Correspondence with my Father.
I received an email from my father this morning. It contained a link to a simple youtube video that ran text forwards to one meaning, then ran the same text backwards to an all together opposite meaning. It brings to mind the beautiful passage of war in reverse in the late-great Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five.
Generally I am not a fan of receiving touching emails relentlessly forwarded again and again in aim of making me all teary-eyed over my morning coffee. For some reason however, this little, rather poorly made video got me thinking. What started as a simple “Thank you, I enjoyed the video,” turned into a 4 paragraph rambling/ranting essay. Now in totally narcissistic fashion, I’m posting my response.
I used facts (not checked, but I think generally accepted) from here.
“That was awesome. We are definitely living proof that money is not an important factor in happiness. And divorce, so rampant in today’s society, is a non-issue if you are confident in your choices and who you and your spouse are as a couple. Separate as well as unified identities must coexist and work to strengthen the bond sworn under God to be upheld, an oath as sacred as civilization itself. That love, that bond is a perfect metaphor for man’s marriage to the earth. As mankind tries to divorce himself from the earth, civilization begins to fall apart and threatens to descend into chaos and war over the very needs our spouse, the earth, has met since the dawn of time. We desperately need marriage counseling in this relationship, the most important of our time. As I have sworn my love to Lacey before God and family, I have also sworn an allegiance to this earth. Though my love for both, Lacey and the earth, is not perfect I am trying and will try to my dying day. In danger of sounding preachy, Vegetarianism/Vegan-ism is an environmentalist cause, not just a cry for man to be better stewards of the dominion over the animals given to us by God.
- Conservation of Fossil fuel. It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein; 35 calories for 1 calorie of pork; 22 calories for 1 of poultry; but just 1 calorie of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of soybeans. By eating plant foods instead of animal foods, I help conserve our non-renewable sources of energy.
- Water Conservation. It takes 3 to 15 times as much water to produce animal protein as it does plant protein. As a vegetarian I contribute to water conservation.
- Efficient use of grains. It takes up to 16 pounds of soybeans and grains to produce 1 lb. of beef and 3 to 6 lbs. to produce 1 lb of turkey & egg. By eating grain foods directly, I make the food supply more efficient & that contributes to the environment.
There are many other environmental factors at stake in the grossly inefficient meat and poultry industries. I make no demands of anyone to stop eating meat. I just ask that we choose carefully and eat locally. Your own local economy depends on it. The ideals and values that make rural and small town America so beautiful and necessary are on death row. Big companies first make it impossible for the independent farmer to compete with the ludicrously low prices possible by the disgusting practices of factory farming. (I dare anyone to google their practices and not be mortified.) The farmers must often sell their land to the very companies that have driven them off of it, feeding the beast so to speak. Possibly the most disturbing trend is the closure of all but a few independent slaughterhouses in United States. The independent livestock farmer must now send his animals farther distances at much greater cost to increasingly inhumane houses owned by the same companies that do not want the farmer to succeed. It’s a monopoly that the American people demand every day by the choices they make at the supermarket.
Stop feeding the beast, save the earth. We must save ourselves from the environmental destruction wrought by factory farms owned by multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies. Give the power back to your local farmer and help preserve the values and ideals on which our great country was founded. And good Lord, all I harped on was animal farming practices. Don’t get me started on soybeans. Monsanto has created an invasive strain of super soybean of which they own the patent. So, when a bee cross pollinates their super bean with a regular bean on an independent farm, Monsanto then sues that farmer often taking him or her for more than their worth, forcing them to sell the farm often to, you guessed it, Monsanto. It’s agricultural terrorism. It must stop!
This video that you’ve shared with me obviously had a great impact. It sent me off on a tangent of environmentally based vegetarianism and the absolute need to buy locally to support farms in the area one lives. That was not the author’s intention. It is to boast that a generation such as ours, so often told of our apathy and lack of vision, is one with the most noble and vital cause of preserving our marriages to one another and our earth. A message of hope so badly needed in an era of near oligarchical governance in what should be our people’s republic. We the people must fight for our earth and change the tide. Our marriages and desires are not represented in Washington. It’s the power of money that determines environmental and social policies. It’s the great task of our generation to see that the power is shifted back to the people to protect our values and our earth.
Enough rambling.
Thanks Dad, for sending this video. It has my brain ticking. <3 Thomas”
