I am tickled by the anxiety some of us feel at turning into our parents.
Even if your parents absolutely suck, you probably didn’t grow up with Mussolini as your father. And if you did, you might be the father of Alessandra Mussolini, and she was a model, actress, and eventually a member of European Parliament, so really, it might’ve worked out ok.
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Last week we talked about inheriting narratives. Today we’re going to talk about living them.
The journey is long. It’s a novel that we are the protagonist and author of. The kind of story we write is up to us… and some of us don’t see the pen in our hand-.. or we pretend not to.
But, storytelling is in our bones. Coded into our DNA which is a story in and of itself.
The thing that I believe separates humans from other animals is the depth of the tapestry we have woven in stories. Stories that allow us to work together as no creature born of this planet before us has. And we often don’t realize the power these collective stories hold over our ways of being, our minds, or even our lives.
We are not our stories. I think it’s important to recognize this. We can attach ourselves to stories and connect ourselves to stories… But to say that our story is who we are, is fundamentally inaccurate.
Some of us are so entrenched in our narratives, that we superimpose them onto the rest of our lives and the people in them.
“My first boyfriend was dishonest, so men are liars.”
“My last girlfriend was emotionally abusive, so I don’t emotionally open myself up to women.”
“My parents were fuck ups, people are incompetent and unreliable.”
When we feel invalidated and unseen in our lived realities, we can find ourselves feeling invalidated and unseen as people. We bring up the trauma telling whoever will listen-.. and sometimes those who refuse to listen. We walk ourselves down the same paths, refusing or unable to see the signs of danger or mark the path ourselves, occasionally even rejecting the warnings of those who have relevant experience. We force these experiences back into the forefront of our lives, seemingly until we ourselves can accept them as a reality, rather than the reality.
It is said that there is nothing new under the Sun. Maybe we can trust that there’s truth to that in our narratives... maybe we’ll have to see for ourselves.
I don’t believe we can have the answers for anyone but ourselves. And working to help other’s learn to find those answers within themselves is gift I want to give back to the world. Wherever you are in your journey, I hope we can all aspire to uncover the mysteries of our lives in a way that brings us closer to joy and takes us further suffering.
Buy my first book 17 Syllable Mischief:
https://amzn.to/36XeGYk
Become be a patron of my poetry:
My parents have not always had the best relationship with each other or with me or my sisters. I’ve often felt like the love of my father was conditional, because he was constantly threatening to disown us or cut us out of the will if we did something he didn’t like.
He may have been joking.
...Sometimes?
At least to my knowledge, none of us have been disowned or disinherited...
Yet.
But regardless of whether or not we internalized this, I think it’s important to explore how conditional love and acceptance have colored my life.
When I was younger, I started dating a beautiful french woman. I had a bunch of really dramatic thoughts about the nature of our star-crossed love. How cruel it was for the universe to cause me to meet someone so special when I was blessed with so many opportunities in a country she couldn’t stay in.
Alas.
Some of those thoughts were full of a poignant, youthful angst… But some of them reinforced narratives that lead to a lot of unhealthy behavior. For example, one time, in the middle of the night I bought a ticket to France to go be with her to prove my love in a whirlwind of passionate, Parisian romance. I didn’t tell my family what I was doing or where I was going. I just left.
But that’s not the story I’m going to tell you.
What I’m going to tell you about is the story I told myself about love… because it was the underlying cause of EVERYTHING else.
You see, I’d been working on understanding the concept of “unconditional love” by studying theology and philosophy.
I didn’t realize this at the time, but I was trying to find a way to love everyone perfectly. And if I know anything now, it might be that perfectionism can be one of the quickest ways to discover the potential for misery on any given journey. At this point in my life, I knew two things about love:
Love is more than a feeling
Sometimes, loving someone isn’t enough to make a relationship happen.
I was about to learn that loving someone wasn’t enough to make a relationship work either.
But I thought it was. Sweet summer child.
You see, one of the ways I’d learned to think about love was in “love languages.” I naively thought that perhaps if you loved someone, you could simply learn to speak their love language to them and your relationship would work. Especially if they were willing to speak yours back to you. I’d gotten it in my head for example, that if a person loved quality time, being endlessly available was being endlessly loving.
You may have noticed, but I’ve since come to believe that this is not correct.
