CROSSING OCEANS
Tribes descended from the patriarchal invaders declared holy Crusades in which they tortured and killed heretics, Jews, Moslems, and supposed witches—some of them surviving priestesses of the old goddess religion, some of them just unfortunate women falsely accused. Viking descendants of the patriarchal invaders conquered Normandy, and then Norman Vikings conquered England. English royalty is descended from Viking thugs. Most of Europe, Asia, and Africa, fell under the sway of constantly warring patriarchs, all the intellectual descendants of those Kurgans of 4300 B.C.E.
The patriarchal Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Belgians, Dutch, Italians, and Germans joined in colonial conquest. Everywhere these cattle-herders went they left their trail of destruction: They destroyed indigenous cultures and languages. They burned books and erased histories. They enslaved indigenous peoples. They imposed their religion and banned others. They demoted women and children to second-class status. They burned and cut down forests to make more grazing land. Their goats, cows, and sheep overgrazed the land and contributed to desertification.
In 1492 these Kurgans did something as amazing in their time as our flights to the moon. They leapt the Atlantic Ocean. The rulers of Spain and England, descendants of the Aryan, Indo-European speaking Vikings and Visigoths, almost complete destroyed New World cultures. Their greed and pro-growth value system continues the destruction to the present.
There is a long view of history, although we rarely look at it. Since around 74,000 years ago, when Toba erupted and ashed the whole world, and when our population dropped to as little as a few hundred or a few thousand people, we have believed in growth, because then it was grow or die. We may be genetically selected to grow, grow, grow. There is no end in site. Almost all political parties in almost all countries are pro-growth. Growth is the great destroyer. It is death for other species, and eventually it will mean death to our own. Growth is our original sin. It is the unknown sin for which we ask forgiveness, the sin for which the whole burnt offering was offered. The unknown sin is known: It is growth. It is at least one of our inherited and perhaps inherent flaws. Growth does not initially or always look evil. It can be enjoyable to have new vehicles, new homes, new roads, and new buildings. Growth smiles at us like Ronald McDonald, the gaily dressed butcher. Democrats favor growth of a sort that is a little slower and a little more kind to the environment than do Republicans. But they both favor growth. Slow growth or “responsible growth” is worse in a way than rapid growth, because it does not look as ugly. But it is still growth. I like to say: Time continues infinitely into the future, so the rate of growth does not matter. Any rate will ultimately foul our nest. The growth in our numbers should be stopped and even reversed. Our expansion into the animal and plant worlds must also be stopped, even before we stop the growth in our numbers. We should live in more densely developed cities and leave more land to the animal and plant kingdoms.
Another aspect of the growth mentality of the invaders was warfare. It was a Vedic sacrament to make war to seize the cattle of other tribes. As I like to point out elsewhere, cattle were the first money, “a thing generally accepted as payment for goods and services.” Cattle were capital, and it is from the word “cattle” that the word “capital” derives. The first capitalism was “cattleism.” The herders convert pristine lands into pastures and sometimes deserts.
In one part of the world or another there has been continuous warfare starting around 4300 B.C.E in Europe and 5500 B.C.E. in the Middle-East. There has been continuous criminal violence, man against man, man against woman, man against child. There has been another war going on, a war against the animal kingdom. We imprison, breed, herd, torture, and kill animals, which gives us hands-on training in how to conquer, enslave, exploit, torture, and kill our fellow humans.
Whether it is humans or animals we are killing, we have to suppress feelings of compassion in order to do so. Military leaders have motivated their troops to brutality by telling them their victims were mere animals, and this tactic has worked because troops have accepted the premise that animal pain and death are of no significance. If we were a world of vegetarians who did not kill animals for food, is it not more likely that soldiers would refuse to comply with orders to torture, rape, and kill humans?
Isaac Bashevits Singer, says: If a man has the heart to cut the throat of a chicken or a calf, there’s no reason he should not be willing to cut the throat of a man. (“When Keeping Kosher isn’t Kosher Enough,” New York Times, September 14, 1977, p. 64.)
Vegetarian Thomas Tryon warned Quakers that they should eliminate all violence from their lives, including violence against animals, and become vegetarians, or their experiment would fail.
