The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

Evolve or Dissolve / 223
tems, the rampant exploitation of the world’s poor, and the suicide,
addiction, and disease that ravage countless human lives.
The shadow is the self that does the dirty work for us so we can
remain good and acceptable in our own eyes. The more we repress and
disconnect, the more inner disturbance we will carry that we must project
on an outer evil force, an enemy or scapegoat of some kind, against
whom we can direct our denied violence. We will see these enemies as the
essence of evil and despise them, for they represent aspects of our self
that we cannot face. In our quest to eliminate them we are driven to build
the most hideous weapons imaginable, developing them throughout the
centuries so that today we have the capacity to destroy all of humanity
hundreds of times over. This is not just something in our past, like the
generations of inquisitions, crusades, and wars. We eat more animals,
project more enemies, and create more weapons than ever before. Every
minute, our slaughterhouses kill 20,000 land animals and the Pentagon
spends $760,000. 2 This huge expenditure on maintaining and developing
systems to harm and destroy other people is a particularly egregious
manifestation of the tragic suppression of intelligence caused by eating
animal foods. The 2004 U.S. military budget of $400 billion, spent by
just five percent of the world’s population, is over forty percent of the
entire world’s annual military budget of $950 billion. These are enormous
resources to be squandering on death and violence. It’s estimated
that an annual expenditure of just $237.5 billion for ten years would
enable us to provide global health care; eliminate starvation and malnutrition;
provide clean water and shelter for everyone; remove land mines;
eliminate nuclear weapons; stop deforestation; prevent global warming,
ozone depletion and acid rain; retire the paralyzing debt of developing
nations; prevent soil erosion; produce safe, clean energy; stop overpopulation;
and eliminate illiteracy! 3 Yet we lack the will and understanding
to use our resources constructively. Instead, we frenetically expand our
bloated arsenal of biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear
weapons, psychological weapons, and secret high-tech weapons. The disconnect
between those who use these weapons and their intended victims
also characterizes our cruel slaughter and abuse of animals.
The bomb pilots, generals, and politicians who make the decisions