Just Thinking

Before I can adequately deal with the question of why I am a vegetarian, I first need to express my views about how people generally have such practices and where they come from.

For the majority of people, their religion, eating habits, belief systems and many habits are developed while very young. They are not based on thinking about things but on what your parents did and perhaps other important people in your life such as teachers and friends. Of course we all like to think that our views are rational, sensible and ... well just plain right! But the truth is that they were installed in our little developing minds before we had (if we ever have) learned to think at all.

Funnily enough, it is these views and habits which have never been subject to any questioning or thinking that are defended with the utmost force if they are attacked. That is because they cannot be rationally defended as they were never rationally conceived. They are simply habits born of doing the same thing every day because, well, that was what we just did. Of course our parents did the same, and we end up having to blame poor old Adam and Eve again for all our faults.

Sometimes, when still young, we meet someone who does something differently and so have two examples to choose from in how we behave. We can try them out for size. This can shock the poor parents when children try out new words, new music or want a tattoo. The odd time children pick up a good habit from somewhere or see a fault in their parents through coming across a better example. Then the child may decide that they want to do something another way.

Each person has a different type of mind, and some are much more likely to look at things in a questioning way so that they want to consider whether there is a better way of doing things. Society generally doesn't approve of this, seeing such people as radicals, stirrers and malcontents. Only after a couple of generations when something has been accepted as a better way are these people seen as innovators.

As I mentioned, we all like to think of ourselves as not being herd animals, and in this regard I too am one of the herd.

When it came to eating habits I ate what my Mother served up (except for a few things that I didn't like) as did the rest of the family. My parents in turn got their eating habits from the previous generation. I had really only thought a little about eating meat until I had a holiday job at the meat works when I was at University. The job involved tying lamb carcass front legs to their necks with a string, so that they didn't stick out a long way. It was disconcerting at first because the bodies were still quite warm, but without heads, feet, skin or innards. After some days it became easy to do without thinking. It put me off the idea of killing animals but not enough to stop me actually eating meat. Perhaps if I had worked on the bobby calf line it would have been different, as even without skin, head or innards, they still twitched something awful. I think that might have done the job.

Sometimes in the next 30 years I thought about it, but never became a vegetarian. Then I did a 10-day Vipassana Meditation course and after that things began to change. At the course we were fed vegetarian food. We also agreed not to kill during the course, not even insects. But when we went home these conditions no longer applied.

I began to try vegetarian food most meals, although still had a slight hankering for bacon. Then one day we went to a local restaurant that served a chicken and macadamia nut salad with terayaki sauce, and I ordered it as I had always enjoyed it in the past. I enjoyed it again, until I had eaten about one third of the chicken, then I chewed one piece and no longer wanted to eat it any more. I took it out of my mouth and ate the rest of the meal apart from the meat. I was a vegetarian.

Ultimately it was not a rational act, although the rational mind likes to go along for the ride. The feeling that it is not good to kill other creatures is a part of it. How would you or I like to be eaten? How would we like to be killed? How would we like to be hooked up on a meat works line with no skin or guts and our head and hands and feet tossed into some big buckets?

I don't buy the argument that humans have souls and animals do not. I don't even know what people mean by a soul - it is just words to me. But whatever, when I look into an animal's eyes, I see that there is just as much someone at home as there is in a human's eyes. Our cat understands the words I say and whether I am being nice or nasty to her as well as any person, and reacts in a way that lets me know what she thinks about it.

"George, George, George and George" by cynnersf & "Buds" by ovisdallii

"Love" by robertmiller & "Dolfinarium-3366" by rvo

There are plenty of photos of animals on the Internet that move any person with any heart to say that the animals are expressing love or tenderness, anger or jealousy, hate or rage of frustration. Only a person who wants to eat meat without thinking about the truth of what they do would pretend otherwise.

"Baby Ringtail lemur" & Orangutans by supertigger

Nutritionally we do not need to eat meat. We do need protein in our diet, but can easily get enough from vegetables. Many studies have shown that this is not a problem. We do not need to eat meat to get protein, because if that were true, then cows would not be made of so much protein when they eat only grass. Some people argue that it is alright for cows because they have seven stomachs, but humans do not. Well, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom are Chimpanzees and Gorillas. You couldn't call an adult gorilla a weedy looking vegetarian. But it is a vegetarian and obviously has very strong muscles. Chimpanzees are not strict vegetarians, eating small animals occasionally.

