permaculture

[brookse@igc.org (Eric Brooks)]

Sorry this response was so long in coming, but I haven't been checking this
list much.

Now,

Stephan,

There is a pretty straight forward answer to what veganism has to do with
sustainability, and it is that sustainable systems of food production and
distribution are much easier to create and manage when they are set up for
people on vegan diets as opposed to diets with meat and/or dairy in them.

Meat and dairy simply inherently require much more in the way of resources
and land utilization, and create more wastes, than the alternative.

I am not being extremist at all, I have simply learned from many years of
experience as an environmental activist that meat and dairy unnecessarily
drain resources.


As to your rationalisations, there is an easier solution.


Simply look at veganism, not as static, but as a temporary state of being on
a greater continuum. That, the continuum of doing as little harm to the
universe and biosphere around you, while going about the business of
surviving and enjoying life. All of us kill. The point is to do as little
killing as necessary, and create as little damage in our wake as possible,
because to -not- do so endangers our -own- survival and happiness.


I used veganism as the criterion for membership on the board of directors of
the organisation which I am founding, because it is a convenient yardstick
with which to measure the life experience of those applying, to make certain
that they have gained enough knowledge to understand that one can not create
a truly sustainable future if one sees other creatures and ecosystems as
nothing more than tools to be enslaved and/or manipulated toward human
purposes. 

That kind of mentality is exactly what got us all in the current mess which
we inhabit, and the easiest way to start on the path toward changing that
paradigm in one's own head, is to stop eating animals unecessarily. It is
one of the most basic steps toward envisioning permaculture. 

Most vegans understand just that. They understand that all creatures are
part of a completely interconnected network, and that to disrespect or
damage one part or member of that network unecessarily, is to disrespect and
damage the whole; and therefore threaten one's very own survival and
happiness.

This is the core of holism and sustainable systems.

To rely, at all, on meat and dairy, is to introduce unecessary complications
and damage into a system. Only in the most extraordinary circumstances,
(such as those presented to one living a non-technological life in the
arctic tundra), does such reliance make any sense.

The other reason for the vegan requirement is simply ethical.
It is likely that the next phase of human civilisation will eventually
reject animal slavery, just as it did human slavery. I certainly do already.

So, in starting this program to put a new human civilisation on another
planet in the solar system, I intend to make the abolition of such slavery a
founding principal of that new society.

It would be basically impossible to get the organisation to stay that
course, if the members of the board of directors itself didn't believe in
it.

I also see it as ethically imperitive that any future human civilisation in
space, follow a rock solid doctrine of noninterference with other life
forms, when they are discovered. It is much more likely that vegans would
hold true to such an ideal. Meat and dairy eaters, because they have not yet
come to terms with even their -own- unecessary causation of damage and
suffering to other living things, would be much less likely to stay true to
that doctrine when circumstances challenged it.


Cheers,

Eric Brooks



On 30 Apr 1999 01:27:14, slimerote@yahoo.com wrote:

>Reply-To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
>From: stephan leimroth <slimerote@yahoo.com>
>Subject: [permaculture] Re: Sustainable, Non-exploitive, Space Exploration
Project, SeekingBoard Can...
>
>
>dear eric,
>
>please educate me on what a 'vegan lifestyle' has to
>do with 
>'sustainability'.  should i be eating lentils grown in
>and exported from a 
>country which can not feed its own people instead of
>shooting a deer in my 
>backyard?    how can one separate oneself from the
>nutrient cycle that 
>naturally relies on animals?  where does a 'vegan'
>draw the line in animal 
>use?  is an earthworm an animal?  is manure an
>unacceptable soil amendment 
>since it is an animal product?  is a plastic balnket
>more sustainable than a 
>wool one?
>
>anxiously awaiting your reply,
>
>stephan.
>
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