Manic Activism Continued

Last night I wrote a little about how I want to change the world,

and also about my fear of annoying other people in my effort to do that.

This morning I have some new thoughts on the subject.

First an anecdote:

A friend of mine was telling me about teaching high school in a very rough school. One of her students actually pushed or hit her. When the teacher protested, the girl aggressively said,

"Miss, you're making me FEEL bad."

It occurs to me that the reason people don't like to become aware of nasty, inhumane and cruel aspects of our world for that very reason. I don't want to go around making people FEEL bad, but I also would like to minimize the rather greater suffering of people and animals who are actually being mistreated in the world in a way that goes well beyond making them FEEL bad.

I went to bed last night with images in my head of factory farm slaughter. We've all heard that it's BAD and maybe even seem images before. There were some new practices I learned of last night that shocked me.

The baby chicks -- boys, I think they said -- would be useless for meat, so were being thrown into a machine that ground them up alive for farm feed.

Pigs were killed by being pushed into boiling water.

Chickens, after being genetically modified into horrific looking creatures, were mutilated so they wouldn't peck each other, then killed by hanging them upside down and dipping their heads into electrified water.

"Thank G-d I keep Kosher," you might say. But there are plenty of practices wrong that with that industry as well including shackling and hoisting cows off the ground before schita. Terrifying an animal before killing it is torture, and there are many out there who would dispute the idea that such practices can count as "Kosher."

But let's say you're a vegetarian, which I try to be although I just did my annual meat order from pasture raised Grow and Behold to get us through Pesach. (So glad to be able to have this "alternative" meat, but still feel sad about eating animals, and don't feel so healthy after eating them.)

Here are some other concerns:



The milk that makes cheese -- and boy do I love cheese -- comes at a price. I saw footage of a cow being artificially impregnated, then the baby calf being dragged away from it's mother immediately so the cow's milk would now be used for people to drink instead of for her baby. Oh yes, and the calf will be used for veal. Then of course the mother was impregnated again, and all the time being milked far more than is natural for her.

I knew all of this intellectually, but to watch suffering is an entirely different matter.

One of the women on the show who was "becoming vegucated" and experimenting with veganism, cried when she saw the same images I did, but later had a crisis. She didn't know if she could remain a vegan. Making the choice to be vegan caused her to be isolated from family. I liked what one of the others on the show said to her. She said that she would have to do her best to minimize choices in her life that might cause suffering in the world, but she might not be able to eliminate it completely.

Unfortunately, I think that's the world we live in. We've inherited a structure that causes us to hurt others unless we really bend over backwards. The status quo is not being kind, but minimizing cruelty.

Who knows what we wear or buy that has been created by people who can't feed their families?

Who knows what we eat that has suffered for us without us realizing?

Who knows what other damage is trailing in the paths we leave behind us?

On my way out of the JCC last night was an art exhibition of Holocaust imagery. It was a series of photographs of Auschwitz juxtaposed with nature in Poland today. Each photo had text displayed below. One of the photos remarked on what people always say when they visit there. How could people have let suffering like this happen when it was right in the backyard?

I'm always wary of parallels made to the Holocaust, but we also have to learn lessons from it, and I think in this case the comparison is there.

What suffering would we see and try to change if we were more willing to pay attention?

What if we went ahead and allowed ourselves to FEEL bad, so that maybe we could work towards good?