Y’see, at that point, I thought love was about making other people feel good. My mind had equated love with giving people what they wanted. Or at least, what I thought they wanted. And the more I could give them what they wanted, the better of a match we were for each other.
What I learned through this experience, was that giving people what they want, doesn’t always make them feel good, but it can sure as hell make them feel validated.
And you have to be careful what you validate.
My friend Sarah pointed out that you can’t always know what you’re validating until you’ve spent extensive amounts of time with the other person.
Something I learned from this experience of trying to please people, was that unconditional love doesn’t mean:
Not having boundaries
It doesn’t mean not saying “no”
and it sure as hell doesn’t mean the people you love will feel improved by or grateful for what you do, even if they ask you for it.
If you’re expecting your love to transform someone into their best selves and make them grateful to you for seeing all that they could be, think again.
The reason I think this story is important, is because the relationship issues you have seen modeled in your youth are often the ones you attempt to solve in your life.
The narrative that I acquired from my childhood, was that a relationship was an unbreakable commitment. I learned that love meant being endlessly giving or-.. in less euphemistic terms, a people pleaser. I learned that saying no when a person had an emotional need was always a refusal to love them.
It took me living through these experiences to really understand how hard it can be to truly see what kinds of choices we’re making from inside of situations. How hard it can be to extract ourselves from these situations once we feel beholden to the bonds we’ve made. Love turns into a game of zero sums and sunken costs. But most importantly, I feel like I’ve learned that we can’t always trust ourselves to know what kind of scenario we’re in until we are truly present.
On this journey of self-love, I’ve realized that having no idea how to love myself wasn’t remedied by losing myself in other people. It’s only been through nurturing a desire to grow, and empowering myself, that I’ve learned what I feel helps me grow. I’ve learned who actually cares about that growth and supports it, which makes me feel loved.
Here’s a link to my first book if you’re interested in supporting my work:
https://amzn.to/36XeGYk
I started to get ahead of myself. Writing this blog I’m tempted to break into a run before I really get into walking:
I wrote a whole post today that was about narratives about Self-Love. What I re-learned in the writing of this post, was that there’s a whole foundation you have to build when you’re talking about these things.
Self-love is a journey
The journey is long. It’s a novel that we are the protagonist and author of. The kind of story we write is up to us. Some of us want to pretend we don’t see the pen in our hand.
But we can’t. Storytelling is in our bones. Coded into our DNA which is a story in and of itself.
The thing that I believe separates humans from other animals is the depth of the tapestry we have woven in stories. Stories that allow us to work together as no creature born of this planet before us has.
So here we go.
A lot of things we believe about reality, were determined before we were 8 years old most likely. Whether or not we are worth loving is a story we learned to tell ourselves about ourselves. We saw it reflected in the way our parents loved themselves and the way that they loved us.
As social creatures, we’re coded to learn from each other. With each other. About each other. And we determine who we are from there.
And so the next time you hear from me, I’ll be talking about one version of the story I told myself, and why.
I’d love to hear in the comments about a way you’ve decided to show love to yourself. What it is you do and why?
I’ll go first. My personal favorite rule is that I don’t do shame, and I allow myself to accept that I am capable of anything. This allows me to grow, but also to decide which things I want to move towards and away from in life without judgment of myself. I try to extend that space to others as well.
I think it’s important to remember these things, and to share them with others. My blog is a place for sharing our stories, hopefully so we can write better ones.
If you’d like to support the blog or me as a writer, here’s a link to a copy of my first book of poetry:
https://amzn.to/36XeGYk
Importance of Self love cannot be denied.
Self-love is something that is cultivated as one experiences themselves in reference to others. The experience of self-love is often tied to our experience of worthiness.
The idea of worthiness, that we are(or are not) capable of and deserving of success, is actually taught to us socially, at a very young age. We learn to hold beliefs about our worthiness as true in our childhood, and this is then reinforced by our bias. Affirming our realities is human. But sometimes we affirm realities without bothering to question whether they’re correct or serving us, and this can make us feel like victims when they are not.
We learn to hold perspectives around what each moment in our lives means. If you are not questioning the meaning of an experience, you likely have already formed a belief around it, and your bias is at work affirming that belief.
