The Liminalist # 125.5: A Prayer to St. Anthony (with Emerald Gould)

Part two of conversation with Jasun’s niece Emerald Gould, on disowned rage and powerlessness, Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, Travis in Taxi Driver, Kevin in We Need to Talk About Kevin, finding targets for rage, connecting to Iris, Viet vet rage, rage against the mother, male quest for identity, symbiotic union with the mother, narcissism and the inability to acknowledge the interiority of the other, a benign psychopath, a synthetic android, organic portals, poison containers and pattern possession, nature abhors a vacuum, the robotic drive to create a perfect life, The Stepfather, a carrier for social values, a successful psychopath, an inverted morality, niece and uncle dynamic, Emerald’s introduction to darkness, a felt sense of the world, hating the world, Jasun’s influence, an association with magic, depth & darkness, a monster under the bed, when magic fails, magical thinking, the pathless path, defining magic, an intelligent system, when magic ceases to be magic, a prayer to St. Anthony.

Songs:  “The Kommema and his Religion” & “Of the Lakes” by SunWalker; “This Is Far From A Belle Epoque,” by A Faulty Chromosome; “Arkansas Live,” by Damien Jurado.

21 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 125.5: A Prayer to St. Anthony (with Emerald Gould)”

  1. The narcissist, so named, appears to be misunderstood. He sounds just desperate that he has to go through such expected or half-expected rituals and nobody helps him by explaining he does not have to be so accustomed to such an unnecessary role/persona. Just watching him suffer. He does not sound as though he is pathological, it is the people he is drawn to that seem to have the bigger problem/s.
    Robots have social values, programmed virtuously.
    The acting out of patient and therapist simultaneously is asking a lot in conversation. Emerald maintains strong individuality and confidence despite the shaping of concepts, precepts and confessional and imaginative insights into constructing a psychological geodesic dome of interfamilial static.
    Any attempt at influencing others is mostly always going to end up missing the proposed target. Magic and the occult always backfires given time enough to fall from the tree of knowledge to terra firma. A prison of one’s own choosing that should remain just that, not promulgated. Possession is the danger. There is a big difference between turning off a light 25 times and going to confession. If one is unsure of such difference one should find out what it is. Emerald has trust, Jasun has doubt, or is it the other way around? Either way ‘chaos’ should be avoided. St. Anthony might advise that that is too easily found.

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    • Believing one will go to hell if one fails to go to confession is similar to the OCD compulsion, was my point. I could argue that Catholic confession is no more intrinsically cathartic or cleansing than flipping a light switch, if done with disregard as to whom one is confessing to, or from what part of oneself. It is a potentially empty ritual just as the light switch is a potentially meaningful one. Of course, I recognize the psycho-therapeutic value of airing one’s darkness in such a way that it can be integrated, via self-acceptance, but nonetheless, the notion that a priest who may be a pedophile can absolve someone of sin is, IMO, as nonsensical as the belief that flipping a light switch will protect someone from misfortune.

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      • ‘Believing one will go to hell if one fails to go to confession is similar to the OCD compulsion, was my point’. Thanks for this, and I understand your reply but for clarification’s sake believing one will go to hell if one fails to go to confession is not necessarily the case;

        The Catechism says (Para 1472): “Grave (mortal) sin deprives us of communion with God, and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life…”

        Para 1859 confirms the basic tenets: “Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent.”

        Para 1860 says that: “Unintentional ignorance…” as well as “the promptings of feelings and passions can diminish the voluntary and free character of the offence.”

        Finally, para 1861 says: “If it (mortal sin) is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back.” It then says (and this is the important bit): “However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offence, we must entrust judgement of persons to the justice and mercy of God.”

        More than complicated, I know.

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  2. There was just a brief exchange about meat implying that Emerald doesn’t eat meat and Jasun does. I don’t know if you were saying that as just an example to provide a contrast to what she listens to you about. Either way relating to the podcast, eating meat is dissociative. Animals have emotions and feelings. Many of us have an affinity for them as children. Eating meat distances yourself from affective empathy inside yourself, from caring about sentient creatures who have emotional feelings, feel pain, have families, and have a desire to live. A kind of psychopathic/sociopathic element is writ large in society by our conscious mind dismissing the importance of animal life and coming up with mental gymnastics to justify it (i.e. like we we need meat and dairy to survive which isn’t true at all). It is truly cruel when we look at the truth. (Jasun I know you have talked about the simple act of looking. When it comes to animals we also have to look at the reality) In general, we have the animal as a constant scapegoat in the collective. The innocent needs to die for our species/clan to survive and bind even, which is why the myth that we need their flesh/milk to survive is conjured up. Very early on in our life we are told to make that divide and it’s one of the key cognitive dissonances that we have to resolve as a child, effectively adding one more numbing agent to whatever empathic area of ourselves we are born with. Jasun wish you’d discuss this topic on here. Best to you!

