Some thoughts on life, veganism and the world around us

Some thoughts on life, veganism and the world around us.

I've been vegan for 11 years now. 

Veganism isn't the answer to all the world's problems. It's a good place for western civilization to start finding some answers though. 

I'm more concerned with the politics of food distribution than if your Dad cooked a free range chicken last night.

I'm more concerned with the cruelties of dairy production than if my fries were fried in the same oil as a piece of chicken (although food born illnesses are never fun and this would increase my chances...).

It's not the individual chicken/pig/fish/cow's life that I care about as much as the industrialization of their lives and the industrialization of their deaths that concerns me and should concern us all. 

Pet stores are the same thing as slaughter houses. 

Zoos, circuses and water parks with animal attractions are all the same thing.
When people steal animals from their mothers and lock them away in isolation, they are destroying life, whether they want to face this fact or not.
There have been too many psychological experiments in history that have proven that animals go insane in isolation, whether they are fed or not, whether they have water or not, whether they are "loved" or not, and whether we believe they can go insane or not.
I do not believe in a god that gave man dominion over animals.
Humans are animals, sometimes the most forgetful of all animals.
We've created a world in which we've isolated ourselves from everything we depend on to live.
We've created an idea that we are the center of everything.
Natural selection no longer applies to us.
There are animals that communicate in ways humans will never understand. Yet we blindly say they don't use communication.
There are fish who communicate with electricity (Knife Fish), but we say they can't communicate.
Some animals have no sight or hearing but are more in-tune with their surroundings than we are.
Most non-human animals are more in tune with the rhythms of the Earth than we will ever understand. But we deny this and treat them like biological machines.


I recently watched a documentary about Orca whales who live at Sea World and other amusement water parks. The trainers loved them. They loved the trainers. They had beautiful relationships. The whales were/are basically slaves who perform for fish and the continued affection of the trainers, but the isolation and frustration makes them insane. And they kill people every once in a while. They are 8000- 12000 pound animals who grow to 20-25 feet long, and live in swimming pools their whole lives. But we think it's tragic when they kill people. These animals have more complex emotions and social lives than we have or can understand and we enslave them and lock them away in these swimming pools and we swim with them and then call it tragedy when one of them kills one of us.
We think we appreciate life. We cringe when we watch an animal kill another animal to eat while we enslave animals for entertainment and profit. We call Zoos educational while we learn nothing from these animals we slowly drive to insanity as every natural instinct they possess is frustrated in every waking moment they live.
While watching this movie I couldn't help but think about why we would allow these beautiful creatures to be treated the way they were/are treated. To be bought and sold, to be held captive and in isolation. But it's always money. Crowds line up and pay for tickets to come to the park to see these whales up close. To see the whales interact with people. To get splashed by these whales. The whales lives after the show don't matter. How the whales could actually be happy in the pools they live doesn't matter. Why an animal who has killed 3 people could still be used in shows doesn't matter. What matters in the end is money.
We cringe when we see the Orca kill a penguin. We cringe when we see the Orca kill a human. We don't cringe when we see the Orca jump out of the water and splash people in the stadium seating surrounding the pool, and wave on it's side to a cheering crowd of smiling children. Why? Because that's what we paid to see.

You don't have to be vegan or vegetarian or an animal rights activist to understand how wrong it is to support this kind of exploitation. Or to respect these animals enough to not give your money to the people who profit from their captivity. When I was a child my family went to the circus when it was in town a few times. We sat in the crowded arena and squinted to see the animals do the unnatural things that these shows sell us as entertainment. We ate sugary food and bought souvenirs and we stared in astonishment at the elephants. Years later my high school art class went to the zoo to draw animals, I wasn't vegan then but I didn't want to go. I didn't want to support the animals being held captive, but I went, I sat in the feeding area where an elephant was contained. There was a thick glass barrier that separated me and the elephant, and I talked to it. It might have heard me, might not have. But I sat there and watched it and talked to it. It was beautiful and i felt sorry for it. Years later I marched with a silent protest as Ringling Bros marched their elephants from the Norfolk Scope to a corner of West Ghent to force them into their traveling containers. This was the closest I've ever come to elephants. It was sad. Watching the trainers yell at them and force them to hold onto the elephant in front's tail and keep up with the elephant in front of them as the whole amoeba of huge animals/trainers and protesters moved at almost a running speed through the streets of Norfolk. Just sad. Animals can't be happy living in confinement just like we can't be happy living in confinement. How we confine humans as the ultimate punishment for crimes but think animals can be treated worse in the same situation and not lash out and kill will always amaze me.

Assaulted by a pregnant smoker.

