Our Future is Vegan
We live on the road. For fourteen years now Madeleine and I have been plying North America’s highways in our ’86 diesel pick-up that pulls our solar-powered fifth wheel “rolling home” across this beautiful land. Although we only drive about fifteen to twenty thousand miles per year, following the geese in spring and fall, and presenting around 150 lectures, concerts, and workshops annually, we are able to get a pretty good glimpse into what’s happening here. For me, two things especially stand out. One—monoculture agribusiness. Huge fields of corn, soybeans, hay, alfalfa, and other grains and legumes grown primarily to feed our billions of hyperconfined cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and fish. Two—hospitals and medical facilities. They are springing up like mushrooms after the rain—in large part due to the flood of people hyperconsuming the flesh, eggs, and milk of the aforementioned creatures.
North and south, east and west, monocultures and hospitals. Drugged and poisoned land with all its inevitable results. According to recent statistics from the Department of Agriculture, a whopping 86 percent of U.S. agricultural land is devoted to just four crops— corn, soy, hay, and wheat—the main crops used to feed and fatten confined animals. By contrast, growing all the vegetables in the U.S. requires only 1.5 percent of our agricultural land! And for all the orchards and vineyards that provide our nuts, berries, and fruits, it’s just 1.6 percent! Just three percent of our farmland produces all our fruits, veggies, and nuts! Talk about small footprint! Last fall, for example, as we were driving through Iowa, and I was delivering lectures promoting veganism in cities and towns throughout Iowa (whew!!), we traveled through countless thousands of acres of soybean fields. We found out that only one small field in the entire state grew soybeans that were used for tofu and soymilk for humans; virtually the entire vast Iowa soy crop was squandered to fatten cows, pigs, and other enslaved animals who were hidden away in their stinking sheds and feedlots far from the major roads. In contrast to this, Russia has been encouraging small-scale family gardens (“dachas”), and these dachas have been an amazing success, now supplying 93 percent of Russia’s potatoes, and 80 percent of all vegetables and fruits! This could be our future as well! If we understand and act.
By reducing vast expanses of our precious forests and prairies to toxic monocultures, where only one species is allowed to grow in order to feed the mistreated animals whose flesh and secretions we are all pressured into eating, we create the ongoing conditions of psychological, ethical, ecological, cultural, and spiritual disconnectedness. These prevent us, as a society, from understanding the roots of our unyielding dilemmas. The violence on our plates reverberates through our bodies, our minds, our culture, and throughout our world. How can we or our elected representatives act wisely while the blood that is running through our veins and brains is polluted with hormone, drug, and pesticide residues, cholesterol, and the fear, panic, and psychotic depression lived by the animals we eat?
By Madeleine Tuttle
It is way beyond time for all of us in our culture to look behind the curtain of institutional denial and bring the light of compassion and awareness to our meals and what our meals require.
Everyone in our culture feels it, I think. The existential doubt, visceral and haunting, about our future. The future of our species. Of the Earth. Our way of living. We feel it, but it’s just too much—so we turn away and focus on the familiar distractions, turning up the volume to drown out the inner knowing.
Yet our sanity longs for truth. More than anything else, veganism is truth. The truth of awareness—of what we’re actually eating! Of what it takes to get it on our plates! Of all the implications of our routine actions. The truth of our interconnectedness with all beings. The truth of our radiant essential nature, free, awake, loving, merciful, and wise. The truth of the ramifications of our meals: of our devastation of oceans for fish to feed chickens and cows whose bodies, babies, and yearnings we steal. The truth of our repressed and deadened horror. The truth of our inability to make some pretty obvious connections. Eating violence and terror, we long to avoid the truth.
Everywhere, though, the truth is popping up! It’s increasingly difficult to avoid hearing and seeing the obvious. Eating animal foods destroys the Earth. Drives global climate breakdown. Drives species extinction. Drives ocean depletion and forest devastation, drug addiction, disease, soil loss, water pollution, acidification, toxification, despair, and the mentality of exploitation and elitism and war.
Like the rising sun, the truth is shining brighter every day, revealing the interconnections. Bringing healing, insight, and understanding. And we are awakening. Veganism is the stark and liberating solution to the omnivore’s dilemma, the cultural conundrum bearing down ever more relentlessly as our massive violence toward animals and the Earth and future generations ripens before our eyes.
Happiness, peace, and freedom flow from nonviolence. We are all connected, and our joy is in blessing others. I don’t know how it will happen, but this I know in my bones: our future is veganism. Our future selves are vegans – delightedly and powerfully aware of the ancient truth of our magnificence. We are not shrinking, reducing, commodifying, cruel and numb people who heartlessly destroy the Earth and the sacred web of life—who have no future and have lost our purpose by stealing the purposes of others. We are consciousness, grace, kindness, creative inspiration, joy, and understanding. When light shines, darkness simply disappears without a trace. No fight is required. Letting the light shine through, breathing deeply and fully, we partake of the infinite, moment after moment.
This, then, is the situation in a nutshell:
We are all beings of light and awareness and love, born into a culture of violence, ignorance, and exclusion. We take on its darkness and fear, and the core ritual used by our culture to effect this is our daily meals, where we are forced to participate in routine killing by eating and buying the flesh and secretions of imprisoned, terrified animals. Our path to freedom lies in freeing these animals. Veganism is the feminine wisdom of interconnectedness, the spiritual and practical key to happiness and peace for all. She is our future. She is beckoning to us.
We all live on the road—the road to vegan living and to the harmony, sustainability, freedom, and co-creative celebration shining within.
Will Tuttle, Ph.D., composer, pianist, and Zen priest, is author of The World Peace Diet and is cofounder of Karuna Music & Art and the Prayer Circle for Animals.
