Human and Animal Enslavement

Why Animal Rights Can’t Progress

Unless We Look at the Bigger Picture

Just after I write a guide on being less controversial, I drop this bomb. Some people devote their lives to animal rights. And it’s an area that needs a TON of work. So how could it be a waste to devote attention to it?

In order to create a non-violent world, we need people working on all types of changes, on all levels, from all angles. But sometimes, we become so entrenched in a particular area of focus, that we forget to look at it in the larger context. Some of my smartest animal rights colleagues reject looking at the bigger picture, perhaps because it’s overwhelming.

So what do animal rights activists want?

We want animals to have the right to freedom because we believe that animals want that right for themselves. This includes freeing animals from their roles in food, clothing, testing, and harmful entertainment. In effect, animal activists want animals to stop being thought of as products. But how is this possible when humans are used as products?

Let’s begin by watching this short film on human enslavement:

So who are the farmers?

The farmers of human oppression are not only those in high positions of government, those with accumulated wealth, those with the closest ties to the financial world, or even the small number of families who control 1% of the world’s wealth, but anyone who can find justifiable reasons to use violence. The ones actually making profits from human enslavement would be the owners of the farms – the instigators, but Hitler did not create a holocaust on his own.

Dominating others is the single most profitable industry on Earth. This is why the most powerful countries are at permanent war with the rest of the world—to ensure that they are feared by other nations and their own nation just enough to preserve that dominion. These same nations ensure that other ’3rd world’ nations are kept down to make their own livestock feel as though they don’t have it so bad.

How do they breed us?

Mandatory schooling. Do you remember learning about how our financial systems really work in school? Or about current human oppression in your own country? Let’s not be overly dramatic, there are many positive skills and memories one can experience in school, but it is also an institution that is focused on creating obedient employees.

Also included in this obligatory indoctrination is competition. We are judged with letters and numbers and compared to our peers so that we are less likely to join forces with them. This also has the bonus effect of creating a majority of a population who believes so strongly in their system that they will violently oppose those who point it out to them because they define themselves according to their countries/churches/hockey teams.

We are simultaneously programmed by mainstream media, which has become consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer. Those mainstream media channels project the rights of their owners, under the guise of entertainment and information sharing.

What about all our freedoms?

Just as corporations today are learning that micromanagement doesn’t necessarily equate with more productivity, and thus providing more free time for employees to work towards assignments of their choice, so has the human enslavement model developed, allotting more freedom to humans, but only as far as it makes us more create more profit. Just like allowing cows room to graze to produce better ‘beef’.

The problem is that once humans get a taste of more freedom, we begin to feel entitled to it, leaving us to question why we need to be ruled and why we give up such a large portion of our earnings to a government who represents us only indirectly, and usually not at all. Many vegans are disgusted to know that their tax dollars go towards subsidies for animal agriculture, for example.

We are provided by our farmers with enough freedom to survive, as long as we are productive (for example, you can only be employed if your skills are needed and you comply with your employer’s policies).

Our freedom ends when we want to freely move about our planet or spend the majority of our time as we want. We are trained to think that it is not humble to even consider these possibilities. That we should appreciate what we have, which is more than others have in developing nations. And if we, as livestock, try to push against the system, we meet violence—whether economic or physical—to silence us from dissent.

How do they keep us on the farm?

Heavily manned borders. Laws that dictate who is legal and who is not. You do know you can’t escape, right? And to make livestock feel at home on their farm, sometimes special events are held, such as 9-11, in which horrifying events unite people in attacking other countries and trick them into appreciating the security that their farmers can protect them with.

Not to mention that we are born into debt… and chained to our 9-5 jobs.

As the film states: We will never escape a cage that we refuse to see.

What happens when we try to get rid of the farm?

An excellent example of how humans are prevented from actually changing the farm is evident in the film Into the Fire, which depicts what happened when the G20 Summit visited Toronto in summer of 2011. A (fucking) billion dollars of taxpayers money was spent on fencing people away from the event and costuming police with full riot gear. Police reacted with random violence, ID checks, and strange new temporary laws to deter people’s rights to protest.

Police are quick to point out in oppressing your freedom that it’s ‘for your own safety’ just as veal calves are kept ‘safe’ in dark boxes before they are led to slaughter.

Humans as a means to an end: profit

Sure, human livestock doesn’t (directly) face slaughter, like factory farmed animals. However, with the routine poisoning of the masses through toxic foods and chemicals, constant wars, and weather warfare, are we really kept as safe as we believe? If we are kept alive it is because we are of more value alive, for awhile.

Has anyone seen the Care.org commercial for women as “the world’s greatest untapped resource?”

The commercial is meant to get you to donate to helping women, but hold the phone… Does Care.org think women haven’t been working for the last 4000 years? Ok, the ad is trying to tell us that sexism lives on in some parts of the world more than others. But accidentally gives away that the larger system would optimally like to exploit women to their fullest capacity.  If a woman chooses to exert her power, it shouldn’t be as a resource for someone else’s gain.

