The Case for Going Veggie

The strong case for “going veggie” rests on four key reasons: saving animals, saving yourself, saving others and saving the planet!

The moral decision to stop eating animals is based on the refusal to participate in the suffering and killing of animals for food. This argument gathers potency when you are confronted with the horrifying facts about 21^st century factory farming.

The volume of animals slaughtered for food has escalated over the last 30 years with the rampant proliferation of fast food outlets that tantalise the insatiable human appetite for animal flesh.

Globally 57 billion animals are killed for food every year, according to UN figures. Pause for a moment to let this figure sink in. The human population is only 6.8 billion. This staggering volume of animals including cattle, pigs, sheep, chicken, ducks, turkeys, fish and seafood is unimaginable and incomprehensible.

Worldwide five billion sick, deformed and distressed hens are incarnated in cages to lay eggs. In US intensive egg production is maximised in hideous sheds which each house up to 50,000 screeching birds, in a vision of insanity.

The US, not surprisingly, excels when it comes to sheer numbers of animals killed. In hidden slaughterhouses dotted across the country, life is drained from so-called “food animals” 10,000 times a minute. As the Americans say, “do the math”. How many animals is that per hour, per day, per week, per month, per year?

Americans eat as much chicken now in a single day as they did in an entire year in the 1930s. In 2010, 8.5 million birds are killed every week to keep up the demand from KFC, McDonalds and other fast food pushers. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, turkeys are massacred en mass, ironically to celebrate these heart-warming, wholesome occasions.

In the UK, 850 million animals and hundreds of millions of fish are killed every year to put meat on British tables; that’s more than three million animals a day.

In Australia, with a population of just 22 million people, 500 million animals are raised in factory farms annually and 11 million laying hens are crammed in cages.

To keep up with the rapacious demand for animal flesh, factory farms now “manufacture” meat through the intensive breeding, raising and slaughtering of animals in abject conditions. Small, independent family farms are relegated to the idyllic rural past. More than 90 per cent of meat consumed in developed countries comes from factory farms. And China and other developing countries are following the trend.

The cruel conditions in these intensive operations, run by a monopoly of corporations, cause misery and pain to millions of creatures before they are subjected to terrifying and agonising deaths.

Food animals are considered by this efficient industry as objects and money-making commodities, rather than living creatures that feel acute emotions and physical pain. Animals are sentient vertebrates; they have senses and a nervous system, just as humans do.

If humans extended the same love they feel for their pets to “food animals”, they could never accept these daily atrocities and they would not contemplate eating animal flesh. Imagine for a moment the horror of killing and eating your pet dog.

The heart-breaking film Earthlings, available on the internet, shows shocking footage of everyday scenes in US slaughterhouses. The book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer documents a litany of sadistic abuses by desensitised workers in slaughterhouses across the US. And the film, Food, Inc. exposes the market stranglehold of the six aggressive corporate giants behind the new agribusiness.

In the UK, Viva! (Vegetarian International Voice for Animals) has produced hard-hitting films and graphic reports on the torturous treatment of loveable farmyard animals including pigs, ducks, turkeys and lambs.

Pigs are affectionate and intelligent animals, similar in nature to dogs. Viva! founder and director, Juliet Gellatley has seen the horror for herself. She writes: “Peek into any intensive farm in Britain and you are likely to see diseased, dead or dying animals. Neglect and indifference are commonplace – broken legs, abscesses, ruptured stomachs, animals coughing with pneumonia, others panting from meningitis, cuts and lacerations.

“The camera lights revealed baby pigs in barren metal pens and utterly devoid of bedding. The noise was their tiny trotters clattering on the bare metal floors as they tried to get away. But there was no place to go, no place to hide.”

The Truth About Dairy

Nor is the dairy industry the idyllic picture of contented cows grazing in lush fields. Viva’s ground-breaking Anti-Dairy campaign has smashed the milk myth.

Over-worked cows live in misery. Incarcerated in concrete pens, they are kept permanently pregnant and have their calves traumatically removed days after giving birth. Emaciated cows and are forced to produce 40 litres of milk a day from grotesquely swollen udders infected with excruciating mastitis. Milk containing high levels of hormones, antibiotics and pus can be sold legally.

Juliet says: “People have a huge emotional attachment to milk because we were given it as babies so we think it is all-nourishing no matter what species it comes from. However it is unnatural and dangerous to consume milk meant for a calf. Dairy is linked with a host of diseases.”

The same merciless approach and economies of scale are now applied to fishing. A single trawler, the size of a football field, has the ability to haul 50 tons of sea animals in a few minutes on long lines that stretch for 75 miles and nets of 30 miles in length. The oceans are being emptied of sea life at an alarming rate.

The film Earthlings shows Japanese fishermen luring mother dolphins and their calves into a cove, hauling them onto land and hacking and mutilating them while still alive and writhing in agony. Dolphin meat is sold as a delicacy for diners with discerning palates and no concern for these beautiful, gentle creatures.

Save Animals

When you stop eating meat you literally save animals. The average British meat eater chomps through four cattle, 18 pigs, 23 sheep and lambs, 1158 chickens, 39 turkeys, 28 ducks, one rabbit, one goose, 6182 fish and 3593 shellfish in their lifetime. This is a total of 11,046 animals.

Becoming a vegetarian (meat and fish free diet) or even better a vegan (meat, fish, egg and dairy-free, plant-based diet) is the most effective, radical action an individual can take to boycott factory farming and reduce the slaughter of animals.

As consumers we wield immense power in our food choices by reducing demand and supply. We get to protest against the horrors of factory farming three times a day; breakfast, lunch and dinner and influence others every time we take a stand as a Veggie. We are not helpless victims of the system. We have the power to change our meat-eating culture.

