________________
whose suffering is, to them, as significant as ours is to us, and miraculously escape the consequences of this violent behavior? As we enslave others, we become enslaved ourselves. The net is ever tightening, and the mass media lulls us into complacency, while the ruling elite scares us, and make us like infants scream and run to our parents for security and protection. The system infantilizes us by forcing us, like perennial infants, to drink milk our entire lives, to be taken care of by authoritarian medical and governmental forces, to seek happiness in consuming meaningless and distracting products and entertainment. Like infants, we are fed foods of violence without comprehension, and it never occurs to us to take responsibility for our violence toward others, to question the official stories that are drilled into us and that enslave and numb us and steal our freedom and sensitivity. Every human being—like every living being—is a manifestation of the light of eternal consciousness. Each of us has a purpose and we all deserve respect. We experience self-respect and are respected to the degree that we respect others. We celebrate lives of freedom to the degree that we allow others to celebrate their lives freely. Our routine daily violence toward millions of animals for food is enslaving us and destroying our freedom. The only lasting solution is veganism: More important are our efforts to deepen our understanding and practice of vegan living, of ahimsa (non-violence), which is the essence of veganism, and to advocate vegan living as earnestly and skillfully as we can. There is nothing we can do that's more essential for freedom, peace, sustainability, and for our health and happiness. We are all interconnected. What we do to others, we do to ourselves. We see it everywhere when we awaken from the mass hypnosis of the military-industrialmeat-medical-media complex of materialism and fear. The most effective way to resist the oppression of the established order, and work to transform it, is to embody and spread the vegan message. Without this our efforts are merely ironic
An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
171