn babies, who are both much easier to love than people with all of their messy histories and needs. For empathetic people, who know the harms being done in the world, it's one thing they feel they can control and not be part of. Just a theory.
I have no problem withholding judgement at the grocery store for other people's carts. It's when they show up at my dinner table with the full expectation that OF COURSE I'll accommodate their food preferences. Because of course, this isn't a food preference--it's an ethical judgement that no one should be eating meat. To ask a vegetarian why they are is forbidden--it should be obvious, it's just wrong.
I also know kind, open-hearted people on both sides, some of whom are on here. That's why I say love the people and challenge the ideas. Any ethical position is a judgement and a secret (or not so secret) belief in the superiority of that position. Like economics, I think we should start with the goals we want to accomplish and work backwards to get to the means.
Potato chips and strawberry ice cream, yum! Thanks for your open mind, Barbara, and checking out Lierre's book. I'll also be checking out Eisenstein thanks to Guy.
It’s real simple. There are no plant substitutes for the complex amino acids your body requires and receives from eating meat.
Regarding nutrition they beat the word “protein” to death similar to how they beat the word “antibodies” to death over immunity. Totally ignoring the complex interplay, roles, and necessity of many other functions.
Much wealth and power is gleaned by leading the hordes into traps via oversimplification. Similar to climate change.
Most scientists agree man-made climate change is real. What they do not agree on is whether it is cataclysmic or benign. They focus on the former.
Plastic in the ocean? Asia leads the way literally choking rivers and waterways with the stuff. America? Less than .5%. But whom does Greta insist “stole her future?” I could go on and on.
Systemic racism, white supremacy, gender bias, the list of programs designed to make us feel like shit and bow to a higher (fake) authority is endless.
Going full-on vegan or eating a bowl of crickets, baking with cricket “flour” or eating mystery meat is all part of their plan to glean new riches at our expense.
I hope more and more people resist their guilt mongering mind manipulation and tell them to take a hike.
That's a very good term for it, GLK, oversimplification. I think there's a longing in us for that one line in the sand that's a clean division between right and wrong. And guilt is a much more potent manipulator than even fear. I think it's in this pre-Substack YT that I talk about that as The Only Deadly Sin: https://youtu.be/plL7kvxU4R8.
On a social level, as I say in AHitNV, regenerative ranching not only mitigates climate change but reverses it, in a way that also restores local sovereignty and builds back the soil where it's been destroyed. Ranchers now see themselves as soil farmers. So it would be a good thing to do even if you didn't eat the meat--economically unfeasible as that would be.
On a spiritual level, it's the unholy trinity--fear, guilt and blame--that keep us from recognizing our Oneness with others. We can be superior or we can be God--but we can't have it both ways ;-)
That post should be immortalized, although not the experience. I'm glad to be that nudge since I'm sure I'm not the only one missing you. Dare I say, I think Substack itself has changed over the last year. I wonder if it will feel the same when you get back. That old saw about not wading into the same river twice ...
And for those who also need a brush up on Nordic mythology: Yggdrasil is a giant ash tree that connects the nine worlds, including the underworld, the earth, and the realm of the gods. It acts as a gallows that the god Odin hangs himself from to gain mystical knowledge, and it is said to be the source of new life after Ragnarök, the catastrophic final war of the gods.
We could use some new life after this catastrophic war of the boys-playing-gods!
Wow. Coming to this late. I fell bad I wasn't part of this conversation. Thank you for the reference. Yes, the future is local. We are behind the curve. But the future can be much more mentally, physically and spiritually healthy, so rejoice.
Great nuanced article, Tereza. Have you read Charles Eisenstein's *The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self*? (https://www.goodreads.com/et/book/show/560130). It is a surprisingly deep look at all things food and eating that would snuggle in comfortably with your essay.
Regarding your comment about the history of 'children's' stories suggest / infer that there has been a movement to infantilise them. Yes, I agree. A fun and interesting look at that is a delightful and informative book called 'The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood', a look at how that story has changed Red from a creative solver of problems in the face of serious challenge, to a mouse looking for rescue (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/685677.The_Trials_and_Tribulations_of_Little_Red_Riding_Hood).
When I wrote a university paper on the effect that industrialisation had on the family, the woke class wanted me to write it was horrific. Nope. The opposite, in fact. However, the one part of the woke world that wasn't discussed was how the wealth of industrialisation turned children from assets to expenses. Then we babied children instead of given them function and authority. That eventually allowed for the development, expansion and acceptance of the anti-child, perhaps even a child hating timbre of children as costs and pains in our comics and other entertainments.
Thank you for the great reference to food common sense. Am I allowed to say that, as an 'accidental' vegetarian? And why 'accidental?' That is a story for another time, and it involves a physical transformation that happened during a pranayama course that overturned my experience and understanding of my inherently carnivorous nature. And it began the process of my turning away from trusting sources outside my own corporeal reality and following Gautama Buddha's directive 'Trust your Self.' (I've written a bit about that, although maybe I'll make it a subject for an substack essay.)
Ethics are not just bullshit, they are the foundation for misery and death. They are used to create a false logic that the rational mind uses to rationalise and justify something/ anything. Ethics were used to burn witches, kill heretics, inject babies with vaccines, kill Jews, enslave people across all races and all times, murder prisoners, torture people, etc. Have you read William Blake's 'Songs of Experience' and 'Songs of Innocence?' In the latter he satirised the hypocrisy of the 'ethical' church their once a year praise for children while turning their eyes to the misery of child poverty and chimney sweeps. Have you researched the brutality of that? Children forced into 4" flues, naked, with their feet being burnt? Bodies deformed, often dying young of cancers and lung diseases. Oh! And this was done ethically to prevent fires in the chimneys. (Here is a nice reading of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0vMAb-uCdQ)
And here is an example:
HOLY THURSDAY
’Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green:
Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames waters flow.