Save Yourself

The saddest point of this genocide is the fact that meat-eating is not necessary for human survival or health. There is a vast range of plant-based sources of protein and calcium, zinc, iron and B vitamins. Nutritious alternatives include legumes such as soy, lentils and chickpeas; nuts such as almonds and cashews, grains such as rice, oats, rye and wheat and seeds such as sesame and sunflower.

These days an appetising variety of meat-free, ready-to-eat products offer an easy alternative to meat. Despite the scare-mongering of the dairy industry about soy products, the truth is the humble soya bean is power packed with protein, even more concentrated in tofu and tempeh and soy milk.

The reason most meat-eaters refuse to give up their habit is not health but taste. Staunch carnivores will tell you defiantly they simply like the taste of meat! To justify mass suffering and killing for the trivial reason of satisfying taste buds seems immoral in the extreme.

Maybe some startling facts will spoil any fast food fan’s appetite. In Eating Animals, the author describes how chickens are dunked in water tanks he calls “fecal soup” full of filth and bacteria and that millions of contaminated chickens are shipped for sale to consumers.

Factory farmed meat is dangerous. A meat-free, dairy-free diet is healthy. The second reason to Go Veggie is to save yourself and your whole family.

Juliet, a qualified zoologist and nutritionist, says: “Fundamentally what’s gnawing at people is the misguided idea that humans are meant to eat meat even though they know that vegetarians have less heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, obesity and countless other health problems.

“Humans are not natural born killers. Our physiology, with grinding teeth and long intestines, is designed to eat wheat not meat.

“We have so many other food choices for protein. In fact, people thrive on a vegan diet, reducing their chance of chronic diseases and increasing their energy to enjoy life.”

Save The Planet

Most of us feel helpless when it comes to saving the planet and yet factory farming is at the very root cause of environmental destruction.

Viva! reports: “Rainforests are cleared for grazing; methane from livestock causes global warming; soil is eroded by cattle; slurry poisons waterways and the seas are laid to waste by overfishing.”

Safran Foer reveals that American pig farms produce 72 million pounds of manure annually – that’s 130 times as much waste as the human population. Most of it seeps into rivers, lakes and oceans killing wildlife and polluting the air, water and land.

Pig effluent contains ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals and 100 microbial pathogens that cause virulent diseases such as pfiesteria.

In the face of our collective helplessness about global warming, loss of habitat, species extinction, the pollution of land, water and air and threat of super bugs, it is empowering for caring individuals to understand the cause of these horrendous problems and know they can actually do something real on a daily basis to stop the destruction.

Save Others.

Viva! reports: “While 750 million people go the bed hungry every night, one third of the world’s grain is fed to farmed animals. A typical Western meat-based diet can only feed 2.5 billion people; a plant-based diet will feed every one of us.”

Maneka Gandhi, India’s former minister for social justice and empowerment, says: “In a country where millions of people go hungry, 37 per cent of arable land is being used to grow fodder for animals that are being raised and killed for export.

“As if that were not enough, we are exporting soya beans to feed European livestock, who will in turn be murdered for meat. I see no reason why India should feed the world at the expense of her own land, her water, her people, her hunger.”

There is a mountain of shocking evidence about the atrocities of factory farming and the case for Going Veggie for any courageous person who wants to face up to where their food comes from and give up their taste for meat.

Visit Viva!’s dynamic, resource-rich website http://www.viva.org.uk; read Eating Animals and watch Earthlings and Food, Inc.

Once informed, you can no longer plead ignorance. You will be moved to feel empathy for other living creatures and confronted to make a choice. Please make it in favour of animals, the planet, the poor and hungry and your family and yourself.

As a new Vegan, every day I feel empowered and good about myself for not participating in cruelty against innocent animals. I feel physically better for not having dead flesh inside me. I feel a new level of strength and vitality.

And I feel determined to spread the message to Go Veggie.

Human Matters: I Am No Longer Eating Animals

I thought I had done the vegetarian thing in my idealistic youth. I lived on lentil burgers, fried rice, pasta and bread from 17 when I first refused my mum’s lamb chops until 27 when I weakened and started eating chicken and fish, mentally adjusting my guilt with the rationalisation that I was now more mature, realistic and conventional, no longer the strident, embarrassing, non-conformist rebel.

However getting re-educated about the abject cruelty of the insatiable meat industry by mustering the courage to watch the harrowing doco, Earthlings and the brilliant expose’, Food, Inc. and reading the personal soul-searching of Eating Animals, I can no longer ignore

and be complicit in the suffering of billions of innocent animals in grotesque factory farming.

Eating animals is now, in the 21st century, a worse crime than when I became a Vego in the 70’s. These three heart-wrenching, graphic reports convince me that vegetarianism is the most urgent global environmental cause of our times, not merely a quirky personal moral issue or a selfish, personal health issue.

Actor Joaquin Phoenix narrating Earthlings in his calm voice of reason, names human prejudice against other living creatures as Speciesism. He likens it to racism and sexism where humans with power exploit those without power.

Humans are waging war on animals on land and sea. Out of sight of ignorant consumers, in disgusting hidden abattoirs, unprecedented torture and slaughter is underway on a mass scale every day.

In slaughterhouses, life is drained from so-called ‘food animals’ 10,000 times a minute. Cattle are stunned with a steel bolt to the brain and hoisted upside down while still alive and their throats are cut.

In pig factories, sows are kept permanently pregnant so a single factory can ‘manufacture’ up to 600,000 pigs a year. Starving and crazed pigs cannibalise each other while piglets drown in waste pits.

Americans now consume as much chicken in a single day as they did in a year in the 1930s. In 2010, 8.5 million birds are killed every week in the US.