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    • What of the hunter who eats his kill? Is he or she acting dissociatively?

      Couldn’t your reasoning also be applied to eating packaged food and processed vegetables>

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  3. Yes, in today’s industrialized society, he is. But, we are past the days of the hunter who had to kill to survive, which is a (meat-centric diet) image of the past we have of the people in the northern areas of the world, where winter would have made it a necessity to hunt in order to survive. A hunter, who will die if he doesn’t hunt in the winter, in the glacial past has the right to hunt of course. This image of the past leaves out populations that did not survive on meat (closer to the equator). Rice, Potatoes/Sweet Potatoes, Corn, Beans, Lentils, Bananas are some of the cheapest foods out there today and people have been surviving on just those fine for centuries. But today, yes it is dis-associative. The fundamental point is that the animal doesn’t want to die. One can add all the spiritual ideology about the circle of life and honoring the animal. But if it other beings had more power over us we would want them to not do the same and would like to keep our own lives. It’s just about reaching out across the species divide and finding one’s compassion for something even though they don’t speak your language. I know you have written/talked about language a lot on the blog/podcasts. I think animals can’t speak our language and thus are misunderstood and thus need to be disregarded because, I think, people have a fear of the animal world and furthermore the unknown. Like Animal Planet shows which scare people constantly about animals, humans are scared of the mystery of beings that can’t share their spoken language, which as you said can function as an implant, restricting feeling certain ineffable things. Language in this way as well is also one more barrier towards that human/animal connection that I think many might deep down want to make yet are scared to make it.

    Well it could be applied if one were a fruititarian, but at a certain level we have to survive. With animals we can just use our common sense and emotional intuition. Yes, someone can bring up that plants have sentience but then you need to bring in a large body of scientific evidence, showing plants feel in similar ways, etc. I’m open to that (in a very limited sense) maybe to reduce pulling up complex deeply rooted plants up from their roots, etc. (I don’t know I can’t speak to plant sentience without digging deep into the literature. I’m open to listening to those people’s arguments if they back it up conclusively and accept that we are entitled to survive of course). But with the intuitive capacities we already have we can reach across the species divide to see the emotional lives of animals. We can use our faculties just to see. Look into animal’s eyes, be near them and just know that they have so many similarities to us. We know that they have a desire to live, sentience, emotions, like to be with their families. The hunter today who hunts behind the local supermarket with abundant foods to survive on, doesn’t need to do so. It’s just an ego boost now. The deer, or whomever, doesn’t want to be the venison. We wouldn’t want to be the quarry too if some beings like Steiber’s aliens or something or other finally came whizzing down in their spaceships in droves to dominate us once and for all. We’d be like “hey guys I know your smarter than me but I still want to live thanks! “. We can intuit that and compassionately imagine and shift our mind to see that. We aren’t seeing what is right in front of us. It will always cause a doublethink that will remain unresolved. We have to create images of man and spear, beliefs that we need meat to survive (a few hours of research will show that to be false), or that the industry supports so many jobs, etc in order to justify it. Whatever it is the dominant ideology indoctrinates us not to see what is right in front of us. And when we blot that out we blot out a part of ourselves that wants to connect. Truly connecting with humans and animals entails a loss of control and people can vehemently react against that, pushing it down to not be taken seriously and scoffed at. Anyways, it’s just something (amongst others of course) I think needs to be looked at seriously in order to have the whole picture in focus.

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    • A broader question would be ‘Is violence and killing dissociating for the aggressor?’

      Yes sometimes, and no sometimes, which is to say that the emotional and psychological effect of violence is contextual.

      A sub question would then be, as you suggest, ‘Is the (implicit) violence of eating meat always dissociative in the context of the modern industrialized world?’