Feeling worthy as a human being has a direct effect on our ability to manifest the reality that we want to live in. When we believe we deserve to suffer, we continue to engage in behavior that reinforces that belief. When we believe we deserve happiness, we engage in behavior that moves us towards that experience.
Here are list of 5 reasons to start practicing self-love to increase our sense of worthiness:
When you develop the ability to love yourself, it’s much harder to take truly take things personally. With self-love comes the ability to validate the self. If you lack the ability to validate yourself, when someone says something that conflicts with your worldview, it’s not an invitation to examine your beliefs, but an occasion to defend them.
Excessive force not required.
You don’t have the luxury of feeling secure in your value/correctness/etc. and so you have to re-establish security and perhaps even dominance by invalidating what the offending party has said.
If you’ve ever watched two ignorant people argue about something neither of them has a proper understanding of, you’ll know what I mean.
In line with not taking things personally, you’ll also develop the ability to not make things personal. People who love themselves rarely get off on taking gold at the trauma olympics.
They may enjoy watching though
For many people, self-validation was achieved before it needed to consciously be considered. Some of us picked this skill up after being told to believe in ourselves by mentors or guardians. Some of us got this from fictional characters telling other fictional characters we related to that they were capable of anything.
For a lot of us, I’m pretty sure it was Hagrid.
Some of us didn’t get this at all.
And it shows.
Self-validation, I’ve discovered, is actually a direct byproduct of self-love. Though you can experience validation without love, it’s really hard to truly experience love without an experience of validation. Since many of our ways of being are created in our youth, understanding that you are loved by your parents gives you the sense that you do not need to seek validation from others, though you may enjoy experiencing it. For most of us, strong awareness of self love generally guides us away from engaging with relationships where others might attempt to manipulate us through our feelings of worthiness.
Boundaries are important people.
Love often looks like people respecting your boundaries, especially when they are actually reasonable, easy to respect boundaries.
I need to point this out, because sometimes people will let others violate their boundaries because it feels good to be liked.
Validation: It’s a hell of a drug.
“Well it’s not about being liked” you say?
Perhaps it’s more insidious and it actually feels scary to incur the wrath of the person who is not respecting your boundaries. Sometimes you just don’t want to be bitched out by your roommate, for not letting them complain to you about their very serious, not at all self-inflicted life problems. But sometimes it’s much more serious and if you’re in that situation seek help.*
As you grow in self love, you’ll likely find that you don’t allow people who won’t respect your boundaries into your life. You might even find it difficult or even impossible to create attachments to them regardless of your ability to connect with them.
People responding positively to you does not equate to them loving you. People spending time with you is not a validation of who you are as a person. Just because someone is speaking your love language, doesn’t mean they’re actually saying, “I love you.”
When you love yourself, you love others with more integrity.
Can we love other people without loving ourselves? Sure, but the quality of that love will be diminished.
Perhaps diminished isn’t the correct word... Personally though, I would say that if you don't love yourself but you're trying to love others, the quality of your love is going to be lacking consistency. It damages the integrity of your love for others when they experience the difference between what you preach and what you practice. People may see this as unawareness or obliviousness at best and hypocritical or perhaps even manipulative at worst. Beyond that, it's going to distort your ability to see love, because of what you believe about the practices of others, through the lens of yourself.
Whatever integrity you lack, you will likely expect others to lack as well. What you see in others is often a reflection of yourself consciously or not and the sources of those perceptions can be extremely complicated.
When you see the beauty of unconditional self love in yourself, you can perceive the beauty of that journey being taken in another. It might be intimidating but it won’t be threatening.
Something you’ll recognize sooner or later on this journey, is that all of the things you say to yourself and do to yourself, both great and awful, you are capable of doing to the people you love. If you can make excuses for being cruel to yourself, what’s stopping you from being awful to the people you love?
While the rest of the list items are invaluable, I think my favorite take away from self love is direction.
Finding self love allows you to look at yourself honestly and see if you’re really pushing yourself to grow or not. It gives you a willingness to learn the truth about it at the very least. You can see where your boundaries are. You can tell whether you’re growing and expanding into your potential and embracing greater joys.
Sparkly magic sword not included.
You can also see if you’re hiding from growth. Shrinking away from opportunities because you see them as threats rather than chances to test yourself and who you’re becoming. To see the difference between who you are now and who you’ve been before.