Brutally de-beaked infant chicks endure unrelenting suffering crowded in poultry factory floors amongst up to 90,000 birds. Hens are squashed into battery cages before being transported for slaughter by clubbing, decapitation or bled to death while dangling upside down.

As Earthlings suggests, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarians. However the cruelty is perpetuated by psychological denial. Who wants to spoil their roast dinner or burger by knowing where the meat came from?

Just one per cent of animals are raised in the idyllic rural settings of our child-like imaginations while factory farms now control 99 per cent of meat production in the US.

Six powerful US corporations have a monopoly on the mass production of soybean seed and corn seed (used for feed), chicken, pork and beef and they are currently contemplating moving into Europe and the UK.

The shocking film Earthlings, freely available on the internet, factually, without embellishment, explores the human use of animals for pets, food, clothing, entertainment and science. It is a tragedy beyond belief. That humans are capable of consistent daily abuse of millions of defenceless animals reveals our collective depravity.

Protesting against animal cruelty and killing is the easiest and most direct action we can takes as individuals. As the film makers of Food, Inc. point out we get to vote against the abhorrent industry three times a day; breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As consumers en masse we have the power to stop the demand for dead animals as food. There are many alternatives for protein. We are not lacking choices. We now have convenient and healthy Redwood products, for example.

I have always been squeamish about red meat, dripping blood, so obviously a chunk of cow flesh. I love cows; docile beasts with eyelash-rimmed, big brown eyes and their deep, comical voice that goes moo. They play on my maternal feelings like Bonny, my Labrador. However I didn’t have the same emotional attachment to hens and fish.

But why should I discriminate against chicken and fish? Because chicken have feathers instead of fur, beady eyes instead of big brown eyes, a smaller brain than mammals? Chickens have nervous systems and feel pain too.

Why should I not feel compassion for fish? Because they don’t have legs and arms, because they have scales and can’t smile? Because they are silent and live in mysterious watery depths instead of graze in fields? Fish have nervous systems and feel pain too.

In Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer tells us that the technologies of war are now used in the fishing industry. Radar, echo sounders (used to locate submarines) navy-developed electronic navigation systems and satellite-based GPS give fishermen unprecedented abilities to locate fish, which are then captured with baited hooks on long lines that stretch for 75 miles and nets of 30 miles in length.

A single trawler, the size of a football field, has the ability to haul 50 tons of sea animals in a few minutes. The oceans are being emptied of sea life at an alarming rate.

My dad was a hobby fisherman. He pursued beautiful, shiny, silver snapper in treacherous Port Phillip Bay around Victoria, Australia in a jaunty timber boat with a yellow cabin he called The Yella Sub.

I remember watching Dad slam a gaff, a vicious hook on the end of a pole, into a writhing snapper as he hauled it in from the ocean. If I expressed any childish concern for the suffering of the fish, Dad dismissed it with a shrug. He had objectified fish. He had no empathy with their pain.

I have happy memories of fun times when Dad and Uncle Les, slightly boozed, took us kids out fishing for flathead. These marine adventures were the rare times I got Dad’s attention. I recall the sensation of the tug-tug-tug on my finger from the hand line and the excitement of hauling in a thrashing flatty and landing it on the floor of the boat and watching dad stab it and toss it in the box with the others to die slowly.

When my parents and brother moved interstate to sub-tropical Queensland, when I was 18, Dad hunted big game mackerel in the rolling swells of Moreton Bay.

Dad would set out, motoring for miles to his favourite deep ocean spots, in a succession of powerful, flashy boats; his self-indulgent hobby that my mum did not share. In fact she loathed his obsession with boats and fishing. But by way of compensation, she enjoyed cooking and eating the catch. Mackerel steaks seared on the barbie were, without doubt, delicious.

Our enjoyment of tasty food is understandable but there is a big picture here to take in. Livestock farming has a bigger impact on climate change than the whole global transport sector of cars, trucks and planes put together.

In 40 years, the population of earth is predicted to be 9.2 billion and we are trying to feed this many humans with dead animals. Of all the ways we could produce food, breeding and killing animals is the most inefficient and destructive means possible.

Joaquin Phoenix implores us: “We must learn empathy; to see into the eyes of an animal and feel their life has value because they are alive.”

If you are hard-hearted and sceptical, watchEarthlings. You will never be the same again. You will no longer be able to plead ignorance. Now decide if you can continue eating animals.

Human Matters: The ‘Pornification’ of Healthy Sexuality

The issue of pornography is no longer a benign high school essay topic about censorship and the rights of consenting adults to watch erotic movies to boost their libidos and enhance their dull sex life.

The proliferation of internet pornography in the last 10 years has become an insidious force for personal depravity and addiction and the tip of the iceberg of a multi-billion dollar sex industry, which is enmeshed with paedophilia, human trafficking and organised crime.

Pornography is even more ubiquitous than that other much-revered drug, alcohol, which can be obtained cheaply at any corner liquor store or supermarket. For access to pornography you don’t even need to leave the house. Your drug of choice is just one click away on your computer day and night.

With the spread of broadband internet in the last decade, there is an escalation of availability, perceived anonymity and affordability.

Abrupt magazine reports that a survey by Nielsen Online found that nine million British men had viewed online pornography in 2006 compared with two million in 2000.

‘Sex’ is the most searched word on the internet while 12 per cent of all websites, 25 per cent of all search engine requests and 35 per cent of all downloads are pornographic.

Hollywood releases 11,000 adult movies per year; 20 times more than mainstream movies. Adult bookstores in the US outnumber McDonalds three to one.

Worldwide pornography sales are reported to be $57 billion annually. Porn is big business.

Are we just being prudish about pornography? Is porn merely harmless pleasure or is it causing the worst kind of human damage and misery?

