Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: Sustainable, Non-exploitive, Space Exploration Pr

From: [email-masked] (Eric Brooks)
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 01:20:54 GMT

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, [email-masked] wrote:

>Reply-To: "permaculture" <[email-masked]>
>From: stephan leimroth <[email-masked]>
>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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From: "William Slusser" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Jun 1999 02:28:14 -0500

Eric,

My wife and I are a lacto/ovo vegitarians, although she dos'nt eat eggs unless they are in donuts or something.   I do like and eat eggs. 

Anyway,
I want to build a permaculture environment on my fathers acres in central kentucky.  It is 80% surrounded by river water and a very nice site for this.    He has planted many fruit trees and I will be adding nut trees etc soon.

What I want to get to is what is slavery and what is a symbiotic relationship.   He has chickens that are treated better than most people.   He feeds them well to the point of unsustainability and eats less than 1/3 of the eggs.  He has about a dozen or more chickens.   This is not a sustainable situation but it is also not slavery as the chickens are quite happy.   I know they are happy, as they love their coop which was designed soley for them and they look upon it as their sanctuary, espessially in winter.   Every time I visit they are upset that I am on their turf!
When I retire to the place, I will grow in a rotational pattern a few fenced fields of grain soley for them using natural methods that would make Masanobu Fukuoka proud.   Fenced only for their protection as it is a wild area with preditors.    I will do this among other things in an effort to blend their existence into the natural cycle, thus being sustainable.

Now I have sustainable chickens that are happy and I eat some of their eggs to supplement my diet.  Is this slavery or a symbiotic relationship.   One could argue both, but what is better for the chickens?   If we asked the chickes to move, they would be very unhappy about doing so and would protest.   If we do not help the chickens who will??  Surely not Colonel Sanders!

I would like to note that It sickens me to know about the egg production methods used by corporations.   To live a life in a small pen being barely able to move, only to eat and produce eggs that fall onto a conveyor belt, THEN to be sold as meat!    I have heard that a lot of these chickens develop cancer due to there lifestyles, so people are eating cancerous chickens.   OK, this will not cause cancer in humans, but its the thought that counts:)  Have you seen a chicken with chicks?  Fun to watch.
What do you think?   Where should the chickens live, with me or the corporations? 

Bill
 
>>> Eric Brooks <[email-masked]> 06/03/99 08:20PM >>>

Now,

Stephan,

Cheers,

Eric Brooks

>---reganism as the criterion for member

---

From: John Schinnerer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 14:07:00 -0700

Aloha,

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	[email-masked] [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> 
>...sustainable systems of food production and

Try telling that to the tribespeople in dryland Africa whose subsistence
culture revolves primarily around domesticated goats (for just one of
countless age-old examples - there's also the Lapps, etc.).  It all depends
on where one is and what one has to work with.

Anyone have examples of ecosystems large enough to be potentially
self-sustaining that both include vertebrates (especially mammals) and are
"vegan?"

>because to -not- do so endangers our -own- survival and happiness.

So where along this continuum do we stop killing billions of innocent
plants?

>and damage into a system. 

Damage (or not) would depend on *how* "meat" and "dairy" relate to other
systems, how they are "implemented."   
Complexity can be a very desirable characteristic for ecological systems -
makes them more robust, flexible, adaptable to changes in larger systems and
thus more likely to continue in some recognizable form.  That's a feature I
like in ecological systems that keep me alive!  It also seems to be a
fundament of permaculture, or at least of the natural systems we claim to
pattern permaculture designs after.
I would like to hear more about where animals of all types fit in to your
master plan for this planet (or some other one, as the case may be).  If
they threaten your vegan food sources (whether by trampling, grazing, using
them for habitat, or whatever), what do you do?  There are countless
essential (to life as we know it, anyhow) symbiotic/balancing/cyclical
relations between plants and animals to consider, as well, in this
interconnectedness you mention.

>Only in the most extraordinary circumstances,

I suspect most humans live in circumstances more closely related to the
"extraordinary" cases than to the situations of the privileged few
first-worlders who can easily and affordably live and/or advocate a vegan
lifestyle.

>reject animal slavery, just as it did human slavery. I certainly do
already.

I can see many ways to "reject animal slavery" and still eat meat
occasionally - probably much better meat, too.  "Free range" fish are
healthy and tasty...grandpa's venison was lean and flavorful.  Neither of
those critters are "slaves" in any way I can imagine; certainly no more so
than veggies in a human-cultivated garden.

>forms, when they are discovered.

If they are "discovered" in such a way that they have any experience of your
existence, they will have been interfered with.  So this appears to be a
paradox...

>It is much more likely that vegans would

Now this really starts to sound familiar.  With apologies to Pastor
Niemoller:

"First they came for the red-meat eaters, and I did not speak out because I
do not eat red meat. 
Then they came for the fish and poultry-eaters, and I did not speak out
because I do not eat poultry or fish.  
Then they came for the ovo-lacto vegetarians, and I did not speak out
because I do not eat eggs or dairy products.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me..."

;-)

John Schinnerer