Nonviolence is the Cornerstone
What you're seeing now is the increasing
secularization of human civilization. Contemporary Hindu spiritual master
Ravindra-svarupa dasa (Dr. William Deadwyler) writes:
"My study of religion was far from academic. I had come to view the historic
collapse of value and meaning in Western civilization as an immense
threat... Religion had been on the retreat for at least five hundred years,
and all attempts to construct secular substitutes had failed..."
(though I would argue Beatlemania came close!)
In 1986, my roommate John Anklow, a Reform Jew from New York, going to
school in Colorado and visiting California over the summer, commented that
humanity is gradually becoming nonviolent. Religious wars, for example, have
diminished.
I responded from a Vaishnavaite Hindu perspective: no, it just means our
field of vision has gotten lower... shifted from the metaphysical to the
mundane.
In previous centuries, humans fought wars over religious differences... now,
we go to war over economic differences, e.g. capitalism Vs communism.
A couple of years later, my friend Chris Hull would quote the character of Q
from Star Trek: the Next Generation along these lines, saying humans wage
wars "...over which economic system is better..."
(And that Star Trek episode aired at a time when Reagan and Gorbachev were
trying to resolve their differences!)
Progressives see human history as advancing -- injustices have ended through
social progress over the past five hundred years:
...democracy and representative government replacing monarchy and belief in
the divine right of kings; the separation of church and state; the abolition
of (human) slavery; the emancipation of women; birth control; the sexual
revolution; LGBT rights; children's rights; animal rights, etc...
Brother Wayne Teasdale, a Benedictine monk who engaged in a series of
interfaith discussions with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, wrote about the
incompatibility of religion and war in our modern secular age, when he
commented on The Universal Declaration of Nonviolence:
"In the history of humanity there have been countless conflicts... Religion
has played either a direct or supporting role in most of these conflicts or
wars. Indeed, religious leaders have often been willing partners in
warmaking, and this is still true today to some degree...
"Recall the image of Cardinal Spellman blessing the American tanks and men
before battle in Vietnam, or the mullahs, the Iranian clerics, brandishing
guns in a provocative way during Friday prayers in one of the great mosques
of Tehran...
"...religious officials and lay persons have again and again allowed
themselves to be used or duped in these situations...
"Nonviolence is the cornerstone of the spiritual civilization. The need for
this is eminently a practical one, since the planet and its inhabitants are
continually exposed to horrific forms of violence by states, corporations,
groups and individuals, through war, terrorism, crime and personal attacks."
Would it hurt to refrain from taking the lives of our fellow creatures? John
Robbins, author of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America,
spoke at a Unitarian church here in Oakland, CA in 2001. The church was
PACKED.
John Robbins writes in The Food Revolution (2001):
"The revolution sweeping our relationship to our food and our world, I
believe, is part of an historical imperative. This is what happens when the
human spirit is activated. One hundred and fifty years ago, slavery was
legal in the United States. One hundred years ago, women could not vote in
most states. Eighty years ago, there were no laws in the United States
against any form of child abuse. Fifty years ago, we had no Civil Rights
Act, no Clean Air or Clean Water legislation, no Endangered Species Act.
Today, millions of people are refusing to buy clothes and shoes made in
sweatshops and are seeking to live healthier and more Earth-friendly
lifestyles. In the last fifteen years alone, as people in the United States
have realized how cruelly veal calves are treated, veal consumption has
dropped 62 percent."
Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that "by ceasing to rear and
kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that,
properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from
this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."
Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), his
activism nurtured by years of service in the Catholic Worker community,
similarly sees human history in terms of societal evolution, as he writes in
the foreword to They Shall Not Hurt or Destroy, my 2003 book on religion and
animal rights:
"...Interestingly, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (abolition)
was passed in 1865; the 19th Amendment (suffrage) was passed in 1920. Labor
justice, including the 40 hour work week, is very new. The first child abuse
case was tried in this country in 1913.
"Many good and thoughtful people of the 19th century did not believe that
women, children, or Native and African-Americans deserved rights. Women and
children were considered (with biblical justification) to be the property of
their husbands and fathers. Slavery flourished from the 1520s until the
middle of the 1800s in this country.
"The Oxford theologian Reverend Andrew Linzey explains in Animal Theology,
'[G]o back about two hundred or more years, we will find intelligent,
respectable and conscientious Christians supporting almost without question
the trade in slaves as inseparable from Christian civilization and human
progress.'
"I mention these past atrocities to suggest the ability of an entire society
(and an overtly religious one, at that) to be engaged in extreme evil but
not recognize it, as well as to point out how much society has changed
historically.
"The animal rights movement is optimistic. We believe with Jeremy Bentham,
'The time will come when society will extend its mantle over every[one]
[who] breathes.' We agree with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that
the arc of history is long, but that it bends toward justice (the fact that
King’s wife and son, Coretta and Dexter Scott King are vegans is evidence).
"We believe that society will look back on human arrogance and cruelty
toward other animals with the same horror and disbelief that we presently
feel toward (human) slavery and other atrocities.
"Vasu Murti’s book is a powerful contribution to an increased understanding
of animal rights within the religious community.
"When societal consciousness finally understands the immorality of
speciesism, They Shall not Hurt or Destroy will be considered one of the
true pieces of philosophical brilliance of the early 21st century, in a
class with the abolitionist religious literature of the early 19th century."
The arguments conservatives cite to justify the status quo make no sense
from a progressive perspective.
Three hundred years ago, for example, slavery was legal. Asking
Bible-believers to free their slaves, to include blacks in their ethical
system, etc. in the 18th century would have been met with the kind of
response animal activists are given today when courting the religious
community for support:
abolition is 'work' because it isn't a moral position clearly spelled out in
Scripture; abolition is 'work' because it isn't currently a requirement of
the Christian faith, etc.
Before conservative Christians respond to this posting with an anti-semitic
yawn, consider:
Does human history indicate moral and societal evolution?
Or, as the ancient Sanskrit prophecies of Kali Yuga (our current age of
quarrel and hypocrisy, which began in 3102 BC) given in the Hindu scriptures
suggest, humanity is descending into barbarism?
"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its
gradual development to leave off the eating of animals, as surely as the
savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came into contact
with the more civilized."
--Henry David Thoreau
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