An Issue of Harm

Human sexuality is easily manipulated. Such is the malleability of our biological system, arousal can be associated with any number of fetishes or perversions. It is just as easy for the human brain to link arousal with a five year old child as it is be turned on by a feather or a shoe.

Brain activity during orgasm resembles a shot of heroin. The sexual pleasure stimulated by screen images is addictive. Cravings are caused by the hormone dopamine.

Individuals watching porn combine it with masturbation to orgasm, which triggers a release of dopamine, giving a feeling of wellbeing and setting up a link between porn and feeling ‘good’. If exposure to pornography starts young, the association with pleasure is hard-wired and feels normal.

However a porn user will also be racked with confusion, inner conflict and self-loathing when feelings of fear and shame surface. Resolving this sense of dopamine-induced wellbeing with a guilty conscience is a source of torment.

Alarmingly, one third of British teens are now learning about sex from porn and embracing the degrading images as normal sexuality and forming a value system about relationships based on sleaze.

The Effect on Men

When boys and men are stimulated by the fantasy images of porn stars, they mentally substitute these comical book images for real women, making them dissatisfied with their girlfriends and wives and expecting them to perform porn tricks.

Exposure to porn takes the mystery and intimacy out of real-life sexual experiences between committed loving partners. Sensual tenderness and heartfelt passion in the flesh can not compete with the tantalising, illicit thrills of cyber world.

Feminist writer Naomi Wolf says orgasm is the ultimate Pavlovian conditioning reward and what gives someone an orgasm will reinforce human behaviour.

While the majority of men who view porn might not abuse women (although some do) they are absorbing the misogynous myths that pornography peddles. And much hardcore porn depicts children, endorsing and encouraging paedophilia and the acting out of sexual abuse of infants and children. A vast array of sexual perversions to suit all tastes and flaunt all taboos is also widely available courtesy of the internet.

Women View Porn Too

More and more girls and women are viewing internet porn too, perhaps with a misguided sense of liberation and equality. So now ‘liberated’ women can degrade themselves as much as men!

When women secretly view porn, they feed their shame and dissatisfaction with their ordinary-looking husbands and form the idea they must become whores in bed. And the education is starting young.

Pornography has started to influence young teenage girls to believe that the sexual tricks of porn stars are normal. In a disturbing article published in The Times, August 5, 2009, Janice Turner writes: “More than 25,000 users of Bebo, the social networking site, use “slut” in their usernames.” Many of the users are as young as 13.

Lap dancing has become a legitimate career aspiration for girls along with dreams of becoming a famous celebrity, being snapped by paparazzi as they stagger out of nightclubs, paralytic and dishevelled.

Sex is not to be saved in the old-fashioned way as something meaningful, even sacred, for marriage but reduced to a manipulative game for trapping boyfriends. Impressionable young minds can not distinguish between the fantasy world of porn and real life. Girls want to please their boyfriends by allowing them to ejaculate in their mouth, have anal sex and engage in group sex and same-sex.

Turner writes: “Girls pride themselves on how well they give head and handjobs, such as the singer Kelis, whose ‘milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.’ And anal sex, that Act 4 of every porn movie, which gives little pleasure and often much pain, is now firmly in the sexual repertoire of many 16-year-old girls.”

An insidious message has crept into our bedrooms. Love-making is no longer a mutual exchange of sensual pleasure between a committed couple, but circus tricks performed by a compliant female mimicking a lusty porn star in acting out male masturbation fantasies.

The fashion industry has also been enlisted to dress girls and woman as tarts in skimpy boob-flashing tops, skin tight jeans, micro mini skirts, raunchy lingerie and exposed thongs, excessive make-up, crass jewellery and killer heels.

Even pre-teen girls, aged eight to 13, called ‘Tweens’, are pressured by new fashions to look slutty to appeal to sick male fantasies. A little girl’s natural instinct to flirt to attract Daddy’s attention, affection and admiration is being commercially hijacked and sexualised.

Turner uses the term ‘pornification’ to describe the invasion of porn culture into our everyday lives. This movement is a massive step backwards for feminism, every bit as oppressive as shrouding women in heavy black robes and veils.

If widespread personal degradation is the effect on our culture in the developed world, the impact of pornification in poor countries is far worse.

Exploitation of the Poor

The website Do Something reports facts about human trafficking. It is estimates there are approximately 27 million slaves around the world. The average cost of a slave around the world in $90.

Trafficking primarily involves exploitation including forcing victims into prostitution and compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography. Up to 80 per cent of trafficking involves sexual exploitation.

Around half of trafficking victims in the world are under the age of 18. More than two thirds of sex trafficked children suffer additional abuse at the hands of their traffickers.

Trafficked children are significantly more likely to develop mental health problems, abuse substances, engage in prostitution as adults, and either commit or be victimised by violent crimes later in life.

Women who have been trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation experience a significantly higher rate of HIV and other STDs, tuberculosis, and permanent damage to their reproductive systems.

Global Angels is a fundraising charity founded by Molly Bedingfield. The website reports that 8.4 million children work as slave labourers, child sex slaves or soldiers worldwide. 1.2 million children are kidnapped, sold or smuggled each year. These trafficked children may end up on the other side of the world, working in sweatshops to make cheap clothing, in underground mines to salvage precious stones for jewellery, picking the cocoa and coffee beans to feed Western cravings, or scrubbing floors as housemaids.

Slavery today is also a six-year-old girl in Cambodia sold by her parents into the sex industry as a sex slave and servicing nine men a day.

These are the shocking images we should keep in mind when questioning whether pornography is harmful. The exploitation and abuse of countless women and children in the ‘sex industry’ is the tragic underbelly of this new wave of pornification.

Human Matters: The Art of Normalising War

Like most couples we enjoy snuggling up together with a good movie. With video stores and online rental services bursting with tantalising movies, it’s hardly worth venturing to the cinema these days. Home entertainment, along with the Internet, is the new conspiracy to keep us isolated and socially disconnected within our own four walls.