So how did we get duped into all this?

Death Denial

The film above discusses how our fear of death makes us controllable. We are afraid to be physically hurt or deprived because we fear it will end our existence. While animals also experience this fear, humans have more cerebral capacity to contemplate death on a linear level, making us prone to fear beyond an instinctual level by our awareness of death’s effects on our future.

It is from this deep fear that we are also driven to dominate others. The film Flight from Death: Quest for Immortality discusses how people harm others to feel as though they are at least more immortal than those who they knock down.

Experiments were performed in which subjects who were given subconscious reminders of death were found more likely to cause harm to others, and less likely to destroy systems  that they felt represented them eg. an American flag and crucifix. The studies found that we aim to appease our own death anxiety by alienating those who are dissimilar to us (think Holocaust), and that humans feel a type of immortality in belonging to a greater culture, so that even if we can’t live on, we can live on as a whole eg. as Christians, Canucks fans, Nazis, etc.

{*What the documetary failed to discuss is that this knowledge of how death denial works  is a prime motivator for a group of people seeking financial domination to instill a fear of death in the masses to make them more prone to want to attack an outside source (Iraq and Afghanistan).}

This same death denial can be transferred to the animal-based diet eaten by the majority of the world’s population. We feed off of the death of other ‘lesser’ beings. We believe that our lives can only flourish through their death. We feel that energy is obtained through dominating and conquering those species that are weaker. And we put the majority of this process of domination behind closed doors so that we can shove it to our subconscious, just like our thoughts about death.

The Bigger Picture

The oppression of animals in our society is a symptom of human oppression.

Gary L. Francione writes on The Abolionist Approach that we can change human rights by changing animal rights, which means first and foremost changing ourselves to not wear or eat animal products, and secondarily taking direct action to liberate animals. I agree with Francione – animal rights is a great place to start in order to wake up to large the larger systems of oppression we live in. But it is only a place to start.

This does not mean that we forgo veganism for other causes – veganism is the building block of all non-violent progress. But it does mean that if we wish to campaign for animal rights, we need to pay just as much attention to the bigger picture of our oppressive world systems.

By learning to treat animals non-violently we are feeding something in our souls. However, if we are not aware of the nuances of oppression in our daily lives in a greater scope, then our animal rights victories will not be as far-reaching as we want them to be.

I’m not asking anyone to stop doing what they’re doing, simply to keep an open mind. It takes a lot of courage to look into factory farming and see what really goes on, but the horror doesn’t stop there.

Just as we can’t rally for no war while our bodies are graveyards, we also can’t practice veganism without properly critiquing the systems we live in. Don’t be afraid of anarchism. Check it out and learn what it means to you.

Being the person who protests the effects while ignoring the cause is like being the person who says they are against animal abuse but eats animals.

Only when we strive for the end of all oppressive systems will animals and humans truly be free.

How to Discuss Nonviolence Nonviolently

5 Ways to Address the Controversial Subject of Non-Violence

without Focusing on the Controversy

When asked what the theme of this blog is I often tell people: nonviolence. In dawnofanewera, I aspire to deconstruct modern myths in place of a sustainable and dynamic nonviolent existence or, the end of all oppressive systems.

But often, when an individual is unwilling to compromise on something (even non-violence) they are labeled extremists. Sometimes, in the unrelenting path of my own mental expansion, I look behind myself to see an uproar in the wake of my words. And actually, my intention is not to cause controversy, but to inspire others to come together to create a more free-spirited world.

So, here’s what I’ve been thinking:

1) Communication is the Response that You Get

Christian Carter, dating guru and the boyfriend I never had, may not have come up with this one, but he did coin it (I believe it was one of his female friends). Basically this statement means that if you’re not getting the response you wanted, then you didn’t make the statement or pose the question effectively.

I have experienced several examples of this recently. A certain unnamed person, we’ll call him, John Lennon, was recently feeling as though I wasn’t respecting his needs. But unfortunately he chose to tell me this at an extremely sensitive time in an extremely blaming way, and therefore I didn’t even want to engage with him. I thought about it and realized that if he had asked me to support him in a gentle way with a specific solution in mind, I wouldn’t have even questioned offering the support he was requesting.

So how can we learn from this when discussing non-violent topics such as veganism or a RBE (Resource Based Economy)?

• Choose the right moment
• Remove the blame
• Offer specific solutions
• Ask for what you want, don’t demand

Essentially, knowing that communication is the response that you get puts the responsibility perpetually back in your hands.

2) Give Up Attack Thoughts

In Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love, she discusses how in a dream one night a dream figure told her that she could never establish peace while hating politicians so much, because she was a ‘hawk’. Or in other words, she was on the attack and as such could not spread peace.

Marianne Williamson talks a lot about ‘attack thoughts’ and I really like this term because it refers to not only our attacks on others, but attacks of others on us. This means that if we’re contemplating an unfair remark made towards us, we are still focusing on the attack rather than the non-violent solution. (Serious LOA going on here.)

