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| A lingering sign of the 1969–71 Native American occupation of Alcatraz |
It is a cardinal flaw of the human species that we are always arranging other lives to suit us. Other human lives, and the lives of other beings. We've done it all along and we are doing it now. Every human now living is both an end product of that control and also an instrument of it. We are a domesticated species ourselves, we are pets or livestock to our own machine. Part of the process of making the average man "useful" to rulers and the wealthy is to remove their self-sufficiency and make them dependent. In the factories of the 1700's, a man would have to work three days to be able to afford to buy shoes that his ancestors made themselves in a couple hours with their own leather. They would have to work to buy food that their ancestors grew for themselves. They would slave away to be able to afford a crackerbox to live in, when their ancestors and their neighbors built houses for themselves and each other. This is the process of making a man a slave: take away the physical means of his independence. That man can have "liberty" on paper all he likes, freedom of "ideas, speech and religion", but he is still a slave because he cannot now live without the commercial machine his own labor helped build. A machine controlled by others, or perhaps by itself now.
It is perhaps a symbol of how harmless and powerless the freedom of ideas, speech or religion are thought to be by those in power, that all of these things remain free to us. ;) Freedom of these things means very little if you don't have freedom of life. Freedom means little if you don't have control over the means of your own life. If someone puts you into a vacuum chamber and starts drawing out the air little by little, you can practice all the freedom of ideas, religion and speech that you want and you are still going to suffocate because you don't have the freedom you actually need. The powerful for their own part are also slaves, their minds and spirits are enslaved.
Of course, we do this in spades to the plants and animals we use for food. For plants, we have taken to playing god with their genetics so that we can rain more poisons on them. Many of the animals we use for food scarcely see the light of day, or any green growing thing. I have been thinking very seriously about getting a homestead, which I cannot at present do because I am taking care of my mother, but when I first started thinking seriously about such things I naturally assumed I would have chickens for eggs. Studying the matter, I discovered that there is no sustainable way to have chickens for eggs without involving the intentional deaths of chickens at some point in the process. Even if I only bought hens, those hens had brothers who were either killed at birth or who will be killed for chicken meat. Chickens don't only lay hens, they lay roosters too. If I were to raise chickens, I would not only be arranging their deaths to suit my purposes, I would be arranging their lives to suit my purposes too. Lives spent in one or another variety of incarceration.That's when I reluctantly decided I could live without eggs.
I have been thinking about this in the context of my garden vegetable plants. Most people would not consider this to be even an issue, which is either a comment on me or on them. I do not discount the lives of plants as most other people do. In fact I revere plants as my friends and teachers. I do not grow beets or radishes, even though I like them, because eating them entails the deaths of those plants in the prime of their lives. If you have a piece of land to grow your own food on, it is never actually necessary to kill a plant or animal in the prime of its life in order to eat. Eating seeds, yes, but not whole living otherwise healthy plants. You can pick leaves from lettuces and spinach and the like, you don't need to eat the whole plant. I do pick weeds to prevent them crowding out my plants, I also consider killing animals that try to eat your plants that you need for food to be legit too. Anyone may take a life if they are hungry enough and have few enough options, but one should try to avoid being in a situation where they have that few options.
It is perhaps a symbol of how harmless and powerless the freedom of ideas, speech or religion are thought to be by those in power, that all of these things remain free to us. ;) Freedom of these things means very little if you don't have freedom of life. Freedom means little if you don't have control over the means of your own life. If someone puts you into a vacuum chamber and starts drawing out the air little by little, you can practice all the freedom of ideas, religion and speech that you want and you are still going to suffocate because you don't have the freedom you actually need. The powerful for their own part are also slaves, their minds and spirits are enslaved.
