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

38 / the world peace diet
out of meat. Of course, the same could be said about humans to justify
cannibalism. Or one might say that if God didn’t want people to rape
each other, He wouldn’t have made them with suitable body openings.
Because of our own wounding, we cannot see the blindness and cruelty
that always accompany our thinking that others exist for our purposes.
Slave owners in the South couldn’t see it, either. And yet, if we humans
were the ones born into miserable confinement and routinely castrated,
branded, raped, shocked, mutilated, and driven insane because we were
viewed merely as tasty meat by a stronger and more “intelligent”
species, we would certainly hope that this “superior” species would recognize
that we have a greater purpose than being mere commodities to
be imprisoned, killed, wrapped, sold, and eaten. We likewise must regain
the intelligence we have lost through desensitizing ourselves to the undeniable
truth that from the perspective of the millions of terrified animals
whom we see only as food commodities, we are vicious terrorists.
To the degree that any whole part loses its intelligence, it loses its
ability to make the connections that provide it with meaningful guidance
in its creative serving of the larger wholes—its true purpose. As our
intelligence increases, our capacity for joy and compassion increases.
We become more aware of our connection with the human family, the
whole web of life, and the infinite source of all life, and yearn to serve
these larger wholes. As our intelligence decreases, we disconnect from
our serving of the larger wholes, becoming less sensitive to feedback
from them, more self-centered and self-preoccupied. This insensitivity
becomes stupidity, inevitably bringing violence, disease, unhappiness,
suffering, and death.
This truth is not arcane or difficult to understand. We see it in our
own bodies, as cells and systems cooperate together with astonishing
intelligence to allow us, as the larger whole, to simultaneously: eat and
digest food, read a book, monitor our environment for sounds, smells,
and sensations, breathe, pump blood, heal a sunburn, destroy stray cancer
cells, regulate the levels of hundreds of hormones and enzymes, and
perhaps even nurture a growing fetus! Common activities like reading a
book, playing the piano, engaging in a classroom discussion, or playing
tennis would be inconceivable without the concentrated serving intelli-