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A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 


Popular Proverbs Applied – 15 March 2007
By Mary T. Hoffman

People from many nations have proverbs or folk sayings that offer words of wisdom. Here are two examples:

The first one is of German origin: “One does evil enough when one does nothing good.” The other one is French: “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.”

I was thinking about the worldwide out-of -control increase in factory farms in response to the demand for animal products. Much of this demand is fueled by the spread of global fast-food operations and the copying of eating habits of more prosperous countries by those emerging from poverty. For many people emulating “westernized” populations by eating more flesh and dairy is a matter of status that gives them a sense of “having arrived.”

They “arrive” all right! Welcome to increased rates of heart attacks, strokes, cancers, et cetera, as well as viral diseases!
See: http://www.all-creatures.org/heart/blog-20070314.html 

What has this to do with the two folk sayings I mentioned, you ask? For the first proverb, “One does evil enough when one does nothing good”:

There is nothing good either for humans or for other animals in this “protein frenzy.” In a sense, the evil done to cruelly exploited animals is avenged by the long-term suffering of humans who refuse to do good and instead reinforce the “herding (hurting!) culture” mentality.
See: http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/index.html 

For the second proverb: “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience”:

Since eating or using the products of cruelty makes one complicit, I wonder how long a person can go avoiding the truth and fooling him or herself in order to have a “clear conscience.” Unless, of course, one has internalized the culture’s hardness of heart to the extent of psychopathology!

Go on to: Hell – 16 March 2007
Return to: Preventing Disease – 14 March 2007
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