In the south-eastern rain forests of Democratic Republic of Congo, a hunter butchering a sooty mangabey monkey or a chimpanzee cuts himself. Blood mingles. He swears—and his curses reach down through time. It’s 1920. The virus spreads from Kinshasa, the capital city, along road, railway, and river routes via migrants and the sex trade. The result is the AIDS epidemic. Contrary to the urban legend that AIDS came from someone fucking a monkey, it’s now almost certain that it came from eating one.
Have we learned so little from history?
Confined to my apartment as Europe goes into lock-down or “quarantine”, essentially house arrest, it strikes me I, like millions of others are in this situation because someone in China thought it would be a winning idea to slaughter and consume a wild pangolin.
To me, this aspect of Covid-19 raises a few questions:
- Is it time to stop eating animals? And…
- Why on Earth would anyone want to eat a bat or pangolin in the first place?
No Meat, No Coronavirus: Indians Blame Non-Vegetarians
India. Land of seekers. Mysticism. Curry. And non-meat eaters. India is the #1 vegetarian country in the world, with 38% of the population surviving nicely on a plant-based diet.
And vegetarians in India, a country unconcerned by political correctness, have not been shy on Twitter, launching an attack on the Chinese and meat eaters for bringing the disease to India with the hashtag #NoMeatNoCoronavirus. Via the message of the Buddha—don't be a bastard to fellow living creatures—suffering caused by the meat trade is an anathema in Buddhist Indian culture. So many Indians are miffed at carnivores who don’t respect animal life… and unleash the consequences of this lack of empathy in their backyard.
Fact: Covid-19 originated with the virus leaping via zoonotic spillover from an animal to a human, at a wet market in Wuhan, a city in central China (Warning: Graphic Video). Likely from slaughtering and eating a pangolin or a bat.
When Donald Trump describes Covid-19—as the “Chinese virus”—he’s correct. The Chinese, social justice warriors, and mainstream media were quick to condemn. CNN’s John King actually said President Trump seemed to be “deliberately” singling out China and using a stigmatizing term to refer to the novel coronavirus.
Because—what? Norway is equally to blame for the source of the outbreak?
void of respect for nature.
This is why any potential noble goal of political correctness is undone—because it eschews truth and evidence-based standard protocols in favor of protecting delicate feelings, and this invariably propagates ignorance. Li Wenliang—the Chinese doctor who tried to issue the first warning about the deadly coronavirus outbreak was silenced by the Chinese government for "making false comments" that had "severely disturbed the social order". He later died of the virus. Aircraft carrier Captain Brett Crozier was removed from command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after issuing a warning that his crew’s lives were in danger from coronavirus sweeping his ship.
Free speech is vital: to bring important issues into the public domain, and to apportion blame, because without understanding and accepting cause, the same mistakes will inevitably be repeated. And have been. And continue to be. An investigation by 60 Minutes showed wet markets continue to function throughout Asia and remain a fertile breeding ground for the next, perhaps even more deadly, Covid-19.
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci said that all of Asia’s wet markets should be shut down immediately. “It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human-animal interface, that we just don’t shut it down,” Fauci said. “I don’t know what else has to happen to get us to appreciate that.”
Children are constantly told it’s an honorable course of action to own up and take responsibility for their actions and learn from them, but it’s a maxim never practiced by adults or countries.
The Butterfly Effect: Does The Consumption Of Wildlife In Wuhan Cause The Catastrophic Loss Of Human Life Worldwide?
In 1972 at the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Lorenz posed a question key in Chaos Theory: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Lorenz discovered when observing that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner, would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. The butterfly effect shows the sensitive dependence on initial conditions—where a small change in one state can result in large differences in a later state.
The Covid-19 outbreak in China began with the seemingly small actions of a few, and resulted in a lock-down across the globe affecting education, business, travel, the economy, and our entire lifestyle.
“Everything in nature is a cause from which flows some effect,” according to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
Ozzy Osbourne aside, Americans don’t consume bats. Western countries have basic animal protection laws for a reason. The Covid-19 pandemic exists because of the combination of the consumption of meat, specifically, the wild animal trade, and lack of animal protection laws in China.
There are currently no nationwide laws in China that explicitly prohibit the mistreatment of animals.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.
