The Greatest Lesson

It's been just over three months since the ending of my last job. Since then, we have been surviving on two unemployment insurance checks weekly. Not much, to say the least, but we are grateful for at least something to fall back upon.

I imagine I am preaching to the choir as millions of you are too, standing in the unemployment line. So what's with the article title? Unemployment and poverty is my 'greatest lesson'? Well, yes...

Like the rest of you, when I was working I got caught up in the drama of hectic living. Work here; a few social expectations there. Woofing down meals to meet my next commitment on time. Not exercising enough, not sleeping at night and eating more calories than I could burn off. An occasional email, impersonal as it may be, to friends and family just to let them know I am alive; often neglecting family needs at home.

Initially, when I first became unemployed I felt a lack of equilibrium. It's amazing how much a job contributes to our self-definition and what we perceive as life-balance.

But, after some soul searching and reflecting on what I could learn from my experience, I settled down into a stronger sense of self and I learned that it is less important what I do for a living than what I live for doing. Materialism and ego gave way to a sense of peace and confidence within that I wasn't able to achieve through work.

I've learned that life becomes more meaningful when I refuse the distractions that had dominated my days prior. I've begun to focus on what life is really about, loving, learning and self-growth. Instead of reluctantly waking to the early morning buzz from the alarm clock, I more happily wake to the gentle licking from my pup and feel of the morning's dewy air.

I've realized that although we can't buy everything we need and the bills are often paid late, my time with family makes it all worthwhile and there is no place as comforting as when I am at home.

I am beginning to focus on what I am passionate about and rejecting the learned impulses of 'keeping up with the Jones' ' because the Jones probably aren't fortunate enough to have this chance to realize that things do not bring happiness.

While I am actively seeking employment and positions appear to be opening up, I never want to go back to allowing my work to take precedence over the happiness that my family and home bring me. Poverty can be a wonderful teacher. In this country we are groomed into believing that having too much, working excessively and eating more than we need is the path to a satisfactory life. Rubbish.

We can do more with less. When we have fulfilling relationships, we don't need to be distracted with ownership, constant activity and financial wealth. This has been the greatest lesson of unemployment.

It's All Up To You

"Life is the sum of all your choices." (Albert Camus)


What will your next choice be?

Oh Please People, Please...

There so much politico these days. Obama this, Republicans that, Demo's this. Who knows what to believe?!

Personally, I choose to stay out of politics. I know, I know, 'if I don't get involved then I shouldn't even comment', my politicking friends would say. But seriously folks, who's to say who's right or wrong here?

Well I say, 'Where's the beef?!'.

I prefer to believe facts. What I see. Evidence.

Before the election last year Obama and Biden both scored high on HSUS's Humane Scorecard. Yep, I am an animal welfare and rights activist. Get over it.

My partner is a political voice and a photographer, often mixing the two. Our home is decorated with photo's of high ranking political entities.

My decor...I have no real taste. Politics? I prefer to keep it to myself.

But when Biden BUYS a dog from a known puppy mill and President Obama accepts a dog from a BREEDER, I have to question their integrity. After all, didn't they get high scores on humane issues involving addressing the plight of victims of puppy mills? What is up?!

So I am back to my non-political stance. I have no faith in our government, even though I have worked my entire career in government. I have seen first hand the corruptness of politics. Folks are just trying to make a living, stay in power, look good. It seems to have little to do with doing what's right for others.

Am I negative? Probably. But I am a realist. Don't vote one way and live another. As Bill Cosby has said, "The proof is in the pudding.".

When will we start holding our government officials accountable for what they do, not what they say?

Don't actions speak louder than words?

I'm not saying I agree with all Republicans. I'm just saying I question the integrity of what the higher-up democrats say and do.

How about the rest of you? What's your take on today's political values?

Why We Torture

The DVD,Taxi to the Dark Side, a 2007 documentary film which won the 2007 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The video provides an in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan. It is a very thought-provoking look at not what we do, but what we are.

