the Asocial Ape

sorry, but "feel good! whatever you do is enough!" answers are bullshit.

THEY ARE TORTURING OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS TO DEATH BY THE BILLIONS.

eating tofu instead of steak, and saying it's enough is total hypocrisy. if someone doesn't care about animals, and says as much, so be it. he'll be in the courts after the revolution. but saying you give a shit, while you drive past a slaughterhouse, circus, or hungry cat is just being a liar.

at least have the balls to admit that hanging out watching tv, or goingto the gym is more important to you than taking a stand for animals.

admit that your iphone is more important to you than the 600 dollars worth of battery hens you could have saved and given to a farm sanctuary.

i'm drinking a beer right now. it cost 1.17 including tax. the drug effect of the beer is more important to me than the 1.17 worth of food it could have bought the wildlife at St. Francis wildlife rehab. at least i admit it. i'm not acting as though i do enough. i don't. AND NEITHER DOES ANYONE WHO JUST EATS VEGAN, AND NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE TELL EACH OTHER THEY ARE, YOU'RE ALL JUST JACKING EACH OTHER OFF, and our kin are still dying while you pat each other on the back.

gug.

gug.

the voices. oh god. the voices. but i'm not going to obey them this time.

 

Lamarck is irrelevant here, I'm not saying that eating meat meant that a primate's offspring became more intelligent for any reason other than those in line with the standard theory of evolution...

i misunderstood the argument, then.

i was saying i don't think there's anything special in meat that drove brain development.

personally, i think the ability to eat meat, and damn near anything else, along with our hands, and our generalist strategy, were the traits that contributed to our fitness, and evolutionary success.

saying that what we ate effected our brain's development is totally Lamarckian.

meat and fish consumption have nothing to do with the development of the human brain.

evolutionary pressure is what caused it to be the way it is. i think the current hypothesis is the radiator theory.

Even though he's part of a party I think Dennis Kucinich fits that profile(and of course he's vegan)...personally I'd vote for him if we were electing a monarch to serve until his death

HEY! so would i. my wife and i changed our voter registration from socialist party of florida, to democrat just so we can vote for him in the primaries. we did that last time too.

dennis rocks!

that Van Rules !!!!

did you check for bullet holes?

heh. i didn't actually see it in real life. i just saw a bit about it on neatorama. some ppl in britain own it, and you can rent it out for parties, weddings, prom, etc.

http://www.theateamvan.com/

but i was just saying, it'd be great to get our van customized like that. once we have a van, of course.

...

Why are you so fanatical about people living for others? Why do I have to suffer so that everyone else may survive? Why is everyone else better than I am? It's absolutely ridiculous.

you know? i just wrote a long thing continuing to explain myself, but it's pointless.

here's the thing skittles - don't concern yourself with it.

i care about others. ponder that. it can be like an LA koan for you, ok?

my wife and i carry around a lot of supplies for our feral cat work in our tiny civic, including (though not all at the same time) as many as three hav-a-hart traps, gallons of water, a bale of hay, shelters, plates, bowls, towels, sheets, a roll of visqueen, etc.

i had a dream where i was driving a volvo station wagon, and it was awesome - comfortable, roomy, and safe. plus it had room for all our stuff.

what i'd really like to get is a van though. i had been thinking of a ford E250, as it would be big enough for us and all 21 of our kids if we had to evacuate in a hurricane.

but then i just saw this today. a white ford is probably more practical, but how cool would it be to zoom up to an animal rescue or a protest in this?

DUUUNNN dun dun DUNNNNNN! DUUUUNNNNN dun DUUUNNNNN!

the A-Team (where A=animal).

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3456/142052555984eb33505apx5.jpg

i've heard that some people, not me of course, have downloaded it via bittorrent.

I think you misunderstood me. the fact that i agreed on what Offence74 wrote, doesn't cancel my belief to non violence.

ok.

If you try not to be so fanatic you'll realise that What offence said, and i agreed on...

i'll never be anything but fanatical in my opposition to the butchering of my innocent brothers and sisters.

suggesting that is akin to asking a husband not to be so fanatically opposed to his wife being gang raped.