However I’m more disturbed by a conspiracy of another kind: Hollywood’s indoctrination of the masses to accept violence and war as ‘normal’.

It was my turn to choose a movie. Sultry screen siren, Catherine Zeta-Jones and swarthy hero, Antonio Banderas offer the perfect combination of romance and swashbuckling action in The Legend of Zorro. But I felt cheated with a massive dose of macho violence and just a tiny splash of feel-good romance.

Another night, I wanted to see the tiny-waisted Nicole Kidman in the sweeping epic, Cold Mountain and unwittingly unleashed endless scenes of Civil War butchery in our own living room.

I succumbed to my husband’s choice of the crime thriller, Man of Fire because it starred the yummy Denzel Washington. Imagine my shock when that same sweet guy systematically sliced off the fingers of a crook and in another gruesome scene rammed an explosive up a bloke’s rectum and we watched him explode. But don’t worry, they were Baddies.

I usually like the laconic Kevin Costner, so we got cosy with the Western, Open Range. The pleasant vistas of rolling plains and peaceful campfires abruptly ceased when the cowboys, driven by revenge, got down to the serious business of killing. The classic show-down is no longer restricted to just two gun slingers. This shoot-out escalated into a massacre. But don’t worry, they were all Baddies.

These are just a smattering of the countless movies laced with toxic violence we have endured in the name of entertainment. I’m not squeamish about blood and guts. I know it’s only clever special events; that no one REALLY gets hurt…and besides, they’re all Baddies. But what does worry me is the pernicious underlying themes we are relentlessly spoon-fed and mindlessly swallow.

We, passive consumers of Hollywood pap, are being indoctrinated to accept the notion that violence, more specifically, warfare is a natural part of life. The message is loud and clear; war has always been around and always will be. Moviemakers are on a mission to normalise war. For goodness sake, don’t protest. What are you, some kind of naïve wimp?

Furthermore violence is pleasurable. We are meant to enjoy seeing multitudes of fellow humans stabbed, shot and mutilated in various fascinating ways. Insidiously mix up romance and violence and you can capture the female audience too.

We are being educated to enjoy, not just the odd murder, but MASS slaughter. Sophisticated Computer Generated Images (CGI’s) serve up a feast of gore. What about the graphic battle scenes of the “historic” flick, Kingdom of Heaven? God help us if that’s a glimpse of the afterlife.
Even the latest acclaimed CGI masterpiece Avatar has its obligatory spectacular battle scene.

The mega scale of death and destruction has reached giddy new heights. We are privileged to see buildings demolished, cities crumble and the whole world destroyed in such doomsday celebrations as Armageddon, War of the Worlds and Independence Day.

Don’t you just love bombs? We know from real-life tragedies in Bali, Baghdad and London that bombs inflict the worst possible injuries on fragile human beings; searing flesh with agonising burns, blowing off limbs and deforming those who have the dubious luck to survive.

And here is the concept I like the most. Put aside your conscience and any moral compunction or Sunday school echoes of that quaint old-fashioned rule “Thou Shalt Not Kill” because the enemy are not REAL people.

Using the ever-reliable psychological device of demonising and dehumanising the enemy, we (governments) have license to kill. More than squashing the odd pest, we can invade countries and eradicate, not men, women and children, but vermin. It is a simple trick. You just have to label people Jews, Commies, Terrorists or Muslims.

Moviemakers have all the fun. They can invent aliens, monsters and even machines that the Good Guys get to slaughter by the truckload. Like those grotesque mud-formed Orcs in Lord of the Rings and the legions of metallic villains in I, Robot.

Self-righteous vengeance is another reliable theme that works a treat on the human psyche to justify and rationalise murder. There’s nothing more satisfying than a good revenge movie where the hero, enraged by the killing of his wife and kids or other outrageous offences, blasts to bits the low-life scum who crossed him. This is apparently Mel Gibson’s speciality.

And if invincible, virtuous heroes are not wreaking revenge, they are “protecting” America. For such a noble cause, anything goes, in movies and in real life. We now led to believe that the war in Iraq, seven years on, is acceptable and normal. The death toll for the Iraq war is 1.5 million men, women and children (but this shocking figure is seldom released in the mass media).

Be warned contented movie buffs: don’t dare question wars in far-flung countries. While Hollywood grooms soldiers to commit atrocities, the rest of us are being groomed as enablers, as we sink into our comfy chairs and enjoy a feast of violence. Don’t worry. It’s just special effects…and they are all Baddies anyway.

If adult minds are meant to discern between movie fantasy and reality, and this is debatable, can the impressionable minds of children and teenagers discern the difference between the non-stop screen violence they consume from movies and video games and real life? When are the boundaries blurred? When does the real blood of real children spill onto the streets? Fantasy becomes reality when the child grows up and picks up a weapon.

Don’t believe that violent movies are harmless entertainment. Your sensibilities, your conscience and your humanity are being dulled with every violent movie you consume. We in the developed countries are all enablers in the triangle of perpetrators who victimise the poor in the lucrative Business of War.

It is time to wake up from our pleasant mindlessness on the sofa in front of the Big Screen and take a stand against the insidious indoctrination by Hollywood. Lets all get educated about the atrocities happening every day in the real life drama of our precious world.

Personal Growth Matters - What Does It Mean to Love Yourself?

Back in the Have It All 80’s, when we eagerly attended self improvement weekend seminars in plush hotels, the hackneyed cliché ‘You’ve got to love yourself before you can love others’ was thrown around liberally by the pseudo experts on the stage and the naïve followers in the audience.