I am supportive of our troops. I have 2 troop members in my family. But I have to question how we got to the point where we accept torture as a valid tool in gaining intelligence. More than that, how is it that our soldiers were so comfortable in engaging in the vile acts I witnessed in this recent DVD as well as the other media demonstrations of torture? They have to have determined that the humanness of an Afghan (or Iraqi or other captive) was so far removed from the troop's own humanness that compassion and empathy was eliminated. In order to engage in torture, it is imperative to objectify the target. The troops would have had to, in their psyche, de-humanize their captives in order to eliminate empathy they might naturally feel for another's suffering. This predetermination of a diminished human status, or prejudice, clearly made torture easier for them.

In looking at the troops interviewed I couldn't help but notice that the troops were either female, African-American, lower to middle-socioeconomic status or fell into other "categories" of people in the U.S. traditionally subjected to bias in this country. So how could they, who have probably experienced biased treatment themselves, step so over the line as to subject captives to the humiliation and degradation that clearly went far beyond the call of duty? Regardless of whether I support or oppose torture in Intel-gathering, their sexually abusive actions, even causing death, were of no benefit to gaining information. So why then?

Suzanne Pharr, in her book Homophobia, dissects the elements of all prejudice. She does a very nice job of demonstrating how each element that is found in peoples prejudices against different sexual orientations to what underlies biases against religions, gender, age, skin color and so on. One of the interesting elements she discusses is that of 'horizontal hostility'. This element is a subjugated group's tendency to subjugate another group in order to 'lift' themselves to a higher social status; a sort of pushing others to the bottom rung on the social status ladder to avoid that rung themselves.

I think that this, and the other elements Pharr describes are easily witnessed in how we treat others, even ourselves. Horizontal hostility is a form of torture itself, albeit leaving little physical evidence to compare with that of the Afghan victims. We can use insensitive language towards other groups of people, tell 'dumb blond' or 'dumb men' jokes or hire only certain genders or races for certain positions in our company. Torture can be subjective and comes in various forms. Sometimes torture is our participation in prejudiced dialogue or actions against other groups. Some times torture is what we do to ourselves by degrading self-talk when we have an opportunity to reach higher than we ever have, but fear the unknown. So we label ourselves 'stupid', 'naive' and decide against taking a chance because most others in 'our group' haven't succeeded. Sometimes we torture our employees for the creative ideas they have that would require our risk-taking, when we just don't have it in us to try something new; so we create a work environment of status and hierarchy so that our employees will feel less-than others and not share their ideas so willingly.

When it comes down to it, we torture because not what 'they' are but because of what we are; or aren't. It is not our differences in lifestyle, gender, nationality or even faith that motivates bias and torture. It is where we view ourselves in relation to others.

Surprisingly, it isn't always that we see the target of our hostility as lesser-than, but more often that we view ourselves as the diminished individual. It isn't what we are, but our perception of what and who we are that allows us to torture another, or not.

Black & White

"They chased it all over the barn and it bled everywhere, ...Somehow it ended up in the goat stall. They cut its leg off."
(pet-abuse.com; cruelty case #12459 Mutilation/Torture)

So was the situation of a two year old calf named Neapolitan.

Born into a farming industry, purchased by the Neadow's for two thousand dollars and valued for both the milk she provided and her responsiveness to human prompts. Neapolitan was considered a part of the family, a "pet" by Neadow's standards. Until the calf was found dead, throat slit, in the barn of the Hartland, N. Y. farm, the existence of this voiceless victim had been rather typical, by farming standards.

This 2007 Niagara County cruelty case remains unsolved. It is tragic, horrendous and the extreme violence reflects an anomaly in human behavior. Or does it?

When I was very young, not more than seven or eight, I was told the story of a calf and it's mother who, with approximately twenty other cows, had been transported to a slaughterhouse.

The storyteller was a relative. An old farmer type who had changed careers late in life and now drove the trucks that carried farm animals to their final destination. He was not an animal activist, nor vegan; he was not even vegetarian. Just a typical mid-western sixty-year old man with a mortgage an no pensions to rely on. So he purchased an eighteen-wheeler an began driving for his living.