And please don't speak to me as if speaking to ALL the people who don't care about A/R. The fact that you care about animals is something good. However this doesn't mean that every other person is inferior to you and hasn't any steel in them or their beliefs are malleable....

i don't think i'm superior. i hold myself in the same contempt i hold most other people. i'm at work, whilst there are battery hens being abused a mere fifty miles from where i sit typing.

but when i leave work today, i'll be going out for my daily two hour stint working to succor feral cats, and so for that time, i will in fact be superior to you, if in nothing else, in terms of my expression of compassion.

Was Ghandi passionate? Is violence the only manifestation of passion and belief?

I think there are many ways to protest the things one believe is wrong.

indeed he was. he was a thousand times tougher than i could ever hope to be.

and there are many ways to protest. i think that taking action remedy those things you find abhorrent (in my case, animal suffering), as opposed to merely voice your opposition, is even more important than protest.

but while we're on the topic of gandhi, let's remember that he wasn't a lamb. he was lion. he didn't just protest. he worked to stop the opression of the indians in south africa and india. he interfered. he broke the law. he gathered salt, knowing he would be arrested. he burned his id papers. he stood up for OTHERS, not for himself.

and finally, don't forget these statements he made -

"I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor."

and

"I want both the Hindus and Mussalmans to cultivate the cool courage to die without killing. But if one has not that courage, I want him to cultivate the art of killing and being killed rather than, in a cowardly manner, flee from danger. For the latter, in spite of his flight, does commit mental himsa. He flees because he has not the courage to be killed in the act of killing."

i don't think people that are so selfish and shallow that they are concerned only for their own freedom, health, and happiness (and i don't mean you, offense), are worthy of aligning themselves with gandhi.

great intro.

thanks for joining and being vegan.

p.s. i love tofurky!

You can use all the violence you want for however good a cause, if you haven't convinced people that what you're saying is the right thing, it will backfire. Always.

So while the prisoners at treblinka were quite glad to be liberated alot of Iraqis are not. There is a difference.

 

I so much agree with this

you just wrote, in what seemed to be a condemnation of anger and violence, "anger will bring anger. violence will also bring more violence."

your beliefs seem to be like a moving target. stable as jell-o.

do you people who don't care about animal suffering have any steel in you? are your beliefs that malleable?

I don't give a f**k what anyone else does and I don't try and change anyone unless I care about them and they want my help.

 

Things are as they are and you can only control yourself. Protesting is bullshit. Voting is bullshit. If you think something is wrong then change it, if you can't change it than find something you can and focus on that. Don't feel guilty because of other people's expectations.

 

I don't mind watching the human race catapaulting towards extinction.

i think we'd get a long very well, you and i!

So while the prisoners at treblinka were quite glad to be liberated alot of Iraqis are not. There is a difference.

true. but my statement re treblinka was in response to someone's comment that 'violence is always wrong. it just creates more violence.'

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967

 

WATCH IT. Honest to god I bawled my eyes out.

i watched the first few minutes of it, and couldn't watch anymore. i've still got it on CD, but i don't like watching stuff with animal suffering.

thank you SO much for posting the link and getting the word out!

If my personal freedoms were being infringed upon to the point that I could not live a fruitful life, I would have no problem fighting back. Things have not gotten to that point yet and most likely won't in my lifetime.

you live in the exact right country, then. your freedom to lead a fruitful life will never be infringed. if you work kind of hard, or have the right parents, you can even live in a gated community, where you won't even have to _see_ suffering, let alone sully your hands trying to stop it.

bravo!! bravo, i say, on your choice of birth locations. though i might suggest you move to los angeles, where you'll find lots and lots of people sharing your attitude.

anger will bring anger. violence will also bring more violence.

tell that to the men who liberated the inmates at treblinka. their anger and violence stopped a gang of genocidal monsters.

what you wrote is nothing but a hackneyed, new age-y cliche.

i'll go get my copy of bartlett's and find some of my own.

But it's also possible that the people that do a protest and feel good about themselves, and what they've done, might be so shallow that try to cover it, protesting for animals and expressing their anger for their life.

try as i might, i can't parse this.

Ape you ever heard of a guy by the name of John Brown? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29

one of my heroes (the other being Giles Corey)!

he and my avatar are, to me, the bookends of the american civil war. john brown started it, cump ended it!

i get chills when i remember Fredrick Douglass' comment on him - "His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine... Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him."

not to mention his pamphlet "Did John Brown Fail?" http://www.nps.gov/archive/hafe/douglass.htm

i wish i had the time, money, discipline, and education to write a book about the parallels between the old time abolitionism and modern abolitionism.

