I have been told more than once by vegetarians “I don’t eat anything that had a face.” Some are sincere and kind. Some mostly like feeling superior. Both motives are most likely usually behind this phrase.
I remember thinking about living at the vegetarian co-op at Berkeley, called then Lothlorien. One of the guys annoyed me enough that I wound up at Kingman–there’s a biographical detail–by pointing out he hated the “taste of blood and sinews and veins”. Something close to that.
And as I have likely pointed out, the portrayal of pigs in barbeque places betrays enough psychological ambiguity that I have more than once contemplated a book of picture collected around the country. The strangest I can recall, I think from North Carolina somewhere, was a smiling pig pouring barbeque sauce on itself. The pigs are nearly always smiling. Notice the next time you go out for barbeque.
Maybe, in this world, perfection is not possible. I have made my case for eating meat by saying I’m not going to make the case, because I can’t, other than that I feel better, healthier, and thus hopefully more likely to contribute positives because of it, which in the Great Accounting Sheet in the Sky might yet get me to a positive balance, my many demerits notwithstanding.
But I had the vaguely comical thought the other day–which is the eventual reason for this desultory (I don’t have many of any other kind) post–that maybe if we eat meat all our lives, the animals up in heaven just won’t talk to us for a long time. Imagine meeting an animal you ate and getting a talking to.
This thought recollects the old joke that if women ran the world there would be no more wars, but there would be a lot of countries who were not talking to each other.
Oh, there is so much we don’t know. I will continue to argue that we need to bring all this sort of thing–metaphysics I mean, in all possible aspects–into the realm of scientific inquiry. We need Departments of Afterlife Studies. We need colleges where you can major in Afterlife Research. We need national, well televised conferences. We need to bring it into the political realm.
And I will note that Gary Schwarz, at the University of Arizona, has come close. The Windbridge Institute is, as far as I know, the most credible institution in this regard, and they are doing outstanding work, as far as I can tell.
IONS is another one. Keep in mind it was founded by Edgar Mitchell, an Apollo astronaut, who had a Ph.D from MIT in Aeronautical Engineering, making him a literal rocket scientist with the highest possible degree from one of the best universities in the world.
Keep in mind too that he is on record as having been told by first hand witnesses that Roswell was in fact the “flying saucer” crash that Phillip Corso also said it was.
I just watched this interview. It is interesting on a number of levels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8gLfcnr5Sg
He was a remarkable man, who should be much better known than he is.
He is another metaphor: think of our news as a curated shelf in a grocery store. There might be a thousand varieties of ketchup vastly better than Heinz, but if you don’t see them there–or on Amazon–you won’t know they exist.
Most people blandly assume that reality is roughly what we are told it is, by the plethora of “professional” reporters, who in theory go out there, find interesting facts, and then tell their story. This idea seems absurd to me.
I will often consider–without deciding whether I believe them or not–all sorts of alternative views. As one example, I watched this video today: https://youtu.be/L1fcc6YaFlA
It might be, and most likely is, complete bullshit. But maybe not. Or perhaps–and here is where the mental agility of not having a compulsive need for THE truth comes in very useful–SOME of it is true, but most of it is not. Phillip Corso said that he and people like him would often offer small snippets of hidden truths, but always with the objective of hiding a much larger, much more important truth.
Professionals call this a Limited Hangout.
I start, with Socrates, with an assumption of being completely ignorant. This is the canvas on which I doodle. It is the best possible canvas. If you start from the assumption that you BASICALLY know all the big stuff, and are just filling in details, it blinds you. It not only blinds you in the present, but prevents you from making needed corrections, when the corrections are needed.
As Edward de Bono argued in Practical Thinking–which was on balance probably the most useful book of his that I read–arrogance is a “mistake in the future”. I have loved that line since I first saw it, and it has influenced me greatly.
To use a kinesthetic metaphor, when you are walking, you need to be agile enough to not fall down when the landscape changes unexpectedly, when you step in a pothole, or trip over something you didn’t see. The looser you are, the better. The more rigid you are, physically, the more likely you are to fall. And falling, of course, is persistent error that could and should have been prevented by better attention and greater flexibility, which in character traits are best exemplified by the word humility.
I really like Moshe Feldekrais idea of “reversibility” too, which I have also often thought about. Here is one take on it: https://alacartespirit.com/2015/09/09/feldenkrais-prufrock-reversing-disturbing/
I will quote this at length, then shut up for a minute. The best discussion of this happens in his best book, The Potent Self. I actually probably need to reread it. Without knowing it, much less knowing why, I was much too wound up when I read it many years ago to benefit properly from it. I may start doing some of his exercises again, now that I think about it.
I often wonder what I did all day. A lot of the time, it is this. I have structured my life in such a way that this is possible for me. I don’t know where it is going, but I suppose I am leaving tracks on my life’s journey, both internal, and on the internet. If I lost all this, though, I would be fine.
Anyway, here it is:
https://alacartespirit.com/2015/09/09/feldenkrais-prufrock-reversing-disturbing/
We do not say at the start what the final stage will be” – Moshe Feldenkrais
“Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” – T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
An important component of the Feldenkrais Method and martial arts is reversibility, being able to change positions or directions without reconfiguring oneself to do so. For example, when you are about to sit down, can you pause just before your derriere touches the chair, reverse the movement, and stand or turn? Or are you moving in such a way that you plunk or plop into the seat and have to reposition yourself to rise?
There is something elegant about reversible movement; in the case of Moshe Feldenkrais, who as a teenager walked from Europe to what was then called Palestine and, among other hardships, survived hand to hand combat as an early settler, being able to quickly reverse one’s movement can also save one’s life. Reversibility of thought is also a life skill: not continuous flip-flopping, but recognizing when one needs to change course rather than living out a decision that no longer serves.