      I would suggest that the process of dissociation associated with meat consumption has more to do with the industrial abstraction of violence and survival, than with the act of eating meat itself.

      Note also that intense identification with animals, such that one enters an imaginative state of spirit possession, can also lead to dissociation, and indeed is used in mind control for this reason.

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  4. Sure, industrial consumption of meat certainly adds layers of polarity and cognitive dissonance that killing an animal for yourself might not have. The absolute terror that animals endure in the factory farm system (which guilt-soother Temple Grandin is there to help you not see) separated from the clean plastic wrapped meat wall to wall at the mega supermarket is a divide that I think adds a level of psychic unease and stress to our already fractured society. At a certain level, people do know this (either directly from someone in their lives who have presented them with information or in the general social cues to not look at/talk about factory farms) but are forced to ignore it in order not to be the social outcast for being too “sensitive” about animals. So while I’m genuinely interested in your mentioning intense identification in regards to mind control (could you provide a link?) I still am trying to see how that is really related. People can have a genuine respect, deep feeling and understanding for the lives of animals without thinking they are a beagle or a potbelly pig.

    I think with regards to meat there is an uneasiness about it in many people. So while I think you are genuine, I’ve observed that people too quickly split the issue up in order to assuage some sense of guilt. Factory farming vs. Hunting. If the latter can be justified then people tend to just say ‘whatever’ on all meat eating and believe the stickers at the grocery store saying “free range” or whatever humane-washing is being used to quell our nagging conscience. Who’s to honestly say that the hunter who had to hunt to survive really is totally unaffected by the kill? The first time someone kills an animal is a big moment in someone’s life due to connection many of us have with animals (esp. as children). It subsequently gets easier as the hunter has to deaden that inside himself to continue to hunt. We know today (other groups have known in the past) that people don’t need meat or animal products to survive. If we want to think about ‘living in an invisible control system’ as that podcast put it and how we are incepted with that control system I think we can look no further than that meat on our plates. It really is central. If I remember in that podcast there was talk about what to do and one thing that was put forth was maybe not to try and dominate as the system conditions us to do. In this area, we have the choice to try not to do so (as best as we can and within what is possible) three times a day (for the lucky ones of course). What goes on our plate and into our bodies is a profound decision. We don’t have to dominate these beings who just are trying to get along in their day just like us. I’m not offering a solution to fighting this system, but who knows maybe there’s a possibility that that might help if we are ever gonna get outta this mess. I certainly think it is part of helping us towards a genuine personal embodiment though and the former will probably only be brought about by moving into the latter. It really couldn’t be easier today to make that choice, the resources are abundant and out there.

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    • what about plants?

      For the record, I almost stopped eating meat since this conversation, not because I am against eating meat but because I am against the cruelty involved and believe that meat procured via such practices is most likely toxic due to the chemical imbalances of the animals.

      So I can agree up to that point, as far as anything we do that dis-respects our own bodies relates to dis-embodiment and corresponding pathologies. The idea that humans should not eat other animals however is to me an ideological position, not based in anything really tangible except, hey we’re mammals too. (Do you object to eating chapulines? How about ants? How about micro-organisms?)

      Organic existence is predicated on predation. Face it. One could just as easily argue that denial of this (by turning carnivorousness into a pathology) is a sign of disembodiment.

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  5. That’s great that you almost stopped eating meat recently. Yes, I’ve heard you say on a past podcast about how you occasionally eat meat but that (if I remember correctly) you’ve heard people talk about the animal’s fear in the meat and the chemical imbalances when they die and how we might ingest that. To me, this is far more speculative than anything I’ve said above! I personally think there is some validity to that on an intuitive level but not enough for me to feel strongest using that as an argument not to eat meat. Yes our body is so important to maintain nutritionally and be embodied in it but the funny thing is that eating whole fruits and vegetables and cutting out meat, dairy and cheese has shown (in my pretty extensive yet still laymans explorations admittedly) massive health benefits for so many people. Not to get too speculatively spiritual but maybe we are getting some sort of hint-hint here.