*I’m not blaming you for sticking around if the relationship you’re in has turned abusive, but this is actually pretty serious and you should likely go to someone for help:
There’s a link for all sorts of help when multiple kinds of relationships have turned abusive. There is no shame in seeking help. It is an act of courage.
Do you go on walks?
If you do, have you ever had one of those epiphanies, that hits you mid-stride and makes you go, “Daaaaaang! How did I not SEE this!?” on a crowded city street, causing passersby to pause, rapt in anticipation, awaiting the radiance of your glorious revelation?
I had one of those moments the other day. I actually try to have one of those moments everyday. I even rehearse the delivery of said epiphany, which I actually had several weeks earlier, while sitting inside and working on my 3rd undelivered TED talk.(ask me about them)
I jest.
Kinda.
Anyway, you might have figured it out by now, but I enjoy going on walks when I need to think. Sometimes I’m trying to clear my head… But sometimes I’m just getting some alone time and a change of scenery, then I’ll be struck by an idea.
The realization that led to this particular instance of “Eureka!” screaming was that after 20 years of meditation, I’ve found unconditional joy:
I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain unconditional love to other people... But what I’m realizing is that I’ve actually been trying to work out how to achieve something greater.
Peace of mind.
And it wasn’t until the other day that I realized that peace of mind came from self-actualization. I found it after building a foundation of unconditional love, learning to define success for myself, and learning to see myself as something beyond my body, achievements, and even my mind.
It’s not that I’m walking around with all of the right answers. That’s a preposterous proposition(probably). It’s that I’ve learned to walk through each moment with all of the right questions-.. for myself.
And I genuinely believe that we all can get there if we’re willing to take a little time every now and then. Some of us will need more than others. WAY more. And some of us will need a little less, perhaps none at all.
But I’m going to give you what I’ve got.
In the mean time, I’d love to know what questions you’re asking yourselves right now. The ones that are getting you through the hard times AND the ones that are bringing them on if you feel comfortable sharing.
Guys.
It’s come to my attention that I should never have deleted my blog about self-love.
What is love?
A feeling? An action? A state of mind? Is love all? Is God love?
This a question that each person can only truly answer for themselves.
I realized at some point I was getting tired of trying to explain what I believe love is. My mother told me I need to stop arguing with people about things, so I decided to write a blog so that if someone wanted to argue with me, they could just go read my blog and leave their argument in the comment section. I don’t have time to catch people up on everything I’ve meditated on, thought, or read about love in the last 1/4 century of living…
So here’s my answer:
For me it’s been a developing aspect of my existence, until it became the lens through which I see my existence. But now I believe that in my best moments, it’s really the fabric of my existence.
To really grasp this, you’d have to understand how I see myself I guess. And maybe we’ll get there.
I promised on twitter that I would write about love until there was nothing left to say. And as long as it feeds my spirit to do so, I guess that’s what I’m going to be up to.
Maybe I can’t transmit fully the secret of my endless joy, but it seems like something worth documenting for those who need to know someone is out there who might be entertaining similar ideas.
I have a whole theory about love as unconditional in it’s purest state. About how love exists everywhere we can look for it. About how it comes in many incomplete forms and conditional forms that enslave us, but how when we truly access unconditional love, it is transformative.
A love that is always there to support and uplift us.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, perhaps you should come back.
Success is being the most you version of you that you can find. That’s right, success is all about you.
Making people comfortable is not your responsibility.
Making yourself comfortable isn’t even your responsibility.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes, you can be responsible for making others comfortable. And being comfortable is fine, sometimes. Comfort is for healing. To live your life in a state of seeking comfort is to avoid growth. Discomfort is for growth. If you’re busy making the people around you comfortable, they probably aren’t growing. Your relationship with anyone that you are trying to make comfortable or appease is probably not growing.
And if you’re busy trying to make yourself comfortable, you’re probably not growing.
Think about a manager/employee relationship:
If your boss is giving you more work than you think you can handle, you have to grow your bandwidth to handle it or grow your network to disperse the work. If you’re pushing your boss to improve the quality of their work, they will likely have to grow as a leader.
If you have a boss who doesn’t give you much to do, you probably don’t need to develop your skills. And if you never push your boss to improve their managerial style, they may not see a need to develop as a leader.
