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. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Should those arguing for violence be enraged? (I guess they aren’t because they don’t see how senseless it is?)

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.

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.

I like to hear people’s excuses for not cutting animal products out of their diets because it means they’re actually thinking about it.

A few people in my life lately have told me that my simple presence ‘makes them feel guilty’ about their diets, but the funny thing is they are always the ones to bring up the discussion.

When I remind them that I can’t ‘make’ them feel anything, this is when the juicy part happens; they start to fight with themselves about how consuming animal products is ‘okay’.

Have you ever read the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Well it talks about how when men grumble about doing a requested task, women should see this as a sign of love because this is the process of how men reach within to put the woman’s needs first. This is the exact same thing that happens when people generate excuses to stop eating animals – this is their growth process and it was once mine, too.

Here are the top 9 self-fights I’ve been hearing:

1. It’s Hard Enough being Vegetarian, let alone Vegan.

I feel you. I’ve been there. I was vegetarian for 10+years and towards the end was trying to eat less dairy. But as long as I continued to see dairy as food, I would still eat it. When you learn about the link to casein and most major diseases, when you learn that rape is a mandatory part of dairy, and when you realize that veal is the mandatory byproduct of dairy (calves kept in solitary confinement from birth, then slaughtered as infants), this sickly product starts to look less like food. Mix it with the blood, pus, and bacteria that mixes in during processing  and this secretion cocktail becomes simply inedible.

So what will happen if you don’t have dairy and eggs to support your meat-free diet?? You’ll inevitably make healthier choices. That was the main thing I found in transitioning from vegetarian to vegan. I had to avoid the quickie junk foods like chocolate bars, baked goods when out and about, ice cream, cheese, some types of potato chips, etc. I reached instead for snacks like fruit, some kinds of granola bars, nuts, smoothies, and homemade things. It’s harder to go wrong when vegan because your palette of choices is healthier.

So when worrying that you’ll be even less ‘nourished’ if you take the full plunge, it’s actually easier to be a healthy vegan than a healthy vegetarian.

*I’m all for ‘junk’ food! But as a treat, not a staple.

2. Eating Animal Products is Normal

I’ve heard this one a lot lately. I’m the freak, the animal consuming loved ones are normal because they represent the majority.

In our everyday lives, how many of us kill sentient beings? In our modern day society, this type of behavior usually merits jail and probably the psych ward, and maybe even the fate of being murdered in jail.

In our ‘civilized’ society, killing is not socially acceptable behavior. So then how is hiring others to do if for you behind closed doors any different? Animal cruelty is considered especially sick in our modern world – akin to child molestation.

Eating animal  products = killing.

Killing is not normal. Not anymore, anyway. This isn’t Middle Earth.

3. Veganism Doesn’t Make a Difference Anyway

Less than 1% of the population is vegan so what’s the point? It saves 90 animals per person a year!

Many people believe that unless everyone goes vegan, their doing it somehow doesn’t count. Who cares what everyone else is doing? If you can’t do it, how can you expect anyone else to?

As I said above, you can’t make anyone do anything. All you have control of is yourself and your actions. And that’s all you need.

The real difference is how you feel in making such a small, huge change.

4. I Don’t Like Vegetables that Much

Are you a mama’s boy/girl who was indulged to only eat chicken nuggets and donuts as a kid? Did your idea of veggies consist of perfectly sliced cold cuts and tons of Ranch dip? I was. I was raised with perpetual vegetable threats, probably because my parents had themselves been indoctrinated to believe that if it’s good for you, it probably doesn’t go down easily. Lies.

It’s time to reprogram. Small bites at a time.

You are not a crazy nasty ass honey badger. Do you know how badly your body is craving fresh fruit and vegetables? Can you hear the callings?

But if you love your comfort foods, you can still eat them. Any animal-based indulgence can be vegan: Cadbury cream eggs, poutine, meatball subs, Blizzards, ice cream cake, insert craving here> _____.

5. Eating Animals is a Personal Choice

Some become absolutely livid when confronted about their animal-based diets. How DARE you? they hurl. Eating animals is a PERSONAL choice. I don’t pressure YOU to eat animals.

Well, asking someone to behave non-violently is a little different than asking someone to behave violently, to begin with.

That aside, I believe we are now smart enough as a human race to understand that eating animals is no more a right than enslaving other humans. If eating animals destroys the environment at exponentially greater rates that plant agriculture, if the resources used to raise them perpetuates worldwide hunger when veganism would feed many more, if eating these ‘foods’ is keeping people perpetually ill with documented correlated diseases… then how is this personal?