The story of the calf and mother cow was something that, had the characters' species been different , would have matched the likes of movies such as Friday the Thirteenth and Chainsaw Massacre.

After arriving at the slaughterhouse lot, he backed the trailer to the stall area. The cows were unloaded and herded onto what is known in the industry as the "kill floor". A place where blood pools and men yielding knives and wearing red-soaked aprons awaited them.

As the mother cow began to notice the threats within her new environment she began to cry out a sorrowful moan, attempting to alert her baby and fellow passengers to the dangers. Only there was no way out.

The men immediately separated the mother from her calf, but only by a few feet, and began hacking away at the tiny calf, who remained fully conscious and in great fear and confusion. Each hacking brought laughter to the room of slaughter workers until the violence turned into a sick game of eliciting maternal responses with each assault to the helpless calf. Her guttural pleas for the safety of her infant only prompted more violent responses by the workers until, after twenty minutes of stabbing, hacking and slitting, the tiny and frightened victim ceased to live.

Once the calf's struggle ended, the slaughter workers turned their efforts onto the mother cow and the process of killing then returned to the more automated methods of chaining, hanging, dismembering and skinning.

After hearing this story I asked 'why, in witnessing this horror, had my relative not done anything to stop the cruelty?' He answered with his shameful silence.

Even he, the meat-eating, leather wearing and weekend fisherman that he was, could not rationalize the actions of those slaughterhouse men. After a few minutes of heartfelt contemplation his only response was, "That happens every day. I have seen that same sort of thing many times in my driving career. It sickens me."

So what is the difference between Neapolitan's ending and those of the anonymous calf an his mother?

Neapolitan was a family pet. The cow and calf were not.

Neapolitan was given a name and with that name, was assigned a role within the human system of relationships. The mother cow and her calf were not.

Neapolitan's death was assigned to a cruelty investigation. The other's are not.

Well over 35 million cows and calves meet their death in US slaughterhouses annually. Many suffer the extreme horrors described in this post. Those who aren't entered into these sick and violent games suffer no less, as many are hoisted in the air having their throats slit and "bled-out" to their death. Others live their existence inside crates only large enough to stand, until transported to kill factories. Still others, put inside machines designed to confuse and render less conscious (but not dead or even unconscious in the least) before being skinned an dismembered alive. Yet none of these nameless creatures is ever assigned a cruelty case number. Their death, not considered a tragedy. Not one is even given a second thought as they make their way from the factory farm to a dinner plate or shoe store shelf.

Most issues in life fall into areas of gray. Rigid boundaries of right and wrong give way to the undefined haze of perspective; they are arguments multifaceted and have many angles for consideration. But the killing of the defenseless is not gray; it never can be. If we allow compassion to become debatable we loose our civility. Compassion is black and white.

Food and clothing can not justify the cruelty endured by these sentient beings. Their prolonged confinement in unfeeling environment that denies even the most basic of comforts; the harrowing hours, even days of the cramped, cold and painful ride to the slaughterhouses; the traumatic ending brought by the plunges of blood-stained knives by uncaring men and women. This cruel unsympathetic treatment has no justification.

The killing of innocent beings, whether be the incident named or in anonymity, is black and white. It is wrong. It is uncivilized. It is opposite the nature of humanity.

As the human component of humanity we must stop the disregard that our manufacturing processes have for the beings of other species.

We must, if we are to move closer to our spiritual potential, develop a reverance for all creatures, great and small, and no longer allow convenience and greed to support the pain and suffering that exists today.

What would Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad or any other spiritual leader do or say about the conditions that our societies have created for the non-human animal?

Cruelty is black and white.

Compassion is black and white.

There is no gray in recognizing that other beings feel the same fear and pain that we, as humans, do and that humanity must be a central component of how we relate to one another, regardless of the differences of our species.

"Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind."
Albert Schweitzer