O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor.
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
LOL! Ah, if only hunks reading Blake could wake us up. Too funny.
That ethics thing spews out of me from time-to-time. It has a link to ethical behaviour around human eating practices and is likely the greatest source of delusion.
Guy, you always have such a refreshingly original pov. On CE, I didn't realize he'd written 31 books or that he graduated from Yale! This book looks very interesting.
Oh, I love that idea of the washing out of Little Red Riding Hood to being a helpless shade of pink. I have somewhere hardcovers of both Grimm and Anderson from my mother's era--they have certainly been diluted. Fairy tales are a passion of mine, so that looks really great.
And I did know about the child chimney sweeps from Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make-Believe--a book that was a cornerstone for me. He writes about the normalization of violence, and how it co-exists with everyday life, and the chimney sweeps were a horrifying example. Makes Mary Poppins quite a sinister propaganda piece.
Surprisingly, Derrick is one of the blurbs on Lierre's book--I would have thought for sure he was vegan. But he writes, "This book saved my life. Not only does it make clear how we should be eating, but also how the dominant food system is killing the planet. This necessary book challenges many of the destructive myths we live by and offers us a way back into our bodies, and back into the fight to save the planet."
In the oldest 'western' version of LRRH – it is a world wide archetypal story – the little girl is tricked into drinking her grandmother's blood and then escapes from being eaten by using clever lying about having to go for a crap. No hero came and saved her, male or female. I was so inspired by Zipes' collection I wrote my own version of the story. Hmmmm. Maybe time to change the pace and publish some of my fiction and poetry from time to time. (My last one on the ego is brilliant, imo, and few read it. LoL! No accounting for taste.)
The Yoga of Eating will be an early (2005?) confirmation of everything you wrote here. It was a surprisingly delightful and powerful read for me.
I think that what is really killing the planet more than the system of 'eating' is the system of maximising capital return and viewing the planet, the creatures, including humans as capital to be maximised. That ideology is deeper and more pernicious than ideologies that deny the biological reality of our humanity. And capital exploitation, not necessarily maximisation at the time, was likely the most significant ethic used by the western capitalists to to justify the native genocide and near extinction of the buffalo: the native's didn't deserve the land that they had failed to exploit maximally and the buffalo were easy pickens.
WOAH! Even my very grim Grimm, straight from Germany, didn't have that level of macabre. Yes to Guy's fiction and poetry! I'll check out your one on ego.
The Yoga of Eating was 2001, so even more prescient. And I agree that it's the commodification and profit-mongering that supersedes what choices we have to eat.
Very insightful, Tereza! Populism is “ We The People”. In context, without labels, hatred, division or , partisan or forced ideological requisite, we’re able to not only coexist, but contribute, enlighten and dispel perceived myths.
If two years ago somebody inferred I’d find common ground with Russell Brand, Glenn Greenwald, Kim Iverson, Naomi Wolf and Jimmy Dore.. I’d have been appalled.That I’d support RFK Jr over any of the current crop of GOP hopefuls, I’d have laughed. Because RFK Jr. was an “ anti-vax” crackpot… albeit I’ve for years raged against Fauci. For decades, actually. And then I actually heard how astute and knowledgable RFK Jr. is. And how deceptively misstated and misrepresented his message was.That I would not and could not ignore the self inflicted damage and divide Trump created due to his poor judgment, failure to accept any responsibilty, replacing bad appointments with worse, unprovoked, vile ad-hominem preemptive attacks on those who did nothing to warrant his wrath. The imbecilic, puerile nicknames, obsessive-compulsive tweets replete with misspellings and punctuation marks.How many charlatans could he appoint, surround himself with and depend upon as advisors?Who’s fault is it that he spilled his guts re: Covid to Bob Woodward? Upon Lindsey Graham’s urging. Appointing Wray at the behest of Christie, who he’d betrayed big time and should never have been a consideration in the first place.Picking public fights with Kemp and Raffenberger DURING the Georgia Senate race, pushing Collins into the arena when Loeffler had it in the bag and Purdue, though a vanilla wafer was way ahead. Essentially, Trump handed the worst of the worst.. Warnock and Ossoff to victory. And did it again by pushing Herschel Walker as “ his” candidate.
Yet Trump hasn’t called out the WEF Great Reset, BlackRock,Gates,Bourla,Bancel,Harari,Kissinger, Gottlieb or any of the WEF Young Global Leaders implanted within every government faction globally. Why? Well, he surrounds himself with them. Ivanka,Nikki Haley, Elyse Stefanik, Tom Cotton, Crenshaw, Nick Ayers,Gottlieb, Fauci, Dina Powell, McMaster,Fiona Hill, Kadlec, his BFFs Gavin Newsome,Cuomo,Macron, Boris,MerkelKlaus Schwab,Trudeau, Pritzker, Bloomberg…. He only started hating Elon Musk when Musk turned on the WEF and went public exposing the vileness and threat presented to humanity, the animal kingdom, ecosystem and all things within the natural order.Note he hasn’t had the decency to acknowledge or thank Tulsi, Naomi Wolf, Greenwald, Taibbi , or any of the unlikely sources who came to his defense by exposing deep seated corruption.