Eating animals affects us all.

We have a responsibility to the planet, to the other species of this planet, to the oppressed people who are as enslaved as the animals who we pay to kill them, and to ourselves.

I’m all for individualism. However the very idea of civilization is based on the idea that our freedom ends at the loss of another person’s freedom. And what we are learning is that eating animals infringes on not only the violent treatment towards animals, but the violent treatment to people (starvation, destruction of environment, diseases, dangerous slaughterhouse conditions, etc.)

We are only as free as our neighbors.

6. Animal Rights is Not my Cause

Some people feel that going vegan is like choosing a charity to volunteer for. It’s an option among many. Nice try.

You can be vegan and still support whatever causes you choose. It’s not an either/or matter.

The movie Bold Native explains that animal rights activists are the ones who say: me, I will help; I will do something about it. While you don’t need to become an animal rights activist to be vegan, being vegan is the same concept of realizing that if you eat animal products you are the cause of suffering in factory farms, and therefore showing the world that you are willing to try a different lifestyle to change that.

7. Veganism is a Sacrifice

Hate that word. It doesn’t represent me at all. Yet I identify about 95% with the vegan concept. Veganism is not about cutting things out of your diet, it’s about redefining what you see as food.

From the outside, going vegan probably looks like giving something up, but once you’re in the loop learning new cooking skills and places to eat, and meeting veganish people, not only is it not a chore, but it’s a blessing, inside & out.

When you think about it, you’re only cutting out three main animals from your diet: chickens, cows, and pigs (lamb, fish for some). These 3 elements that make up a huge portion of the North American diet. How many thousands of other foods exist that you are not trying because you’re perpetuating a diet your TV raised you with?

The concept of sacrifice is the opposite of non-violence. Sacrifice is the idea that we must suffer for something greater. Non-violence is the quality of approaching all things gently. Veganism is a lifestyle that embraces non-violence. ‘Embrace’ being the key term.

8. Veganism is a Huge Commitment

You don’t have to be convinced that this new lifestyle will work. You don’t have to make a lifetime commitment. Going vegan is like working on your flexibility – one day at a time. Hurts a bit to start, but feels sooo good to progress and expand your power as a human being.

Before assuming that you’re going to be hungry all the time, actually try it for a few days. You will be hungrier more often, because you’re body will be digesting food faster. But you will also be entirely satiated, just without the heaviness.

Like Alicia Silverstone says: flirt.

9. Vegans are Annoying and I Don’t Want to be Like You

Guilty. People who lean towards veganism in all its variations can be really annoying. Hard to say if they’re genuinely excited about their transformations, or if they’re just trying to spread propaganda to ‘convert’ you. But they sure are vocal about their choices for the most part.

You do realize you can be a silent vegan, right? It’s just that most vegans don’t want to stay silent because they are having the time of their lives growing past what they once knew.

11 Reasons Why it’s About Time

In a lengthy Facebook debate recently, I was told that I was using capitalism as a ‘strawman’ to boost my anarchic Venus Project ideas. I replied that I didn’t make capitalism a strawman, it simply is a strawman – easy to destroy.

As the masses shake off their shackles of financial oppression, capitalists such as former IMF chief economist, Kenneth Rogoff, try to spin the epidemic by agreeing that: sure there are some problems but no real imminent revolution, trying to minimize the international uprising. But the Occupy movement is part of the slow waking up of human consciousness – people are finally realizing that they’re being used.

In this post, I’m going to break down why capitalism is inherently flawed by listing its false premises.

1) Capitalism is Not Barter

Barter implies the exchange of commodities of EQUAL value. Capitalism often tries to ride the coattails of barter as ‘a free market exchange system’, but while barter aims for a trade that equally benefits both parties, capitalism is based on profit, which means that one party must always exploit the other party in some way to get ahead, whether it’s an employer exploiting their employees by paying them just enough to get them to stay, or a merchant charging a customer as much as they possibly can without the customer spending their money elsewhere. Capitalism strives not for sustainability, but for gaining the ‘little bit more’ than the other party, ie. profit. Capitalism ensures that there will always be a winner, and as a result, not only the other half, but 99% loses.

Should we also talk about how capitalism has morphed beyond goods and services to trading abstract concepts such as derivatives that most people don’t even understand? I would, if I understood more about it.