Of course, we do this in spades to the plants and animals we use for food. For plants, we have taken to playing god with their genetics so that we can rain more poisons on them. Many of the animals we use for food scarcely see the light of day, or any green growing thing. I have been thinking very seriously about getting a homestead, which I cannot at present do because I am taking care of my mother, but when I first started thinking seriously about such things I naturally assumed I would have chickens for eggs. Studying the matter, I discovered that there is no sustainable way to have chickens for eggs without involving the intentional deaths of chickens at some point in the process. Even if I only bought hens, those hens had brothers who were either killed at birth or who will be killed for chicken meat. Chickens don't only lay hens, they lay roosters too. If I were to raise chickens, I would not only be arranging their deaths to suit my purposes, I would be arranging their lives to suit my purposes too. Lives spent in one or another variety of incarceration.That's when I reluctantly decided I could live without eggs.
I have been thinking about this in the context of my garden vegetable plants. Most people would not consider this to be even an issue, which is either a comment on me or on them. I do not discount the lives of plants as most other people do. In fact I revere plants as my friends and teachers. I do not grow beets or radishes, even though I like them, because eating them entails the deaths of those plants in the prime of their lives. If you have a piece of land to grow your own food on, it is never actually necessary to kill a plant or animal in the prime of its life in order to eat. Eating seeds, yes, but not whole living otherwise healthy plants. You can pick leaves from lettuces and spinach and the like, you don't need to eat the whole plant. I do pick weeds to prevent them crowding out my plants, I also consider killing animals that try to eat your plants that you need for food to be legit too. Anyone may take a life if they are hungry enough and have few enough options, but one should try to avoid being in a situation where they have that few options.
Again, not a question most people would ask themselves, but am I controlling to my garden plants? I do love them, genuinely. It is true that they wouldn't be where they are, growing as they are, without me. I consider the relationship to be one of cooperation, but they didn't really have a choice as to where they were planted. If they could choose, would they choose to be there? I would like to think that they would. I try to think of their interests as well as mine. Of course, for the most part we have interests in common: they want to grow and prosper, I want to help them do that.
This is my dream: to live in a way that provides the most benefit and least harm to the plants and animals and ecosystem around me, especially to the plants I rely upon for my food. To regard the plants I depend on as partners, and to treat their lives with respect.
I seek to not merely look out on the world as a selfish ego peering out from the windows of its eyes onto a world it can use for its own purposes, but to look out AS the world itself. The world looking upon itself and regarding all things and all interests as equal, and seeking the most benefit for the most beings. I and the plants are the same, my flesh is their flesh. We are part of one extended body, and the interests of that whole body must be regarded, not simply the interests of this one human. My eyes the eyes of the world looking at itself, my hands the hands of world helping itself.
I don't think this is a vain dream. I see it happening in fact in my own garden. My mostly peaceable kingdom of corn and beans and squash and melons and eggplants. We could make the world such a garden, the only thing lacking is the will and heart and love to do so, and to stop thinking that the world revolves around self-centered humans.
In a sense, it is far easier in many ways than what we are actually doing.
This is my dream: to live in a way that provides the most benefit and least harm to the plants and animals and ecosystem around me, especially to the plants I rely upon for my food. To regard the plants I depend on as partners, and to treat their lives with respect.
I seek to not merely look out on the world as a selfish ego peering out from the windows of its eyes onto a world it can use for its own purposes, but to look out AS the world itself. The world looking upon itself and regarding all things and all interests as equal, and seeking the most benefit for the most beings. I and the plants are the same, my flesh is their flesh. We are part of one extended body, and the interests of that whole body must be regarded, not simply the interests of this one human. My eyes the eyes of the world looking at itself, my hands the hands of world helping itself.
I don't think this is a vain dream. I see it happening in fact in my own garden. My mostly peaceable kingdom of corn and beans and squash and melons and eggplants. We could make the world such a garden, the only thing lacking is the will and heart and love to do so, and to stop thinking that the world revolves around self-centered humans.
In a sense, it is far easier in many ways than what we are actually doing.
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| Hopi blue corn in my garden. Mother Corn, radiant beloved one, lend me your nourishment. |
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