Apples, Arsenic, Fence Posts, and Sleeping Humans

When I was little, I was eating an apple one day & someone said... Do you know that apple seeds have arsenic in them? Then I was told not to worry, because the arsenic was locked up in the seeds & they would pass right through me if I happened to eat them.

Sure, would-be toxins are present in nature, often either locked up or in harmless amounts... and of course not everything out there, deemed as natural, is safe to eat... certain red berries and otherwise... tribal wisdom helps one to navigate the landscape.

Arsenic as a concentrated addictive, combined with other chemicals, is a whole other story... even in the case of treated lumber, which was first taken as benign, but now has demonstrated adverse effects on the ground. 

I am not sure what the exact impact of having treated wood in the vicinity of the garden has, but I'd prefer not to engage in an experiment. 

Although I have indeed been a part of the experiment. When employed as a youth crew leader, we built trails, and we were, on occasion, provided treated lumber (and told it was safe).... and when repairing my family's fence, I have unknowingly used it... but beyond this point, now I do know, so it becomes a different story. 

To know is to harbor responsibility, so there is an obvious benefit to not knowing. [Update... of course, what I did not mention is that a lot has changed with treated lumber since.]

Although, surely it is a complex world... and all of our personal and ecological issues do not come down to one single element or choice. 

Although, they do indeed seem to come down to a conglomeration of numerous subtle things and subtle choices... and people, as a result, are often ill with mysterious things like cancer... largely in reaction to an environment which is out of balance... due to the culmination of small things... a latticework of intimate details.

Eating, in particular, is a very intimate way of melding with the environment. It is to bring into us what is around us, funneling into us the land and all of the farming practices we enact upon that land... which in the context of illusion is separate from us entirely. We toss it out and then reel it back in. 

From our habitat, we make energy and tissue and reflect the quality of that environment back to itself... by expressing health or disease. 

In a context, how can we expect to be anything close to in-balance when eating food under synthetic circumstances or when eating a creature that lives a synthetic life on synthetic foods? 

We are born into this particular ecosystem and this situation/relationship, and generally can not, at this level of being, just hop skip and jump into some synthetically created one that happens to be convenient... one we have no history of melding with successfully.... and hope for instant harmony. 

In a context, we are what we eat and what we eat eats & inconvenient or not... to eat in a haphazard way is a quick way to entering the experiment. 

This is the same experiment that has yielded nutrient deficiencies, cancer, birth defects, mental imbalances, and dental abnormalities (dental b/c of less vitamin A & K... and who knows what from an improperly fed and improperly treated animal). 

The fact that some of us needed braces as kids is crazy. How many creatures in nature not domesticated or otherwise tampered with have dental abnormalities? I can only think of one. Yet this all seemed a normal part of society growing up.

Dr. Weston Price photographed indigenous peoples from around the world, getting close up shots of their perfectly aligned teeth, complete with wisdom teeth... never extracted. 

Why? Because the dental palette was wide enough to accommidate... because the body got what it needed in its developmental stages... from a parent, whose body got what it needed and so on.

But regardless, of nutritional incentives, I hope we will carefully withdraw our support of (nutritionally inferior) factory farmed animals, because the picture is an inhumane scene. We have empathy for other living creatures... where is it in this case? 

Perhaps it is hidden behind a long shadow of indirectness that cuts us off from what is actually happening in tandem with our eating habits.

At best, for that animal, chickens in particular... living on a factory farm could be equated to being trapped in an elevator full of people... one's entire life. I don't feel that the end justifies the means, and this isn't even the end, so it certainly doesn't justify the means... 

It is astounding to contemplate the practices propagated by many large scale farm operations. To say that we live in a civil society, while meanwhile this is still a legal means of 'food production' is to kid ourselves.

I'll spare us the more extreme pictures, as it is natural to simply turn away... Would that be our empathy in play?... the shadow having been lifted.... a recovery of lost directness. It literally hurts to look. 

That is why all of this has to do with ignorance and disconnection more than say...evil, but it really doesn't say much for being intelligent that we would, in the case of factory farming, harbor the responsibility of owning a sentient being's whole life & with that responsibility, treat that being as such. (tight spaces, confinement, etc.) 

Furthermore, this relationship is something that we would ideally be appreciative for... if, after all, we are taking about taking the relationship into ourselves... you know... to further us being alive. 

We live off of this mess and the human form is nothing without it. To look down upon it or to not recognize its value seems a sign of disconnection. 

Now its true, whether one is a vegetarian or a meat eater, that things out there (animals, human or not) are eating each other, and I don't know why that is, but for now it is.... and it is part of nature and for now part of the mystery.

To picture a factory farm on the other hand... I do know at least part of why it happens... ignorance... people... Nice People... don't get the concept that chickens are beings. And if they do, they are are far enough away to be unaccounted for.

The same person that might stop & offer compassion to a hurt animal on the side of the road may then, the very next day, swing by McDonalds for a chicken sandwich... oblivious to the irony.

I am picturing the Kalahari Bushman who, at the beginning of the Gods Must Be Crazy, walks up to the deer he has shot (with a natural tranquilizer) and apologizes... saying that his family must eat. 

This is not to cultivate guilt, simply to cultivate respect... to acknowledge that these are not objects we are hunting... but fellow beings. This hunter survives as an individual but is tied to all that is and he knows it. He has direct relationship.

There are also other issues... economic issues and the ease & addiction of the fast food industry. Maybe we all have some form of addiction to deal with, and its hard to pass fair judgment on anyone, but I hope people will withdraw their financial support from factory farms. 

Just like I hope we would withdraw our support of slavery... were we born in that period. If we are sleeping through this, we have to ask ourselves if we would be sleeping through that. (Although slavery is still in play today in parts of the world... and in more subtle formats all round the world... sometimes right at our feet) 

At some point, we either recognize the things the future will outgrow or we don't. We can wait till everyone is firmly on the bandwagon and reflect back on history as the onlooker... 

But better... we can face the subtleties right now in the simple interest of being kind, moving the process more quickly along... to the higher end of easing suffering. 

When we get up in the morning and we aren't pressured by an updated, new and improved society... when we aren't moved by guilt or habit... when we do it because it is our deep desire to ease suffering, that is when we have truly grown. 

That's when the action or inaction actually indicates something. Then we step to the cutting edge.

There are things we have the ability to do that we decide we just don't do. It would seem that one day, in a compassionate and balanced framework, factory farming will be one of those voluntarily obsolete things. 

We have to ask questions regarding the impacts of our food production, involving animals... and in general. We have to look at those photographs from space... that show a world stripped of its skin. 

One day we simply know that we don't keep people as slaves. We simply know that we don't discriminate based on gender or sexual preference or color. We simply know that we don't keep animals under harsh conditions. We know that we don't test our products on them. We know that we don't dump poison on the world to make things a bit more convenient or profitable. 

We know life is complicated... as we adjust to the wider and wider circle of inclusiveness... but there are some things we just don't do... We think around them, over them, through them... but we just don't do them. We are intelligent, inventive, intuitive, inclusive... not indifferent. Sometimes we yield. Sometimes we lose.

The arsenic in the apple seeds is not a problem... the chemicals on the apple are.

What do we want to do? Go with the flow... wait for it to float us to our value system... our sense of what is right and wrong... the next stop along the way... or do we wake up, step to the cutting edge of complication, navigate the sloppiness, navigate the flow and change the world?... or more specifically... change civilization... and thus the world for the better.