2) Capitalism Breeds Sociopathy

Some argue that capitalism, while not ‘fair’, does reward those who work the hardest. But by now we know that those who come out on top of the capitalist game not necessarily those who work the hardest, but are actually:

a) those who are most interested in financial gain

Excelling at financial gain is just one strength of many other equal strengths – those who excel at science, math, writing, raising children, etc. are just as important to the quality of life of our society.

b) those who are already in a position of financial privilege

Should businesses necessarily be started only by those who have the funds? This just leads to more financial imbalance of the rich getting richer.

Or what about growing up in a wealthy family? This leads to segregation among classes, elitism, and resentment. And politicians like Newt Gingrich suggesting that poor kids work as janitors at lunch to make money.

c) those who are most physically and/or mentally endowed

Many financially successful people feel as though they deserve their monetary gain because they have worked hard for it. But what other traits led them to their financial gain? Many people don’t realize how brilliant they actually are and how many other people don’t have the same intellectual or physical capability. Sure, a businessman who works 8-5 for 40 years has worked hard, but hasn’t a person with physical or mental disabilities perhaps worked just as hard at tackling their own obstacles?

What we essentially live in is a meritocracy. When we are not born equal, capitalism only exacerbates our individual weaknesses.

e) those who are the most ruthless 

Capitalism is the economic system of ‘survival of the fittest’. This is a vicious and often violent mindset, when ‘fittest’ becomes interchangeable with ‘most ruthless’.

Going further down this mental mindset could lead all the way to eugenics – a valid concept to explore, but loaded with potential for genocide and other types of oppression.

3) Capitalism Trumps Community

Capitalism is in direct competition with community, which is why it’s illegal to have a bake sale on the streets of Vancouver, it’s illegal for homeless people to congregate in tent cities, and it’s illegal to exercise free speech in many places unless that space has already been determined a ‘free speech zone’ or unless one purchases a permit.

Canada’s media is among the most consolidated in the world – why? Because a few individuals managed to purchase it. So the community does not talk amongst itself in mainstream media, it is talked to by the voices of its paying customers. How is Canwest owning the media any different from Monsanto purchasing patents on organic life?

Instead of having places of true ‘free space’, capitalism dictates what activities can be held in what zones. For example: in Wal*Mart – you shop. You don’t sit and relax, or play cards with friends. Wal*Mart owns that space and while you’re there Wal*Mart tells you what to do, the same as in any private property.

When we go out to socialize, we rent a portion of space and are expected to get in and get out, buying enough to justify our presence there. Capitalism frowns upon simply giving things away because then it’s more difficult to control what’s being exchanged. Capitalism wants to track, measure, rate, evaluate, classify… which brings me to my next point.

*(To digress,  non-profits such as Liberation BC can’t be considered charities because they actually strive to change laws. This is how charities can get tax breaks while activist groups can’t – a blatant policy to stifle activism or anything that opposes capitalist reign.)

4) Capitalism is a Control Freak

Capitalism aims to dissect and package what we have to work with until everything has been claimed and assigned a dollar value in a bloody race to the finish. It is so fearful of scarcity that it mutates into a complex knot of rules and regulations until they make no sense anymore and can be interpreted about as clearly as the bible.

Capitalism has so much fine print that entire sectors must be devoted to defining its rules and policing the rules. These sectors are made up of anal people policing each other. I’ve worked with them. They are so pressured to ‘fit in’, that they will call you out if you don’t fit in to ease their own pressure, the corps. don’t even need to get involved – it’s a self-cleaning system.

And have you heard the one about the fat cop spraying the cross legged activists like an exterminator? (Don’t worry he was fired reprimanded.) What exactly do you think he’s trying to protect? I doubt he knows, but his heavy-handed training taught him to protect the current dominant economic system that employs him.

In the U.S., anyone who upsets business trade can now be labeled a terrorist, and (even more recently) detained and tortured (some articles say assassinated) on the grounds of suspicion without legal process (!)

When we have demonstrations against fur stores in Vancouver, which side do the cops stand on? The side of the store, of course.

Now… what makes people become control freaks?

Oh, right. Insecurity.

5) Capitalism has Nothing to do with Democracy

Those who wave the flag of capitalism believe that it provides them with the freedom to prosper. By now we know that 1% of the people own 99% of the world’s wealth. So ok, let’s lower our expectations of financial prosperity to simply the freedom to have guaranteed income and a home. Not so easy – inflation soars, interest rates waver at the hands of the major banks, minimum wage drags its feet to keep up, social programs are snipped to pay off national debts, and your worth as an employee declines as technology leaves your skills behind. Sorry, pal.

