[Jennifer_SFBA]

Will Tuttle, M.A. in Humanities, San Francisco State University; Ph.D. in Educational Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley; trained in Korea as a Buddhist Monk in the Zen tradition with extensive work in Tai Chi, Yoga, meditation, intuition development and spiritual healing; a pianist, composer and teacher begins Chapter 1, Food's Power, Food as Metaphore, of his book, "World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony" as follows:

"Since time immemorial-going back at least two and a half millennia to Pythogoras in Greece, the Old Testament prophets in the ancient Levant, and Mahavira and Gautama Buddha in India as well as later luminaries wuch as Plato, Plotinus, and the early Christian fathers-social reformers and spiritual teachers have emphasized the importance of attending to our attitudes and practices surrouding food. The fact that these teachings have been aggressively ignored, discounted and covered up over the centuries is of paramount significance, and if we look deeply into the wounds and attitudes responsible for this cover-up, we will discover liberating truths about ourselves and our culture ..."

Then, on page 23, says;

... "The largest animals were cattle and horses, and the cattle-herding cultures that established themselves in the Middle East and eastern Meditaranian engaged in unimaginally vicious warfare with each other and against weaker people for millennia, gardually and forcably spreading their culture and heading values throughout Europe and most of Asia. From Europe, this same cattle culture eventually spread to the Americas. I continues to spread to this day through transnational corportions like ConAgra, Cargill, Smithfield, and McDonald's and well as through projects sponsored by the World Bank and the U.N., religious missionaries, and charities that propagate animal slavery like the Heifer Project.

At the living core of this ancient culture that became what we call today Western civilization was the absolute supremacy of humans over animals, reinforced through daily meals. Wealth and prestige for men began to be measured in terms of how many livestock animals were owned and how large an area of land was controlled for grazing. The role model for young boys became that of the successful proto-capitalist, the macho herder and warrior: tough, cool, emotionally distant, and capable of unflinching violence. Women, livestock and captured or conquored people were property objects contributing to the total amount of capital; wars, though horrific to combatants and the general population, were potent methods used by the wealthy aristocracy to increase its' accumulation of cattle/capital, land, power and prestige.

It's helpful to realize that the mentality of domination characterizing the culture into which we were born thrives on seeing and emphasizing differences and ignoring similarities, because this is what enslaving and killing animals requires us all to practice. As herders and dominators of animals, we must continually practice seeing ourselves as separate and different from them, as superior and special. Our natural human compassion can be repressed by learning to exclude others and to see them as essentially unlike us. This exclusivism is necessary to racism, elitism and war, because in order to harm and dominate other people we must break the bonds that our hearts naturally feel with them. The mentality of domination is necessarily a mentality of exclusion. ..."

Will Tuttle eloquently discusses the eating of the fruits of plants and trees for healthy bodies and enlightenment.

[-V-]

It's helpful to realize that the mentality of domination characterizing the culture into which we were born thrives on seeing and emphasizing differences and ignoring similarities, because this is what enslaving and killing animals requires us all to practice. As herders and dominators of animals, we must continually practice seeing ourselves as separate and different from them, as superior and special. Our natural human compassion can be repressed by learning to exclude others and to see them as essentially unlike us. This exclusivism is necessary to racism, elitism and war, because in order to harm and dominate other people we must break the bonds that our hearts naturally feel with them.

That last paragraph deserves repeating. Wars, the abuse of animals, and just about every other flaw in human behavior have the same root. It reminds me of something another profound writer (me) once wrote in the closing paragraphs of a school paper: The Case Against the Production & Consumption of Meat and Dairy Products and the Human Animal's Discrimination of Other Species (http://progressivesonline.com/vegetarian/anti-meat-research-paper.htm)

Few people in America today would eat another slice of slaughtered animal flesh if they had to perform the deed themselves. Something at the core of their being would make them pause, and forget for the moment all the self-serving logic, even the hunger, if before the axe came down they could look into the eyes of just one of the 1,000 feeling animals they would call dinner in their lifetime.

If, as it has been said, "ignorance is bliss" it also explains why the weak are oppressed, the silent are exploited, and those who are different are thought to be of lesser importance. Terms like inferior beings, dumb beasts, and lower life forms are frequently tossed about because it suits human purposes. Meanwhile, everyone forgets the warning that history has echoed time and again through the empty chambers of man's ego and across the bloodstained battlefields of his conscience; that the most dangerous and destructive feeling a human being can posses is the feeling of superiority, and that the weakest and most selfish action a human being can take is the one that will satisfy his own needs at the expense of others. And yet, instead of learning and evolving into the higher life form of which man stakes his claim, his actions continue to serve as an aberration of his needs and a travesty of nature.

Plantation owners once treated black slaves like animals, now factory farm owners treat animals like machines. The Nazi's threw Jews in the oven under the guise of being the "master race". Now human's throw chickens in the microwave under the guise of being the "master species". The faces of man's prejudice are constantly changing but the affliction of blindness that goes with it is passed on like some incurable disease. While humans may indeed have "dominion over all living things" by virtue of their capability of destroy them all, their role should be as parent to child, not as master to servant. For now, people are the caretakers of the planet and the guardian of its inhabitants. For 200,000 years homo sapiens have walked the earth, a mere fraction of the time that other creatures have reigned "supreme". In another 200,000 years or so, human descendants will be as distant to present day man as he is now to baboons. One can only hope that if, today, the earth were visited by "superior" beings from another world, that they would see man as more than just a meal.