Sure, you both might develop eventually. But you’d have to push yourselves to do more than what is comfortable. And while other people might perceive this as trying too hard, it’s not your job to make them comfortable. It is not your responsibility to make them look good.
It’s also not your responsibility to seek growth.
Wait-.. What?
You heard me right. It’s not your responsibility to seek growth.
Seeking growth, is a choice. One that you commit to. Your whole life is this way. It’s made of choices. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. I’m here to remind you that you have endless options as far as how to do that. I’m not here to judge the choices you make, I’m here to help support you in making the ones you’re going to be happy with.
You don’t have to argue with me about how you live your life. Cause I’m not telling you what to do. If you’re trying to argue right now, you’re justifying your choices to yourself, not me. And if you’re offended, you can always leave.
For those of your who do feel personally responsible, I’ve got an important reminder.
You don’t have to shrink yourself to fit into your environment anymore. We aren’t limited to the small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers we were born into anymore. We don’t have to cut away the bits of ourselves that don’t fit with the tribes culture in order to not be exiled.
Now we can find a bunch of internet misfits with the same interests as us. We can exile ourselves. Sounds trendy right? We can become part of small tribes of digital nomads who wander the world through screens to take on challenges and connect with things we actually care about. Exiling yourself to find a new tribe is weirdly one of the more successful strategies a person can adopt in this day and age.
Look at the people flocking to Vishen Lakaihani, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Tony Robbins. Today, you can find the ideologies that fit with you and a whole slew of people who are willing to support you. Today, you can essentially find and create your own culture. You can search for mentors that have achieved what you would like to achieve from anywhere you can connect to the internet.
If you’re reading this, you likely have never been more free as a human being than you are in this current moment. And sure I can think of a few exceptions, but even then, the only limits that matter are the ones you decide matter. Creating happiness for yourself is an art that you as an individual must decide to master.
So go. Find happiness. Invite everyone you can.
The actions of everyone matter when it comes to making the world a better place. So help me. I’m just a poet.
My book:
https://www.amazon.com/SYLLABLE-MISCHiEF-George-Akolade-Coker-ebook/dp/B07HBPV1KM
My Poetry Collective:
Just me doing a wheel pose on a bridge. Nothing to see here.
While I have you here, at the risk of accidentally writing waaaay too much for a monday morning coffee break:
When I say, "all data is qualitative" I do not mean to suggest that it is invalid to say some data is quantitative. Math exists beyond humanity. Math is part of the natural order of reality such that it can be recognized by nature.
When I say, "all data is qualitative" what I'm actually expressing is a working theory that due to the subjective nature of human cognition and the fundamental functions of the amygdala to choice architecture, no data can be rationally executed on by a human mind without the weight of emotional preference. Whether your preference is efficiency, optimization, fairness, convenience, hedonism, etc. there is always some underlying emotional preference that allows you to choose.
If you keep a human brain functional, but impair or neutralize the amygdala, decisions cannot be made "logically". For example, a preference for numbers, be they high or low, must exist for a person to be able to make a choice based on empirical preferences.
So, even in computing we run into the same problem. Computers are coded by human minds so any "choice" a "computer" makes must be first run through the choice architecture dictated by a human. Even if a computer makes the decision algorithmically for the sake of efficiency, a human first had a preference.
So. Someone read my last blog post and told me that it was a really “motivating” experience. I chose to only highlight that part, because I don’t want to sound dramatic.
(but honestly, drama is great for the shareability so maybe I’ll embrace the possibility.)
I hate being motivational:
It’s not that I’m not grateful for the emotional responses that the ideas I share with a person can trigger. Far from it, I actually am really struggling with the idea that motivation actually doesn’t generally get much accomplished.
For example:
Someone motivated to make a change as it relates to women’s rights might show up to a march one time. Sure they come out in force and they show support and it helps to make people feel like there are people who care about the cause… But on a daily basis, how many people continue to be determined to be a champion of the rights of women.
How many of us know which people are actually working to undo legislation that harms female agency? How many people are reaching out to the trans community to ask how they can use their voice to make their issues heard? How many of us are making sure that we work on our own biases? When we encounter sexist rhetoric or behavior in media do we address it with our friends, family and children?
I’m really trying to make sure that the way that I go about my life shows my determination to contribute positively to that which I am passionate about and that for those issues that I care about, but cannot make time or space for, that I at the very least do not knowingly become an obstacle to their progress.