    I have to say the quick question of “what about plants?” is really moving towards a reductio ad absurdum to me. I have to be honest in my reaction to that response because I want to try and be respectful in my response in turn. In my experience, it’s usually used by people who aren’t open from the start and aren’t listening to the actual thoughts laid out, hoping instead to catch what they view as an odd fringe position in hypocrisy. Hopefully you aren’t like that but I’m just putting that up front because that is my experience. Yes, if you feel you are some super in-touch earth person that feels things on other sorts of other deeper earth vibration levels then sure you are free to claim that we should extend moral consideration to plants, but I would say for the most part when taking a clear view, most people would say that plants do not have anywhere close to the central nervous system that animals and ourselves do, don’t have emotions that we can see, don’t have families we can see, etc. We can’t be faulted for not seeing deeper plant dynamics in the ecosystem, though as I said above I’m not opposed to giving them some level of consideration on a personal level. It wouldn’t feel right just razing an old tree for the heck of it but that’s not the mountain I’m going to plant my flag on either.

    Most people that think we shouldn’t use animals for our own ends are in no way denying that there won’t be some sense of predation in the world and that much of the world is predicated on predation. But can’t we also be open to the possibility that there is some corresponding compassion (albeit much more diminished and lesser seen) that might be under-girding things as well? A kind of unseen life force / soul too? Check out videos or animals actually saving other animals of other species from death. But sure a lot of the world (as you’ve demonstrated) is predicated on predation. Of course that’s a part of life. Let’s just take the definition of veganism from the Vegan Society: Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. (“As far as possible and practicable” is right there). We can’t be 100% perfect. Of course in agriculture you might kill a few field mice, some insects, etc. But there is a spectrum and a difference when we as humans (who do have a choice unlike true carnivorous animals who don’t) consciously know we aren’t actively setting out to kill/use animals just to eat them unnecessarily. The moral baseline for me is mammals that are closer to us in terms of emotional responses, exhibiting a clear desire to live, and similar sentience from what I can deduce with my own common sense, faculties in my reading and experience with animals. Chapulines and ants I give the benefit of the doubt to and wouldn’t eat them myself while not raising as huge warnings to other people about how it could be disembodying, etc (i think it’s unnecessary and a bit weird if someone wanted to ardently defend eating them) . Again bringing up micro-organisms feels reductio ad absurdum to me again. I’m not sure that you have given a fair shake to people who have given this serious philosophical attention. I don’t think anyone denies we don’t have the right to self-defense. People aren’t saying that we should let ourselves die for the horror of killing a deadly parasite inside of us or that we should create sprays to preserve micro-organisms in as high a quantity as we can. I have to say come on…

    Are you open that you also might be coming from an ideological position? Simply because that position is more widespread doesn’t mean it isn’t an ideology as well, it’s just a dominant ideology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism

    Anyways hope you are open to continuing or somewhere down the line (I know you got a lot right now. I don’t know how you put out so much stuff!). FWIW for your project Jordan Peterson’s position on animal rights might be something for you to look at and the corresponding reaction to that. Of course I don’t agree with him (arguing social contract theory is a really weak argument) but you could’ve guessed that 😉 I would be interested if you ever dig into Tom Regan (and others) and what you might think. This interview is quite entertaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwNoBYeBW0o

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    • When I was a 15 year old vegetarian, I once got into an argument with an older Christian who challenged my vegetarianism by saying that animals had been placed on earth by God for us to eat them. I thought he was an idiot and knowing me, I probably said as much. Ironically, I now see a tiny kernel of truth in this statement, insofar as: a) I see a difference between humans and animals that is innate and objective and pertains to Christian doctrine (humans as made in the image of God); b) I also see merit in the religious viewpoint that the survival (or comfort) of the body is secondary to the salvation of the soul, even tho I don’t think body and soul should, or maybe even can, be separated in so cavalier a fashion.

      My somewhat contrary position to you is based mostly on a resistance to any strongly held ideological position regarding the right way to live that is extended to everyone simply because it works for oneself. Not that I don’t think many, even most, moral principals are universal (i.e., what is good for one body-soul is good for all); only that I have yet to be convinced that eating meat, per se, is one of these. I would personally be very happy if I was the sort of person who could, and did, kill animals in the wild, skin them, and eat them. I can think of few activities more embodied than this. And, more outrageously still, I think the animals in question would be content to be sacrificed in such a way, insofar as animals exist in some sort of conscious harmony with an entire natural system without over-identification with their own identities or with prolonging their happiness on this earth etc, etc.