So what does this leave us with? Freedom to choose. How we want to spend our 8 hour work days, sort of. Consumer freedom – well, based on the declining selection of monopolized corps. And freedom of our small slices of free time. As long as you stay leashed to your designated areas of habitation and employment and don’t break any laws or get caught looking bad on Facebook or make your co-workers feel uncomfortable by being too different from them or….

This is a rather vast point to explore, but for me, true freedom comes with knowing that as I flourish, others do not suffer. Capitalism creates a world of winners and losers, employers and employees. For one to win, others must lose.

6) Capitalism is Drama

Capitalism has us chasing our tails to fill arbitrary 8 hour days, celebrating and grieving stock market crashes and bail outs – such unnecessary drama. Wouldn’t it be nice if the busy work was automated and those who wanted to play the money game could in some virtual reality scenario? And those who didn’t want to play wouldn’t starve their families because of that?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could create our own drama instead of being a slave to the hormonal capitalist outbursts?

7) Capitalism Wastes Time

In Tim Ferris’s book 4 Hour Work Week, he describes the perfect job as ‘one that takes the least amount of time.’ Most people would rather be doing something else rather than what they’re doing. Do people have the insight to imagine what that might be after being indoctrinated by the media and public education their entire lives? Perhaps not. They have forgotten how to imagine a more satisfying life. Could these people learn to live by their gifts and not their jobs? Sure, quickly.

People spend so much energy simply surviving. Shouldn’t we be past worrying about survival by now? We’re not cavemen – it’s 2012. There are more than enough resources to ensure that every single person on this planet could prosper. So, as Foster Gamble points out: why aren’t we thriving?

How much time do we waste re-writing the rules, translating the rules, establishing bureaucracy around the rules, enforcing the rules, punishing people for not adhering to the rules? How much free time and resources would we have without all this excess?

Sure, transitions can be messy, but once new systems are established, how many redundant, boring jobs could be eliminated? How many wasted lives could be resurrected?

8) Capitalism is Addictive

Or rather, capital is. Money is and always be a virus in the human mind because we can never get enough. Money is (well, really it’s debt) but in our society it represents potential power and potential power is never something that you can achieve and put aside – its obtainment is a lifestyle. Two words: dangling carrot.

In Zeitgeist III when I saw pictures of people throwing away their money, I wanted to go and pick it up. I have the addiction, too. We place all our power in this external structure of money, and therefore the worth of humanity lessens. This is why factories and factory farms exist. Sentient beings becomes products. Human welfare becomes secondary.

Those who are the closest to the money will always have a Gollum type relationship to it, which calls for surveillance, which calls for a need for surveillance of those who are surveilling, etc. (See 7)

9) Capitalism Disempowers Personal Will

The world is in debt to itself. When we are born into countries in debt, it creates a mindset as though we owe something, even if it’s not personally us who’s acquired the debt. When we owe, we are indentured to work. When we are indentured to work, we have less time to think for ourselves.

Profit incentives in social experiments have only been shown to raise productivity level with tasks such as factory line assembly, or other mindless work. However, people are more innovative in creative ingenuity when left to their own devices with the reward of freedom instead of money. The natural human state radiates genius and if we rid ourselves of the stress of needless competition, human potential would flourish exponentially.

Technological breakthroughs exist not because of capitalism but despite capitalism. The internet exists not because a corporation forced it into existence, but because of the human need for global inter-communication. Inevitable human expansion at its finest. It is not regulated and taxed to its fullest capacity only because of the non-physical nature of intellectual property.

10) Capitalism Promises Uniformity

In other words – booo-ring. How many times have you gone on vacation only to see the same effing KenTacoHut franchises littering the landscape? How many times have you gone out shopping for something unique… and found every store to carry the same knock off fashions? How many times have you tried something new at work and been told to: just stick to the protocol?

Sure, the world’s financial crisis has become exacerbated since WW1, since the derivatives spiraled out of control, etc. But going back even as far as the industrial revolution, people were made to involuntarily witness a transformation of their landscapes and lifestyles as mass production turned them into machines (I recommend reading the American classic: The Jungle), and even when gold was the currency fractional reserve lending was being practiced. Capitalism turns people into consumers, but worse it turns people into products. We are so much more complex than this.

Ok, so on the plus side, it’s nice sometimes that Starbucks has your favourite drink at every location on the planet. But are we willing to sacrifice variety, adventure, selection, and creativity for consistency? Maybe we are until we see the repercussions.

