The Question

The Question

A New, Disruptive Community

The Trap

By

Many of us spend our entire lives trying to understand love from the inside of a formula, only to find out that new experience, new knowledge, new inspiration from outside of the formula renders that formula inadequate, baffling, or sometimes completely wrong.

You would think that new experience, knowledge and inspiration would encourage us to seek new understanding, but often we are just left broken, disillusioned and discouraged by the formulas of love. It speaks to the unique power of the world to control our understanding of love when we buy into the belief that we have failed, and not the formula.

Vegan Dilemma

By

When plants are isolated from the sounds of other existence around them, they often don’t flourish. But, they appear to respond positively if any sounds of existence, pleasant or not, are present in their environment.

When human voices, instead of recorded electronic sounds, are present, many plants demonstrate an ability to distinguish between spoken nurture or abuse, and then they respond accordingly. They respond to us.

Plants appear to have some practical internal network for electrical impulses that reacts to external stimuli. This internal network can be de-sensitized using a conventional anesthetic.

Sincere, committed vegans believe that their lifestyle is an expression of the foundational truth that animals possess an innate personhood. In this way, they sincerely believe that they really do understand love, because you don’t kill and eat a person that you love.

But what happens to their understanding of love if there’s a possibility that plant life is also sentient, self-aware, sensitive to the vibrations of environment, and able to recognize human communication. What happens to their understanding of love when electrical impulses passing through a plant’s internal network might contain a message of suffering or even pain?

Would they shake off this possibility, because plants have no conventional neural capability, and can’t really perceive suffering or cry out in pain? How might they react if they were told of present day indigenous cultures that celebrate and experience the life of plants in an audible dimension.

Vegan Love

By

If you love animals but think that veganism is extreme, then you are confused about the meaning of love. – Gary L. Francione

Dr. Fancione is considered one of the fathers of the abolitionist theory of animal rights, which basically argues that all sentient or self-aware beings, like animals, share the right to life with us, and should not be treated as property or product. Dr. Francione is also a committed vegan, and other abolitionists believe that all animals – although not persons in the strictest sense – possess an inherent personhood as well as an ability to perceive and even understand what it is to suffer. Strong animal rights activists maintain that it is this innate personhood that makes the production and consumption of any animal-based product inherently immoral. In fact, the production and consumption of animal-based food products is the ground zero of the abolitionist cause, and not surprisingly, ethical veganism is the abolitionist’s most passionate expression of their cause.

To be fair, there are other reasons – beyond the love of animals – that people become vegetarians and vegans. To be equally fair, many vegans view their lifestyle as an important expression of love for another living, self-aware being with whom they share the earth.

Unexpected Provocation

By

Matthew and Terces Engelhart are owners of a very successful California chain of plant-based restaurants called Café Gratitude. They have been vegetarians for 40 years, and full-on vegans for the last 11 years. In addition to their restaurant business, the Engelharts own and operate a sustainable organic farm called Be Love Farm.

A year ago, in a blog post, they announced that they had returned to a dietary lifestyle that included meat and other animal products. Many of these animals were being raised right on their Be Love Farm.

In their blog post, they represented their decision not just as an evolution of their dietary life, but as a revelation about the role of healthy and humane animal consumption in a global sustainability model.

Their decision to move away from veganism unleashed a firestorm of criticism and even hatred from their many loyal customers – animal rights activists, and the global vegan community. The intense reaction manifested in every kind of attack, from calls urging them to sell or even close their business, to actual death threats being uttered online, and through anonymous notes and packages left at their farm.

TQP 016: Do we really understand Love? III

By

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

TQP 013: Words - Beacons of Creative Power or Mere Devices of Communication IIDr. Gary Francione, a committed vegan, is considered one of the fathers of the abolitionist theories of animal rights, which basically argues that all sentient or self-aware beings, like animals, share the right to life, with us, and should not be treated as property or product.

Other abolitionists believe that all animals, although not persons in the strict sense, possess an inherent personhood as well as an ability to perceive and even understand what it is to suffer. Strong animal rights activists maintain that it is this innate personhood that makes the production and consumption of any animal based product inherently immoral.

In fact, the production and consumption of animal based food products is the ground zero of the abolitionist cause. Not surprisingly, ethical veganism is the abolitionist’s most passionate expression of their cause.

In this episode of The Question podcast, you will hear highlights from Frederick Tamagi’s presentation on love, and the music of Joanna Drummond.

Thank you for listening!

What questions will you be taking with you after listening to this episode?

We encourage you to connect with us via social media:

We look forward to interacting with you.