      Now, perhaps you have factored all these things into your moral position and deemed them non-extenuating to it, in which case, very well, you may be right. But I suspect it may be somewhat compensatory and tinged with a Disney-esque sentimentality abut Nature and animals, which itself (as sentimentality usually is) is the flip side the our society’s brutal indifference to animals “rights” to live long and prosper. (Which IMO is absurd. Nature offers no such rights to its creatures.) In the meantime, I am not ready to commit to such a position as yet in the way, for example, I am ready to commit to other moral positions, some of which are a LOT more unfashionable than vegetarianism (which, by by the by, has been promoted by Fabian social engineers for over a century, another thing which causes me to question it as ipso facto beneficent to human beings).

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      • That’s an interesting part of your life that I didn’t know. That you were vegetarian at 15. That’s the age I stopped being a vegetarian for 5 years or so thinking I might need animal protein to play sports optimally. A big part of it was that I was also trying to fit in in my adolescence too. But eventually came back to being vegetarian and ultimately vegan (just to keep everything clear since I’ve kind of had to blur the lines above, trying to keep the points to meat itself).

        The Christian view is certainly one I take seriously. I, like you, do believe that there is an innate and clear difference between man and animals (I think most responsible people that argue for animal rights would say that. Most probably don’t deduce that from a belief in the Bible though). I too have sympathies and leanings towards a some Christian views these days. However that early Christian that scolded you when you were fifteen might or might not have been an idiot but (might’ve) been misguided in his surface reading of the Bible and subsequently in his belief that animals were placed on earth for is to eat. I say might’ve because honestly I don’t have enough understanding of Christianity, something I plan to seriously undertake soon (still a young one myself). I say this as purely someone who has done some digging into the relation of vegetarianism and Christianity. It’s possible that this is one of the oldest and far-reaching cover-ups we know. Keith Akers’ The Lost Religion of Jesus Christ (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Religion-Jesus-Nonviolence-Christianity/dp/1930051263) is one of the most prominent books to posit this. It’s fascinating read and on a personal level would be an interesting guest for the podcast. His points rest on a study of Jesus’ early followers the Ebionites (or Jewish Christians) and their supposed abstention from meat in following Jesus who he claims was also vegetarian. He points to the evidence that James was raised vegetarian so it begs the question why would their parents raise Jesus differently? There is much more he brings up, I could go into more later (I need a refresher on the book honestly). I’m only opening this as a possibility. If we are talking about social engineering, well, there’s a potentially big one for you. Man might’ve been given dominion over animals but that doesn’t mean a green light to eat meat. In my experience, a challenge to meat-eating makes certain people extremely irrational and almost desperate to justify it. If the same phenomena was prevalent back then, it makes sense that an omission and massive cover-up on even just a natural reaction level might’ve taken place, especially by those that were trying to water down, monetize and export Jesus’ teachings for a wider audience. That’s the best case scenario possibly. A further possibility might be that if true that Jesus was vegetarian (and certainly against animal sacrifice as Akers shows) then it touches an even deeper nerve (touching even some of the forces that you have explored even). One example: In light of his other evidence Akers questions the notion that Jesus, when he turned over the tables of the money-changers in the temple and banished them, that his reason for doing this was solely due to the monetary aspect. “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said: ‘Get out of here.’ (John 2:13–16)

        Anyways to the extent we can bring in Christianity where I guess everyone can put their projections on it, I think it would be interesting to question the notion that meat-eating is totally a-ok sanctioned by God. Just like Regan, I would be interested if you ever read Akers’ book. The picture might be more complex. I’m saying this as someone who hasn’t nearly enough background to state what I think on the issue firmly. I plan to look deeper into this in the next few years. Maybe the question of what to do with animals is a deeply profound question that faces man, maybe one of the deepest. Just something to keep in mind.