Meat eating in large quantities is a relatively modern thing. Although the rich probably ate more meat in the past, there were very few of them. Medical reports show that meat eating is not healthy for humans. It causes problems in the intestines, including increased incidence of cancer.

Many Christians think that the bible says that man was given the right to eat animals, but I think that they misinterpret the meaning of having dominion over animals. There is excellent evidence that Christ was a vegetarian. Most scholars agree that he was a member of a sect called the Essenes, and both Greek and Roman reports of the Essenes say that they were strict vegetarians, eating only raw food.

The Buddha also taught that people should not kill, neither other people nor animals. Although he was not a vegetarian by modern definition, he did instruct all his followers to never eat meat if they thought that an animal might have been killed to feed them. It was only acceptable to eat left overs where it was known that no deliberate killing was done to support their lives. This was a matter of not wasting food.

Generally speaking, vegetarians are not pushy people, but they often feel the pain that others choose to cause the killing of so many creatures to feed humans. Could you kill the creatures that you eat? How would you feel if you saw all the carcasses of all the creatures that you have eaten in your life in one big heap? What a burden of guilt we must share.

Several generations have passed since George Orwell wrote "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm", but in real life we are nearer now to the situations described in those books than at any time since he wrote them. The person acting as the Minister of Truth is none other than George Walker Bush.

Busch sprechen

According to Dubbya, the USA is installing a "missile shield" in Eastern Europe. According to dictionaries, a shield is "a protection used to block attacks", "a device or part that serves as a protective cover or barrier". So one might expect that a missile shield would be something that can absorb missiles. But not in Busch sprechen, where it actually means missiles themselves. There appears to be a little bit of confusion between a weapon and a shield.

The one in his left hand is the shield Mr President. The other one is called a weapon. The left hand is the one holding the big shield shaped thingy. The right hand is the one swinging the big sword shaped thingy. Hope that is clear to you now Mr President.

As far back as 2001 the BBC reported "Bush to push for missile shield".

"United States President George W Bush is expected to outline his vision of a national missile defence (NMD) programme on Tuesday.

Following conversations with allies, he is likely to argue that the US cannot be bound by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that bans such systems."

Other countries have argued that this will lead to a new arms race, but Bush seems quite happy with that. Indeed that may be the very job that he is being paid large sums to do if one is to believe Michael Moore.

"We will deploy defences as soon as possible. Therefore, we believe that the ABM treaty will have to be replaced, eliminated or changed in a fundamental way," US defence official Lucas Fischer said last week. Of course the word defences actually means weapons of attack.

Busch sprechen

When BBC News reported that "Amnesty accuses US over 'torture'" stating that "In a 300-page annual report, the group accused the US government of damaging human rights with its attitude to torture and treatment of detainees" Busch sprechen "Bush says Amnesty report 'absurd'".

"I'm aware of the Amnesty International report and it's absurd, it's an absurd allegation," the president said during a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House. Mr Bush said that accusations against Americans were "fully investigated in a transparent way".

Yes Mr President, a very transparent way. We can all see right through them. Why Mr President is it absurd for your country to apply the same standards of rights to people from other countries that you ask for your citizens? Methinks that you do not know the meaning of absurd.

If you were a Russian Mr President, how would you feel if in your lifetime you had seen a war-mongering foreign power attack, occupy and threaten many countries around your borders? USA has forces on South Korea, it threatens North Korea with attacks on a monthly basis. USA has forces in Turkey, Kuwait and other countries in the region. USA has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, it threatens Iran and other neighbours with attack regularly. USA is now putting missiles in Eastern European states that were formerly part of the Soviet block. What would America';s reaction be if Russia were to do any of these things in USA's neighbours?

We do not have to speculate as we have experience of that. On one occasion Cuba was installing Russian missiles and the USA threatened to bomb them in retaliation leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Do not forget that that this situation arose because of the USA attempt to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs Invasion and so Cuba had every justification in fearing the USA.