Note the GOP and it’s deeply held “ Christian pro-life “gospel quoting, abortion banning zealots haven’t uttered a peep about Biden’s Transhumanist Executive Order signed while the zombies focused on Queen Elizabeth’s nine day rebelling casket extravaganza. Nary a peep re: The Great Reset aka Build Back Better aka Brave New World, Event 201,Agenda 2030, overturned election results globally where leaders were lawfully elected. The bizarre and increasingly frequent fires and explosions at food processing, chemical plants, farms, power facilities, forested areas. The string of train derailments, mass shootings, business closures,plane craves…. The series of “ coincidentally timed” deaths, disappearances of whistleblowers… attributed to accidents, random armed robberies, suicide, and I dunno s.
Among them, Dr Kary Mullis, Dr Luc Montagnier, Phil Haney, Peter Pry, Nathan, Jeff Epstein, Terry Turchie, Seth Rich, Adm. Tommy “ Ace” Lyons, Dr. Robert Epstein’s wife, Shinzo Abe, Dr. Ramon Oswui, Whitey Bulger ( who’d been threatening to out key players in the Deep State,
The “ religious Christian pro- lifers” who are cheering for Ukraine and WWIII, mRNA vaccines,sending billions of unaccountable tab dollars and WaPo s to Ukraine whilst ignoring the actual Ukrainian Nazis, exponential loss of life and worshipping the “ hero” Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy, the most anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-democracy, racist ( like most Ukrainians)tyrannical, despotic grifter. But Putin!
Why aren’t Republicans calling for Bill Gates’, Fauci’s, Larry Fink’s, Bloomberg’s, Avril Haines’, Nuland’s, Schwab’s,Haspel’s, Judge Emmett Sullivan’s, Bezos’, ,Kerry’s, Buffett’s, Bourlas’, Bancel’s,Becerras’, Weissman’s, Powers’ heads on platters? Because they’re also corrupt and complicit. Romney, Graham, Burr, Flake, Corker, Cofer-Black, Barr, Flake, Paul Ryan, Cheney, Mitch,Murkowski, Capito, Pence, Cassidy, Barasso, Shelby, Portman,McMaster,Kerner,Ducey,Jolly, Hurd, Bush, Thune, Christie,John Roberts, Kavanaugh, Conway, Haley,Pompeo, Ronna McDaniel, Rove and the most toxic, radioactive treasonous of all… John McShitstain. Filthy to the core. In bed with the worst of both worlds and each other.
Yet only DeSantis and Ramaswamy on the ( R) side have named the WEF Great Reset, BlackRock, the UN, EU, NGOs or the fact the border invasion is being funded by the taxpayers through the UN/USAID/Catholic Charities, Red Cross… the cartels are only an opportunistic part of the incursion. Biden signed a fucking bill!
We’ve been sold out for decades. To the worst of humanity and our vaunted “ elected representatives “are paid corporate corporate and foreign enemy puppets.
They don’t care that our food, water,medicine are poisonous, our manufacturing capacity non-existent since selling out every necessary component and resource to China, Mexico,Qatar,Indonesia, Ukraine, Kuwait and ather nations that despise us .
Our collapse is orchestrated, deliberate and didn’t happen overnight.The insidious path to implosion kicked into hard drive under Bush Sr, Clinton, W, Obama, Trump and Biden, but the Johnson,Ford, Carter, Reagan admins are in no way exempt.
We’re a step from extinction as a natural species.
Search “ Aldous Huxley/Mike Wallace interview 1958”. Huxley was so inexplicably prescient in his warning, you’ll wish for a few Soma!
Thanks for introducing me to Gavin and those beautiful photos!
"If you need Hostess Ding-Dongs to get you through the day, go for it. Be kind to yourself." This is pretty much the approach I take to eating meat. I am an aspirational vegetarian (I don't think I could ever justify giving up locally sourced eggs, and that's before we get to my cheese addiction) because i'm more and more concluding that the decision for humans to eat flesh was the original "Fall" (it seems to me pretty clear that we weren't originally "designed" to be carnivores).
But that's in an ideal world, not the one we currently inhabit. The need for flesh has for so long driven the evolution of our species that it is now ingrained across all cultural/racial/economic et al. lines. Due to the now inherent material/biological diversity in our species, the necessity of meat in a healthy diet seems to vary wildly. In very real and practical ways (e.g. the ability to get proper nutrition based on the food supply lines that are available to our primarily urbanised species) the majority of the population literally can't live without it, or would have to completely re-orientate their lives to be in a position to give it up. Indeed, despite my best efforts to manifest otherwise, I still find meat to be, in general, tasty AF and nourishing: particularly when it is cooked by someone (particularly my mum) in the spirit of generosity and community.
What we can all do is take our role as stewards of this realm seriously. "He came to set the captives free" is often interpreted as humanity needing an external saviour to escape this crap show. I prefer to see it as reminder that one of the most moral tasks we have on Earth is to free the souls that we ourselves have put into captivity. "Animal Husbandry" is a great way to capture how diet is only one aspect of this ethical challenge we face.
I'm so glad you went to Gavin's photos! Aren't they breathtaking?
When you say 'the decision for humans to eat flesh' and before the 'Fall', I assume you're going back more than 420,000 yrs, before humans were humans and were tree-dwellers? Maybe a literal fall? ;-) Lierre Keith quotes an anthropologist writing, "In anthropological scientific circles, there's absolutely no debate about it--every respected authority will confirm that we were hunters.... Our meat-eating heritage ... is an inescapable fact."