        Yes I remember reading your Occult Yorkshire series and noting George Bernard Shaw in the mix. He’s obviously is one of those people you see listed as famous vegetarians over and over. I think that any of their links (to anything) should obviously raise massive red flags. I want to dig more into what exactly they advocated, how truly central it was in in terms of priorities, and whether it was used more self-servingly amongst themselves if they were hip to facts of it’s health benefits. It also could’ve been used as a cover (wolf in sheep’s clothing right?) to make them seem compassionate and also innocuous (some people in society would just view it as “weak”). Honestly as technically a vegan (which is reductive but just for short reference), vegetarianism is a pretty easy position anyways and I have a kind of view that most prominent vegetarians are kind of like spiritual gate-keepers blocking you from reaching deeper connection and understanding of our relation to animals/earth/etc. So they could also be trying to control the narrative from more radical animal defenders and environmentalists. But maybe they are advocating it in order make us all brittle-boned weaklings in the long run and the science is being manipulated to show veggie diets are better for you when they are in fact not, who knows!?! I’ve been vegetarian or vegan for the majority of my life and I feel quite good, haven’t lost muscle, etc so I don’t think so but then again I could be wrong! Either, way I’m interested to look into it and plan to in the near future.

        Damn seems like a wrote too much again. I wanted to respond to other points (esp. about your view of Nature) but maybe somewhere down the line or if you respond. Til’ then.

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          • Coming back here after a while away. Yes, that forum certainly does look inert. If you really think it would improve the discussion sure you can move over there but looks like might not get much traction from what I see. In general, I just think you are actually more speculative than I am on this issue. I think you have beliefs (ideology?) about nature that is blocking you from just leading with what I would say is common sense compassion. I have the same tendency in my personal life to want to stake a contrary or out there position sometimes. (Maybe that’s why I’ve listened and read you quite closely) But I realize it can be a trap as well. I’m open to your exploring your positions without much internal resistance on, say, homosexuality. But I think saying that animals would ‘content to be sacrificed in a certain sense’ is not a similarly radical or grounded position, it seems to be one that is just working backwards from the generally conclusion that eating meat is generally ok if done the right way (based on a belief about nature). Animals clearly avoid pain and want connection (from what I’ve seen). I’d say that it’s apparent that they want to prolong their happiness. And yes, they might not be able to express themselves philosophically, yet we also can’t assume that there is absolutely no thought about existence for them internally (we don’t speak their language). In the moments after a family member of theirs dies and you see their grieving, who is to say that some wondering of what just happened and what happens after isn’t going on in some capacity? I can’t say either way but I will give the benefit of the doubt to these beings which I have had genuine connections with. Not as if I’m in a Disney movie or hoping my dog will become Air Bud or something. Just humble encounters where I’ve seen a spark or life force in them and gone hmm these beings are quite amazing and (from myself at the very least) deserve some respect across the species boundary. That’s all nothing more or less.

            Anyways if you want to continue sure move it over to the forum. If not, it’s ok. I want to shore a few things up myself. In your current investigations of Christianity (have yet to listen to the last two podcasts) I would like to ask some of your guests about Akers’ work and others. So maybe on a more current podcast I will take that subsection of this thread up there when I get the time. Cheers!

          • good timing, as i was just thinking about you, as someone emailed me about needing to eat more meat for her health, which intersects with the alleged plot to turn us into Vegans & vegetarians to weaken us, something I do not discount the possibility of.

            the main difference as I see it is a) you wish to impose your viewpoint on others, i.e., assume that this is an example of a universal morality that can be logically argued, while I do not assume this, because there are simply too many variables for me; and b), inseparable from a) you have reached certainty around this question while I have not.

            We also have a different view of compassion, which I do not equate with simple kindness or with giving the organism what it wants; nor is survival the be-all and end-all of our existence; if it were then we would be nihilists driven by sheer self-interest and not have to care about animals’ inner lives. What serves God – what best serves our own needs that we can best serve God, the Spirit, our own souls? That’s the question. I find the idea that animals have a right to live long fruitful lives together but humans don’t have a right to eat them in order to do the same not just pro-animal but anti-human, at base. I suspect this may be the ideology that you aren’t acknowledging behind your own position.

            I have no difficulty accepting that, for some people, living a good, healthy, compassionate life includes eating meat – and that doing so can be consistent with having respect across the species boundary. We too will be food for worms. While for myself, I prefer to err on the side of caution, I don’t feel offended by those who choose to eat meat. But I do feel offended by those who tell me I shouldn’t, or who assume a morally superior position because they don’t.

            I have been in touch with Ackers over the years, he keeps agreeing to do a podcast and then vanishing. He’s very erratic.

