the initiation experience imparts the realization that, given universal holistic interrelatedness, all sexual acts are incestuous and all forms of consumption are cannibalistic.– John Moore
Raw or cooked, why is cannibalism of the already dead considered morally repugnant (rating just above scavenging upon car-wreck meat and other roadside carnage) while the murder, maiming and deprivation of the living (whatever the species, but particularly your own) merely good business or economic sense?
It's often been suggested that the human is at base an opportunistic predatory animal, and to look around, we see that this in fact describes the workings of capitalism quite accurately, what with its armed forest rangers and the like protecting power-plays of corporate interest ("the greater good" my ass!) or one-sided economic "transactions" (actually, "extractions") just to put bread on the table. Ask them why? "It's just a job!" If you are a poacher or berry-picker on "community property", best not even ask!
Reactionaries against thuggery of all sorts have historically looked at what we're eating rather than how we come to do it, and many conclude meat itself is the problem. Perhaps this is why oppositional defiance is considered a mental illness whereas pure-and-simple defiance is merely a crime, being that it is more diabolical than dialectical. Whatever the case, vegetarians do not like to hear that they are enslaving other species in their gardens just to eat the children produced and turn the less palatable elders into the soil without even the pretense of a funeral ceremony: "they're only plants, after alll!" Egg, fruit and nut growers seem to escape this criticism, trying to keep their "charge" living, but not so productively as to crush the earth and all the other inhabitants with their accelerating weight, their growth rate. It is said a mother oyster has three billion babies in her lifetime just to keep the seagulls happy. If the other critters weren't well fed, the oyster itself would perish.
When I was a child learning to fish, I objected to what I considered a cruelty in the 'hooking' enterprise, and it was explained to me that "fish have no central nervous system so can't feel pain". John Moore used the same logic to justify eating lettuce babies. Corporate suits & generals have always looked on others as would a Greek god: as "mere people", ie., disposable. No need to bring up the ku klux klan. Over the years I've come to see that I was not alone in thinking rutabagas and fish have feelings too, and developed a theory to explain this squeamishness over killing and maiming fellow creatures (a "sentimentality" often mistakenly attributed to females and children), that the human was neither predatory carnivore nor herbivore, but like the coyote, vulture or dung beetle, a scavenger helping to keep the landscape fresh and fragrant. I've never had an existential problem arise from eating the unborn egg (helping to resolve the deadly conflict between fertility and fecundity) or stuff that's already dead. Our pig-like teeth and stomachs agree with me on this point. And now I seem to recall a word from grade-school science: "omnivore".
Apparently, when a wolf eats healthy mice in the spring, she is participating in the chance-driven eco-systematics operating all around us, where even the good (as far as a mouse goes) die young. Eating's always an accident from one perspective, good fortune from the other. No need to get all arrogant or self-righteous about it; fortuity is not something under our control. In fact, even for the most favourably conditioned or well-practiced and intentioned, favourable conditions are still necessary for a successful hunt or gathering of any sort. And we still say "Good luck" when sending others out into the world. We know it may be the last words we speak to them.
Grover Krantz once suggested that the original hand-axe was a multi-stage, multi-purpose tool useful in pantomime as well as a kitchen aid. When coming upon a carcass being consumed by other scavengers like jackals, the little Southern Ape-man (our ancestor by virtue of dramatics and technological disposition) might have held the pointed rocks up to his mouth mimicking the threatening body-language of a large canine-equipped predator, and then used them to cut off bite-sized bits from the vacated corpse. The only risk would be if the primary consumer was not swayed by the "virtual" antics because of her own bigger teeth. A Saber-tooth cat comes to mind. The first sentence spoken might just have been "Run away!! Run away!!"
Speaking of accidental death, it is rarely calculated the actual biomass of the live, creepy-crawly variety that sheep, cattle and elephants consume in their grazing, wiping out whole families of bugs too large to survive even the first stomach, should they miss being crushed by the last molars. It is only the very smallest whose metabolism is hardly distinguishable from their reproduction, the microbes, who actually want to be eaten so they can have a nice warm abode adequate to feed all their children and grandchildren. In fact, prohibiting them from residence would result in death-by-starvation for ruminating beasts, no matter how much pure leafy matter they ate. You could say microbes mediate their metabolism without the merest speculation toward causing alienation. Sometimes the indirect or mediative is the safest sort of action.
I was astonished to find out I had similar sorts of creatures navigating my intestinal tracts, only harmful when evicted. Is there a hidden implication for those who would charge rent for tract housing in the cities, particularly since each and every squat is at best an intestinal occupation? I was also astonished to discover it was only the actual predatory animals who had the compassion to kill the sick and injured, as well as the gluttonous and arrogant critters incapable of sharing, with a quick bite or blow, all to help limit the suffering in the world. Authentic predators and prey have one nothing on the other in the departments of kindness and warrior spirit.
The logic seems impeccable, yet we are not to follow it:
if we consider an apple tree a living organism, and if economic pertains to 'how we make a living', then the mode of production for an apple-grower is represented by an early-term abortion induced by the orchardist – a potential tree cut off before the prime of its life, so to speak. This may just be how a seagull approaches a cluster of oyster eggs should we restrict all meaning to functionality.
Such a metaphoric extension as apple abortion, despite its biological accuracy comparing perceived patterns, would be considered eccentric, to say the least – evidence for institutionalisation by means of thought disorder. Yet the safer alternatives raise existential problems concerning death and equally disturbing ontological problems concerning our own species. If one considers that the apple, a burgeoning tree that might be, merely undergoes a metamorphosis (with our help in the eating) jumping across not only the presumed unbreakable species boundary but that impenetrable border between class or kingdom, becoming the other (us, that is) no less easily than we merge with traffic on the freeway, we are labeled harmless spiritualist, but definately sailing on the "wrong" route. But really, who suffers in the transformation, the transcendance of class distinctions, this re-incarnation (see carne: 'meat')?
But no! How much easier to consider life (and death) a particularly nasty interruption like sleep apnea, or to embrace brutish behaviour with a vengeance, or merely hire or delegate others to do one's dirty work (as well as dirty thinking about what that work should be) than the rather more enjoyable "inmixing of otherness"?
Of course, the "kind" thing to do after depriving the little seed of its supper is to share with it your own evicted intestinal residents. Such might be how Johnny Appleseed discovered agriculture.
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