World of Pain: The Horror of China’s Animal Abuse
China is one of, if not the worst country for animal cruelty. Each year thousands of animals are tortured mentally and physically and brutally murdered. In China, dogs are stuffed into small cages before being hung up by their paws and skinned alive. This happens in front of other dogs who witness and understand their own fate, barking and wailing in fear. Does anyone really believe dogs feel no pain? The fur trade in China begins with the live skinning of millions of dogs and cats annually; no more horrifying death can be imagined. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog (Warning: Graphic Video) on the heap of carcasses who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and blink. Each year China holds their “Animal Olympics” where horse fighting often ends with the horrific death of these majestic creatures. In zoos live cows, donkeys and other animals are thrown into tiger enclosures to be eaten alive for entertainment of the crowds. On streets in China, baby tortoises are found packaged as souvenirs (Warning: Graphic Video). Still living, these tiny tortoises swim inside a permanently sealed solution where they will die a few months later. Every year they have a festival called the Yulin Cat and Dog meat festival (Warning: Graphic Video). Dogs are boiled alive to improve the taste of the meat. Desperately trying to escape their fate, clawing at the edges of the pot, they are pushed back with a wooden stick. All perfectly legal. The Chinese seem to enjoy and take sadistic pleasure in the cruel spectacle of animal suffering.
Fact: There are currently no nationwide laws in China that explicitly prohibit the mistreatment of animals.
Trump later said of Covid-19: “It comes from China, there’s nothing not to agree.” How can even the origin and reason for the origin of coronavirus become an elephant in the room? The culpability of the Chinese people must be named and shamed.
An obsession with race by CNN, BBC and other media outlets is disturbingly Goebbels-like, and counterproductive. Criticizing animal abuse in China isn’t racism. Nor is stating Covid-19 came from China. This is part of the reason the left is (unfortunately) losing the cultural war (and elections) in the West as they are constantly on the wrong side of right and wrong, fact and fiction. To be crystal clear Trump is the worst president in history—with virtually no leadership skills—absolutely the worst person to be in charge of a country, least of all in an emergency. Asleep at the wheel, his non-existent leadership will sadly lead to a great deal more deaths than necessary in the US. However, Trump is as popular as ever and he need not tell the truth all the time to keep winning. He just needs to pick key things to be right on. Leftists, CNN, BBC, and democrats just need to appear more competent, truthful and in touch with reality than he, but can’t seem to manage it.
Had China been instantly put into worldwide quarantine at the outbreak of the disease once human-to-human transmission was clear in early January 2020, lives and money would have been saved. That it wasn’t, shows the stupidity of world leaders, who were largely unconcerned with citizen’s safety and more worried about global trade and being seen to be PC.
The Science Of Emerging Disease
Donald Trump claimed the crisis is “an unforeseen problem” that “came out of nowhere”. Fact: Trump is wrong. The US intelligence community, public health experts long warned of the risk from a pandemic and some mentioned the possibility of a coronavirus pandemic. The precedent of diseases transferring from animals to humans, through the consumption of their meat, has been with us for decades. Covid-19 is like other coronaviruses; Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). All spread from animals to humans.
Fact: Bird flu developed from eating chickens in China.
Fact: MERS is derived from eating camels in Saudi Arabia.
Fact: SARS came from cave-dwelling horseshoe bats via the intermediary of civets in China.
Fact: Ebola came from eating wildlife or “bush meat” in Africa.
Fact: Mad Cow disease came from eating beef (infected via animal feed) and originated in the UK.
According to the United Nations, over 70% of emerging diseases originate in animals and many of these are directly linked to animals used for food.
For years, scientists in the West have warned that filthy farms worldwide crammed full of sick animals are breeding grounds for new antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”. Antibiotics that go into stock feed are usually the same as the antibiotics prescribed to fight disease in humans. They serve two purposes: they help prevent animals kept in crowded conditions from dying, and they make animals grow faster. The consumption of animals comes hand in hand with the consumption of antibiotics and bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Studies suggest that by 2050, more people will die from antibiotic-resistant diseases than from cancer.
PETA get it right
Not Only Murder, Meat Is Coronavirus
The Buddhists of India are not alone. As a vegetarian, I resent the risk of losing my life or loved ones, because of humans who not only fail to care about animals, but are willing to play Russian roulette with their lives and other members of humanity. People over eighty have a one in six chance of dying from Covid-19. That’s literally Russian roulette. It’s akin to loading a revolver with a single bullet, going to your grandparent, spinning the chamber, pointing the gun at their head and pulling the trigger.