          • I think that is an unfair speculation on your part. It isn’t an either/or. You can be pro-human and pro-animal. Being in favor of the latter isn’t discounting the former at all, not at all. Are there misanthropes in every group, including vegans, yes. For the record, I’m highly critical of juvenile youtube animal activists that ask pointed judgemental questions to people on the street. These people are a barrier to understanding, and are using their sense of moral superiority in order not to help but to score points. Although I don’t agree with her on everything, I like the approach that the more mainstream Colleen Patrick Goodreau takes. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWD1Zze5Qo4)

            If there are many variables then we could list them and go through them. Saying that there are many variables and not at least attempting to come out with a few doesn’t open ourselves up to getting to bottom of it. Our intellect can be connected to the soul here.

            “I find the idea that animals have a right to live long fruitful lives together but humans don’t have a right to eat them in order to do the same not just pro-animal but anti-human, at base.”
            –> But it isn’t necessarily in order ‘to do the same’. We can use our intellect and find the truth here. There have been so many studies showing the long-term health benefits of a plant-based diet. I could be blinkered in reading them sure and I am open to the possibilty that vegetarianism, veganism could be used to weaken us on a wide-scale. But you might be even quicker to open yourself up to that without genuinely listening to the other side. (I was a small-m meat eater and a huge dairy-eater for a while too. I didn’t really want to give up my convenience either!) These vegan athletes are something to take into account as well: http://www.greatveganathletes.com/

            You might think I’m trying to impose something on you when all I’m trying to do is open the door to the possibility that eating meat isn’t good for us spiritually, psychologically and bodily. I do have faith in something (for that I am searching). I think we can both serve God and not eat animals (which may not have been put on earth for us to eat as some theologians/scholars posit; Alison Covey and Andrew Linzey are examples). What I’m trying on this thread is just to open the door to this possibility as we talk in an society where industrialized animal agriculture is the norm and where the scale is tipped so far in the other direction.

            (p.s. don’t know if this will thread correctly. It wouldn’t let me reply to your last comment. Only onto your comment from May 26)

          • I agree it remains an open question and worthy further discussion. But seeing as how it is only the two of us it requires more energy and interest than I have to sustain my end, I’m afraid. (I was hoping Emerald would chip in.)

            When I said about the variables, it is not only that there are too many, but that they are too difficult to define with any certainty, or at least, that many of these variables are outside my own area of research so I don’t feel qualified to comment on them.

            If you want to list them, by all means, I will try to keep up here. It’s not as though I don’t consider it an important question, and in fact I have my own moral dilemma around it, which is that our thrift store gives away chicken dinners to the poor & homeless once a week, and I am ambivalent about contributing to the meat market in this way, it feels as though a good deed is seriously compromised for the sake of (necessary) convenience. So if you have some good, feasible alternatives for how to feed the hungry cheaply & nutritiously with pre-prepared supermarket produce, I am all ears.

          • Yeah no problem I think it’s good to just leave it for now. It’s time-consuming on my end as well. I’m glad in some sense that you think it’s worth keeping open and might merit further discussion.

            Due to the fact that factory farms are the norm, all these moral dilemmas come up in our lives all the time. There are still a few animal issues that I deal with but I’m leaving them open hoping that I will shift and that time might resolve them. It’s certainly not easy and I don’t want to diminish them, considering the massive incentives for convenience. I do think that cutting out meat (and dairy; have to add because I’m vegan) is viewed as harder than it is and generally just takes a few weeks of re-orientation. You begin to see the amazing wonders that vegetables and fruits can do. Rice, Beans, Potatoes/Sweet Potatoes, Lentils, Corn are some of the cheapest foods there are and they are great bases to build around then just add a great sauce and yum. Pasta too if you are trying to feed many people.

          • thanks James; unfortunately we’re not licensed to serve home-cooked food, even for free distribution, hence the part about “packaged supermarket food.”

            They do make a good packaged pasta dish pretty cheap….

  6. My awareness of the use of animal identification in trauma based mind control and cult activity comes from biographical accounts of people who have been subject to it. I don’t generally link to that material here, as Jasun does not seem to either, but you can find it on the internet if you search for it.

    It’s interesting and perhaps ironic that agricultural methods are an answer to limiting cruelty to animals. Agriculture is the foundation of civilisation, and therefore also of the inhibition and shaping of the natural spirit of both people and animals, for good and ill. Perhaps one could say that a society’s inherent cruelty or humanity derives directly from its agricultural practices.

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