The “disease of disconnection” plagues the human condition. As a species, we are not at ease with ourselves - with our bodies, with our minds or with our feelings. We are not at ease with others - with other human beings as well as other animals. We can be nervous, competitive, fearful and worried; we crave respect and approval while simultaneously seeking dominance and power. We certainly aren’t at ease with our environment, and are constantly altering it to suit our needs or wants with little regard for how our actions impact others or the earth. This dis-ease causes all sorts of problems. We are destroying ourselves, as well as other animal species and the planet, in a misguided quest to find happiness, or ease of being.

By enslaving and abusing other animals in order to feed and clothe ourselves, we deprive them of freedom and happiness. How can we hope to be free or happy when our own lives are rooted in depriving others of the very thing we say we value most in life -the freedom to pursue happiness? If you want to bring more peace and happiness into your own life, stop subjecting others to violence and unhappiness.

We tell our children that “might does not make right,” and yet we throw this high-minded idea out the window when it comes to the everyday reality of using might to humiliate, torture and kill the animals we raise for food.