... How do you change culture???

with force.

with rigid, dogmatic, fanatics, and cadres spreading the doctrine and discipline.

cde castro liberated cuba with an initial group of (i think it was) twenty seven men.

the North Vietnamese fought the french, and then the US to a standstill, and (i have been told) that a times in the struggle, the average NVA soldier went on patrol with no boots, and five rounds of ammunition.

the US will never win in Iraq, b/c the insurgents _are_ willing to martyr themselves. they are willing to do _anything_, commit any atrocity, to achieve their goals.

...Although i'm not concerned about AR...

well, there you go. you're doing it for yourself. not for them.

so the fact that you'd eat them if you had to fits into your ethical scheme.

it doesn't fit in mine.

i don't think the animals care whether protesters choose to brag about the protest or not, so long as people are trying to help them. also, your impression of them bragging, might really be you compensating.

the people that do a protest, and feel good about themselves, and what they've done, might be making you feel shallow for 'not [being] concerned about AR'.

good questions, offense.

i'm not any sort of official AL theorist or anything, and know many in the movement, all it's branches, will disagree with me (i've often thought that the only movement more fragmented than AW/AL/AR is socialism. heh.)

that said, i don't think we'll ever win globally. it's the selfish gene, again. most people care only about themselves - the spreading of their genetic material, and the avoidance of pain, and seeking of pleasure.

to my eyes, our fight is wholly symbolic - we fight because we can not do otherwise. like the monks that immolated themselves in vietnam - they didn't stop the war. to the pro war forces, it was just one less troublemaker.

no one alive is truly vegan - as soon as sperm meets egg, we begin to kill others, to use resources others might have used. mere existence is a constant, ultimately doomed battle against entropy. our homes are built on land animals used to own, our cars or buses or bikes kill insects, our vegetable crops are grown on stolen land, and animals _are_ killed in processing.

that doesn't mean we give up though. in my ideal world, we each do as much as we can, every day to diminish our impact, and to offer succor and safety to the innocent.

i myself fall short of my ideals, as does everyone else. what i, and everyone else should be doing is fighting an insurgency against the bastards that are butchering our brothers. we should be martyring ourselves. instead, lacking the balls, we wave signs, we read labels, we write letters, we feed ferals. everyone is a poser.

so, to some degree, what i think, is that the measure of our conviction, and our morality, is the degree to which we suffer for the animals - the amount of stuff that we don't want to do, that we do anyway, the money we spend for them, that we would rather have spent on ourselves, the amount of abuse we take from omnis and cops, the number of people we piss off.

we're all born with an immeasureable amount of guilt, and all we can do to win forgiveness is to live in a crucible, trying futilely to burn that guilt away.

so yeah, the cat lady is guilty of hurting animals b/c she's an omni - but to each of the souls she saves, she's a savior, and to that one cat, that's all that matters.

ditto for the raw food guy i knew - to each animal he doesn't eat he's a savior, of sorts.

but she suffers more for her convictions than he does. he eats different things, and that's it. the inconvenience to him is minimal. he still doesn't go out in the rain to save cats, his house is expensive, spotless, and empty, while hers is filled to capacity with refugees, litter boxes, and cat hair, and as soon as she finds a forever home for one cat, she takes in another, and begins the battle anew.

in all, i think very little of any human, and if i could, i'd be happy for us all to go to the gas chambers. it _would_ be horribly sad, but i'd be smiling when i entered, shut the door behind me, and hit the switch.

*******

let me amend that. i think a LOT of many humans, but just like all life, we live on others lives. so, since we alone carry the curse of the knowledge of morality, we can know that this method of existence is wrong, and so are required to do something about it.

Whether we've become Vegan for Animal Rights, Anti-Aging, the Environment (my thing), or trying to live the most vital, healthy life humanly possible while we're on this planet... we are all on the same team!

i'm not. i'm vegan because i'm an abolitionist, not the other way 'round. while i applaud people who are complete vegetarians, they're not really doing anything in the war for animal liberation than someone in the old south of the US who said 'i don't own slaves. i'm not part of the problem.'

i find i have WAY more in common with the omni cat lady at the local humane society than the this raw food vegan i used to associate with, who was only in it for health and antiaging. she is awesome, and a real soldier for animals. he is a trust fund baby and a tool.