Like I said before, I hate being motivational. But only in the circumstance that I create motion rather than progress. If I’m going to be motivational, I want to be motivational at the time where it’s the tipping point into a commitment. Where it gets the movement to critical mass and change becomes inevitable.
If you walked away from this feeling motivated, I don’t think I’ve done my job. If you’ve walked away certain that you want to recommit to your passions in life or determined to find the things that burn you up enough action is the only response you can fathom, then I’ve done my job. I’m here to spark determination.
I’ve been feeling a little conflicted for a while about something that seems pretty simple to most of the people around me, and I feel like I need to get this off my chest. Alright, here we go:
I haven’t been capable of committing to veganism.
And I think that I need to say something about this, that might seem a little controversial to my vegan friends and like a “no-brainer” to the meat eaters out there.
Eating only plants did not make me a better person.
But before anyone high fives or boos, I’d like to say that I’m absolutely certain that my puzzling over this definitely has made me a better person.
I’ll put it like this:
Eating meat in and of itself, is not evil. And eating only plants is not inherently good. Are our cats evil because they eat meat? Are the termites in our yard good because they eat wood?
In yoga, there’s this philosophy of ahimsa or “non-violence”
I think it’s a really cool idea. And while I would love to live a life violence free, it’s not because I actually am a paragon of peace with some visionary plan to orchestrate a world order free from destruction. In fact, I think that violence is inherent to existence, necessary and in some cases wonderful.
Violence is an aspect of change. Creation, destruction, nurturing, violence, are all part of the greater concept of change. Whether I am doing violence to a medium to create art, or nurturing a rebellion to destroy autocratic order, the reality of what I’m generating is change. And what you call that change is based on your perception of it.
So when I look at the reality of eating meat, I recognize that as a human being, I in part owe my ability to fathom the world as I do directly to the advent of cooking. Cooking food made digestion less energy intensive and as a result we got shorter intestines and larger brains.
Brains large enough to wonder whether or not their existence is worthwhile.
This is important. Because it’s that very ability to get existential about the current world order that I believe is the root of my “betterment” in this regard.
You see, I am capable of thinking about my food sources in a way that another animal might not. But I also am capable of thinking about my food sources in a way that another animal doesn’t actually need to.
Lion’s don’t have to wonder if it’s good to eat a gazelle. It’s the lion’s place in the food chain to cull the gazelle herds. It doesn’t run after the strongest healthiest gazelles and kill with reckless abandon. They work together to hunt what is convenient to hunt, when they are hungry. And they hunt what they have to hunt when they are desperate. They live their lives inherently in balance with the ecosystems they belong to. The gazelle doesn’t exist to feed the lion any more than the grass exists to feed the gazelle, anymore than the death and waste of lions and gazelles exists to feed the grass. They are all interdependent parts of an ecosystem.
The thrill of the hunt and the rush of survival. The microscopic melee of organochemical decomposition reminding us of the inevitable: being reclaimed physically to fuel the next generations of life. The pain and the fear which salt the caramel of gratitude. All of this is life, and in its own way, all of this is beautiful.
Human’s however have perverted this balance. Not with the eating of the animals, but with the growing of animals specifically to be eaten. Chickens, cows, pigs, and lambs are not herd animals living as part of an ecosystem. They are no longer creatures we respect and have a symbiotic relationship with. They’re protein sources we parasitically exploit for convenience. We’ve built a fortress for the mind to protect us from the reality of violence and consumption and our own place as hunters and hunted. It shields us from the personal experience of responsibility for the death of another to perpetuate our own survival.
The chicken now exists for 3 weeks after birth, subsequently packaged or precooked for my consumption. Scavenging a chicken is not evil. Hell, killing a chicken is not evil. But taking a living creature and denying it freedom, and then exploiting it unto death, I’ll let you decide.
Eating meat is not cruel. But industry, which turns the living into commodities to be used and tossed aside… Which has worked men, women, and children to the bone and rent limbs from their bodies. Which exploited the immigrants and the impoverished until we got sick of seeing it at home and shipped that violence overseas. That is the real cruelty.
