As we sow, we reap

Have you noticed –

We feed animals on farms so much grain and unnatural food that they become obese and unhealthy, and then we find that so many people in our society are obese and unhealthy.

We take baby animals from their mothers and destroy their families and communities, and we find our families breaking down, with higher rates of divorce and more children abandoned or leaving their families.

We confine animals in sheds, battery cages, and crates where they can’t even turn around, and we find ourselves confined in office cubicles, or in prison cells, or by social and economic pressure.

We force animals to live in highly polluted environments, in sheds reeking with ammonia, and we find ourselves breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water.

We give animals antibiotics, growth hormones, and other drugs to make them grow faster, and we find so many people in our society addicted to alcohol and to prescription and illegal drugs.

We push animals incessantly to produce, and we find our jobs in the capitalist system forcing us to produce more and more. We break their spirits, and find our spirits broken.

These are not just coincidences. The wrongs that we are doing to animals are preventing us from living in harmony on the earth.  The animals themselves don’t retaliate, but the bad effects of our cruelty will always be felt because all living beings are interconnected. We can’t expect to live in joy and peace while we are tormenting and killing others. In the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” (a universal rule across religions and cultures), “others” means all of our co-inhabitants of the earth.

Will Tuttle wrote in The World Peace Diet, “The desensitizing of millions of children and adults – on the massive scale that consuming millions of tortured animals daily requires – sows countless seeds of human violence, war, poverty, and despair. These outcomes are unavoidable, for we can never reap joy, peace and freedom for ourselves while sowing the seeds of harming and enslaving others.” (p. 10)

Neither human nor non-human animal lives need be lived in pain, stress, or fear. We can create a better world.

[Thanks to Will Tuttle for making these connections.]