Diet for a New America 25th Anniversary Edition. John Robbins

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СКАЧАТЬ by one who is in training to become a true healer, a girl of 20 who is both beautiful and compassionate. She holds his hand to help him bear the pain and smooths his forehead until he falls asleep. She washes and feeds him as though he is a baby, and when he grows a little stronger, she tells him stories of the ways of peace and love.

      As he convalesces, he conceives a deep devotion and gratitude to his nurse and asks that he might be allowed to serve her in however humble a capacity. She tells him that one of her duties is to look after the geese, that the geese are very special to her, and that it would be a great help if he would do this for her. Her words cause him to remember his many cruelties, and he begins to cry bitterly and says that he dare not do what she asks, for sometimes almost against his will he has been cruel to animals, and so he is very afraid that he might attack her geese, an act that, to him now, would be like causing her personal injury.

      She says to him: “You were so ill that you might have died. I asked the gods that you might be born again; they listened, and you recovered. The cruelty that you once inflicted and the pain you suffered are as though they had never been. They are dead, but you are alive. Because of the link between us, you will never forget again the link between you and your younger brothers and sisters.”

      The boy is filled with hope but even so does not entirely believe her. She brings him a kitten, but he protests, saying he can’t be trusted with the kitten. She smiles and teaches him how to scratch the kitten’s throat and ears and points out how loudly it purrs when he does so. “It likes you,” she says. “It knows you can be trusted, and I know you can be trusted, too, so I will leave you alone with the kitten now.”

      The boy doesn’t know what to think and protests, but she just smiles and kisses his forehead.

      When she returns, several hours later, she finds the boy asleep, with the kitten curled up beside him, purring.

      The boy grows to become one of the kindest veterinarians in all the land, and his manner with animals is so gentle and clear that even the most terrified and injured of them instinctively know they can trust him.¹

      It looks to me as if many of the people who mistreat the animals raised for today’s meats and eggs are not that different from this boy, likewise crying out for wise and compassionate help. The lack of caring they display for the animals in their keeping stems from an alienation from themselves and from life, not from innate cruelty. Merely blaming and hating them does nothing to heal the separation and isolation out of which their cruelties spring. Our goal should be to help them learn to act according to an authentic respect for other creatures, for in so doing they can come to feel a kinship with life and their own value as part of Creation. We urgently need laws that would guide them in this direction.

      Of course, in some instances it may take a serious remedy to be effective. Sometimes only a severe corrective is able to produce the needed empathy in someone who otherwise remains indifferent to the suffering of his fellow creatures. Here is another such case from ancient times.

      A man is accused of mistreating his oxen. The judge inspects the animals and sees that they are indeed in bad condition and have deep sores on their shoulders from an ill-fitting yoke. He tells the owner that this is not good, thinking that perhaps the man is ignorant, or stupid, and has not seen the hurt done to the animals. But the man protests defensively that his oxen are thin because they are too lazy to eat, that the work they do in the fields is light enough for a child, and that he envies the oxen their contentment. And the judge says: “There shall be no longer any need for you to have to envy them. For now you will have the opportunity to share their contentment, by doing yourself this work you say is ‘child’s play.’ Tomorrow you shall be yoked to the plow, and you will draw it back and forth under the hot sun until the field is furrowed.”

      The judge gives the man’s oxen to a neighbor whose animals are well cared for and says that the man may regain his oxen when he has finished furrowing the field. Furthermore, his oxen will be inspected thereafter, and if it is found that he has mistreated them, he will receive unto himself whatever treatment he has given unto them. But if it is found that he now treats them well, then it will be known that he can be trusted with oxen, and so his herd will be expanded.²

      If a person refuses time and again to imagine how he would feel in another creature’s shoes, sometimes the only remedy that will bring about the needed empathy is to physically place him there.

      In some cases the conditions suffered by today’s food animals arise simply because greed has clouded the eyes of those responsible, and they can no longer see the pain of their fellow creatures. In such cases, the best justice may be that which serves not only to right the wrong that has been done but also to clear the vision that has become so clouded.

      Here is one more case of ancient wisdom, uniquely pertinent to the issue of greed. In one village there are two men who dispute ownership of a wild ass. Both claim ownership by right of having seen the animal first. One of the men is more prosperous than the other, yet he keeps bemoaning his poverty, the number of his children, and the poorness of his fields and he protests that the ass should be given to him because his is by far the greater need. A wise judge says to him: “You tell me that your need is the greater because you are poor and this other man is far wealthier than you; and when he says he is the poorer you say he is lying. Therefore I shall give a judgment that will adjust the wrong that he does to you. You, who are the poorer man, shall have the wild ass. And to show you how much you are favored, you and this other man shall exchange all your possessions.”

      Now the man cries out in self-pity and says he has been robbed. At this, the judge pretends to be surprised. “Robbed? When I have given to you the greater possessions of your neighbor? Surely you don’t believe his claim that his possessions are meager, when you yourself have just assured me that he lies and his holdings are great. As an honest man, you must admit the exchange has indeed favored you.”³

       A Cow Testifies in Court

      In our own times, courtroom justice is not always so poetic or profound. But our judges sometimes manage to come up with creative ways of getting to the truth of a dispute.

      On July 6, 1953, a California man named Mike Perkins was formally accused of stealing a calf from his neighbor’s ranch and then branding it with his own ranch’s insignia to conceal the theft. Mike stood before the judge and vehemently denied the charges, saying his neighbor had made the whole thing up out of jealousy.

      The judge was going to find Perkins innocent, because the only evidence against him was the other farmer’s word. But then he had an idea: he sent the sheriff out to Perkins’s ranch and had him bring to a yard adjacent to the courthouse all of Perkins’s calves who were about the age the allegedly stolen calf was reputed to be. Then he sent the sheriff out to the accusing neighbor’s ranch and had him bring to the yard the cow who was alleged to be the mother of the stolen calf.

      When the mother cow arrived, she began calling loudly and seemed to be trying to move toward the roped-in calves. The judge decreed that she be allowed freedom of movement. When she was let go, the cow gave her testimony to the court in no uncertain terms. She went directly over to the calves, nudged her way to one in particular, and began to lick it over and over, right on the hip, where Perkins’s brand “P” was located.

      I probably don’t have to tell you Mike Perkins was found guilty.

       What They’re Really Like

      When I first heard what happened in this California court, I was surprised. There was an image in my mind of what cows could and couldn’t do, and I wouldn’t have thought this kind of thing possible. I was still, more than I knew, a prisoner of the common notion that animals are automata, with perhaps a dash СКАЧАТЬ