PETA drew much flak when they tweeted that “Coronavirus” is an anagram for “Carnivorous" and that meat eaters were responsible for the outbreak. Many more ill-informed Twitter users and even mainstream media, insisted the consumption of meat has nothing to do with the outbreak. Facts don’t back this up. New viruses don’t just happen. There is always cause and effect.
Nullifying the argument that it’s nothing to do with animal consumption, even China banned the trade of wildlife on February 24th 2020, deducing that exotic animals infected humans. The 13th National People’s Congress issued a decree stating: “Comprehensively prohibiting the illegal trade of wild animals, eliminating the bad habits of wild animal consumption and protecting the health and safety of the people.”
Just as Socrates was executed for questioning society, so today humans still seek to silence the questioner, rather than address the question.
Eating Meat Isn’t Just Killing Animals—It’s Threatening Human Existence
“Wet markets… create ideal conditions for the spillover of pathogens from one species to another, including to people,” says Prof Andrew Cunningham of Zoological Society London (ZSL).
“We are bringing together animals from different countries, different habitats, different lifestyles—in terms of aquatic animals, arboreal animals and so on,” says Professor Diana Bell of the University of East Anglia, “and mixing them together and it’s a kind of melting pot—and we’ve got to stop doing it.”
Even if you don’t care about the suffering of animals, are the resulting inevitable pandemics and impact on global warming, worth continuing to consume animals? Forget animal rights. The rights of the thousands of human victims of Covid-19 have had their human rights terminated.
What might seem a tasty snack, has the potential to not only kill the eater, but thousands, perhaps millions who may not share your inclination, cultural or otherwise for bleeding, squishy flesh.
We are bringing together animals from different countries, different habitats, different lifestyles—in terms of aquatic animals, arboreal animals and so on, and mixing them together and it’s a kind of melting pot—and we’ve got to stop doing it.
The big questions is why eat this?
The Pangolin Strikes Back
Genetic analyses have come up short of pinpointing the animal Covid-19 spread from thus far, but among the suspects is the pangolin, a long-snouted, scaly, ant-eating mammal unknown in the West but prized in China as a supposed delicacy and for its unsupported medicinal virtues.
So, on suspicion that it might have infected humans with Covid-19, the pangolin will finally be spared and protected?
Probably not. In 2003, civets—mongoose-type creatures—were banned and culled in large numbers after it was discovered they likely transferred the SARS virus to humans. The sale of snakes was also briefly banned in Guangzhou after the SARS outbreak.
But today dishes using the animals are still eaten in China.
The Wuhan seafood market at the center of the novel coronavirus outbreak was selling a lot more than fish. Cats and dogs, turtles, snakes, rats, raccoon dogs, porcupines and deer were just some of the species crammed inside cages, side by side with shoppers and store owners. Menus and signboards posted online also listed foxes, wolf cubs, monkeys and masked palm civets, among other animals. These wildlife markets are filthy, crowded places where animals are displayed alive in small cages. Once purchased, they are often slaughtered on site, creating not just a human health hazard but also an animal welfare nightmare. Many of the animals traded and killed at the markets are threatened with extinction. Unsurprisingly, somewhere in this mass of wildlife horror, scientists believe the novel coronavirus jumped to humans. The Wuhan market wasn’t unusual. Across China, hundreds of similar markets continue to exist.
“These animals have their own viruses,” said Hong Kong University Virologist Professor Leo Poon. “These viruses can jump from one species to another species, then that species may become an amplifier which increases the amount of virus in the wet market substantially.”
With many people visit markets selling these animals each day, the risk of the virus spreading to humans rises.
Poon was one of the first scientists to decode the SARS coronavirus during the epidemic in 2003. It was linked to civet cats kept for food in a Guangzhou market, but Poon said researchers still wonder whether SARS was transmitted to the cats from another species. “(Farmed civet cats) didn’t have the virus, suggesting they acquired it in the markets from another animal,” Poon says.
Annie Huang, a 24-year-old college student from southern Guangxi province, says she and her family regularly visit restaurants that serve wild animals. She said eating wildlife is considered good for your health, because diners also absorb the animals’ physical strength and resilience.
Exotic animals can also be an important status symbol. “Wild animals are expensive. If you treat somebody with wild animals, it will be considered that you’re paying tribute,” she says. A single peacock can cost as much as 800 yuan ($144).