- Posted by Dr. Will Tuttle on June 12, 2009 at 9:24 am
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Tagged as: agribusiness, nonviolence, organic, peace, Spirituality, sustainability
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Thank you ever so much for this beautifully written piece. You have opened my eyes wider than they already are. Peace to our animals!!!
This is a really wonderful post,
thank you so much for your clarity & compassion…
Thank you for this post. I feel the way you described the abuse of animals for food enlightening. People become numb and conditioned to certain words and no longer have a reaction to them. These new descriptions make my heart cry all the more for the plight of our animal brothers and sisters.
I live in Iowa in the middle of all the corn and soybean fields…it doesn’t seem like many people here get that it’s feeding big macs. Sad
This article was so beautiful. It touched my heart! I will be sure to share it with others.
Yes I agree its tragic how much meat is consumed but where do you get your b-12 if you are completely vegan? Supplements I suppose. I recently read about the risk of heart attack and endothelium disfunction (blood vessels) due to a rise in homocysteine levels from B-12 deficiancy. Its called hyperhomocysteinemia. Thats why I eat eggs and prawns and fish in small amounts. I also think I need the protein for many other bodily functions. I
This was one of the most beautiful things I’ve read about veganism. Dr. Tuttle is a visionary. Thank you.
For Hanna:
First, you don’t get B12 from animals as is believed. They get it from the soil off of the plants they eat from the ground, and if we hadn’t of destroyed our top soil like we have we’d be able to do the same more efficiently.
Also, you can get it from fortified whole grain cereals, tofu, tempeh, and soymilk. Besides, you only need a VERY small amount of B12 a day anyway. It doesn’t need to be your top concern; as long as you eat a variety of healthy plant-based foods you’re fine. The same goes for protein and all other nutrients, and in fact it’s animal protein that is a contributing factor-and a very significant one-to cancers and osteoporosis.
There is simply NO reason to eat ANY kind of animal product.
We can get ALL of our nutrients from plant-based foods.
Thanks for writing SUCH a beautiful, insightful article, Will; I’ve reposted the link on my Facebook page, and hope people will look at it.
I wish more people, particulary people I know whom I’ve talked to about veganism and animal rights and diet would understand and accept what you’re saying here; it’s frustrating and troubling to me sometimes when you give people sources to refer to to back up what you’re saying and yet still continue to eat meat!
How do you deal with that? Do you have any advice/words of comfort, perhaps, for that?
So beautiful! The animals are so fortunate to have such a shiny soul speaking so eloquently on their behalf.
Thank you for what you both do on the planet. Bringing the wisdom to the people through lectures, music and workshops. We are always reinspired to continue our work teaching vegan cuisine and lifestyle when we hear of your travels and experiences.
Thank you for your words.
Excellent article. I just wish more people in the world could see it and accept it as the truth. How long do we have to wait for that nice peaceful vegan world to arrive?
Will Tuttle personifies compassion in action. He’s the most compelling and humane advocate for veganism that I’ve ever read. He accentuates the spiritual, moral, ecological and planetary imperatives of a flesh-free diet. Will Tuttle’s piano CDs are also exemplary. He’s a virtuosic pianist.
From farm animals suffering in sheds to monocrops to fatten the food animals, you bring reality to light. Hopefully, as many seeds of change, as seed to grow animal feed infuse people to make paradigm shifts to go vegan. You are so eloquent!
Will Tuttle’s vision is a beacon of our aspirations. His book, “The World Peace Diet” eloquently discusses our path to veganism.
As in his usual graceful manner,Dr. Will Tuttle has succeeded in puting into words what we as vegans feel we want to SHOUT to everyone. With his voice singing the words, he gets his point across so delicately yet forcefully.
To Hanna:
b-12 is found in the topsoil,like someone mentioned (sorry someone i forgot your name).
B-12 is also actually produced by the gut. So,the reason animals’ meat contains B-12 is b/c their gut produced it for them. Some animals eat their feces (you’ve seen your dog) which contains B-12. I know no one talks about this but this is true. Obviously,one is not going to get their B-12 THAT way (you can verify this on Dr. Gabriel Cousens’ website) so it is easier and more pleasant to take a supplement (microspray has a great spray made in the USA–it’s a small company and i have talked with the owner/inventor/chemist Dr. Thistle. You can call them 1-800-555-1276).
I now have to forward this wonderful article to people i know who still are not vegan but thinking about it.
Thank you
Namaste
There was my life before Dr. Tuttle and the WPD (5.3.2009) and now there is my life after. I have been vegan for 38 days. Thank you for shining your light on me. Will. Follow my journey on OneHealthyGirl.com. xo-Carla.
Amen-Our freedom lies in the interconnectedness of the femine view of veganism.. praise be the truth has been written. If we do not recognize that the interconnectedness of man with the planet we will be the animal that dies out the dinasour. We are living breathing proof that this lifestyle that most people adhere to is not only incomplete it is depleting. I think this will go down as my all time favorite blog. Love it. Callie
Beautiful article. Important to have as much info. on this as possible, as every piece this well written builds momentum for our movement.
No one says it better than Will. He is THE real man that men should model themselves after; a man of, by, and for the Earth and all of its creatures.
I was just wondering where this 1 soybean field in Iowa was that grew soybeans for tofu? My family’s farm grows soybeans (among other crops), some of which are destined to become tofu.
Question though – do you have any idea how many Iowans are vegans? My friend would like to open a vegan bakery in the Des Moines area but is worried there aren’t enough people who would be interested in frequenting her business.
PLEASE open anything vegan! DSM is so very limited for the vegan diet!!!
Vegan or not, do what your body is telling you!