This trite statement begs to be dissected and explored in more depth. What exactly does the word ‘love’ mean in this context? Romantic love? Hardly. Or spiritual love? What’s spiritual love anyway? And what aspect of the Self are we meant to love? The fake image we manufacture or the real self that lurks within, with all its flaws? How do you love yourself if you don’t even know yourself properly? It’s like falling in love with a complete stranger, as if mindless infatuation was a good thing!

Back then I worked out that if the opposite of love is hatred (some say the opposite of love is indifference) then such an aversion is usually based on projections. We project feelings of dislike onto someone else who has the traits we don’t like in our self. So, the logic goes, if I learn to accept these aspects of myself, I will accept them in others. This line of thought was getting warm but not hot.

Instant negative feelings about others can also be based on transferences (aspects of other key people such as parents and siblings that hurt us growing up). Hating someone can also simply be that they rub us the wrong way by being offensive or we just don’t click with someone’s personality. Surely having negative feelings about some people, (while loving trusted others) is a normal inbuilt protective device so we avoid those who cause us distress. Perhaps the concept of universe love is not necessarily desirable.

Back in the 80’s when I was trying to work it all out, I reasoned that negative emotions were NOT love, and realised that when I felt emotions such as variations of anxiety, grief, neediness, shame and anger I was not feeling generous, warm, gooey love. So I decided my goal should be to remain in a constant state of blissful ‘love’ in order to express love to others. I was trying hard to crack this nut, but not quite getting it!

In my marriage, I certainly knew that my gnawing neediness was selfish; all about my craving to get my insatiable emotional needs met, rather than unselfishly, unconditionally giving love to my husband.

I was once told by a devotee of the popular Indian guru Rajneesh that the goal was to exist in a state of love, starting with loving yourself, so that you had so much love, there was an excess and it just spilt out! So I spent lots of time trying to fill my inner cup so that it would run over! But to be honest, it didn’t work, because truth is, like everyone, I am a complex mixture of emotions throughout any one day, which changes from minute to minute, in fact. Running the gauntlet of a parade of changing emotions is just being human.

Now three decades later, in my 50s, with piles life experience and study of psychology under my belt, I can confidently claim I know in my heart what the concept of loving yourself is all about.

One thing I know for sure (to borrow Oprah’s assertive phrase) is the real meaning of “loving yourself” is NOT narcissism, which is to love your own false image. The word narcissism comes from Greek mythology about the youth, Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection in a stream. He was so transfixed by his own beauty he couldn’t move away and ended up dying there, staring at his reflection.

Our western culture promotes narcissism. We are encouraged to worship the fake facades of celebrities manufactured by the media and to become obsessed with our physical appearance and carefully cultivated self-image (which sells fashion, beauty products, cosmetic surgery, gym memberships etc). The commercial focus on image exploits our human need to be admired but sadly the more effort we put into created a false image, the more we become estranged from our Real Self.

The ‘self’ we are meant to love to find healing, growth and transformation is not the superficial False Self. To fall in love with our own image is vanity and delusion and ultimately leads to a tragic end. Healing and growth comes through loving the real inner self; the self that is flawed and vulnerable; the self we mostly keep hidden from others. In theology, this is the sinful self that has done wrong, made mistakes and fallen short. In therapy, it is the wounded Inner Child who carried all the hurts of a lifetime.

We must target this ‘True Self’ in order to heal and grow. In therapy that takes someone below the surface behaviour and deep inside the psyche to the memories of childhood, we discover that all emotions and beliefs about other people and life in general, are reduced to core beliefs and core hurts that revolve about the Self.

If the adult is angry and hates their partner, in therapy, we contact the inner child who was angry and hated mum or dad (or another caregiver or sibling). But going deeper, we always discover the faulty beliefs link to the self (children are egocentric in their undeveloped thinking). If the child felt unloved, neglected or abused by a parent, they blame them self and conclude “There’s something wrong with me”; “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t deserve love” etc.

So, yes, the wounded inner self, with all its distorted negative opinions, requires love in order to heal and unleash the ability to love others. In therapy, the unconscious distorted beliefs about the Self are lovingly corrected. The wounded Inner Child is gently nurtured and protected.
But what is meant by ‘love’? There are different kinds of love such as romantic love (eros); family love (phileo) and spiritual love (agape).

Firstly let’s explore emotions that are NOT love. There are four core ‘negative’ (painful or unpleasant) emotions which have various degrees of intensity.

FEAR runs the spectrum from mild apprehension, worry, nervousness and anxiety to panic and full-blow terror. Fear tends to be about the ‘future’, is concerned with safety and survival and is mostly triggered by mental activity about perceived threats. Fear starts in the head, with a thinking process.

When someone experiences chronic anxiety, especially if they perceive their partner as a threat, it is difficult to feel love. They are too on edge, defensive and reactive all the time.

GRIEF, the emotion of sadness and sorrow, experienced in the heart region, is a response to loss or unmet emotional needs. Grief, like the other emotions varies in intensity from mild disappointment to a devastating experience of being heartbroken and in the deepest despair (lacking all hope and motivation to live). Grief actually feels physically painful in the heart because of the nerves and hormones activated in this region. Grief is about the PAST; yearning for what you once had or wanted but is now lost or gone.

When someone experiences the loss of a loved one or some kind of trauma, it is healthy to express the grief through crying. When grief is not openly expressed, but repressed and buried, it is not integrated and a person becomes disconnected from their Inner Pain.

Clearly it is difficult to feel love for yourself and others while stuck in chronic, repressed grief, which sometimes takes the form of depression. However the person in mourning who expresses grief through crying will emerge from the process renewed and capable of loving again. In fact, feeling one’s Inner Pain is the path to genuine love…that’s where we are going with this but first let’s consider two other emotions.