She also has two pages comparing the biology of humans, dogs and sheep. In 30 different ways (all of them) humans and dogs have the same digestive process different than sheep. So nature would dispute that we're not designed to eat flesh.
With my daughters, I trained them (with more and less success) to know how to humanely kill and process chickens. My retort to other kids, who were horrified, is that being squeamish is not the same as being ethical. If we had to survive on what we produce, it wouldn't be possible without meat, as authors like Barbara Kingsolver have shown.
I think you're lucky to have a mum who's a good cook and she's lucky to have you as an appreciative eater! Give up your aspirations, I say, and enter into the kas-limaal of an adult relationship with your food where someone has to die in order for someone to live. It's a surprisingly wholesome relationship--especially since there would be no domesticated animals without it!
"Someone has to die in order for someone to live". An argument that we live in a fallen realm if ever I have seen one! I don't accept that this was the original state of the world, but one that we have created through our own choices. The human body is remarkably clever, and has no doubt been very effective at adapting (as distinct from "evolving") to our conscious decision to eat flesh. Just like we are adapting in various ways to injecting ourselves ritually with poison and living in EMF and chemtrail-polluted environments, we will find a way to survive... but that doesn't mean it is a positive or inevitable adaption.
Obviously I am being provocative here (I can't prove any of my opinions either) but let's go all in given you have opened the door enough. If every theory that has presented to us as fact is now on the table, then Evolution has to be as well, no? 420,000 years ago we were in trees: says who and based on what evidence? Carbon dating (aka the PCR test for mainstream geologists and anthropologists)? Remote viewing? You will have to forgive me, but I place no worth in these unprovably large numbers that seem designed to wow us into turning our brains off.
And as for "there's absolutely no debate about it", "every respected authority will confirm", "an inescapable fact"... sounds like just another branch of the Scientism cult to me 😁
I'm so glad you're willing to go all in, Isaac! So let's start at the spiritual realm. In Genesis, God first creates the world and it's perfect. Then there's a second creation story involving what I call eating from the tree of judgement--the 'knowing' of good and evil. In this version, Adam is put to sleep but it never says he wakes up. So we may well agree that this world of dog-eat-dog and death, suffering and loss is not our original or true state. In which case, as a dream, we can't get out of it by making ourselves out to be more virtuous than others, thanks to our consumer privilege that other people produce our food and we can pick and choose what we eat.
One of my old radio episodes was called "People Are Animals Too." Do you condemn a cougar for eating meat? To say that humans should transcend their biology is to say that we're superior to animals.
In the video I mention that Lierre asks for a full accounting from those who think they can live without killing. Native prairie is now 99.8% gone, along with all the species that lived there, because of monoculture grains. Tilling destroys 40-500 tons of topsoil per year, while nature can build it at a rate of 2-4. That's what caused the Dust Bowl. The thousands of species of organisms in a square yard of topsoil--do they count in your equation?
Anthropologists rely on spears found 420,000 yrs ago, some buried in the ribs of mastodons, or the cave painting at Lascaux. Also skeletons showing a degeneration of health after the rise of agriculture and the decline of hunting. As we both know, they've lied to us about the real science, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. To refute the safety and effectiveness of the jabs isn't a belief system, it relies on data.
For someone who believes in catastrophic climate change, they might be relieved that the WEF is turning our skies into an aluminum helmet. For someone who believes that killing animals for food is wrong, they might be happy that the WEF is shutting down farms and ranches, regulating meat consumption, and replacing them with cricket meal. This destroys local sovereignty but hey, we shouldn't be doing it anyway. I think we need a hard and critical look at anytime we're in alignment with them, especially ideologically.
And last, to take this position to its logical endpoint, if killing animals for food is wrong, there would be no domesticated animals including carnivore pets. Is that the world you want to live in?
Holy moly! I don’t have much more to add, but I would say that the implication of the hypothetical reality I was proposing is that animals take their lead from us, and so the “Fall” also diverted them into a carnivorous world. I can’t see any sustainable or realistic pathway towards a non carnivorous world, and I also wouldn’t advocate for one: diet is a personal choice and as you point out, is currently being weaponised to remove human sovereignty and lead us even further towards a weak and diseased population that can be more easily controlled.
Ah! Thanks for receiving my preaching with such good graces ;-) On a mystical level, I think our views of the Fall are complementary. In mine, it was falling into a dream where death and hunger were both real things, and intertwined. In yours, it's also an idea that shapes reality. I like that.
Dear Tereza,
just wonderful !!! I have only read the title and skimmed through the first few paragraphs, but I am so grateful that you are daring to write such important words. I don't have time to get into any analysis, but it doesnt matter - your energy and integrity of words will create light!!!
thank you
Thank you so much, Michael!
Tereza, you are brave to enter into this conversation. Thank you. I find myself usually passing on commenting on food war articles, especially those written by vegans. It's one of the touchiest subjects around. I was vegetarian once, and vegan for a while. My failing health got worse, not better. Our bodies are all different, at different times in our lives. I have studied holistic health for many years and the one conclusion I've come to is that there will always be a study to prove one's position in this debate.
I have kind, conscious, open-hearted vegan friends, as well as kind, conscious, open-hearted meat-eating friends. Like you said, we all surely agree that factory farming is horrific and certainly unnecessary. But, I prefer to let everyone make their own food choices, without judgment. Believe me, I work on my own judgment issues every time I walk the aisles of a grocery store and see what people put in their carts. And then I remember how much I love potato chips and strawberry ice cream. Not together, of course. :)
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Tereza. I'm going to check out Lierre Keith’s book, as well as Charles Eisenstein's "The Yoga of Eating" that one of your commenters mentioned.