Busch sprechen

But George Bush states "We are a peaceful people", although that was in a speech where he was threatening to attack Iraq under a set of excuses that he knew at the time to be lies. Yes Mr President, your destruction of the language which we used to call English is now almost complete.

"If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick," Cleese said over a year ago. The Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star came out with this in his audio diary on his website for his "My Life, Times and Current Medical Problems" tour, which he will take to Australia later in the year. Cleese heaped praise on other towns and cities where he performed, but introduced Palmerston North as the "suicide capital of New Zealand".

Palmerstom North didn't really want that label but recognised that Cleese was not to be taken too seriously. What began as the suggestion of a joke has now hit the news. From the NZ Herald:

"Cleese's name is gracing a compost heap at the local landfill.

City council waste and water manager Chris Pepper said no one was taking credit for the sign, which was quietly put up about a month ago.

Entertainer John Clarke (aka Fred Dagg), originally from Palmerston North, had suggested more than a year ago that the landfill be named the "John Cleese Memorial Tip".

Members of the council had a good old laugh at this, and then somewhere along the line the "Mt Cleese" sign was constructed."

According to Stuff:

" Some people have a statue made in their honour, others a street named after them, but the Palmerston North City Council has bestowed the honour of a commemorative compost heap on comedian John Cleese.

Cleese achieved infamy in Palmerston North last year when, after a performance at the Regent on Broadway, he said he hated the "town", calling it the "suicide capital of New Zealand".

Palmy-born entertainer John Clarke (aka Fred Dagg) was quick to defend the city, and suggested the local landfill be named the "John Cleese Memorial Tip" with the tagline: "All manner of crap happily recycled".

A few members of the council thought this was a good idea; and as new signage was being organised for the old Awapuni Landfill (now a waste minimisation centre), "Mt Cleese" was born."

Here is a list of the top 10 blog directories that I have listed my blogs in. You may find them useful for doing searches in, or for adding your own blog(s).

... under preparation ...

BlogRankings.com

Blog Directory

This is rather an unusual topic. I haven't found anyone putting this idea forward before. However it seems to me to be an inevitable result of truly understanding what things are. Of course nouns and things are the same thing. Well excluding all the other even weirder categories of nouns they are.

To put forward this idea with any clarity, it is first necessary to discover what things (the main class of nouns) are. Things are made of stuff that we call matter. We think of matter as substance that exists and then behave so that it can act as subjects or objects in sentences that have verbs. However I want to turn that idea on its head, or at least make it so that people can see another angle on all this.

If we know that a thing "exists", then it must already not be stable and constant. If it were stable and constant then we could not know of its "existence". We only know of existence through our senses: we see, feel, hear, taste or smell something. We can only sense something if it is putting out some sort of substance or vibration that our senses detect. So it isn't the "thing" that we detect at all, it is these other substances or vibrations that we hear or smell or see. Without these substances or vibrations issuing forth from our supposed "thing" we would be oblivious of its existence, indeed we would conclude that it didn't exist at all, or rather it would never enter our mind in any way to consider its existence.

So all that thinginess of things is actually a result of a flux of some sort: of light or sound waves, of matter in liquid or gaseous form that can be tasted or smelt, or of somehow occupying space in a pushy sort of way so that we can feel it. Now the more cunning of my readers are already getting their objection to this voiced with "but the light is only reflected" or "there is no flux from matter that we feel", so I will have to go into these if I am to have a chance of convincing you.

Of course there is some truth that light is reflected, but not that it is "only" reflected. Things have colours and these result from the selective reflection of the light that falls on them. Each different object absorbs some colours and reflects others in various proportions giving each its particular shade, brightness and purity of colour. In addition, all that absorbed part is also re-emitted at some other wavelength meaning that the object is also putting out a flux that is not reflected at all - this is an inevitable result of the partial reflection.

So when it comes to colour and our ability to detect shape and size by visual means, it is the objects interaction with fluxes of light and the like that we allow us to know of its existence. You have to agree that that word "interaction" is a verb and not a noun. The key to existence lies in the verb behaviour of nouns.