SHAME is a core emotion that sits just under the heart, in the stomach. It comes from an inbuilt survival mechanism to distinguish good and bad and what is healthy or harmful, both in the moral sense and the physical sense.

If we eat food that has gone off and could make us sick, we will feel disgust and spit it out. If we do something wrong, against our own values, we will feel guilty, a feeling of being “bad”. If we correct the behaviour the feeling should go away however some children are made to feel guilty, bad about themselves, all the time and temporary guilt morphs into an overall sense of permanent, chronic shame where the child grow up and continues feel like a ‘bad person’. Chronic shame can lead to all kinds of shameful or harmful behaviour as self punishment for being bad and unworthy.

ANGER is another core emotion that is felt in the lower gut. It has a purpose in the human psyche to motivate action, to fight, if your survival is threatened. Anger is activated to defend against an attack or offence. It can be turned into the impulse for retaliation or revenge if the offence has already happened.

Anger has range of intensities too, from frustration to annoyance through degrees of disrespect and disdain and contempt (when coloured by judgements) to blind hatred and furious rage. Repressed anger is experienced as hostility and resentment. In a relationship, if one or both partners are carrying unexpressed resentment, it seeps out in all kinds of ways such as non-co-operation, covert hostility and passive aggression.

If someone lives in a state of chronic anger, it is difficult for them to feel love and softness while feeling hyped up on aggressive hormones.

All these emotions are natural to the human condition and serve a purpose. However to become a Loving Person, we have to gain mastery over these emotions and allow them to transmute into a positive, spiritual form.

Fear can bring us to Faith. Grief leads us to the highest form of Love, which is compassion. Shame is overcome through finding a sense of goodness and the energy of anger can become a motivator, the essence of Hope. Remember the scripture, 1 Corinthians 13: Faith, Hope and Love.

Let’s revisit the Heart and explore the nature of love more fully. It is necessary to feel your own Inner Pain; all that buried grief over not being loved enough or even abused as a child plus a lifetime of accumulated hurts. The experience of grief leads to the gift of EMPATHY; the ability to feel another person’s pain. Empathy leads to REMORSE (sorrow) for how we have hurt others and a desire not to hurt others again.

Empathy brings a feeling of COMPASSION for other people’s suffering. Compassion is a feeling of deep concern, kindness, sympathy and understanding. Compassion is spiritual, agape love. This kind of love is unconditional and generous, not needy, requires no reciprocation and has no strings attached. It is God’s kind of love expressed through humans.

And compassion is the kind of healing love that is needed by the Inner Self.

When we feel ashamed of our self for our past sins and mistakes, we tend to fear three reactions from others if they ever found out our secrets: judgement and condemnation which creates more shame; rejection and ending the relationship and anger and hatred.
The opposite of these reactions is non-judgement; to see the goodness in the person; forgiveness (to pardon without punishment); acceptance instead of rejection and compassion (kindness and gentleness) instead of anger and hatred. The child or adult consumed by shame can be healed by this loving combination.

The Inner Self needs a sense of goodness, acceptance and compassion. How can we give this gift of ultimate love to our self? Now here is the paradoxical twist in the 80s You’ve Got To Love Yourself mantra; the ability to love yourself only comes from receiving this kind of unconditional healing love for others.

Humans are social creatures and we first learnt what to feel about our self from how others treated us; our parents and other caregivers growing up. As adults in search of healing we need to experience love from others again; to have acceptance, our true worth and value and heartfelt compassion reflected in the eyes of others in order to experience ‘love’; acceptance, forgiveness, goodness, respect, compassion, kindness and understanding towards our true self.

Other People who are compassionate are the necessary step to Self Love.

Who are these loving people? It is your job to find them. And it is your job to be that loving person in the healing of others.

Personal Growth Matters -Sibling Rivalry Drives Immature Adults

I grew up with a kind, protective big brother, no bitchy sisters, so it has been perplexing for me to grasp this insidious aspect of human nature. In fact, it has taken years of observing the bizarre behaviour of fully grown adults to comprehend sibling rivalry.

Sibling rivalry, a deep, burning competiveness, is the underlying driving force that makes a 54 year old man regress to the age of three around his younger brother and act superior and boastful and ignore or denigrate his brother’s achievements, as if throwing a tantrum and screaming at an invisible mummy and daddy: “Look at ME. I am much better than him!”

The potent force of sibling rivalry makes grown women steal other women’s husbands, causing horrendous damage to all concerned; far worse than stealing their sister’s favourite dress. It makes otherwise-intelligent professional women copy and compete with the clothes, jewellery and hair styles of female colleagues (as if screaming: “Look everyone, I’m prettier than her!”). It compels childish men to backstab colleagues by reporting misdemeanours to the boss (the way the Goody Two Shoes kid dobs in his siblings to Dad to score points.)

There are several weapons in the armoury of the grown-up still driven by unconscious sibling rivalry. In conversation, the sub text remains “I am better than you (and other lesser beings)”. This dysfunctional person is proud to strut as a flagrant snob, even though most mature people, who value equality and human rights, consider snobbery offensive and misguided.

A superiority complex might form if someone is born with a firm grip on the Silver Spoon, into a wealthy, upper class family, or it might be based on real attributes and accomplishments (Ironically most genuine achievers are modest and have no need to boast).
More often, superiority is a phoney act with no basis in reality. One guy I know, far from being born into the aristocracy and preened for privilege in a private school and an elite university, grew up in an ordinary, struggling family and left Tech at 15 in the back blocks of Australia. In adult life he moved to the UK, and now fakes a posh accent and pretends he’s Blue Blood. (Sadly not many people fall for it. His false pretensions are very transparent!)

Such a self-centred person will hog the spotlight in a conversation, boasting about their latest exotic holidays, sporting pursuits and dubious achievements and name-dropping about rubbing shoulders with the rich, famous and obnoxious, but they are loath to give the other person equal time.

