If we were to search throughout the history of human existence, in every nook and cranny on Planet Earth, we would not find one perfectly sane mind. Some form and degree of madness (in both senses of the word) is and has always been a pandemic disease among our species, from which no one has been immune, or has ever been known to fully recover.
And yet, despite the monumental ramifications of this astounding fact, it is rarely noted by even the most serious thinkers. It seems that we are unwilling to experience the inevitable humbling that must come with admitting, even to ourselves, that as a species, we human beings too often think, feel and behave as though we were not in our right minds.
Until we lift the veil of denial that blinds us to this premise, we will continue to go about our lives in utter confusion as to why we do the crazy things we do. But when we admit to ourselves, and one another, that the reason we behave as though we are mad is because we are, our confusion disappears.
We understand why we choose, of our own free will, to sacrifice clean air, water and food essential for our survival for petty pleasures that are too embarrassing to list and are sure to be the death of us; why we hide from one another behind a lifetime of disguises and lies; why we settle our disputes by fighting people we do not know, under orders from others we do not know, in defense of what we do not know is so; and why the demons of depression, obsession, repression, anxiety, guilt, apathy, hate and jealousy haunt our days and nights.
The many symptoms of our shared illness are easily seen on any street corner, in homes, schools, work places, courtrooms or anywhere else human behavior is on display. But the most serious is our seeming obsession with some form of violence. What greater proof that the state of our minds is off-kilter than the fact that we commit, condone and applaud gruesome acts of violence, on a daily basis… from slaughterhouses and laboratories to war zones? What else, but mental illness, would explain why spiritual beings, capable of reason and compassion, choose cruelty and violence instead?
Evolving beyond our lust for violence is the essential first step toward our desperately-needed cure. Only by rising above our willingness to terrorize, be terrorized by or watch anyone else terrify or be terrified by anyone else, will we, for the first time in our history, feel safe enough to lift the veil that hides our saner selves. When we do, we will discover that although we are surely mad, we are not only mad. Each of us is empowered with a reasonable mind and a compassionate heart… the golden pillars that frame the pathway to a saner way of living.
When we embark on that pathway, we come face to face with veganism, which is non-violence in action. The concept, as simple as it is profound, is that the violent, unbelievably cruel custom of enslaving, torturing and killing our fellow earthlings must and will end when we stop supporting it, and we will do so when we see the innocent victims for who they really are… mysterious beings like us, who feel pain and love life as we do, and have done us no harm. When we open our minds to reason and compassion, we will see with saner eyes, that their precious bodies are not ours to bend and break to our will for the sake of our pleasure, comfort, convenience or any other excuse our unreasonable, apathetic thinking can conjure up.
Without veganism, we will remain trapped in our madness.
With it, we will be the sanest we have ever been.