But of course I have yet to deal with the sense of touch which will be the last refuge of those that haven't fully accepted my argument so far. From our bodies point of view, touch is a rich sense, not just the mere presence of something. We detect all kinds of texture, roughness, coarseness, smoothness, softness, hardness, yielding or unyielding, warm and cold, and a host of special properties like fluffiness, furriness, spikiness, sharpness, and on and on. All of these properties result from interaction between the object and our nerves with which we feel. There has to be interaction or we cannot detect the properties. Again, the essence of existence is action, noun does not exist without verb.

So I feel that at least I have introduced you to a new idea. No doubt I will have to argue this with some people and I look forward to that. Please leave a comment here and I will let you have your say and answer you.

Before I go for now though, I want to take this a step further. To show that what I say is true at an even deeper level. I am talking fundamental physics and the laws of nature here. To do this is is necessary to ask the question "What are elementary particles?" and to look at it in a way that is different to particle physicists.

I suggest that the correct answer to this was first offered by William Clifford, a man of recognised brilliance in mathematics and philosophy. When Maxwell, himself a brilliant physicist, developed his famous equations for electromagnetism, Clifford realised that there must be solutions to those equations that are concentric spherical standing waves. He saw that those solutions must in fact be what we call matter. This at once solved the problem of what those standing waves of electromagnetism which must exist would appear like, and explained once and for all what matter was. Unfortunately this idea seems to have been forgotten and so it happened that people became confused about how matter could travel through a tensile medium, the luminiferous aether, and not have any resistance. This lead to all the problems of the Michelson-Morley experiment because people thought that matter was stuff rather than a process.

The next chance to get it right was when Louis de Broglie put forward his famous work on understanding matter as waves which lead to successful experiments and a nobel prize in physics. However he was not fully understood and spent the rest of his life trying to get physicists to understand that matter really was waves. Schroedinger also had this view, but they were both ignored and Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics prevailed and set physics back over 100 years.

A third chance happened when the famous physicists, Wheeler and Feynman, came to understand that an electron behaved as if there were both advanced and retarded waves happening around it. This did not mean that electrons were dim, but that they acted as if at all times there were waves converging on it and also as if waves were coming out of it. generally physicists found this idea incomprehensible because they didn't see how the universe could organise the incoming waves -- it would have to know where the electron was going to be in the future to make the waves converge there! Or even worse, they started talking about waves going backwards in time! Yikes!! Actually, no, that is not the case. the waves do not converge where the electron is, the electron is where the waves converge. The electron is nothing other than this convergence of waves.

Although the idea has never caught on to physicist as a whole, there have been the above mentioned incidents and some physicists such as Milo Wolff have persisted with the idea. Milo found me on the internet when I proposed this idea that he had already had.

So physicists went on believing six impossible things before breakfast, well maybe even twelve. All the weird stuff that supposedly exists in physics results from this failure to understand what an atomic particle is. It is nothing other than a standing wave of electromagnetism. That means that at all times there is an inwards flux of electromagnetism and after that flux passes through the central region there is an outwards flux. Together the two fluxes make the standing wave. Matter is made of particles and particles are a flux and nothing more. Matter is made of waves.

All matter is simply a flux, a process, a verb. All nouns are really verbs. However they are slow verbs in the sense that the flux is rather stable over time so that it has a thinginess sort of look to it. So there I rest my case that nouns are slow verbs.

Recently I have had some wonderful experiences with people on the Internet. I have been finding sites that answer my long pending questions, asking in forums and getting people that give me much more than I asked for and all of what I dreamed of. I decided that it would be good to have a place where I can list all the good people that I meet that have blogs:

¥åßßå's Blog Inner Visions with bimble, babble, art and code. This is a very well presented blog by someone who gave me fantastic advice in the b2evolution forums while using the subtitle "Blonde Bimbo". Haha! Very far from it. Inspirational poetry, art and photography.

wow factor is John's site. John helped me to make my first change to the standard b2evolution blog setup so that I could have a wider main section in my blog. Combined with ¥åßßå's help above, I have now solved the 3 things that I didn't like about how my blogg worked.

hackblog@wonderwinds is run by EdB who is also a kind person helping out in b2evolution forum.

tamiki.com is run by a young man that I met in SU (StumbleUpon). He is very prolific, has a wicked sense of humour and a delightful way of making fun of stupid things.

Blog Potato has original ideas on promoting blogs which involve doing reviews of other's blogs and exchanging links and other things.