You're so right, Barbara, that food choices have become the third rail of polite discourse--more so than religion or politics. To be really controversial, I think that there's a correspondence between vegans and right-to-lifers. In both cases there's an embodiment of innocence in animals and unborn babies, who are both much easier to love than people with all of their messy histories and needs. For empathetic people, who know the harms being done in the world, it's one thing they feel they can control and not be part of. Just a theory.
I have no problem withholding judgement at the grocery store for other people's carts. It's when they show up at my dinner table with the full expectation that OF COURSE I'll accommodate their food preferences. Because of course, this isn't a food preference--it's an ethical judgement that no one should be eating meat. To ask a vegetarian why they are is forbidden--it should be obvious, it's just wrong.
I also know kind, open-hearted people on both sides, some of whom are on here. That's why I say love the people and challenge the ideas. Any ethical position is a judgement and a secret (or not so secret) belief in the superiority of that position. Like economics, I think we should start with the goals we want to accomplish and work backwards to get to the means.
Potato chips and strawberry ice cream, yum! Thanks for your open mind, Barbara, and checking out Lierre's book. I'll also be checking out Eisenstein thanks to Guy.
It’s real simple. There are no plant substitutes for the complex amino acids your body requires and receives from eating meat.
Regarding nutrition they beat the word “protein” to death similar to how they beat the word “antibodies” to death over immunity. Totally ignoring the complex interplay, roles, and necessity of many other functions.
Much wealth and power is gleaned by leading the hordes into traps via oversimplification. Similar to climate change.
Most scientists agree man-made climate change is real. What they do not agree on is whether it is cataclysmic or benign. They focus on the former.
Plastic in the ocean? Asia leads the way literally choking rivers and waterways with the stuff. America? Less than .5%. But whom does Greta insist “stole her future?” I could go on and on.
Systemic racism, white supremacy, gender bias, the list of programs designed to make us feel like shit and bow to a higher (fake) authority is endless.
Going full-on vegan or eating a bowl of crickets, baking with cricket “flour” or eating mystery meat is all part of their plan to glean new riches at our expense.
I hope more and more people resist their guilt mongering mind manipulation and tell them to take a hike.
That's a very good term for it, GLK, oversimplification. I think there's a longing in us for that one line in the sand that's a clean division between right and wrong. And guilt is a much more potent manipulator than even fear. I think it's in this pre-Substack YT that I talk about that as The Only Deadly Sin: https://youtu.be/plL7kvxU4R8.
On a social level, as I say in AHitNV, regenerative ranching not only mitigates climate change but reverses it, in a way that also restores local sovereignty and builds back the soil where it's been destroyed. Ranchers now see themselves as soil farmers. So it would be a good thing to do even if you didn't eat the meat--economically unfeasible as that would be.
On a spiritual level, it's the unholy trinity--fear, guilt and blame--that keep us from recognizing our Oneness with others. We can be superior or we can be God--but we can't have it both ways ;-)
Chasing hogs down the freeway:
https://guttermouth.substack.com/p/freyjas-day-thing-81922
Each time I read you I feel a nudge to get back to the 'stack. I'm glad you're here.
Presently hanging myself from Yggdrasil, so to speak. I'll have to come down eventually.
That post should be immortalized, although not the experience. I'm glad to be that nudge since I'm sure I'm not the only one missing you. Dare I say, I think Substack itself has changed over the last year. I wonder if it will feel the same when you get back. That old saw about not wading into the same river twice ...
And for those who also need a brush up on Nordic mythology: Yggdrasil is a giant ash tree that connects the nine worlds, including the underworld, the earth, and the realm of the gods. It acts as a gallows that the god Odin hangs himself from to gain mystical knowledge, and it is said to be the source of new life after Ragnarök, the catastrophic final war of the gods.
We could use some new life after this catastrophic war of the boys-playing-gods!
Wow. Coming to this late. I fell bad I wasn't part of this conversation. Thank you for the reference. Yes, the future is local. We are behind the curve. But the future can be much more mentally, physically and spiritually healthy, so rejoice.
Well put!
Here in Texas, vegetarian is what food eats.
Great nuanced article, Tereza. Have you read Charles Eisenstein's *The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self*? (https://www.goodreads.com/et/book/show/560130). It is a surprisingly deep look at all things food and eating that would snuggle in comfortably with your essay.
Regarding your comment about the history of 'children's' stories suggest / infer that there has been a movement to infantilise them. Yes, I agree. A fun and interesting look at that is a delightful and informative book called 'The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood', a look at how that story has changed Red from a creative solver of problems in the face of serious challenge, to a mouse looking for rescue (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/685677.The_Trials_and_Tribulations_of_Little_Red_Riding_Hood).
When I wrote a university paper on the effect that industrialisation had on the family, the woke class wanted me to write it was horrific. Nope. The opposite, in fact. However, the one part of the woke world that wasn't discussed was how the wealth of industrialisation turned children from assets to expenses. Then we babied children instead of given them function and authority. That eventually allowed for the development, expansion and acceptance of the anti-child, perhaps even a child hating timbre of children as costs and pains in our comics and other entertainments.
Thank you for the great reference to food common sense. Am I allowed to say that, as an 'accidental' vegetarian? And why 'accidental?' That is a story for another time, and it involves a physical transformation that happened during a pranayama course that overturned my experience and understanding of my inherently carnivorous nature. And it began the process of my turning away from trusting sources outside my own corporeal reality and following Gautama Buddha's directive 'Trust your Self.' (I've written a bit about that, although maybe I'll make it a subject for an substack essay.)