Today i was assaulted twice by a pregnant woman with road rage, once with her vehicle, and then again with a lit cigarette. I was waiting at the red light to turn left onto Olney from Colley, the light turned green, I got my right foot in my toeclip and started pedaling, the car to my right (that was in the straight lane) started coming over into my lane, startling me as I looked and yelled "JESUS F%CKING CHRIST!" and moving over to the very inside of the lane, the woman driving the car yelled "I'M TURNING!" and I replied with "THAT WAS A STRAIGHT LANE!" Which evidently sent her into a rage. She started screaming things I couldn't understand, I heard a pretty clear "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!" and I yelled back " THAT WAS A F#CKING STRAIGHT LANE!!! WHAT THE F%CK ARE YOU DOING?!?!" She sped up cutting further into the lane and eventually 3/4 of the way through the turn forced her way past me and slammed her brakes kind of forcing me to run into the side of her car, I don't recall hitting her car hard but she was screaming at me when this happened and the spark inside my heart had now lit a raging fire. I was furious. She threw her lit cigarette towards my face while continuing to scream about me being in the way and that I needed to "GET THE F#CK OUT OF THE ROAD!!!" as I looked back to see if I had my u-lock, which was in my bag out of reach (probably a good thing..) I punched her car as she started to speed away after throwing the cigarette and then the car jerked to a stop again, her bf jumped out of the passenger side of the car and came around the car to try to instigate a fight with me, screaming something about me "trying to put my hands on" his "pregnant girl"... ( I thought I had just almost been run over by her...)  The thought of this was just ridiculous. This guy was trying to fight me after his girlfriend tried to run me over and then threw a lit cigarette at me. If I could take it all back (wouldn't that always be nice! Fucking hindsight...), I would've stopped, walked away from him, and called the police. After the short shouting match with the bf and him getting back in the car still yelling and talking shit as they sped away, the driver that was in the car behind me pulled up and asked if I was okay, told me she had their license plate number, saw the whole thing and asked if i wanted to call the police. She said "they just assaulted you and I saw it", "she hit you with her car! That's assault!" At that point it hadn't really occurred to me that the driver hit me, but she totally did! She cut her car into my lane and slammed the brakes turning into me and my arm hit her car when I was trying to stop. Which I now have a scrape/lump on and my wrist is really sore, more than likely partly due to me punching the car, which is just really dumb. I'm really not proud that I punched the car or that I even shouted at the driver to begin with. The whole situation could've been avoided if I'd just grabbed my brakes and let this pregnant smoker into my lane and just shook my head and smiled as she continued on her way living her life with Marky Mark's little hotheaded cousin. But I told the witness/driver that it was fine, I wasn't hurt and that they needed to just cool off. She said "okay, I wrote down their license plate number anyway". I thanked her and turned at the next turn and started pondering whether or not I should keep riding... And how strange it was that I usually keep my u-lock in my basket but had put it in my messenger bag just a few minutes before this happened. How much worse this situation could've ended. It already ended bad: a shameful shouting match with a douche bag (was he wearing a Tapout shirt? I wish i'd taken note of the t-shirt he was wearing!) who wanted to fight me, my wrist hurts enough that I can't comfortably play my guitar right now, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to lift heavy things at work tomorrow and how long it's gonna take my wrist to feel better. I don't feel like a victim, even though I was technically hit by a car earlier. I feel like a jerk for losing my cool in that situation. I've got a lot of experience with intersection shouting matches. If you added up all the honks that have been aimed at me, you'd probably have a couple hours of honking. I've had things thrown at me, had close calls with HRT buses that have stopped me in my tracks to call them and report the driver immediately for "trying to kill me!", and have been told to "GET ON THE FUCKING SIDEWALK!!!" more times than 106.9 The Fox has played Freebird. My point is that I should be used to this by now. I've gone through long phases of smiling at people and/or waving at cars that honk at me to let them know it didn't bother me. I've tried hard, really hard to not let assholes bother me when I'm riding my bicycles. And I need to try harder...

   On a related note, almost every time I mention "almost getting hit" by a car, someone makes the point that people on bicycles do dumb things alot and that they need to play by "the same rules" and they don't. I always find this interesting and discouraging, as i see no connection in these two things. (I'm not going to get into the idea of bicycle riders being safer getting through traffic intersection before cars start to move or the politics of inertia and it's obvious advantages to motorists and disadvantages to cyclers)  A cycler waiting for a traffic signal to change and then almost getting killed by an angry driver does not make me think about people doing dumb things on bikes. A person on a bike throwing caution to the wind and riding through an intersection with cars coming is not the same thing at all as a person almost getting run over by a reckless driver. Recklessness on behalf of the bicycle rider is risking their own life, the recklessness of a driver in close calls with cyclists doesn't risk the drivers life at all. It is only the cyclist whose life is at risk in both cases. But risking your own life due to your own stupidity is very different than someone else almost taking your life due to theirs. These things are not in the same ballpark, not the same sport, if one of them was a sport the other wouldn't even be a board game. Nope, not the same at all. It would be like a friend getting hit by a reckless automobile driver on a motorcycle and someone saying "those guys on crotch rockets are always riding too fast on the interstate! They are dangerous!" Just not the same thing. I'm obviously biased, but I just don't think these ideas or comments are relative to the conversation. I guess for some folks this is part of the "us vs them" mentality that is kind of the root of the problem. What we all need to realize in alot of aspects of our lives is there is no "us" or "them". We're all people, sometimes making dumb decisions, some of us, alot more often than others. We don't all look at the world around us the same way and we aren't all operating on the same intellectual level (remember when Bush got re-elected?!?!?!?!) . When I didn't have a car and rode 200ish miles a week I could've raged on facebook constantly (well, I did rage on facebook constantly, but it could've been WAY WORSE!) about sitting at lights waiting and watching every driver that passed either texting or doing makeup or distracting themselves with something in their car. Hearing car crashes occasionally and thinking "Holy shit! That could've been me getting crashed into!" And back then sometimes I felt like I was living in that "us vs them" world and that it was a war of survival on the streets between bicycles and cars. But that was all in my head. It was a fantasy and I lived it. The Bike commuting eco-warrior vs all the cars/buses/semi-trucks and the idiots that drove them. But that wasn't what was really going on. It was just a guy riding a bicycle to and from work and people driving around him. Our society can't tolerate the "us vs them" mentality when it comes to life and death on the roads. We're making a little progress with these bike logo things painted in the lanes on roads that bikes often travel around Norfolk. I may have seen these in Va Beach too. But these are small battles and the war is really going on in our heads.