For those of us who feel like simply not eating meat exonerates us, I have to say it’s really not that simple. Farming as an industry brings migrants here to work and poisons and breaks their bodies before throwing them back across the border. The industry of farming and agriculture systematically destroyed small farms and as a result family’s livelihoods and legacies stretching back for generations.
If you somehow are thinking, “People aren’t animals(you’d be wrong by the way) and that’s a different story(which it’s not by the way)” then you still have another thing coming. The meat industry might be killing animals who only exist to be exploited, which we can agree is a complete mess if we have a conscious… But farmers clearing forest to make fields destroys habitats. And farmers culling “pests” which are just creatures that compete with humans for food sources indiscriminately slaughter wildlife like bunnies, foxes, and rodents, who are drawn to these hyper-bountiful food sources like sailors to sirens. Except they’re not looking for a good time, they just trying to get lunch. And instead of rocks it’s bullets and poison and electrical fencing.
This might be somehow redeemable by the booming human population and the fact that people need to eat… But the amount of food waste we generate in the US alone is 30 - 40% of the food we produce. And most of it is produce. Combined with the reality that roughly 10% of the population is experiencing food insecurity points to a greater problem.
It’s not simply that industry is wasting food and harming people. It’s that those of us who aren’t aren’t going hungry don’t or won’t see the harm.
For me I wish I could be satisfied to just “go vegan” or simply have the money to be “source conscious” and only buy from companies that treat living creatures like they matter, but currently I’m stuck on the fact that people are so busy arguing about what animals have the right to eat meat that I can’t have any meaningful conversations about improving the overall systems in place for feeding people.
I can’t call veganism a step in the right direction anymore than only eating meat you’ve hunted and consuming it nose to tail. I would like to hold the degree of cosmic certainty that others I spend time with seem to have, but I am not the arbiter of justice. And justice usually just comes down to what whoever is in charge deems to be fair.
While I would love to have a solution, I don’t. The meat and dairy industries are a firmly ingrained part of our economy, our culture and our ecology. When food is part of your culture, the industry that serves it, is a part of your culture, too. It is enabled by it. The meat and dairy industries create a culture of food cruelty and that’s something all of us must accept. Agriculture, too, in its own way.
This brings up another point. While eating meat in America often leaves me really disappointed with the levels of cruelty we enact en masse and thoughtlessly, I know it’s not the case in every part of the world. And while all of the world has its own problems, the idea that the American meat industry’s problems are shared by every meat producer on the planet creates a willfully obtuse position. Even amongst companies in the United States practices are not equal. There are real people, working to create change, little by little. And if people are going to keep eating meat, those companies need support, too.
And if you want sustainable change, that’s the most viable option. If you can see a better one, illuminate me.
Sure we could just collapse the American meat industry. But there would be consequences.
The unemployment and anger around meat access, would likely be the first thing people think of as problems. The unemployment would be out of sight out of mind for most, but the meat shortages would be incredibly personal. The culinary world might go into shock. Perhaps there would be a heightened demand for meat alternatives, but the infrastructure could collapse under the pressure. Corporations serviced by the meat industry would likely collapse. Pet food would collapse. The second wave of unemployment from all of the companies and restaurants closing. All of this would likely be felt before the eventual consequences of releasing multiple billions of animals with no survival skills/instincts into the wild. What would that do to the global ecology? I could do the research, but I really don’t feel the need to pursue that. I’m sure the answer is, “it’d be terrible in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.”
The best I’ve come up with is this:
Figuring out how to draft bills incentivizing city planners to create large organic urban greenhouse farms that pay out a stipend/crops to locals who come to help tend them, and that turn local food waste into fertilizer. Decentralizing our food production seems like a safe way of creating more avenues to shifting away from the current system.
If you know anyone who might be interested in this, please, send them my way.
One of the main problems of human thinking is that what has not yet been experienced is often treated as outside of the realm of possibility. And that which has been experienced can easily become accepted. That is to say:
We’re often unwilling to pursue a possibility without the promise of a payout, and we’re often willing to live with a problem, simply because it doesn’t seem “unreasonable.”
So I need to create new possibilities that make some of our currently acceptable problems “unreasonable.”
Also, I’m trying to figure out what I can do besides sip Lipton or eat popcorn 🍿 when people start arguing about eating animals.
The actions of everyone matters when it comes to making the world a better place. So help me. I’m just a poet.
