#22 Postby compassionategirl » Sun Nov 06, 2005 12:40 pm
yes I think you are the only Italian vegan on this board! I cannot tell you how awesome I think it is that the compassionate seed within you has overpowered how you were "raised", all the Italian customs and traditions and meat eating lifestyle, what you saw growing up (i.e. everybody eating mostly animal dishes and still believing 100% that that is okay), etc etc.
You remind me of a friend I once had a long time ago. She was from Pamplona, Spain, and her father was a professional matador (bull killer/fighter for those that dont know what that word means). Anyway, she grew up her entire life not only in a country and culture that conditioned her to believe that bull fighting was okay, that it was tradition, that it was "Truth", but even her own father, whom she adores, was a matador.
She told me that one day when she was at her father's bull fighting matches, she was looking around at the crowd and was suddendly struck by the fact that each time her dad stuck that spear into the bull and drew blood, the crowd went wild. They were "turned on" by, and exhilirated by, the animals injuries, by the animals blood, by the animals suffering and staggering. The more the animal was speared, the wilder the crowd got and the louder they cheered.
She said that at that moment -- something happened inside of her, something changed, and all the 21 years of societal and familial conditioning were washed away -- only Truth and compassion remained standing. She was saddened that her people and her country took such a perverse pleasure in the torturing of an innocent animal, and that her country continued to justify this practice on the frail ground of "custom and tradition."
That was the last bull fight she ever attended and became a zealous anti-bull fighting activist and advocate, and has spent the years since that fateful bullfight trying to make this despicable form of human entertainment in Spain history once and for all, even though that will mean also the end of her father's professional matador career. She says, "my father should find a living that doesnt have blood money on his hands."
Truly an amazing story, and goes to show you that no matter how we were raised by our parents and brainwashed by society, sometimes people just one day have that light bulb moment where the wrongness of something becomes crystal clear and can no longer be ignored. I believe that most people know that it is wrong to kill innocent animals for food, for example. It is just a matter of do they have the courage to go against the grain, to throw out all that society has taught them, and stand up for a class of beings that are deemed by society at large to have only commercial worth, without any intrinsic value.
Last edited by
compassionategirl on Sun Nov 06, 2005 2:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.