11) Capitalism is Delusional

Capitalism is not based on reality because it never started from a place of assessing our collective resources in total. It is based on ideas, not solid resources. Might we prosper from the resources of other planets one day? Yes, but not yet.

How does a capitalist system measure the total of its resources if it’s measuring with old systems? Capitalism measures energy in money – a concept.  A resource based economy relinquishes the game tokens and aims to preserve and equally distribute resources, releasing human innovation from the confines of lifetime enslavement so that we can function to our fullest capacity (a resource that capitalism does not even perceive and so therefore has not been able to exploit).

Capitalism does not see the world as an inseparable entity, it divides and conquers: and this is why it creates a war machine. War is the use of force, which is why capitalism and constant struggle are lovers.

So, can we reform capitalism? Tweak it into something more functional. Absolutely not.  There is no from of renovation that can make capitalism habitable because it was never intended as a long term sustainable system, and therefore we must lay a new foundation.

The point of a resource based economic system is abundance, where people don’t have to steal because they do not lack. It is not lack of resources that prevent widespread wealth – it is closed minds. Only when we diminish the power of money to zero will it be impossible for a small group of people to gain control over it. Only when we eliminate poverty will people no longer feel compelled to fearfully hoard and preemptively strike each other down for land and wealth. Only when we distribute widespread elective education can people become mentally sound enough to make better decisions.

When asked on a university exam which was more important: the needs of the individual or the needs of the collective, I argued that the needs of the individual ARE the needs of the collective. The systems ARE the people. When the people are secure, the systems will be, too.

I’m not writing this post as a prescriptive because I truly don’t know how a vegan can glide through the holidays when celebrating them with meateaters. When I look at the Christmas cacaphony of bacon fryers and leather handbags and turkeys, I see the places they came from and this doesn’t make me feel like celebrating.

Instead I will post a conversation between myself and a family member about our attempts to reconcile the lifestyle clash. When meateaters argue with vegans, it can be exhausting, especially for the vegan because they’ve probably had this convo a million times before. Ring any (jingle) bells?

Meateater VS Vegan – Conflict @ Christmas

M = Meateater

V = Vegan

V = I appreciate the efforts you make to provide vegan options and gifts, but please realize that when you gift everyone else twice as much of the opposite kinds of gifts, and feed everyone else ten times the amount of non-vegan food, I feel upset because I see all the violence it took to obtain those products.

M = Well, those are your beliefs. I don’t get why you have to ‘push’ your ‘beliefs’ on the rest of us.

V = The nature of and prevalence of factory farming is statistically documented. It has nothing to do with a belief – this is what’s happening in our world right now. I’m speaking the truth and being myself.

M = You are making me feel bad when you say something about gifts such as the PiggyWiggy bacon fryer.

V = I am not ‘making’ you feel anything, but I am drawing attention to the violence behind this gift.

M = Well why do you have to do it in an attacking way?

V = The slaughter of pigs is the ultimate act of attack. If you perceive someone mentioning this as an attack, then maybe you are creating that experience out of your own inclination to defend this consumer choice.

M = How do you know that the animals suffer?

V = Would you suffer if you were strapped to the floor of a gestation crate and raped over and over until your innards spilled out of your body?

M = Well have you gone and actually witnessed this yourself? You just watch these videos and assume it’s true.

V = I could go into the factory farms but then I could be prosecuted as a terrorist according to new U.S. law.

M = Why do you need to try to change us? We don’t force you to eat meat.

V = I am not trying to change you. I am simply sharing my experience with you and the essence of who I am. Changing you would be a waste of my time, if you choose to grow for yourself that’s great.

Also, me reminding you of the violence in animal products is very different from you pressuring me to support violence.

M = What if we don’t want to change?

V = We are always changing no matter what – the only question is in what way. On a personal note, if you learn about animal agriculture and simply don’t care – I don’t get that.

M = I care about other things that you don’t care about: poverty, homelessness, various charities, etc.

V = I care about those things, too. If I was doing something directly to cause these things and I had other choices, I would choose the least harmful options.

M = So you really don’t want to change us?

V = Would I love to live in a non-violent world? Yes. Am I going to go around begging individuals to change? No.

M = Can’t you just be pleasant?

V = I can be a lot of positive things. But I’m not willing to silence myself.

I’m going to stop there because it’s excruciating. I would like to point out though that it’s not the veganism that tears families apart – it’s the violence behind the animal products. Just like it wasn’t women’s rights that tore families apart, it was the sexist laws of that time. Just because an animal based diet is currently more popular, doesn’t mean it’s natural or normal.