She said she doubted the ban would be effective in the long run. “The trade might lay low for a few months ... but after a while, probably in a few months, people would very possibly come back again,” she says.
I have sympathy for populations in developing countries who must eat whatever they can to survive. If it’s us or them, then it’s us, where us is the human and them is the wild animal. This isn’t the case in the Western world or China. Chinese people, on the whole, aren’t in a situation where they must eat pangolins to survive. They are doing so for status, for arrogant, inhumane and indulgence reasons. All the unpleasant characteristics of the human race.
The Oral Stage In Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory
So why would humans want to put so many things, such as disease-ridden pangolins or bats in their mouths?
The explanation may lie in the Oral stage of Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
According to Freud, children go through a series of psychosexual stages that lead to the development of the adult personality. If certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixations can occur. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain "stuck" in this stage.
During the initial stage the developing infant’s main concerns are with oral gratification. For the newborn, the mouth is the all-absorbing organ of pleasure through gratifying activities such as tasting and sucking.
If fixation occurs at this stage, Freud believed the individual would have issues with among other things, eating.
Have many members of humanity not moved beyond Freud’s oral phase, living an infantile life, desiring nothing more than to consume all before them, to grab everything within reach and stick it in their mouths? Have many cultures collectively not graduated infancy?
The Chinese are mired in long-held fallacies about the benefits of eating exotic and often endangered animals for good health. The opposite has been proved the actual reality.
Many cultural beliefs are ignorant, childish, and evil. I would defy any social justice warrior/leftist/CNN "journalist" who decries the blaming or "stigmatization" of China for Covid-19 to do some research (Warning: Graphic Video) and sit through a few videos depicting China’s treatment of animals (Warning: Graphic Video) and then try to defend Chinese culture in terms of good and evil. True human evil exists. No matter how brainwashed, it shouldn’t be difficult to come down on the correct side of the argument.
Continued below...
Wild animals are expensive. If you treat somebody with wild animals, it will be considered that you’re paying tribute.
Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. Which dog wins? The one I feed the most.
Beef’s Role In Climate Change
While pangolin isn’t on the menu in Western countries, beef is. Beef also isn’t good for the planet. Beef is responsible for 41% of livestock greenhouse gas emissions, and that livestock accounts for 14.5% of total global emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas twenty-five times more potent than carbon dioxide—that cattle produce from both ends.
Forests are cleared to make way for cattle and the grain that cattle are fattened on, losing greater ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
A UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said changing our diets could contribute 20% of the effort needed to keep global temperatures from rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
The science seems to suggest that if you want a world for subsequent generations that isn’t devastated by global warming, Westerners must stop eating beef now.
The WHO: Meat Definitely Causes Cancer
Processed meats—such as bacon, sausages and ham—cause cancer according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Fifty grams of processed meat a day—less than two slices of bacon—increase the chance of developing colorectal cancer by 18%.
This isn’t the internet. Or your local homeopathic healer. Or your granny. It’s the World Health Organization. That’s the health organization of the World.
In their decision, the WHO placed processed meats into their Group 1 category of carcinogens, alongside items such as asbestos, tobacco smoke and plutonium.
Processed meat is in the same category as plutonium. If that doesn’t ruin your appetite for a Big Mac, I don’t know what will.
The WHO also said all red meats were “probably carcinogenic”—meaning a flesh fetish is a surefire path to a colostomy bag.
A vegan diet reduces the risk of many chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, including heart disease, cancer, obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes. But thanks to technology, it’s not even the only cruelty-free, risk-free option.
The Psychology Behind How People Eat Meat
People love to moan that vegans/vegetarians are annoying: research has shown that only drug addicts inspire the same loathing. Admittedly, the reputation of vegans isn’t helped by “soy boy” culture. The average soy boy being a vegan, a feminist, non-athletic, posts endless pictures posing with soy lattes on Instagram, reduces all arguments to labeling the opposition as ‘Nazis’ and will probably never marry or have sex as they’re unappealing to practically all members of the WOKE generation who created them.
Arnold Schwarzenegger who is “99% vegan” is probably a healthier and fitter example of the non-meat eater. And there are plenty of others: Joaquin Phoenix, Forest Whitaker, Alicia Silverstone, Paul McCartney, Moby, Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Emily Deschanel, Woody Harrelson…
Given that most of us would like to see less suffering in the world, it seems illogical that the least popular non-carnivores are those who cite animal cruelty as their reason. Why is there such resentment towards those who do something about it?