Ethics are not just bullshit, they are the foundation for misery and death. They are used to create a false logic that the rational mind uses to rationalise and justify something/ anything. Ethics were used to burn witches, kill heretics, inject babies with vaccines, kill Jews, enslave people across all races and all times, murder prisoners, torture people, etc. Have you read William Blake's 'Songs of Experience' and 'Songs of Innocence?' In the latter he satirised the hypocrisy of the 'ethical' church their once a year praise for children while turning their eyes to the misery of child poverty and chimney sweeps. Have you researched the brutality of that? Children forced into 4" flues, naked, with their feet being burnt? Bodies deformed, often dying young of cancers and lung diseases. Oh! And this was done ethically to prevent fires in the chimneys. (Here is a nice reading of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0vMAb-uCdQ)
And here is an example:
HOLY THURSDAY
’Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green:
Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames waters flow.
O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor.
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
(Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1934/1934-h/1934-h.htm).
Also, some hunky young guy reading Blake in the woods could start a new poetry revolution!
Love your diatribe on ethics!
LOL! Ah, if only hunks reading Blake could wake us up. Too funny.
That ethics thing spews out of me from time-to-time. It has a link to ethical behaviour around human eating practices and is likely the greatest source of delusion.
Guy, you always have such a refreshingly original pov. On CE, I didn't realize he'd written 31 books or that he graduated from Yale! This book looks very interesting.
Oh, I love that idea of the washing out of Little Red Riding Hood to being a helpless shade of pink. I have somewhere hardcovers of both Grimm and Anderson from my mother's era--they have certainly been diluted. Fairy tales are a passion of mine, so that looks really great.
And I did know about the child chimney sweeps from Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make-Believe--a book that was a cornerstone for me. He writes about the normalization of violence, and how it co-exists with everyday life, and the chimney sweeps were a horrifying example. Makes Mary Poppins quite a sinister propaganda piece.
Surprisingly, Derrick is one of the blurbs on Lierre's book--I would have thought for sure he was vegan. But he writes, "This book saved my life. Not only does it make clear how we should be eating, but also how the dominant food system is killing the planet. This necessary book challenges many of the destructive myths we live by and offers us a way back into our bodies, and back into the fight to save the planet."
In the oldest 'western' version of LRRH – it is a world wide archetypal story – the little girl is tricked into drinking her grandmother's blood and then escapes from being eaten by using clever lying about having to go for a crap. No hero came and saved her, male or female. I was so inspired by Zipes' collection I wrote my own version of the story. Hmmmm. Maybe time to change the pace and publish some of my fiction and poetry from time to time. (My last one on the ego is brilliant, imo, and few read it. LoL! No accounting for taste.)
The Yoga of Eating will be an early (2005?) confirmation of everything you wrote here. It was a surprisingly delightful and powerful read for me.
I think that what is really killing the planet more than the system of 'eating' is the system of maximising capital return and viewing the planet, the creatures, including humans as capital to be maximised. That ideology is deeper and more pernicious than ideologies that deny the biological reality of our humanity. And capital exploitation, not necessarily maximisation at the time, was likely the most significant ethic used by the western capitalists to to justify the native genocide and near extinction of the buffalo: the native's didn't deserve the land that they had failed to exploit maximally and the buffalo were easy pickens.
WOAH! Even my very grim Grimm, straight from Germany, didn't have that level of macabre. Yes to Guy's fiction and poetry! I'll check out your one on ego.
The Yoga of Eating was 2001, so even more prescient. And I agree that it's the commodification and profit-mongering that supersedes what choices we have to eat.
Hello, Tereza. I didn't add that LRRH also ate some of her grandmother's flesh and did a kind of strip tease.
Details added to my post with my version of LRRH. I've included extracts from our dialogue to set up the story.
https://gduperreault.substack.com/p/little-red-riding-hood-from-clever
I LOVED this and left a note on your stack!
namaste
🙏❤️🙏
Very insightful, Tereza! Populism is “ We The People”. In context, without labels, hatred, division or , partisan or forced ideological requisite, we’re able to not only coexist, but contribute, enlighten and dispel perceived myths.
If two years ago somebody inferred I’d find common ground with Russell Brand, Glenn Greenwald, Kim Iverson, Naomi Wolf and Jimmy Dore.. I’d have been appalled.That I’d support RFK Jr over any of the current crop of GOP hopefuls, I’d have laughed. Because RFK Jr. was an “ anti-vax” crackpot… albeit I’ve for years raged against Fauci. For decades, actually. And then I actually heard how astute and knowledgable RFK Jr. is. And how deceptively misstated and misrepresented his message was.That I would not and could not ignore the self inflicted damage and divide Trump created due to his poor judgment, failure to accept any responsibilty, replacing bad appointments with worse, unprovoked, vile ad-hominem preemptive attacks on those who did nothing to warrant his wrath. The imbecilic, puerile nicknames, obsessive-compulsive tweets replete with misspellings and punctuation marks.How many charlatans could he appoint, surround himself with and depend upon as advisors?Who’s fault is it that he spilled his guts re: Covid to Bob Woodward? Upon Lindsey Graham’s urging. Appointing Wray at the behest of Christie, who he’d betrayed big time and should never have been a consideration in the first place.Picking public fights with Kemp and Raffenberger DURING the Georgia Senate race, pushing Collins into the arena when Loeffler had it in the bag and Purdue, though a vanilla wafer was way ahead. Essentially, Trump handed the worst of the worst.. Warnock and Ossoff to victory. And did it again by pushing Herschel Walker as “ his” candidate.
