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

24 / the world peace diet
and activities of the ancient herding cultures still define our culture
today. The single most defining activity of these ancient cultures was, as
it is today, feasting regularly on foods provided by the bodies of dominated
and excluded animals. Wars still enrich a wealthy elite class while
millions bear the burden of them, and the world’s rich feed on animals
fattened on grain and fish while the poor go hungry. Our capitalistic
economic system and its supporting political, legal, and educational
institutions still legitimize our commodification and exploitation of animals,
nature, and people; our domination of the underprivileged and
foreign; and an unequal and unjust distribution of goods based on predation
(often euphemized as “competition” and “free trade”), oppression,
and war. As we have evolved socially, we have made some undeniable
gains in reducing certain excesses, and in providing some protection
to the weak and vulnerable. On the whole, however, we have to
wonder why our progress has been so slow and difficult. The answer to
this is on our plates and extends from there to feedlots, slaughterhouses,
research laboratories, rodeos, circuses, racetracks, and zoos, to hunting,
fishing, and trapping activities, and to prisons, ghettos, wars, and
the military-industrial complex and our ongoing rape and destruction of
the living world.
The Pythagorean Principle
“As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he
who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
—Pythagoras
Over two thousand years ago in ancient Greece, the need for a positive
revolution based on compassion for animals was clearly understood and
articulated by Pythagoras. Recognized today as a genius whose discoveries
are still of critical importance, Pythagoras remains an enigma, with
some of his insights eagerly received and used and others ignored. His
theorems laid essential foundations in mathematics and geometry and
made possible subsequent progress in architecture, design, construction,
cartography, navigation, and astronomy. Pythagoras and his students
also discovered and applied the principles of harmonics that underlie