Psychologists are starting to understand why—and the reasons aren’t rational.
Hank Rothgerber, a social psychologist at Bellarmine University, Kentucky, thinks it all comes down to answering the question: how do we continue to eat meat?
“So basically we live in an era today, at least in the Western world, where there’s more and more evidence, more and more arguments, and more and more books about how eating meat is bad,” says Rothgerber. “But still our behavior hasn’t changed significantly.”
“So what I’m looking at is, how do people rationalize that, and still feel like they’re a good person?” To continue to eat meat, Rothgerber suggests, requires serious mental gymnastics. Luckily, our brains are good at protecting us from realities we don’t want to face—and there are many several psychological tricks at our disposal.
If you bring your fish and chips home to eat in front of your beloved goldfish, or tuck into a rabbit stew mere moments after cooing over cute bunny videos, you’re likely to encounter “cognitive dissonance”, which occurs when a person holds two incompatible views, and acts on one of them. Here, your affection for animals might clash with the idea that it’s fine to eat them.
Some psychologists call this the “meat paradox”, though it’s also been couched in stronger terms—as “moral schizophrenia”.
The tension that results can make us feel stressed, irritated, and unhappy. But instead of resolving it by changing our beliefs or behavior, it’s normal to blame these feelings on something else.
Rothgerber suggests we have strategies—around fifteen—which allow us to eat animals while avoiding facing up to the meat paradox. These include pretending that meat has no link to animals, only eating meat from animals which are humanely farmed, imagining that we eat less of it than we do, and willful ignorance about how it’s produced—assisted by the cartoons of happy farm animals that we’re brainwashed with from childhood.
Changing our diets could contribute 20% of the effort needed to keep global temperatures from rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels
A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
The Soy Boy: A poor poster child for veganism
Moral Schizophrenia Derailed By Vegetarians & Vegans
By their mere existence, vegetarians and vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance. And this makes people angry.
Philosophically eating meat is morally indefensible. We all inherently know this, but we don’t like to be reminded of personal moral bankruptcy. We don’t want to feel vegetarians/vegans are morally superior and stronger willed. Our fear of being judged inferior far outstrips any respect we have for their superior integrity.
The arguments for meat-eating are slim. Most people eat it because they’re told to. Because it’s there. Because they were born in a place that has meat dishes. The common excuse that it tastes good is another psychological “cognitive dissonance”. It isn’t particularly palatable in and of itself. That’s why it’s cooked, doused in flavors, sauces, spices and chemicals. Given the choice of consuming a raw slab of cow or a raw carrot, even a dedicated carnivore will go for the carrot every time. Most meat eaters even balk at a simple steak tartare on a menu (a raw meat dish made from minced beef or horsemeat).
Vegetarian and vegan lifestyles are criticized endlessly, but as the PETA tweet shows, carnivores cannot withstand the same level of critique. A point of difference for all anti-vegans out there is that vegans/vegetarians are unlikely to be responsible for a pandemic which could kill you or your loved ones. You aren’t at risk of getting a virus from a cucumber, unless you place it somewhere it shouldn’t be.
The opposite isn’t true. Carnivores in China have caused a pandemic which is killing people across the globe, particularly, but not only, the elderly.
Lab-Grown Meat Is The Future Of Our Planet
After the success of the Greggs vegan sausage roll in the UK and the juicy-yet-meatless Impossible Burger in the US and Europe, the next new food revolution coming to a plate near you is 3D-printed steaks and chicken thighs.
Printed meat may be on restaurant menus from 2021 as Israeli and Spanish firms offer realistic beef and chicken produced from plant protein or actual lab grown meat. And, within a few years, the printers are likely to be available to buy so that consumers can produce their own at home.
“Meat” is built up in layers by 3D printers until there’s a solid object—produced either from vegetable matter or from animal cells grown in a lab. The printer uses these raw ingredients, which come in a Nespresso-style cartridge, to create a steak or chicken fillet that looks, feels and tastes precisely like the real thing, and in the cases of cell-based, is the real thing.
“The biggest reason for going to alternative meat is because of the future of our planet,” says Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, co-founder and CEO of Israeli Redefine Meat. “We love meat but we don’t have enough resources for it. Cows require a lot of water, a lot of food and a lot of land, but we don’t have enough of any of these. We can recycle, drive electric cars, we can shower less, but these changes can’t compete with reducing consumption by one hamburger per week.”