Yet Trump hasn’t called out the WEF Great Reset, BlackRock,Gates,Bourla,Bancel,Harari,Kissinger, Gottlieb or any of the WEF Young Global Leaders implanted within every government faction globally. Why? Well, he surrounds himself with them. Ivanka,Nikki Haley, Elyse Stefanik, Tom Cotton, Crenshaw, Nick Ayers,Gottlieb, Fauci, Dina Powell, McMaster,Fiona Hill, Kadlec, his BFFs Gavin Newsome,Cuomo,Macron, Boris,MerkelKlaus Schwab,Trudeau, Pritzker, Bloomberg…. He only started hating Elon Musk when Musk turned on the WEF and went public exposing the vileness and threat presented to humanity, the animal kingdom, ecosystem and all things within the natural order.Note he hasn’t had the decency to acknowledge or thank Tulsi, Naomi Wolf, Greenwald, Taibbi , or any of the unlikely sources who came to his defense by exposing deep seated corruption.
Note the GOP and it’s deeply held “ Christian pro-life “gospel quoting, abortion banning zealots haven’t uttered a peep about Biden’s Transhumanist Executive Order signed while the zombies focused on Queen Elizabeth’s nine day rebelling casket extravaganza. Nary a peep re: The Great Reset aka Build Back Better aka Brave New World, Event 201,Agenda 2030, overturned election results globally where leaders were lawfully elected. The bizarre and increasingly frequent fires and explosions at food processing, chemical plants, farms, power facilities, forested areas. The string of train derailments, mass shootings, business closures,plane craves…. The series of “ coincidentally timed” deaths, disappearances of whistleblowers… attributed to accidents, random armed robberies, suicide, and I dunno s.
Among them, Dr Kary Mullis, Dr Luc Montagnier, Phil Haney, Peter Pry, Nathan, Jeff Epstein, Terry Turchie, Seth Rich, Adm. Tommy “ Ace” Lyons, Dr. Robert Epstein’s wife, Shinzo Abe, Dr. Ramon Oswui, Whitey Bulger ( who’d been threatening to out key players in the Deep State,
The “ religious Christian pro- lifers” who are cheering for Ukraine and WWIII, mRNA vaccines,sending billions of unaccountable tab dollars and WaPo s to Ukraine whilst ignoring the actual Ukrainian Nazis, exponential loss of life and worshipping the “ hero” Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy, the most anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-democracy, racist ( like most Ukrainians)tyrannical, despotic grifter. But Putin!
Why aren’t Republicans calling for Bill Gates’, Fauci’s, Larry Fink’s, Bloomberg’s, Avril Haines’, Nuland’s, Schwab’s,Haspel’s, Judge Emmett Sullivan’s, Bezos’, ,Kerry’s, Buffett’s, Bourlas’, Bancel’s,Becerras’, Weissman’s, Powers’ heads on platters? Because they’re also corrupt and complicit. Romney, Graham, Burr, Flake, Corker, Cofer-Black, Barr, Flake, Paul Ryan, Cheney, Mitch,Murkowski, Capito, Pence, Cassidy, Barasso, Shelby, Portman,McMaster,Kerner,Ducey,Jolly, Hurd, Bush, Thune, Christie,John Roberts, Kavanaugh, Conway, Haley,Pompeo, Ronna McDaniel, Rove and the most toxic, radioactive treasonous of all… John McShitstain. Filthy to the core. In bed with the worst of both worlds and each other.
Yet only DeSantis and Ramaswamy on the ( R) side have named the WEF Great Reset, BlackRock, the UN, EU, NGOs or the fact the border invasion is being funded by the taxpayers through the UN/USAID/Catholic Charities, Red Cross… the cartels are only an opportunistic part of the incursion. Biden signed a fucking bill!
We’ve been sold out for decades. To the worst of humanity and our vaunted “ elected representatives “are paid corporate corporate and foreign enemy puppets.
They don’t care that our food, water,medicine are poisonous, our manufacturing capacity non-existent since selling out every necessary component and resource to China, Mexico,Qatar,Indonesia, Ukraine, Kuwait and ather nations that despise us .
Our collapse is orchestrated, deliberate and didn’t happen overnight.The insidious path to implosion kicked into hard drive under Bush Sr, Clinton, W, Obama, Trump and Biden, but the Johnson,Ford, Carter, Reagan admins are in no way exempt.
We’re a step from extinction as a natural species.
Search “ Aldous Huxley/Mike Wallace interview 1958”. Huxley was so inexplicably prescient in his warning, you’ll wish for a few Soma!
Thanks for introducing me to Gavin and those beautiful photos!
"If you need Hostess Ding-Dongs to get you through the day, go for it. Be kind to yourself." This is pretty much the approach I take to eating meat. I am an aspirational vegetarian (I don't think I could ever justify giving up locally sourced eggs, and that's before we get to my cheese addiction) because i'm more and more concluding that the decision for humans to eat flesh was the original "Fall" (it seems to me pretty clear that we weren't originally "designed" to be carnivores).
But that's in an ideal world, not the one we currently inhabit. The need for flesh has for so long driven the evolution of our species that it is now ingrained across all cultural/racial/economic et al. lines. Due to the now inherent material/biological diversity in our species, the necessity of meat in a healthy diet seems to vary wildly. In very real and practical ways (e.g. the ability to get proper nutrition based on the food supply lines that are available to our primarily urbanised species) the majority of the population literally can't live without it, or would have to completely re-orientate their lives to be in a position to give it up. Indeed, despite my best efforts to manifest otherwise, I still find meat to be, in general, tasty AF and nourishing: particularly when it is cooked by someone (particularly my mum) in the spirit of generosity and community.