Christmas can be a difficult time for those who have seen the truth behind the animal products the ‘mainstream’ chooses to purchase because we are simply unable to appreciate or celebrate them.

Vegan Xmas Options

a) celebrate Xmas among meateaters and shut up, feeling as though you are a  phony

b) celebrate Xmas among meateaters and speak out, probably causing defensive responses from others

c) spend Xmas with vegans (but be guilt tripped by meateating friends and family who you’re ignoring)

d) volunteer at a homless shelter and serve people… turkey

So it’s kind of a no-win sitch. But it’s all good, because it’s not about us anyway in that our feelings of exclusion and alienation pale in comparison to the atrocities faced every day by animal slaves.

Foster Gamble, renegade heir of the animal-torturing Procter & Gamble corp, has made his own version of the Zeitgeist trilogy with an extraterrestrial spin.

Below are a list of WINS and FAILS that I’ve compiled to gauge the overall success of the film. Generally, the first 3/4 of this film is a win, and the last quarter is a fail. Not an F, but a D-.

The end of Thrive is reminiscent to that of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, except in that film the solutions came rolling down like credits in a tiptoeing, whistling, thumb twiddling don’t-ask-me slink away.

WIN

• Names are named. Thrive pinpoints the main elites causing the global fear-based decision making structure in what is labeled the Global Domintation Agenda: the Rockfellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and their buddies. The film explains how this small group of people control money, food, water (trying to), education, media, healthcare, etc. Well done Thrive for not being afraid to call the hoarders out.
• Blame is diffused through explanation. Any time people lean on the concept of ‘evil’ as an explanation for violence, whether economic, physical, or other, we regress back to the polarity of the US government, the bible, or a Star Wars movie. Truth is far more complicated than simply: some people are just evil. Thrive explains that those hoarding power are doing so out of fear. Fear of freedom, scarcity, and change.
• Exposing the appropriation of the term ‘conspiracy theory’. It seems as though anyone who commits to dissent these days is termed a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorist is the new terrorist. So I’m glad that Thrive exposes the negative connotations this term has garnered so people can feel more comfortable about thinking critically. Remember critical thinking? That skill we were taught in school that gets us fired from jobs in the real world?
• Thrive has a fact checking page on their website. Point.
• Thrive does make one or two good points in its otherwise weak attempt to solve the world’s problems, with statements such as this: “It doesn’t work to build an healthy system on top of an unhealthy one.” True that. (So why does Thrive go on to try to bandaid job the system we’ve got now?)

FAIL

• Thrive’s main failure is in its proposed solutions. While the Gambles’ hearts are in the right place, they lack the vision to picture actual economic alternatives and therefore they aim low, telling viewers to work within the monetary system, when the monetary system IS the problem. Bank locally? Vote for better people? These systems are already corrupted – time to start fresh.
• No mention of the Venus Project. Hello! There is already a much more cutting edge solution out there for all the problems Thrive presents. Could Thrive not even comment on a resource based economy? Even to say why it isn’t feasible? If Gamble missed this biggie, what other essentials did he omit from his ambitious film?
• After showing numerous shots of people starving and living in poverty, the makers of Thrive warn that watching the film without paying for it is immoral. Isn’t it more important to get their message out than to expect immediate reward? The filmmakers seem to be stuck in a place of rich kid entitlement on this issue.
• Thrive’s golden rule is to practice non-violation… but what exactly does this mean? What about violating the wealth of the elite hoarders and redistributing it? And don’t we have to violate current laws in order to exercise free speech these days? What about the people who pay more for water than Coke who might violate the copyright laws to watch this movie? Gamble then tries to interchange the term with non-aggression. Let me help, you Thrive – the term you’re reaching for is: non-violence. But to be fair, for humans to practice non-violence, this requires a shift from animal agriculture, the violence-based system that nourishes most of the people on the planet.
• Fail squared: the soundtrack. Please make it stop.

All in all, Thrive is well organized and accurate on many points but its main flaw is that it has an economic blind spot.

Instead of spending a bit longer to search for solutions to the problems it presents, Thrive rushes the project and instructs viewers to follow a list of biblical commandments that basically amount to recycling to attempt to save the environment.

In my humble opinion, the film would have been more cohesive if it had spent longer examining its main breakthrough concept: the torus, explaining what direct solutions a functioning torus could offer.

May the torus be with you.