Being defensive is just as bad as being offensive because we are still creating a scenario of attack in our minds. Which brings me to my next point.

3) Choose your ‘Battles’

Those who advocate for non-violence are not likely to see their tactics as being violent. I have a few friends whose vegan views feel slightly fundamentalist to me and who often use the cause as an excuse to behave threateningly. It can be difficult at demos to not get carried away at times, as there is so much adrenaline in the air, but it is entirely possible to use rage at demos in a non-violent way. Non violence is not about not having feelings. The key is to do it in a respectful, controlled way.

In order to see opportunities to create non-violence in place of battles, you have to first be clear about your intention. I’ve discussed the concept of ‘choosing connection’ before. Instead of judging a (totally adorable and amazing) friend, we’ll call her Nelly Furtado, for wearing bunny moccasins recently, I explained a similar situation where I’d unknowingly purchased a fur hair accessory once. My intention is to connect with her, not to villainize her.

Engaging with teeny bopper girls who pretend not to know English on the street, or a certain millionaire booty queen who swears she’s a good person (and skins hundreds of animals alive a year) – it’s not so easy. You want to slap stickers their furry backs and kick them in the face. *Face kicking is violent, for those who were wondering. Solution? Keep it light and then move on. I chased the Harajuku girls for a block and they took a pamphlet, and I came up with some zingers for the poor Kardashiass, eg. “junk in the trunk, nothing in the heart #furkills”, which were retweeted.

I have a friend, we’ll call him David Blaine, an advocate for non-violent principles, who saves up his rhetoric for people of more influence, such as journalists who he feels could actually help him reach his activist goals. It can be fun to completely annihilate people intellectually, and I love a good debate, but sometimes our time can be better spent when working at larger goals. However, I’m in no way encouraging passivity. Passiveness is not pacifism.

4) The Rogerian Approach

We’ll call this the ego-sensitive approach, but it can be fun because it requires an element of stealth. Technically, a Rogerian argument is a long slow finessing of the other side, completed by a gentle suggestion of your true stance. Think of Robin Hood the fox sucking the rings off the cowardly lion’s fingers after buttering up his ego with praise.

The Rogerian approach doesn’t need to be manipulative – you could call it Canadian if you prefer. It begins with a great amount of listening and summarizing the other person’s view, and your best impersonation of sympathy. *This is not a feely feely communication guide.

When you’ve found a way to agree with every single point the other side has brought up eg. you know what climate change could be natural, and the government does do a lot right that we don’t give them credit for, and a transition of economic models could be messy (hint: do it in a way that doesn’t hurt too much), then suggest one small, unobtrusive point at the very end of the conversation, eg. hey, I heard your aunt was suffering from cancer, have you ever heard of the China Study?

The theory is that the other side will be so sure that you’re agreeing with them that they won’t notice that you’ve implanted a logic bomb inside their minds. A bomb like a bath bomb, not nuclear.

5) Use your Anger

Often when discussing non-violence with people who think it’s far-fetched or ‘utopian’, rage follows on the part of the pacifist. The other party transforms into this barbaric monster with antiquated views and entitled values and this is exactly what enrages those who rally for a non-violent world (even though it would make more sense for those who advocate violence to go to anger). The anger stems from the obviousness that arises from seeing better solutions that others do not see.

If you see the possibilities of a non-violent world, you are part of a minority. (In case you haven’t noticed, we’re still living in the dark ages where war and slaughter are daily occurrences). This learned vision is a gift, but it comes with anger – which is what will drive us to create change. It is our responsibility to diffuse the anger as we move forward. To exchange the anger for results.

In Marshall Rosenberg’s The Surprising Purpose of Anger, he advises not to see anger as something bad, and not to oppress it but to see it as like a warning light on your car – informing you that you need something. He says not to confuse the trigger for your anger with the actual cause of it, which is always your own thinking. So once we identify the trigger and cause, we can move onto the unmet need behind the anger. Just as we would die of starvation if we were never hungry, we become angry to satiate our emotional needs.

I think often times we feel like victims to our anger. We don’t want to engage with it because we feel it is overpowering us – bossing us around. One alternative to diffusing anger is ignorance, making a quick escape from the anger to something else. But activists for non-violence usually choose to go deeper. We are not afraid to get angry, even though we’re not experts at understanding our anger yet. As my friend, well call him Marcus Aurelius, just summed up well on Facebook: the more you oppose an idea, the more you give it strength.

When we entertain blaming thoughts, we are rejecting our personal power. It takes humility to recognize the scope of changes you can realistically make (those directly through yourself), but this seemingly small scope can lead to huge effects. It is all we can handle, and all we need.

Remember: just because we are honing our debate skills and activist methods, non-violence should NEVER be compromised to reach any type of temporary peace. Gentle interactions can exist without meeting people who support war or killing halfway. Stick to your… carrot sticks.