What we can all do is take our role as stewards of this realm seriously. "He came to set the captives free" is often interpreted as humanity needing an external saviour to escape this crap show. I prefer to see it as reminder that one of the most moral tasks we have on Earth is to free the souls that we ourselves have put into captivity. "Animal Husbandry" is a great way to capture how diet is only one aspect of this ethical challenge we face.
I'm so glad you went to Gavin's photos! Aren't they breathtaking?
When you say 'the decision for humans to eat flesh' and before the 'Fall', I assume you're going back more than 420,000 yrs, before humans were humans and were tree-dwellers? Maybe a literal fall? ;-) Lierre Keith quotes an anthropologist writing, "In anthropological scientific circles, there's absolutely no debate about it--every respected authority will confirm that we were hunters.... Our meat-eating heritage ... is an inescapable fact."
She also has two pages comparing the biology of humans, dogs and sheep. In 30 different ways (all of them) humans and dogs have the same digestive process different than sheep. So nature would dispute that we're not designed to eat flesh.
With my daughters, I trained them (with more and less success) to know how to humanely kill and process chickens. My retort to other kids, who were horrified, is that being squeamish is not the same as being ethical. If we had to survive on what we produce, it wouldn't be possible without meat, as authors like Barbara Kingsolver have shown.
I think you're lucky to have a mum who's a good cook and she's lucky to have you as an appreciative eater! Give up your aspirations, I say, and enter into the kas-limaal of an adult relationship with your food where someone has to die in order for someone to live. It's a surprisingly wholesome relationship--especially since there would be no domesticated animals without it!
"Someone has to die in order for someone to live". An argument that we live in a fallen realm if ever I have seen one! I don't accept that this was the original state of the world, but one that we have created through our own choices. The human body is remarkably clever, and has no doubt been very effective at adapting (as distinct from "evolving") to our conscious decision to eat flesh. Just like we are adapting in various ways to injecting ourselves ritually with poison and living in EMF and chemtrail-polluted environments, we will find a way to survive... but that doesn't mean it is a positive or inevitable adaption.
Obviously I am being provocative here (I can't prove any of my opinions either) but let's go all in given you have opened the door enough. If every theory that has presented to us as fact is now on the table, then Evolution has to be as well, no? 420,000 years ago we were in trees: says who and based on what evidence? Carbon dating (aka the PCR test for mainstream geologists and anthropologists)? Remote viewing? You will have to forgive me, but I place no worth in these unprovably large numbers that seem designed to wow us into turning our brains off.
And as for "there's absolutely no debate about it", "every respected authority will confirm", "an inescapable fact"... sounds like just another branch of the Scientism cult to me 😁
I'm so glad you're willing to go all in, Isaac! So let's start at the spiritual realm. In Genesis, God first creates the world and it's perfect. Then there's a second creation story involving what I call eating from the tree of judgement--the 'knowing' of good and evil. In this version, Adam is put to sleep but it never says he wakes up. So we may well agree that this world of dog-eat-dog and death, suffering and loss is not our original or true state. In which case, as a dream, we can't get out of it by making ourselves out to be more virtuous than others, thanks to our consumer privilege that other people produce our food and we can pick and choose what we eat.
One of my old radio episodes was called "People Are Animals Too." Do you condemn a cougar for eating meat? To say that humans should transcend their biology is to say that we're superior to animals.
In the video I mention that Lierre asks for a full accounting from those who think they can live without killing. Native prairie is now 99.8% gone, along with all the species that lived there, because of monoculture grains. Tilling destroys 40-500 tons of topsoil per year, while nature can build it at a rate of 2-4. That's what caused the Dust Bowl. The thousands of species of organisms in a square yard of topsoil--do they count in your equation?
Anthropologists rely on spears found 420,000 yrs ago, some buried in the ribs of mastodons, or the cave painting at Lascaux. Also skeletons showing a degeneration of health after the rise of agriculture and the decline of hunting. As we both know, they've lied to us about the real science, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. To refute the safety and effectiveness of the jabs isn't a belief system, it relies on data.
For someone who believes in catastrophic climate change, they might be relieved that the WEF is turning our skies into an aluminum helmet. For someone who believes that killing animals for food is wrong, they might be happy that the WEF is shutting down farms and ranches, regulating meat consumption, and replacing them with cricket meal. This destroys local sovereignty but hey, we shouldn't be doing it anyway. I think we need a hard and critical look at anytime we're in alignment with them, especially ideologically.
And last, to take this position to its logical endpoint, if killing animals for food is wrong, there would be no domesticated animals including carnivore pets. Is that the world you want to live in?
Holy moly! I don’t have much more to add, but I would say that the implication of the hypothetical reality I was proposing is that animals take their lead from us, and so the “Fall” also diverted them into a carnivorous world. I can’t see any sustainable or realistic pathway towards a non carnivorous world, and I also wouldn’t advocate for one: diet is a personal choice and as you point out, is currently being weaponised to remove human sovereignty and lead us even further towards a weak and diseased population that can be more easily controlled.
Ah! Thanks for receiving my preaching with such good graces ;-) On a mystical level, I think our views of the Fall are complementary. In mine, it was falling into a dream where death and hunger were both real things, and intertwined. In yours, it's also an idea that shapes reality. I like that.