When Man Moves Away From Nature, His Heart Becomes Hard (Lakota)

Comments

  • blevinandwomba
    blevinandwomba Posts: 813 ✭✭✭✭

    That picture of the crowded pigs makes me so sad!

    The farm where I buy my meat is the opposite. They have a stretch of woods fenced off, where the pigs roam. It makes me happy every time I see them.

    I also feel terrible for the farmers on the operations- they work so hard, but its a broken system.

  • Leslie Carl
    Leslie Carl Posts: 255 ✭✭✭✭

    Yes, how our food is grown/raised has a direct effect on us. Not only nutritionally, but now we also have to deal with consequences of altered genes from GMOs and poisonings from the dangerous chemicals they use on them, which are also getting into our water supply.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Animals generally only kill what they can eat. They don't do 'mass'-anythings, or in excess.

    No one with a conscience, heart or anything else good would think to do such things. - There are laws against all sorts of actions, How about writing a law that makes it " Illegal to mass-produce any life., over 10". - What do you think ?

    Nature, & everyone, & anmials would be better off, returning to "Individual Family farms".

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,576 admin

    @rainbow That has flaws. Some large families are over 10 and function well. Gardeners would have a hard time with this too.

    I had someone argue with me last year saying that their vision & definition of a family farm was the same as mine, after being offended by my definition was. Their ultra-modern dairy operation in California was nothing at all like a small family farm. It was technologically amazing, but so very far from a real farm. It may have been owned by a family...but so is Johnson & Johnson. It is not a small family business either, but a big business & run as such.

    When people ask us for raw milk (illegal to even give away here), I say to buy a cow or figure out how to do so. I will not break the law and risk the invasiveness of govt. I promote people doing things for themselves and taking responsibility instead of asking others to take the fall should something go awry. They have no risk. I risk much. They don't have a clue what is at stake. Only through the voice of many small farms could change actually happen. I am not holding out hope because governments like their "science" & control, but I think people need to reconnect with animals, the effort & cost, life & death and the land. Only then are they in a place to speak with a true working knowledge & conviction.

  • shllnzl
    shllnzl Posts: 1,820 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I am glad that my husband can make the kills because I was constantly depressed when I tried to hunt. I would make a terrible farmer because of my strong empathy to animals.

    I apologize to the plants I kill. I know that my crazy points are adding up on this forum!

  • judsoncarroll4
    judsoncarroll4 Posts: 5,490 admin
    edited November 2019

    Not at all @shllnzl I never kill an animal or fish without empathy, nor do I kill a plant without feeling... perhaps only fruit and mushrooms do I harvest with unconflicted joy.... but gratitude is the rule - I always say a prayer. I don't even like killing bugs and spiders in the house. But, Ill also butcher a critter and make blood sausage and be really, really happy and grateful! Maybe that is what is hard to translate.... it is an honor to harvest food.

  • shllnzl
    shllnzl Posts: 1,820 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @judsoncarroll4 My husband also feels for the animals he hunts but he doesn't let that stop him from the task. The best he can do is to kill quickly which means lots of practice with his rifle.

    Luckily I am able to avoid killing the animals. I am good with them alive or dead -- it's the in between part that is tough for me. I assist with the butchering.

  • judsoncarroll4
    judsoncarroll4 Posts: 5,490 admin

    @shllnzl That is the goal. To take an animal's life quickly and efficiently, with as little pain as possible and as little waste as possible. That is what we strive for through practice, dedication and seriousness. The dispatch is the skill. The butchery and cooking is the art. Each aspect must be valued. There are people with whom I will not hunt and "chefs" with whom I will not cook. I am not arrogant. Things matter. It matters what you say and what you do, in every aspect of life. Modern "culture" seems to have little regard for anything.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @judsoncarroll4

    For me personally, it is excellent that I don't need to kill any animal for food. - I was shamed... into it at age 19, & I had nightmares for years re killing just 1 single chicken. I had never seen 1 animal killed for food before, so there I was with the bloody knife in left hand, & the head in the other, whilst the chicken was flying... all over the yard, & I totally freaked out screaming. - I kept asking that chicken (who I had lovingly named & raised & never intended to harm in any way), to "Please forgive me". - After like 4 years, I stopped having nightmares. - I've posted this in TGN months ago.