He warned the Quaker settlers that, if they brought up their children to kill animals for food, they might become so accustomed to handling weapons that they would finally be reluctant to renounce their use against their fellow man. (Peter Brock, Pioneers of the Peaceable Kingdom, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., p. 64, quoted by Charles P. Vaclavik, The Vegetarianism of Jesus Christ, p. 2.)
Certain Quakers went on to participate in the Indian wars, the American revolution against the British, the Civil War, and other American wars, including the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was a Quaker whose mother spoke to him using the Quaker “thee.” It seems Tryon was correct.
ARYAN TRIBES WAR WITH ARYAN TRIBES
Descendants of the Aryan invaders ran out of indigenous people to conquer, and so they turned to conquering each other. Think of the incessant wars of Europe and Asia, a case of the patriarchal bad boys playing deadly war games. I don’t need to tell the entire story; it’s covered well enough elsewhere, although it is generally not made clear how it fits into the broader historical framework.
I would like to mention one example you might not categorize as just another patriarchal war. Think of Los Angeles and the California Indians.
California was the home of Indians who lived a peaceful, easy life of gathering, hunting, fishing, and a minor amount of agriculture. The staple of their diet was nutritious acorns and juniper piñon or pine nuts, which grew in abundance. When the fish spawned, they ate fish in abundance. There was little need for them to cultivate. They were not vegetarian, however, they did not herd animals, and they ate a diet that contained a substantial vegetarian component. They lived the easy life in a land that was much like the legendary Eden.
Came the Aryan Spaniards and conquered the Indians, forcing them into indentured servitude. Came the gold seeking Aryan Unitedstatesians and conquered the Spaniards. At them same time they almost completely exterminated the Indians, shooting them like rabbits with high powered, long distance rifles. Finally, came the Aryan Los Angelinos who conquered previous Aryan Unitedstatesians to take their water.
After World War I, Los Angeles grew in population and area, and water was lavished on lawns, swimming pools, industry, and animal husbandry. More water was needed, and so Los Angeles looked to the Owens Valley, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles, and stole the water there, turning it into a dust bowl. With more water, more people came to Los Angeles. So more water was needed. So when the Colorado was dammed, Los Angeles obtained a large percentage of the flow. With more water, more people came, and so more water was needed. So Los Angeles stole the water of Mono Lake, even further north, a beautiful lake, where millions of birds flying north to south would rest as they were migrating, some from the Arctic to South America. It became a dusty basin. With more water, more people came, and Los Angeles needed more water. So Los Angeles obtained part of the flow of the Feather River. With more water, more people came, and Los Angeles needed more water. So Los Angeles started looking at the Clamath River and the Columbia River and even water from Alaska. Technocrats of the Technocracy type drew frightening maps of continent-wide irrigation systems and advocated that the world be ruled by engineers.
There is another story here too: More water is used in California and in the United States generally for agriculture than for human consumption and industry. Further, most water used in agriculture is used to raise animals and grow the grains fed to them.
Los Angelinos realized they were ruining their paradise and did not want to ruin it even more, so they stopped the increase in water to stop population growth. It was not because of some moral realization that growth was bad or that it was inappropriate to build a big city in the middle of a desert that they quit their expansionist, dominator ways. They quit for selfish reasons. I am still glad they quit. It’s my theory that it is better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than to do the wrong thing.
The dominator mentality still prevails, the belief that endless growth and endless conquest of nature is good for the economy. The economy! All else takes second place to the economy. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was Bill Clinton’s campaign motto. Some say this is a Christian nation. Ha! Our god is Profits and Growth. We Aryan descendants believe in Mammon, the False God Dollar. Idolatry is the worship of something as god that is not god. Our mindless pursuit of profits and growth and subordinating all other goals to it is nothing less than idolatry.
OTHER HISTORIES OF VEGETARIANISM
I recommend several books for the scholar interested in delving more deeply into the history of diet: Colin Spencer, The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism; Mark Mathew Braunstein, Radical Vegetarianism; Rynn Berry, Famous Vegetarians and their Favorite Recipes; Jon Gregerson, Vegetarianism: A History. These writers discuss such vegetarians as Apollonius of Tyana, Plutarch, Porphyry, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Tryon, Alexander Pope, Jeremy Bentham, Leo Tolstoy, Percy Shelly, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Salt, John Harvey Kellog, and Mohandas Gandhi. They also cover such vegetarian sects and religions as the Manichaeans, the Bogomiles, the Cathari, and the Chinese and Japanese Buddhists.