Reducing beef production would cause a huge reduction in CO2 emissions and far less clearance of wild countryside for grazing land. Pork and fish will ultimately be added to the menu, reducing the need for pig-rearing or fishing.
Developing nations, where traditional meat is too expensive for most of the population, will also benefit.
To continue to eat meat, requires serious mental gymnastics. Luckily, our brains are good at protecting us from realities we don’t want to face
Violence begins at the dinner plate
As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.
Does China Have Comprehensive Public Liability Insurance?
Dr. Anthony Fauci said that other countries should speak out against the unsanitary sale of wildlife. “In other countries in which this is commonplace, I would like to see the rest of the world really lean with a lot of pressure on those countries that have that because what we’re going through right now is a direct result of that,” he said.
The world needs to go further.
For any company operating in the business world today, comprehensive public liability insurance against unforeseen accidents caused by their employees is mandatory.
Covid-19 was not only foreseeable; it was a certainty.
China is the global redneck drunk driver.
The world should indeed, send China the bill for the damage. Those who lost loved ones should sue China as if it were a company or individual.
And if the Chinese people desire to continue doing business with, and traveling the world, they must take measures to limit their country's future culpability in pandemics, and that means stopping animal abuse.
Ultimately capitalism is all about the bottom line, and even here the cost of continued animal exploitation is exorbitantly high. If you drink and drive, cause mayhem, death and trillions of dollars’ damage in the workplace, the world just can’t do business with you China.
A Society Built On Suffering
A pandemic sweeps the world; meat has been proven to be carcinogenic and proliferate mass animal misery while hi-tech alternatives exist—but still animal consumption continues. Animals do not want to be hurt and eaten, and most people no longer need to eat them.
Suffering permeates our society. Our lives depend on a never-ending bloodbath of evil (Warning: Graphic Video), daily trucks and trains taking animals to their own Holocaust. Our sustenance, our supermarket shelves, our lives are built on fear, pain and suffering inflicted on other species—whom we should be protecting.
If you believe in any kind of spirituality you have to ask, what kind of karma does that mean the human race is collectively soaking up?
Religion has always bred not only intolerance to people but also arrogance towards our place in the ecosystem. It does not provide moral guidance on how to treat other living creatures, in fact the opposite is true—the teachings of religion offer a moral wasteland. As Nietzsche noted: “In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.” I once had a fundamentalist Christian colleague who commented that: “I don’t give a shit about animals.” This passage from Genesis is probably the reason: “God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The Koran is likewise morally bankrupt when it comes to the sanctity of life. If people must go spirituality, Buddhism is probably the path of least harm. It’s hardly a surprise that some of the most violent societies—Islamic ones, for example, kill animals in the most violent way possible.
Violence begins on the dinner plate.
But it does not end there.
I watch as humans in face masks walk ghost-like around an empty city. I think of those dying in bleached rooms. The end of meat via animals is a discussion that’s timely, overdue and much too late, unfortunately, for many. Imagine what the world would be like if we were all vegans or vegetarians and it was instilled in our culture that taking all life is wrong. What would it mean for creating a color free world, if we were to eliminate speciesism? How would that affect crime, war, and politics in our society? In how we treat each other?
Eating animals could ultimately have apocalyptic consequences. Modelling by UK epidemiologists suggests that Covid-19 could inflict “in the order of 500,000 deaths in Great Britain, and 2.2 million in the US.” Professor Gabriel Leung, Chair of Public Health Medicine at Hong Kong, and an expert on coronaviruses, estimates that between 50% and 60% of the world could become infected. That places the figure of estimated deaths at between 45 and 65 million.
Here is the legacy of suffering and violence the carnivorous human race has built their world upon.
“If you were a man I going (sic) to smash your face,” says a shopper caught up in panic buying toilet paper to a female Coles supermarket employee in Australia.
An Italian nurse, Antonio De Pace, strangles his doctor girlfriend Lorena Quaranta in a fit of rage. “I killed her because she gave me coronavirus,” De Pace tells investigators after being taken into custody. He tests negative for the virus.
US sales of guns and ammunition soar amid coronavirus with long lines and massive rushes reported at gun stores across America. “Financial meltdown, pandemic, crime, politics… you throw it all into the pot, and you have one hell of a mess,” says one store owner.
One thing’s for sure, when the time comes, the human race will not go into oblivion holding hands and singing hymns.