They never ask about you, having honed with sibling rivals growing up, the skill of avoiding the subject of you as their preferred competitive strategy, which has the affect of making you feel ignored and devalued.

However if you seize the audacity to talk about yourself, gripped by panic, they go to the next level of competing which is to negate you by showing no interest and changing the subject. This will be confusing and hurtful; especially if you are used to courteous conversation with supportive friends who take a genuine interest in you. I’ve been on the receiving end of this undermining treatment, and being taken by surprise, I am quite undefended. It is impossible to connect with someone who is acting superior and competitive. Bonding is based in equality and mutual respect.

If you persist in talking about yourself, they will bring out the big guns of sarcastic put-downs; such is their infantile fear that you will outdo them or take the attention off them. If you are sensitive like me, and not ready with a sarcastic come-back, you can be wounded by these malicious tactics, learned long ago as a sly backyard bully to weaker, younger siblings.

A certain personality type (Type Seven, for readers who know the Enneagram) is prone to jealousy and rivalry, based on a faulty belief formed in childhood that there is not enough parental affection, praise and attention to go around. They perceive parental love as a small pie, which has to be divided up and if your brother gets a bigger slice, you get less.

These jealous kids grow up with a sense of lack and deprivation, fighting with siblings for the biggest share, instead of experiencing a sense of abundance; secure in an unlimited, endless supply of love for the whole family. Stingy parents who doled out scraps of love might be responsible for creating this belief or it can spring from the child’s own insatiable neediness.

A toddler dethroned by a new baby at the Identity stage of development, between the ages of three and four, is particular susceptible to jealousy and perceiving the baby as a rival for parental focus. This is the attention-seeking stage when kids dress up and yell at mum and dad: “Look at me! I’m a tiger/Superman/Fairy/Princess etc”

What this kind of competitiveness becomes in adults is begrudging giving your partner, children, extended family, friends, colleagues, anyone for that matter, any credit, praise, complements or encouragement. Even as adults, we continue to need these emotional strokes and it is wounding not to receive them from people we love.

When I was in my 20s holding down a highly responsible job as Women’s Editor of a daily broadsheet newspaper, I was working my heart out and achieving great things by writing in-depth features that publicised community issues and promoted worthy events.
I craved a pat on the back from my best gal pal and my best male friend, but both of them in their own way, withheld all praise and acknowledgement. I remember buying into their unspoken devaluing message and thinking “Ah well, what I’m doing isn’t such a big deal!”

Likewise I scrambled after approval from a close relative, longing for the day she would praise me for a clever article I’d written, but it never came! She lived with low self-esteem having grown up with ‘small pie’ parents, so it was too risky to throw a few crumbs my way.

Unresolved sibling rivalry can also emerge in adulthood in silly ways. An impressionable female colleague of mine in a male dominated workplace, was obsessed with copying my clothes. One day I wore a smart green suit, the next week, she coincidently wore the same suit. If I wore red, she wore red. I wore big gold hoop ear rings, she wore bigger hoops! She started wearing her hair like mine. I thought I was just vain and paranoid and imagining this copying syndrome until she bought the same make of car as mine! Apparently she grew up with a lot of sisters.

There is a positive developmental role to sibling rivalry; growing up we learn by copying parents and are motivated to succeed by comparing and competing with our brothers and sisters (and friends). Humans, like other mammals, have an inbuilt instinct to learn through imitation of parents and siblings.

How do we learn to speak if not by listening carefully to and copying our parents? When my husband was a primary school teacher he had a little girl as a pupil who spoke as if she had a speech impediment, when she had no physical problem. She learnt how to speak from her dad, who had a cleft palate. Another woman I know has slurred speech having grown up with an alcoholic parent.

When we reach the Individuation Stage of Development in our teens, when it is essential to psychologically ‘separate’ from enmeshment with parents and start to form our own independence and individuality, we need to clash with parents in order to break the attachment. This clashing is normal and necessary although very tough on parents.

Some times the latent urge to individuate from parents comes out as rivalry. I once had a woman friend whose mother died when she was young. She was still straining to grow up and break the psychological maternal tie in her late 40s and used me to ‘compare, copy and compete’ with. It was quite weird being the recipient of such a dynamic.

Some kids who grow up as an Only Child, without siblings to bounce off, end up competing with their parents in adult life, trying to prove they can do exactly what their parents did, but even bigger and better. If they are High Achievers, they feel compelled to surpass their parents’ success in every aspect of life.

In the final analysis, sibling rivalry is an extension of the survival instinct. We are born with a powerful urge to survive, which is purely selfish and self-centred. This is the ‘Taker’ part of you, which tramples over others to get your own physical and emotional needs met.

But thankfully we are also equipped with an altruistic instinct to care for and protect others. Females of the species have a powerful maternal instinct to nurture and males come installed with the paternal instinct to provide and protect. This other-centred instinct, the ‘Giver’, is firstly directed to our own children and family and then expanded to encompass all children, the sick, old, weak and vulnerable members of the Tribe and animals in our care.

This Social Instinct hopefully guides us to nurture and care for, and to protect from harm, our community and natural environment in these current times we live in (having left the Tribe).
As we develop and mature as adults, concern for others must override the selfish and competitive instincts. The Social Instinct allows people to work together for group survival in a spirit of co-operation, rather than competing as individuals.

In marriage, the caring and protecting instinct should be the strongest instinct. The husband who perceives his wife as the ‘enemy’ is stunted in survival mode and must locate his masculine paternal instinct, altruism, empathy and compassion.

Likewise the adult trapped in childish sibling rivalry must grow up and see his peers (brothers and sisters) not as competitors but as equal human beings to be respected and cherished.