  • shllnzl
    shllnzl Posts: 1,820 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @judsoncarroll4 @rainbow I judge people by how they treat other living beings. I have raised a few eyebrows when stating "I would not want to be that person's wife or children." Arrogance is not the issue, it is avoiding people who are lacking something essential on the inside.

    The people who care, sometimes to a great degree, those are the people I want to associate with.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @shllnzl - When I was shorter (than now), in Germany we lived next to a fully-functioning farm, & sometimes in winter meat would appear on my plate. Plus we had our own chickens & rabbits that I used to feed yummy food. - It never once dawned on me that some of that meat, in all likelihood came from the very same rabbits I used to pet. After all, there's a Defining difference between something Alive, & something on one's plate. I never made the connection, & no one ever Clued me in. - Obviously my subconscious did know, but did not want to make me consciously too sad, or sick, so it kept me Naive.

    Even now, when people show pictures... of animals crammed into tight spaces & otherwise terribly abused, I want to Face them & ask: What if that was you ? - You do NOT want to be abused, so why do it to another living being??

  • shllnzl
    shllnzl Posts: 1,820 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @rainbow I totally agree with you, the "Do Onto Others" proverb applies to more than just human beings.

  • judsoncarroll4
    judsoncarroll4 Posts: 5,490 admin

    I was vegetarian for about 10 years. Now I am an ethical omnivore. Either diet is a personal choice and I don't see either as more or less moral. I cannot abide animal cruelty, not can I abide soaking fields in round up nd pesticides, etc.... countless millions of creatures killed just to grow some soybeans so some self-righteous tofu eater can call me a murderer for raising a chicken or harvesting a deer. Either way, if you grow it or take it from the wild and you eat it, you are close to your food and can live the ethics you hold dear. No one who buys their food from a chain grocery store can claim that. I always say that the decline of freedom began when people stopped dealing with their own garbage, relying on others to "take it off"... it is only a small step from that to relying on others to produce food.... and the farther we get from the small farmer/homesteader, the more abstract our ethics become.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Well said. As far as Able-bodied adults "small farmer/homesteader" live the ethics you hold dear.

    RE "No one who buys their food from a chain grocery store can claim that." - Okay,

    what of anybody else (child, physically-Disabled, anyone paralyzed, the too-old, etc) UNable to "grow it or take it from the wild and eat it". - There are countless... circumstances where people can NOT farm, or homestead, or take it from the wild.

  • judsoncarroll4
    judsoncarroll4 Posts: 5,490 admin

    @rainbow That is where the small farmer, market gardener or community garden comes in. Such models are what we need - so farmers can make a living doing things the right way and so people who follow other career paths can have access to good food.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    All over the world such Community gardens, market gardeners, & small farmers DO exist, & function.

    What is NEEDed for such survival : Abolish the political fraud called > property taxes <, so we can continue...

  • judsoncarroll4
    judsoncarroll4 Posts: 5,490 admin

    @rainbow I agree, whole-heartedly on that point! We are losing our small farmers at an alarming rate for that very reason; well, that and because people have been trained that food comes wrapped in plastic from a big store and not from a farmer.

  • merlin44
    merlin44 Posts: 426 ✭✭✭✭

    Paul McCartney said once "If slaughterhouses had windows, we all would be vegetarians". As @rainbow and @judsoncarroll4 pointed out, we are disconnected from the source of our food. I've read of young children given whole apples and not having any idea how to eat them. Besides the GMO's in the feed these animals are fed and the horrible crowded living conditions, the fear they experience at the moment of their very often brutal death, their bodies release harmful hormones that remain in the meat. Then the tainted meat is wrapped in plastic......and you know the rest of the story.

  • AngelaOston
    AngelaOston Posts: 249 ✭✭✭

    Ive been raising cuy (guinea pigs) as small livestock in our backyard the past year. And i just dispatched my first cuy, My grown son had done the earlier ones. I now understand why people who raise and release their animals to the infinite call it dispatching. It was good to hold, love and give it warmth of my hands and heart before it left. It was relaxed and warm immediately after it was dispatched. A good quick parting with out terror. And then will still warm, i dispatched its body between out two older dogs, one who is healing her cancer. The other who has lost weight and frail from age, but is getting strength back from the cuy, and starting to look better. So quickly the cuy essence was dispatched back into nature and every drop of its body was dispatched into other life. And it disappeared, didpatched into the infinite again.

  • merlin44
    merlin44 Posts: 426 ✭✭✭✭

    Beautiful description of the cycle, very respectful.